On Being Faithful, Part 1

My teacher Spotted Eagle refers to our deepest fears of the future and our regrets about the past as being generated by what he calls our "biological contract." He puts it this way: 

"The biological contract states that there are not enough resources, and only through domination or being loved can we have access to what we need, therefore we must find a way to compete. The biological human concerns himself obsessively with his access to resources, protection, and support. He does this in three ways:
 

1. obligation (love)
2. domination (power)
3. subservience (safety)
 

Your biggest fear is that your survival depends upon these things, and that if you do not compete effectively, you will be abandoned by the tribe and die."

Heady and heavy stuff, yes? If you look back on your life and the choices you've made, I have a feeling that you, like me, can see this contract in action at virtually every important decision you've made - whether influencing you to act out or as a point of principle prompting you to conduct yourself with intergrity. When we speak about overcoming fear, what we're talking about is overcoming our fear of uncertainty as an agent of our choices. As I see it, it's why we're here.

The following is Part 1 of a series of teachings I'm sharing on Faith and how the biological contract influences our perceptions, behaviors, and choices around the concept of faith:

"The culture has so much morality tied up in the concept of being faithful, making faith about broken promises, disappointed expectations, and so on. If you look at this squarely, from the point of view of breaking the biological contract you will see immediately that being faithful in the now is really about being true to what is authentically who we are, and being true to what is authentic in the other. What this means is that we must withdraw our support of others acting out their biological contract. We know that we cannot make someone to be something this person is not, any more than this person can make us something we are not. You can see this at work in a troubled relationship. Two people are trying to be faithful to some sort of expressed or implied promise that requires one or both of them to sacrifice authenticity. The biological contract motivates them to be faithful to this idea of a promise and to be completely unfaithful to themselves.

You have all heard the expressions 'faithful representation' and 'high fidelity.' What these expressions mean is this: as close as possible to the original authentic thing, whether it is a photograph, a painting, music, or an electronic signal on a wireless network. As close as possible to the original. What does this mean to you?

To Spotted Eagle this means as close to the authentic self as possible. When we speak about authenticity, it may surprise you to know that our current interpretation, giving the word to mean genuine, is really only about 300 years old. The actual origin of this word in Greek meant “something that has the authority of its original creator”, and the word authority, deriving from the word meaning to originate.

Authentic. Original. Having the authority of its creator. If you look at authenticity through this lens, you become aware of its defiance of the biological contract. The biological contract surrenders authority to others, to institutions, to mental constructs such as morality, legality, and various codes of conduct created by the myriad of cultures that span our globe, all enforced with the contract’s enforcement methods: shame, blame, guilt, moral outrage, and pity. In the macrocosm, this is easy to witness and conceive. But let us take a view into the microcosm of the self, and all the rules we have adopted or made up. You can begin with the list of everything that offends you."

I hope you will take the time to reflect on what offends you as a means to inform your personal inquiry into Faith and how it functions in your life.