Why Create A Spiritual Rule of Life?

A Spiritual Rule of Life is not how we find our spiritual life, it's how we nurture and amplify it.

Spiritual life is always, always, always an inside out process.

We can't make it happen. We can't force it or will it. It's not from our analytical mind, rather our spiritual life flows through our intuitive heart. It is our spirit that is the gateway into the spiritual life.

So with that viewpoint, let's begin:

Crafting a Rule focuses our lives and attention on what matters most to us. It cuts off options and distractions that waste our time and sucks the life right out of us. We focus on abundant life.

We are spiritual beings first and foremost. It's the essence of who we really are. But we are human in this life with limited resources of time, talent and energy.

Our disciplines focus and enhance our lives. They expand our inner life by focusing our outer one. It's an expansive life on a narrow way.

Our hearts rule deepens and enhances our emotions rather than suppressing them. We cultivate, love, joy, peace... Yes, these are deeper than emotions, but emotion gives them motion. Emotion moves us into action. Emotion brings the spark into our lives. Flatlining our emotions is not the spiritual path, it's the souls path of control. In the garden of our heart, we cultivate the spirit's work and flow within us as it deepens and grows fruitful emotions.

I'll develop this if  you find it helpful.

Another point is: Our rules grow and adapt as we do. What works in one season of life will stifle our spirit's flow in another.

Here's where the good counsel of a Spiritual Director, an accountability group, a sage, or someone God has put in your life really helps. We don't do life alone.

Notes: Aristotle, The Tao, and Our Wisdom Voice

In the same way, Aristotle and Plato addressed the perspective of philosophy, so the Tao Te Ching addresses spirituality. Is it divinely written? I don't see that, but it's written out of the person's spirit and holds timeless insights into the nature of things.

An Example would be: "What goes around comes around." ~ Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching  Ch. 30

The Tao is written out of the spirit of the writer and thus teaches the oneness of things which is the nature of our spirit. It is the nature of our spirit to see things as wholes rather than dualistically or  opposites, life's unity rather than it's divisions.

To live out of our spirit is to live out of wholeness. This is the realm of the wise, the sage, and even our elders. Our brains actually begin to change as we get older, thus making this state of oneness or seeing things in wholes more accessible to us. 

A Sketch of Forgiveness and Healing

Forgiveness isn't a head game, it's not mental assent. And forgiveness isn't a contractual agreement: If you ask me, I will forgive you.

Forgiveness is a matter of the heart.

Let's say I was sexually abused by someone. It may take me a while, but forgiveness is usually progressive. And I don't forgive for the other person. I forgive for me. I want to be free. I want to cut any bond that might connect me to that person or event, spiritually, emotionally/mentally, and physically.

With my forgiveness, they and the trama become God's problem, not mine. But if I don't forgive, the trama remains, however fading in the distance. Unforgiveness is where we become very clever with our brokenness. Everything from split personalities, to total emotional shut-down, to acholism, drugs, personality disorders and the list goes on, and that's just the emotional/mental end. The ways we deal with brokenness is endless. Walking away may be the best thing we ever do, but it doesn't heal the underlying suffering.

But we can learn to let go. When or as we forgive, the healing can begin. My healing is why I choose to forgive, even if it takes a thousand times a day. So don't get locked into a contractual agreement, or  an all or nothing mindset. The healing process can lead us to forgiveness too, as we cut the spiritual trama in our bodies. So don't wait around for the stars to aline. Break that spiritual cord as it surfaces. The longer it festers the deeper it goes into us.

This is where some of the latest data, and things like Yoga, and Tai Chi teach us, that trama can lodge in our bodies, and muscles and make us sick. I think it can lodge in our cells and even turn on cancer, but the studies haven't gotten that far yet.

Healing and release go hand in hand in the process of forgiveness.

If it isn't dealt with, our brokenness and trama can be passed on to our children, as well as to other's around us. We might even be dealing with what has been passed on to us. In cultures that don't practice forgiveness like Muslim cultures, you are honor bound to carry on the pain of preceding generations. They're still fighting the Crusades, among other things.

