S11 #07 - Addressing hierarchy, equality, shame and self-compassion in liberal, free-religious community - A thought for the day

The full text of this podcast with all the links mentioned in it can be found in the transcript of this edition, or at the following link:

https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2025/11/addressing-hierarchy-equality-shame-and.html

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Opening Music, "New Heaven", written by Andrew J. Brown and played by Chris Ingham (piano), Paul Higgs (trumpet), Russ Morgan (drums) and Andrew J. Brown (double bass) 

Thanks for listening. Just a reminder that the texts of all these podcasts are available on my blog. You'll also find there a brief biography, info about my career as a musician, & some photography. Feel free to drop by & say hello. Email: caute.brown[at]gmail.com

Transcript

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation 

—o0o— 

As most of you know, we are in the middle of a weekend workshop led by a member of our free-religious gathering, Aysha Madha, on the subject of “Hierarchy, Equality, Shame and Self-compassion.”

This weekend workshop is being led by Aysha because these are dimensions of human life that are of deep, personal concern to her; she believes — and I agree with her wholeheartedly — that these dimensions urgently need to be noticed and attended to, and that we must remain mindful of the important consequences they have in our life together. 

But it is also important to be fully aware that this workshop is taking place here because of our gathering’s willing exploration of, and I hope commitment to, the free-religious “Principles of Living” articulated by the twentieth-century Japanese Yuniterian (sic), educator and free-religionist, Imaoka Shin’ichirō-sensei. 

And, if you are joining us for the first time and are not aware of them, you can find them at the back of your order of service; printed copies are also available here on our communion table.

As you know, the first three principles state our trust in the self, neighbour, and cooperative community. But today I want to focus on the fourth principle, which brings them together, because it speaks directly to Aysha’s theme of hierarchy, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “a system in which members of an organisation or society are ranked according to relative status or authority.” Holding that definition in mind, here is Imaoka-sensei’s fourth principle:

“I place trust/have faith in the trinity of self, neighbour, and cooperative community. The self, neighbour, and cooperative community, while each having a unique personality, are entirely one. Therefore, there is no differentiation of precedence or superiority or inferiority between them, and one always contains the other.”

This helps us to see that, according to this definition, there simply can be no such thing as a free-religious community based on hierarchy. This is, of course, an expression of the basic Unitarian/Yuniterian intuition that, in some ultimate way, all things are always-already forming an intra-dependent unity. This is an affirmation of the many returning-to-one — what Imaoka-sensei called “kiitsu” [帰一]. He writes elsewhere:

“It is a returning-to-one within diversity. This does not mean erasing differences or reducing everything to a single system. Rather, we recognise and respect the existence of diverse individual identities, while seeking common ground and working together in cooperation” (The Faith of Returning-to-One/Kiitsu, November, Shōwa 1980).

So, although in a free-religious community we recognise that we all have different talents and skills, we are constantly trying to ensure that these differences are not turned into hierarchies of status or authority.

All of this speaks, obviously, I hope, to the second of Aysha’s themes: equality — the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities. Again, there simply can be no genuine free-religious cooperative community without equality.

But now things become a little more difficult, and Aysha’s third theme of shame — which we are exploring this weekend — helps us see why. The researcher and author known for her work on vulnerability, courage, shame, and empathy, Brené Brown, defines shame as:

“ … the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging — something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”

Why is this relevant? Because, one way or another — and that includes me — all of us come into a free-religious community from a hierarchical culture deeply shaped by all kinds of inequalities which, from childhood onwards, have baked various elements of shame into our very bones. At home, at school, at university, and in the workplace, too many of us have, in one way or another, been led to believe, and deeply feel, that in key respects we are less valuable than someone or something else; not as well-educated or intelligent as someone else; that we are unworthy of respect, love, and belonging for this or that reason — and so on, almost to infinity.

Because we cannot help bringing the results of this shaming into every setting, it should come as no surprise that we find creating a properly functioning, living free-religious gathering so hard to establish. Our shame all too easily allows us to cast, often unintentionally, hierarchical and unequal shadows on everything the community tries to do. We project onto others (and onto ourselves) all kinds of imagined hierarchies and inequalities. This dynamic makes us feel ashamed and then, in response to it, we may go on to say or do things that make others feel ashamed and unworthy of respect, love, and belonging.

This is not always done in big and obvious ways, but often in small and subtle ways — yet unless we pay attention to it, shame simply goes round and round, and thus a true free-religious gathering can never fully form.

So, although the genuine intention of a free-religious gathering is to live out Imaoka-sensei’s principles — to be together without hierarchies and to promote equality — we, including me, thanks to our baked-in (and often invisible) sense of shame, cannot help silently allowing in, and projecting onto others and ourselves, all kinds of hierarchies and inequalities.

This means that one of the first things we need to address as we create a real, functioning free-religious gathering is the need to overcome shame. And that is why the practice of self-compassion is so vital — because self-compassion is one of the most effective ways to overcome shame, the last of Aysha’s themes.

Obviously, in this short thought for the day, I cannot fully unfold how self-compassion works. So all I’ll say, to conclude, is that self-compassion has been shown to help overcome shame by replacing self-judgement with kindness; by helping us to recognise our shared humanity with its many complexities; by helping us maintain a mindful awareness of painful feelings; and, lastly but not least, by helping us to remain open to empathy and connection.

In short, self-compassion can help break shame’s isolation and affirm that we are, even in our vulnerability, worthy of love and belonging. It is vital for us to realise that, in the end, even with a strong intellectual affirmation of Imaoka-sensei’s Principles of Living in play, without an associated and living practice of self-compassion and mindfulness, a genuine, non-hierarchical and equality-minded free-religious gathering will always remain beyond our reach.