Enough Already

Men will wrangle for religion; write for it;
fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it.

A friend of mine was getting a massage when the massage therapist asked her if she had been saved. Oh dear …

We have all been confronted by people who want to convert us to their religion, multilevel-marketing company, or belief system. Perhaps you have attempted to convert others. Such interactions can be stimulating if you are up for a theological discussion or attracted to a product. But many people find them annoying. When young men in black pants and white short-sleeve shirts approach my yard, I inform them that I am the gardener and Mr. Cohen has moved to Fiji. When they depart, I thank God that I have been saved.

The Guinness Book of World Records cites the longest conversation in recorded history as transpiring between a Jehovah’s Witness and an Amway salesman. I respect religious devotees and multilevel-marketing aficionados for their faith and determination. They believe in their pathway or product, and want to share the benefits they have discovered. Yet why do so many people run the other way when others try to sell them God or soap powder?

Proselytizing is motivated by insecurity. People who do not have confidence in themselves, their God, or their product need to amass legions of believers around them to compensate for their perceived emptiness. The more people you need to get to agree with you, the less you trust your own knowing.

An inspired invitation to participate, on the other hand, proceeds from inner security. Confident belief is content to simply express itself, is unattached to results, and trusts that those who can benefit will recognize truth and be uplifted. It is less important that you join my religion, and more important that we are joined with each other. Faith acknowledges many routes to the mountaintop and respects all paths as valid. Fear shouts, “My way is the only way!” and seeks to meet the needs of the converter more than the converted. Many have been killed in the name of dogma. Many more have been healed by unconditional love.

First you talk the talk.
Then you talk the walk.
Then you walk the talk.
Then you walk the walk.

— Source unknown

People founded in faith motivate others by example. When you model the behavior you wish to inculcate, your message is far more compelling than when you resort to histrionics, games, gimmicks, and threats.

Never buy hair grower from a bald salesman.

— Source unknown

The less you believe, the more you need to convince. The more you believe, the less you need to say. Authentic sales or conversion occurs more at an energetic level than a verbal level. Everyone is unconsciously reading your energy more than your words. Be the life you wish the world would live.

The desire to get everyone to do what you do cloaks your desire to experience more of what you value. I met a fellow who practices watsu, a delightfully soothing method of massage in body-temperature water. He told me, “My goal is for everyone in the world to get a watsu treatment.”

While worldwide watsu would probably make the planet a better place, his vision was not realistic or even necessary. Not everybody in the world will ever get a watsu treatment, not everybody wants one, and not everyone needs one. The fellow’s intention was benign, yet inherently a projection of his own value system. What he really meant was: “I feel so wonderful when I receive watsu that I want my entire world to be filled with that good feeling.” The operative words here are “the world” and “my world.” If he could just recognize that his mission in life was to elevate his own consciousness, he could leave the other seven billion people on the planet to discover their unique healing paths, and he would reach his goal far more quickly and easily.

In the movie The Karate Kid (2010 version), the student begins to sense the power of his martial-arts practice. He tells the master that he would like to control lots of other people with this power. The master shakes his head and tells the student that there is only one person he needs to control—himself. All of our efforts to gain mastery over others are but veiled distractions from the challenge of mastering our own selves … the only real mastery required and of which we are capable.

Trying to convince others to do what you do is generally ego motivated and counterproductive. Real conversion or uplifting of others occurs only when love, not fear, is at the root of the experience. The root word of religion means “to join together,” as with a Higher Power. When you are connected with your Higher Power, the light you radiate stimulates those who look upon you to connect with their Higher Power—ultimately the same as yours—and far beyond any particular religion or human pathway.

Finding God never has anything to do with the promise of future heaven or the threat of future hell. God is realized only now, for heaven is a state of mind available right where you stand. Eternity does not start after you die; it begins when you really live. Those who threaten you with the flames of Hades are already there. The fear of death is death, and the threat of hell is hell.

My religion is very simple.
My religion is kindness.

— His Holiness the Dalai Lama

If you are happy with your religion, spiritual path, product, or life, others will be drawn to follow in your footsteps—not because they fear going to hell if they don’t, but because they will find a touch of heaven if they do. Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs are built upon a mature tenet: “We rely on attraction, not promotion.” They suggest and invite, but do not coerce. Those who come to 12-step programs do so because they recognize the value of the system. They are free to come and go as they please, and most stay because they want to, not because they will be punished if they don’t.

Is God love, or fear? When you get clear on this answer, all the other questions in your life will answer themselves. The sage Meher Baba put it most eloquently:

Love has to spring spontaneously from within; it is in no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; but while love cannot be forced upon anyone, it can be awakened through love itself. Love is essentially self-communicative; those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. Those who receive love from others cannot be its recipients without giving a response that, in itself, is the nature of love. True love is unconquerable and irresistible. It goes on gathering power and spreading itself until eventually it transforms everyone it touches. Humanity will attain a new mode of being and life through the free and unhampered interplay of pure love from heart to heart.

The Teachings of Abraham (Abraham-Hicks) delineate three basic universal laws: the Law of Attraction, the Law of Deliberate Creation, and the Law of Allowing. The Law of Allowing states that each of us must follow our own unique path in life, and we must allow others to follow theirs.

You do not have the right or power to choose for another person because: (1) from your limited perspective, you cannot know what is right for them; and (2) if you impose your choice on them, you rob them of important lessons they can learn only by walking through them personally. To try to manipulate another person to do as you wish is not just selfish, but fruitless. If you have ever tried to get your spouse to change to live up to your expectations, your efforts likely failed and caused more problems than they solved. Certainly you may invite, suggest, support, and offer help or guidance where you can, but ultimately the choice to accept your offering is in the hands of the recipient.