This is a little sketch of things I've learned. As I've alluded to before, things like Cognitive Therapy can really lay out the problem and help us, but if we don't focus on what makes us better, we can spend a lifetime rummaging through the labyrinth of our soul.

I adhere to a wholistic approach to forgiveness and healing, to use as many helpful tools as we can find, spiritually, emotionally/mentally, and physically. It's one reason among many why I do Tai Chi, meditate etc. Good counselors, pastors, spiritual directors, group support, etc.

I'll be adding to this:

Positive Psychology:  http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/

Stanford Forgiveness Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSGfMVRVWZw

The Grace of Goodness

 Lauri Rantala via Compfight

In the West, with our fight against evil, we've maligned the concept of good, not realizing goodness is the social glue that causes every relationship, marriage, family, and society to flourish.

If indeed, as the Scriptures tell us God is good, it behooves us to check it out and see just how this character trait of God expresses itself.

Goodness always works behind the scenes, so we rarely see it. But the grace of goodness is behind every good thing that ever happens to us.

Goodness, like a cold, is caught more than taught. And as goodness is not a gift, it needs to be sought out, cultivated, and grown.

There's a great research site: The Science of a Meaningful Life

For a great place to start, I highly recommend One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Ann is one of the most important contemplative writers of our time. She also has a wonderful website: A Holy Experience

Live big-hearted and generous.

Shifting Into Our Spirit?

Shift into your spirit.

I realize when I used this phrase, it might not make sense. So let me lay it out and I hope give you a handle on the concept.

Being filled with the Spirit, walking in the spirit, It is the spirit that gives life... it's spiritual life not soul life. Most of our spiritual work is going through the motions in the labyrinth of our soul. To have a spiritual life we must first shift into our spirit. We can do it in our body and bypass our soul altogether. ie breath prayer, meditation, etc. But it can also move from our soul into our spirit. It's a shift of consciousness.

Shifting into our spirit is when our awareness moves from our soul into our spirit. Not that we loose the awareness of our soul, but the center of our awareness shifts into the perspective of our spirit.

Sometimes it's called awakening, awakening awareness, mindfulness, even Being In The Zone.

It's an expansive awareness that allows us to see and experience life from a spiritual perspective.

My Brother Rick

I just found out my brother Eric Mills Holmes died, so I want to tell you a little bit about my brother Rick. 

Here's my family at Thanksgiving in 1952. I'm the little guy on the left with my mother. My brother Rick is the guy on the right in the flannel shirt.


Rick always had a larger than life presence. You can see it in his eyes even here. It didn't matter how he was dressed or who he was around, he took center stage.

Rick had a run in with his guidance counselor at Concord High School. She told him he wasn't smart enough to go to college, so he needed to get a good mill job.
When Rick entered Duke University, he had two letters of recommendation one signed by John F. Kennedy and the other by Richard M. Nixon. Rick played on the Duke Freshman Basketball team. He made the Dean's List. So that when Spring came around, he was asked to give his old high school guidance counselor a tour of the school. Oh yea, Rick was a Page for Congress during High School in 1958.

Our dad, the Rev John Julian Homes, died when Rick was in college, so he snuck me on campus for about a month. I lived, ate and argued philosophy at Duke when I was 13. (I had started studying Confucius when I was 12, so I had ideas.) Thank You Rick for such an opportunity!

Rick graduated from Duke and worked a year in Manhattan for Cannon Mills, handling the J.C. Penny accounts. Of course, Rick brought me up there. My first view of New York City was Harlem during the race riots. It was mind boggling. Loved the city. Did the Zoo, the Statue, the UN, the Empire, and even took in some Broadway plays. Rick lived on Central Park facing a famous old church. It was beautiful!

Rick had a keen mind for law, so he went to UNC and got his first law degree, then got his second one from Columbia. He taught contract law in schools all over the country, then moving overseas to  the University of Galway and the University of Dublin. Rick would be writing sometimes 5 books a year, culminating with the encyclopedia Holmes Appleman on Insurance Law and Practice.

