Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
in Conversation with Swedenborg’s Process of Regeneration
Rev. Alison Moore, Nov. 17, 2019
Montgomery New Church, Cincinnati, OH
Genesis 28:10-16;
Luke 6: 46-49; Divine Love and Wisdom 330
I left my composed sermon behind,
due to a lack of ink in the host’s printer, but also following my own deep
sense that speaking from my heart was the better thing to do this day.
The Readings
Genesis 28:10-16 Jacob left
Beersheba and set out for Harran. When
he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set.
Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to
sleep. He had a
dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top
reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of
your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your
descendants the land on which you are lying. Your
descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to
the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on
earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I
am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will
bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done
what I have promised you.”
When
Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not
aware of it.” He
was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than
the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”
After the reading from Genesis, I
invited the congregation to reflect on the detail that Jacob was to be a
blessing. He wasn’t just to be blessed, he was to be a blessing to others. The
path of regeneration opens to each of us
a connection with heaven, which is like Jacob’s vision of the angels ascending
and descending between us and God. It is the gate of heaven.
Luke
6:46-49 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do
not do what I say? As for everyone who comes to
me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what
they are like. They are like a man building a house,
who dug down deep and laid the foundation on a rock. When a flood came, the
torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well
built. But the one who hears my words and does
not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on sandy soil. The
moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was
complete.”
After the reading from Luke, I
observed that I grew up believing my spiritual house was already built on a
rock simply by virtue of being born into the right denomination. We “had” the
rock, and it was everyone else whose house was built on the sand and that would
fall. I now believe that we all build our houses on sand repeatedly until we
learn what spiritual rock truly is. The process of spiritual growth and
regeneration may mean that our spiritual house falls down several times, requiring
us to re-examine the things upon which our beliefs are founded. I invited
everyone to forgive themselves and be open to the times when the foundations of
everything they believe seem threatened because that is an invitation from God
to grow.
DLW
330: The divine purpose of creation is that all humankind enters heaven. Every secondary
goal in creation is in service to this primary goal. Because the whole focus of
creation is on the regeneration of humankind, this focus breaks down into three
areas of human life: our physical bodies, the development of our rational
capacity, and ultimately our spiritual life which grants us union with the
Divine (which is heaven). We are united to the Divine by a spiritual life; but
we cannot live a spiritual life without a developed rational faculty, and we
cannot maintain a rational perspective when our physical life is unstable. Our body
is like the foundation of a house; the rational faculty provides a sturdy
dwelling; and because of these structures, spiritual consciousness flows in
from the Lord, dwelling within them.
From this, we can discern the
priorities of providence regarding our lives: to support the health of our
bodies, so that we can develop our rationality so that we can be made
spiritual and become joined to the Lord.
Following the reading from
Swedenborg’s Divine Love and Wisdom I highlighted that the very purpose
of our life on earth is to become angelic—that all of Providence is aimed at
our spiritual growth—and that by engaging on this path of regeneration we are
asking God to make us blessings.
The Sermon
The following is the best I can
recall of what I said in lieu of a sermon:
Welcome to this beautiful harvest
feast celebration. It is a lovely thing to see the two congregations coming
together in shared worship. As someone who left the one tradition in order to
pursue ordination and the right to serve as a minister in the other, I know a
bit about loss and about needing to find comfort within new traditions. And I imagine
that, for some in this room, the ways we will worship this morning will feel unfamiliar.
I have come to understand the two
traditions as representing the two directions of the cross. The Glendale New Church
which comes from the “high church” or conservative branch worships in a very
vertical way. The focus is on God. The relationship is between the individual
and God, therefore there is a discouragement of anything social and a
preservation of what is called "a sphere of worship". It favors
silence in the sanctuary, and that all social conversation remains outside in
the hall and the rest of life. There is
something beautiful about that.
The Montgomery New Church, which
comes from the original flavor Swedenborgians in North America, is more casual.
They hold the place of the horizontal bar of the cross, welcoming space for our
connection with each other. There is hugging and quiet chatting in the sanctuary.
Their art and music are more homespun. Their ornamentation and ritual tend to
be simpler and their presence unpretentious. There is something lovely and
comforting in that. It is unintimidating.
I see value in both. And I give each
one of you here permission to be uncomfortable with things that are unfamiliar,
and still to prefer what you prefer. I invite you to be curious about the unfamiliar
practices and to open in yourselves a way to appreciate the other without any
need to feel inferior or superior. This is how we walk together. We can hold
fast to what we love, without needing to invalidate things that are different.
So this morning I want to talk about
the way psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs can be in
conversation with Emanuel Swedenborg's foundations of regeneration. “Regeneration”
according to Emanuel Swedenborg is the reason we are here—to become better
people—to see the ways we are short-sighted and selfish and insensitive to others and to make small changes daily as we seek to become better people. We are here
to become a blessing to others. This process takes a lifetime of experience and
learning (and sometimes big mistakes), and I think we are meant to be patient
with ourselves so that we don’t give up.
Maslow stated that there are five
stages of human needs, each stage completely dependent on the previous stage
for it to exist. The same way Swedenborg describes the health of the body and
then a sound rational mind as necessary before a human can be regenerated,
Maslow describes similar requirements that seem to map very well onto
Swedenborg’s teachings.
