The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
1. These lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem “Renascence" are both sobering and heartening as a perspective for viewing the contemporary world. They seem to say that the world we live in is about as big as we are, and the problems of the world come from our own limited faith and ideals.
2. But she also points to the Truth that we are never further away from transcendental solutions than the thought of God. We may be worried about the morality of our society and the integrity of people; but it is not a godless society, and the integrating power of God is within every person as the key to growth and change.
3. In a day that has produced Watergate and Iran-Contra debacles in our nation's capital, and insider trading scandals on Wall Street, it is not uncommon to hear the call to get back to religion, back to God. I am not sure I know what this means. If it means getting back to moralistic preaching and piously professing clichés, I am less than enthusiastic. But if it means a renewed effort to "split the sky in two, and let the face of God shine through" within each person is an awareness that not only improves conduct and changes character, but also modifies consciousness, then I say, "Amen!"
4. A letter to the editor of the local paper touches on the theme, "If people would just live by the Ten Commandments, we would have honesty and integrity in business and personal relationships, and peace in the world." Certainly the Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian Bible form the backbone of the religion of hundreds of millions of people. Unquestionably the Ten Commandments have influenced the development of modern civil law in the Western world. But who knows them, or actually lives by them?
5. The phrase "The Ten Commandments" has become the "great cliché" of Western religion. Often it is used as an excuse for noninvolvement with the religious establishment: "Oh, I don't go to church. I just live by the Ten Commandments. What more can one do?" Yet how many persons who parrot the cliché could repeat even five of the commandments? Or locate them in the Bible? Or even have a Bible in their homes?
. We have been taught to keep the commandments, and we have kept them all too well. We have enshrined them like religious relics in sealed containers on the altar. Thus, it could be said that one lives by the commandments in much the same way as many persons live by a neighbor, never learning his name, let alone having any understanding communication with him.
6. If Jesus was anything He was an iconoclast, breaking with the traditions of the past, and giving emphasis to the "practice of the Presence" in the present. He sets a tone that clearly indicates His belief in the need for every individual to break down the tablets of stone so as to find in them a workable formula for victorious living. He said: Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time . . . but I say unto you . . . (Matthew 5:21, A.V.).
7. Undoubtedly, a widespread commitment to the Truth of the Ten Commandments could touch off a great spiritual renaissance in the world today. But this could happen only if there were a mass commitment to the breakup of what Gilbert and Sullivan call "platitudes in stained-glass attitudes." If we could break through the crystallized shell of the Decalogue, we would discover some marvelous guidelines for the integrated life. How great is the need in our society for spiritually integrated people!
8. The religious world is rife with clichés. The Ten Commandments is only one. Michelangelo's master-work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has helped to create another. It is the stereotype of God as a man. True, it is a big man, a powerful man, a majestic and wise figure of a man, but still a man, with all the possibilities of wrath and capriciousness. Cecil B. DeMille made skillful use of this cliché in the motion picture, The Ten Commandments, which is thus a grossly misleading caricature. For, though we do not actually see the big man "out there," we hear the booming voice of wrath and we see the "work of his hands."
9. Paradoxically, the commandments themselves are intended to turn us from this very kind of distorted imagery. The hand of God etching the commandments on tablets of stone is cinematography at its best and communication at its worst. For it completely misses the symbolism that is so important to understand the narrative of Moses' spiritual experience. It totally misses the full meaning of Mt. Sinai.
10. For generations Bible researchers have tried in vain to locate Mt. Sinai, the high mountain on which Moses is supposed to have received the tablets of stone from God. Perhaps they have been looking in the wrong place. Charles Fillmore defines Sinai metaphysically as a high or exalted state of consciousness (MBD/Sinai). Because of the cliché of the big man "out there," we repeatedly lose the sense of infinite Mind "in whom we live and move and have our being." In the account of Moses' wilderness experience, he seems to say, "You don't have to go anywhere to get into infinite Mind." For at the burning bush he records hearing a voice from within, saying: "Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5).