A happy outcome to all things is sure.

— A Course in Miracles

The Law of Allowing calls you to trust that other people are capable of succeeding without your managing their lives. This applies most obviously to parenting and teaching. When my friend Jenny’s stepsons (described in a previous chapter) got into jams, she struggled to get them out. Yet over time she realized that the boys gained more by learning the lessons the jams provided. Eventually she came up with a mantra that has helped her and her kids time and again: They’ll figure it out. Now Jenny helps where she can through word, action, and prayer. But beyond that, she trusts the process of learning and empowers her kids by regarding them as wise and resourceful.

One way to evaluate any religion, self-development path, or organization is to observe whether it has an exit door or graduation mechanism. Many pathways have subtle or obvious rules or pressure tactics to keep members in the fold. If you declare that you are ready to move on, the institution goes into intense threat-and-survival mode. Leaders tell you that you need to stay in the organization for life or you will be lost or go to hell.

It is a rare organization or leader that can say, “Thank you for joining us for the time you did. We now trust your decision to move on, and we wish you well.” Instead, when you tell such an organization you are leaving, or you leave without telling them, the group calls in its heavies and does everything in its power to force you to stay. Some religions practice shunning and treat you like a criminal or a nobody if you start to stray. Other cults will hound you for years with letters, phone calls, visits, and threats. If you want to assess the level of health of an organization, study how it deals with those who leave.

You can gauge your sense of enoughness by your attitude surrounding leaving an organization or relationship. Do you feel guilty and avoid communicating about your departure? Do you offer excuses, leave abruptly, create a drama, or make the organization or person you are leaving “wrong”? Do you feel like a failure or judge your tenure with the group or person as a mistake or waste of time? Or can you stand tall in dignity and integrity, thank the group or person for the time and lessons you shared, and firmly declare with love, “It’s time for me to move on.”

People who join cults or religions because they believe they are not enough are an energetic match to the organization when they join. Populated by people who feel they are not enough, the organization has a sense of non-enoughness built into its fiber, so it attracts or preys upon people who believe they are not enough.

When you grow beyond your sense of inadequacy, you have graduated from the belief that moved you to join, and the agreement of not enough no longer binds you and the group together. So you must move on to find and bond with other people or groups based on an agreement of adequacy.

This is not to say that religions or cultlike groups do not help people. They do. If you are steeped in an addiction, fear, pain, or a dysfunctional lifestyle, and you find a belief system that uplifts you and brings you healing and a more fulfilling life, the religion or group serves well. Many lives are improved by participating in groups that are not fully healthy. All cults are based on at least a seed of truth that attracts people to join. If you cultivate that seed, you gain for life. Yet if that seed is accompanied by myriad illusions or oppressive dogma, you cannot afford to stay.

Resolve to evolve.

— Source unknown

Often there is a period of transition between leaving a group or relationship based on not enough and connecting with people and groups based on enough. This can be a confusing or frightening period in which you feel lost, alone, or abandoned. You might be tempted to return to the group or relationship for a sense of familiarity and security. But the genie is out of the bottle, and you can no longer stuff him or her into a container that has been outgrown.

When the newly liberated Hebrew nation left slavery and found itself in the wilderness, some of the people cried out, “Let’s go back to Egypt! We were slaves there, but at least we had food, shelter, and security.” Some did return, as did some African-American slaves who did not know how to deal with their freedom when it was granted. Yet most of the Hebrews and African Americans realized that the challenges of freedom were more attractive than the “security” of slavery, so they forged on to claim the gifts of independence.

Those gifts are available to you when you mobilize the trust and courage to keep moving ahead. Healthy partners or groups will support you in your decision to grow, and even celebrate with you. Be grateful for those who rejoice in your freedom. There are healthy ways to leave, and if you choose that path, your learning is further fortified.

There are two ways that participating in a relationship, religion, or organization empowers you: first, when you enter with a whole heart; and second, when you leave with a whole heart. The hidden gift of a conscious departure is that, in a sense, you are not really going anywhere. Where there is love and caring, the relationship is forever. You are not leaving the love, just the form that the love has taken. You can remain friends and mutual supporters for a lifetime, a hallmark of enoughness that pays a compliment both to you and the group or relationship from which you are moving on.

If you’ve participated in a religion or cult that has misled or abused you, you may be tempted to blame the organization or become soured on God or self-improvement groups. Yet blame and resentment only perpetuate pain and keep the negative experience alive in your psyche. Consider, instead, that you are not the victim of the group, but rather value the gifts you gleaned from the experience. They include:

• The healing and life enhancement you gained by putting those principles into action

• The growth you sustained by taking your power back after you had given it away, and departing by conscious choice

It all ends up in the good pile.

— Mike Grefner

Ultimately the experience of participating in the group served you on many levels. All experiences in life are either to be enjoyed or learned from. Your relationship with the group or person provided you both.

The inconvenience is temporary.
The improvement is permanent.
Thank you for your patience.

— Sign in a highway construction zone

There was a reason and purpose for you to join the group when you did, and a reason and purpose for you to leave when you did. Now there is a reason and purpose for you to move on and connect with others who are a match to the frequency at which you are living or wish to live. Evolution is proceeding wisely.

When you know that you are enough, you don’t need anyone to agree with you, join you, or prove your adequacy. Your worth cannot be bestowed by a group or by surrounding yourself with a posse. Your value is intrinsic, not earned. It is internally hardwired, not imported. You do not need to proselytize or be proselytized, because the Law of Attraction guides everyone to be in their right place without pressure or struggle.

When religions, self-development groups, and sales forces honor innate wisdom and wholeness, there will be no need for membership campaigns. How could you join the elite group created in the image and likeness of God when you are already a lifetime member?