Abraham Maslow’s most foundational
human needs are the ones you might imagine if you were plunked down on an alien
planet and knew nothing about how to survive. Immediately you would need to
know what is good for shelter, what is good to eat, and how to clothe yourself.
You would need to be able to rest—to get sufficient sleep without needing to
worry about remaining vigilant.
This leads to the next level of
human need which is safety and security. Once our most basic physical needs are
met, we need to know how to protect ourselves. What is dangerous? We need to
know we can relax into knowing our physical well-being is not imminently
threatened before we have time for higher pursuits. Security in today’s world financial
security. We need to know where our next paycheck is coming from. And this
brings to mind our many fellow citizens who are living paycheck to paycheck,
trying to hold down three or more jobs to do so. This breaks my heart. This
shouldn’t be. It seems to me that our duty if we believe that all humans
deserve the ability to be regenerated, is to see that many more members of
society can earn a living wage with dignity, so that they can be freed up to
grow spiritually too.
The third level of human need, once
our bodies are well cared for and our future is relatively secure, is love and
belonging. We do better in a loving supportive community. We are designed to
live in community, and it is life in community that invites us to see the ways
we are falling short. I can’t help but think all of the people that I know who have
been rejected from their family or community for reasons of gender identity, orientation,
religion, skin color, or even their politics today. It is terribly hurtful and
reduces these people to a spiritual homelessness that can take a long time to
recover from. I see so many people who have been rejected from their church communities,
and the hurt is so deep, that they resolve never to belong to any church
again. And I have to ask, if love and belonging in a safe social community is
required for us to be able to regenerate, how are we serving these people by
kicking them out of our churches and families? Ironically, these folks often go
on to build for themselves a new social network that does love and support them.
It does not reflect so well on the group that did the rejecting.
It is never simple. It is never
black and white. It is usually in need
of a lot more humility and love, regardless.
The fourth level of human need
Maslow calls “esteem.” Esteem has recently been translated as confidence and
could also be called faith. This “esteem” is not an arrogant certainty of one’s
own correctness or superiority. This esteem is faith in the process of regeneration
which could also be called trust in Providence.
“Esteem” requires first that we feel
secure enough to face and acknowledge the ways we make mistakes without
overwhelming shame. So many of us are prone to shame. Like Adam and Eve, we are
more likely to cover up and hide our mistakes than be open and honest. This
hiding and covering up prevents our growth. This hiding and covering up create
distance between ourselves and God, and distance between ourselves and each
other. I submit that the real sin of Adam and Eve was not eating the fruit, but
hiding and covering up out of shame. It was shame that made them hide. It was
shame that made them distance themselves from God. They projected onto God an
inability to forgive and stepped away. They didn’t even give God a chance.
This maps on to my experience of
working with people trying to heal relationships. We seem so quick to blame when in truth the one we find it hardest to forgive is ourselves. We use shame
and blame outward to protect ourselves from feeling our disappointment with
ourselves. We armor ourselves with feelings of superiority which are as fragile
as glass. It is so easy to throw stones when we forget we also live in a glass
house. Why is it so hard for us to see that throwing stones helps nobody? Our
shame, like the snake, tells us we are not safe being open with God. Our shame
is the opposite of the esteem we need to regenerate. We don't need to be
perfect to get to heaven, we need to trust that God's providence, compassion,
and wisdom are more than enough to get us to heaven if we would just stop
hiding.
The fifth level and final level of
human need according to Abraham Maslow is what he calls "Self-actualization.”
In this state one become so connected with one's gifts and abilities and loves
that one serves intuitively and automatically and without self-consciousness.
One is a blessing just in the way one shows up. That description sounds a lot
like the outcome of regeneration. Regeneration removes the things that block our
usefulness. “Usefulness” does not mean a sort of numb, endless serving out of
some sort of obligation or selflessness. In heaven, "usefulness"
means coming from joy to contribute to the joy around us. It is a way of being
that is hard to imagine. But this is the promise of heaven.
Heaven means all of our basic needs
are met. We are not struggling just to get enough sleep or enough food, or to
pay the rent. We are supported physically and emotionally. We are safe and we
are wanted. We are a desired part of our community where the things we
contribute are valued and where we in turn value the contributions of others. The
life of heaven will feel something like a really well-executed sports maneuver
(bump, serve, spike!), or being part of a really magnificent dance troop successfully
performing some brilliant choreography. Each person performs their part to
their best, and because everyone is at their best, the combined outcome is brilliant.
This life on earth has only the rarest
glimpses of what it could be. The path of regeneration gets all of us there
faster and with less suffering.
So this is the summation of what I
came to say this morning. I came to say that we are here to become better
people; that God is more than wise enough and powerful enough to lead us to
heaven, even when we are having trouble forgiving ourselves and believing it is
possible. Instead, let us love each other to bits. Let us do our best doing our
own personal growth, and try to stay out of each other's business. Let us do
better at appreciating each other and not criticizing each other, the same way
we each would really like it if others appreciated us more and criticized us
less. Let us create together the world we need to bring heaven on earth.
Blessings as you go forward from
this place. May you increasingly become blessings to each other. Amen.
From this, we can discern the
priorities of providence regarding our lives: to support the health of our
bodies, so that we can develop our rationality so that we can be made
spiritual and become joined to the Lord.