So when China was just beginning to open up, the John D. Rockefeller Foundation sent Rick to China to represent the US in the field of law. He visited political prisoners in jail. While he was there, the face off at Tiananmen Square happened and they jetted him out of the country. He was just that kind of guy, my brother Rick.

When I graduated high school, Rick set me up to go to Outward Bound School in Maine. That was a heaven on earth survival school. The guy who taught mountain climbing was the 2nd man on Everest. Euel Gibbons did the plant study for the islands. The wooden sailing boats were a Dutch design. We actually got drawn out to sea in 30 foot waves and had the Coast Guard pull us into a safe harbor. It was Awesome! Thank You Rick!

There's a million stories. I remember the time of the last big Race March in Atlanta. Rick was out leading the front carrying a sign that read: We're All God's Children.

But Rick did everything big. He was a big drinker and it got the best of him. But through that, my cousin, Mick Yount and I had the privilege of introducing my brother to Jesus. And eventually, he made his way into AA, which worked.

From here, Rick rebuilt a new life, with his faith and a wonderful family, but that's a story for another time.

So my brother died yesterday, resting in the arms of Jesus. Finally at peace, finally whole, finally at home.

Oh, one thing I think is a bit humorous and it set him on the path of law: Rick failed the physical exam for becoming a CIA operative after Duke.

I'm gonna miss that big lug of a guy! My brother Rick.

Rick and Grayson Holmes

Be A Doubter!

In mystical matters, I'm a skeptic! I test everything. I especially doubt and test my own spiritual experiences. It's too easy to deceive ourselves into thinking more highly of our spiritual states and experiences than they really are. I also have seasoned spiritual advisors who help to keep me accountable. If something can't be examined, if it's a deep secret entrusted to few, or too holy, your discerner should be standing straight up and the warning bells going off.

Jesus always led from the bottom up. He never lorded it over anybody, even when he was revealing peoples hearts and motives. Jesus did all his miracles right where he found himself. Wide open accountability. So should all pastors, priests, spiritual masters, prophets, and leaders.

We serve from humility, the lowest up, bathing them with honor, not from the platform down. It took the foolish humility of St. Francis to restore humility back to the Catholic Church at a time they were dying from the inside out. It' not too light a statement to say that if is wasn't for St Francis, there would be no Roman Catholic Church today. We have such a Pope in Francis who's bringing back that same spirit of humility in such a time as this.

For me, it happens every time. I'll be walking in a mystical experience with God, sometimes it feels like I'm walking in an expansive state, timeless. That's when it hits me. Is this psychosomatic? Am I creating this? And God will say, or show me something profoundly simple that floors me.

You see, only God can answer our deepest doubts. Remember Job. Let me repeat it: Only God's presence will ever answer our deepest doubts.

It's not wrong to have doubts. In fact, it's part of the discerning process. It's how we learn to discern. We question. Our learning curve is to ask good questions.

Here's my story. I was burned slap out of 40 years of failure after failure in the church. I learned, but I couldn't go on, something had to change. I was leaving for good. That's when I felt God tell me to get back in touch with my mystic roots and go back into Buddhism as a Believer. That went over like a led balloon. So I fought with God over that one for 5 long years.

So I was back, and one day I was doing a meditation practice called Great Doubt. It's when you doubt everything. You doubt God. That there ever was a God. You doubt your beliefs. You doubt yourself. Your heart. Your motives. You doubt your doubts. And then, when there's nothing left. When you're about to disappear as a being. You step out in faith. It's likened to stepping off a hundred foot cliff or a fifty foot pole. An act of total surrender.

So I stepped out into this transcendental fog, like a mist swirling around me, deafening in expansive stillness. I was wide open not knowing what to expect. But I was there, wherever there is. I hadn't fallen into endless nothingness. Then I saw it. It was like smiling eyes breaking through the swirling clouds. There came Jesus, striding up to me with open arms and a hug of welcoming acceptance and love like I've never felt before. I had found my way back. Swallowed up in the mystery of God. I'm still there.

So I encourage you to doubt, and test and taste and see. God waits to be examined and found true. Such is true humility.