11. It is important to recall that Moses came to Mt. Sinai after many years of spiritual development in the wilderness of Horeb. During this period there evolved within him a strong awareness of the omnipresence of God, and of man's oneness with "the One." All else in the Sinai story must be seen against this backdrop. In his inner search for ways to help his people to find their freedom, he perceived that the causes of their suffering were in their attitudes and sense of values. His goal was to bring them into an awareness of "the Lord our God is One" (the Jewish Shema). These were undeveloped people, thus, in an experience of cosmic perception, he evolved a set of guidelines that were designed to meet their needs at the level of their ability to comprehend.
12. Look carefully at the commandments. It appears that they are restrictive laws set down by fiat of the divine dictator. Surely they seem to be careful lines of conduct by which the Israelites must live. However, law is not coercive but supportive. The commandments were (and are) fences to keep the undeveloped ones from wandering. Children need fences, and teenagers may need curfews and times of "grounding." But there must come a time when they "put away childish things" and move on toward maturity and self-reliance.
13. When dealing with gravity, a child must be told, "Don't lean out the window; don't get too close to the well." As he matures, he understands gravity's inexorable function, and so the parent's commandment ceases to be coercive and punitive. For gravity is supportive, holding him in his chair as he sits, enabling him to walk and run and jump and play. Thus, abiding on the right side of the law of gravity becomes second nature to him as he goes about the business of living.
14. The Ten Commandments are usually considered to be the basis for morality. However, morality deals not with spiritual law, but with "accepted rightness." Recent history has revealed dramatically that it is a short step to the rationalization that "everyone is doing it." The great need of every person is to understand his inherent spiritual nature, and thus that it is not a matter of what is being done, but what is the very best he can do. It is not enough to be superior to other persons; we should strive to be superior to our former selves. Beyond morality is a whole new dimension of metamorality. It is the deeper meaning in the Ten Commandments.
15. Religious institutions often engage in imagemaking. The emphasis is on the good reputation, or moral uprightness, which may be equated with being seen going to church, kneeling or standing at the correct moment in the service, joining in the public recitation of the commandments and other religious codes by rote. Religion might achieve a new public acceptance if the "good life" were to be measured not by the way we conform to religious codes, but by the degree to which we live by what Thornton Wilder calls "the incredible standard of excellence." This is what metamorality is all about. It is what this book is about.
16. Religious education has made great strides in recent years. However, all too often it still consists of rote-learning of custom-made convictions. Parents want Johnnie to have a "good religious background." He is sent off regularly to "school" were he learns the Ten Commandments and an assortment of creeds under rigid discipline and holy threats of eternal punishment. All this is directed toward the important time of confirmation or bar mitzvah. There is a great occasion of joy and celebration and a collective sigh of relief. Now Johnnie is a card-carrying member of the religious community, which he proves not necessarily by attendance at services, but always by stating the great cliché, "I live by the Ten Commandments."
17. This is not to denigrate the fundamental Truths that inhere in all the great religions of the world, or the need to build lives on laws of living such as outlined in the Ten Commandments. However, man is not a plaything of the gods, nor even of God. Man is a spiritual being, alive and living within a universal system that is constantly supportive. The idea of keeping God's commandments to honor Him, and thus to accept certain restraints set down “for some inscrutable reason of His own," may be extremely confusing to most persons.
18. The goal of this book is not to herald the Ten Commandments in their literal or crystallized form, but rather to break them down, one by one, to their underlying esoteric meaning. I am confident that you will discover some understandable spiritual fundamentals that will open new vistas of growth and unfoldment for you.
19. Perhaps I should emphasize that each commandment deals with a spiritual insight relatable to life on many levels. You may want to come back to specific chapters again and again, using the ideas as a basis for meditation. The object is to break through the limited states of consciousness that may have held you in bondage, like the Israelites of old. May this book be as a Moses unto you to help you go forward, through your own wilderness of spiritual growth, into your Promised Land of spiritual fulfillment and human achievement.
20. Metamorality is an idea whose time has come. It could be a powerful instrument in bringing light and effectiveness into all the many well-meaning attempts to create a moral climate in our schools, our business community, and in our political system. Don't be bashful in bringing its message to the world. But keep a balance by remembering, "Let there be peace (integrity, honesty, fair-play) on earth, and let it (them) begin with me."
© 1987, Unity Books
Reprinted with permission.
