What I Was Trying To Say Was…

My mind feels particularly blank this morning, like I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next.  In my last post, I started off with a thought that got taken in an entirely unintended direction.  It’s like that with me.  I never know what I’m going to say when I sit down to write, and I’m sure you can tell that, can’t you?  My first sentence from that post,

I think I’ve allowed my curious mind to get the best of me.

started out in my head as a confession of sorts.  You see, I fell, or settled, into the role of a “seeker” in the spiritual enlightenment game.  The threads I mentioned that took me from one thing to another were all based on an unsettled curiosity of what this life is all about.  Christianity was leveled many years ago in my mind as a means for salvation, and certainly as a means of understanding reality and my particular place in it.  I’m sorry, but it’s just so damned silly to me now, and I marvel at those who blindly follow it, and especially those who teach, or preach, it.  Some of these folks are very well-educated, highly intelligent people, too.  I think to myself, “Have you ever questioned what it is that you believe, or listened to what you’re saying with a rational mind?”  Oh, I tried it.  Dove deeply into it when I was a teenager, and thought it was the bees knees.  Something was always lacking though.  This Jesus fella… never “met” him, even though that was the whole point: meet Jesus and walk daily with him.  Nope, never met, although I’ve often said that it would’ve been really cool to be around him when he was here.  I’d love to know what he really said.  So Xtianity didn’t work out.  I mentally debunked that a long time ago.  People believe… cool.  I wish I could just believe.

Once the Christian bubble popped, I was no longer interested in other religions even though I did study them for a while.  I just wanted to know what everybody else’s bubble gum tasted like.  It’s funny ’cause even though there are many different flavors, it’s all still the same gum.  And Christians get all pissy about other religions, calling them “devil worship”.  I remember my mom’s warning when I was questioning her religion and the fact that I was exploring others: “Mike, you need to be careful.”  Careful of what?  Going to hell?  Getting infected by Satan?  Having God strike me down?  I should be so lucky.  At least then I would know, wouldn’t I?  How long has Jesus been almost ready to come back and start the end of the world as we know it?  I remember being so terrified as a child that Jesus was going to come back before I grew up and had a chance to drive a car, and have girlfriends, and a wife, and kids.  Soooo scared!  I would actually pray, “Jesus, please don’t come today.  I want to grow up first.”  How pathetic?

Anyway, during my research into the other major religions, I figured out that none of them had anything I wanted.  My thoughts on God had changed drastically.  God no longer was the man on the throne doling out rewards and punishment.  There was no “book of life” that determined who was going to be allowed entrance into Heaven, and who was to be tortured in Hell for all eternity.  If there was a God, then that god had to be everything.  Nothing would exist without “God”, because everything was a part of god.  Everything – you, me, the trees, rain, space, stars, dust, everything – is God.  In my mind there was nowhere that God was not.  So I didn’t think of God as a single entity, standing apart from all of His creation.  All I could honestly say was God is.  We are because of God, and yet are God at the same time.  We owe no debt of gratitude or servitude to this God because we are it too.  God is us, we are God, same-same.  So why pray?  For what?  And what about “The Secret“ and the law of attraction?  Really?  Who’s keeping the secret from whom?  Who figured it out?  Does it work?  Maybe, but so what.  It doesn’t matter.  None of it matters.  It’s all a grand show, and guess what?  You are playing your role magnificently.  Me too.

So what’s my role?  Not sure right now, but it has been that of a “seeker”.  I got sucked in.  There were these folks (the Advaita Clowns) that spoke of reality from a much different perspective than I had been used to hearing.  It was alluring.  I jumped in, as usual, and asked the “experts” lots of questions, and really didn’t like the answers I was getting.  So what did I do?  I hunkered down and became determined to understand this nonduality stuff.  It got to be an obsession.  ”I must understand this!  I must know the truth!”

Isn’t life gentle with us?  I can imagine what it must look like.  I bought books, read tons of material on the internet, emailed numerous “enlightened” folks dozens of times, all in the hopes I would finally understand it.  I don’t believe I was ever after enlightenment.  That’s akin to a spiritual experience, which I wanted no part of.  I was after the truth.  Still am.  What is the truth?

I wish Advaita didn’t have to have a name.  It makes it seem like a religion.  There are gurus, and pointers, and books, and satsangs, and disciples, and idolatry, and meditation, and on and on.  All of that has built up around what, as far as I can tell, is a very basic, almost too basic, obvious (to some) truth.  That truth being that there is no such thing as separation.  There are no separate things.  You, and I, and horseshoes, and buttermilk biscuits, and Volkswagen buses, are all one continuous, uninterrupted whole.  That’s crazy, right?  Right!  And it sounds so profound, and there are just enough folks out here that “get” that, who are trying to teach the rest of us.  And these venerable few are put up on platforms with pictures of their gurus and fresh-cut flowers and microphones.  And dozens of others sit cross-legged on the floor below, some with their eyes closed, some with video cameras so the rest of us can watch on the internet, all hoping to catch something that’s said that will make us go, “Ooooohhhhh”, and wake up to this truth.  And I, being one of those followers from afar, have been sucked in, playing the seeker role, “learning” from gurus.  As much as it looks like that’s the truth of it, it’s not… kind of.  I’m not a disciple, and I don’t subscribe to the language and rituals of Advaita.  I only want to understand the core, the basic core of what it is that all this hoopla has gathered around it.  (I think it would be very easy to start a religion.  All you have to do is profess a truth that nobody can debunk because it’s so esoteric, so ethereal, then people will flock to you, wanting to know what you know.  You could be rich!)  I just want to know the damned TRUTH!  That’s all.

And the way my mind works is sort of like having Special Agent Dana Scully AND Special Agent Fox Mulder inside.  One needing definitive proof of everything, the other saying “I want to believe”.  The fight wears me down sometimes.