And it occurs to me this morning that we are so fallen as a society that it is hard, very hard, for most of us to conceive of spirituality as something other than a means of doing some combination of selling books and getting laid. These seem to be the aims of most of those who we have to choose from as role models and guides.
And I want to be clear that it is not Capitalism which has absorbed spirituality. The Silk Road–which did so much to breed the spiritual traditions of Central Asia–was Capitalism, Capitalism fettered by many restraints by many rulers, which in their effect amounted to restrictions of the sort socialism imposes, and often to the same purposes: some combination of palace building by the ruler, and gifts showered from the sky to keep people docile and pacified. There is nothing new, now, other than that we have achieved vastly more freedom than ever before.
What has changed is that God has been removed from the classroom. God is not an acceptable purpose of life. God is not a focus of life. The Eternal sits on a dusty shelf in a back room, while we watch “The Walking Dead”, do our best to drink the best booze, and go on vacations which create sufficiently good selfies that we make others jealous.
And every once in a while something intrudes to cause you to buy a Marianne Williamson or Eckart Tolle book. You do some sort of boujie retreat at Kripalu or Esalen. But have you changed the structure of your life? Are you doing something deeper than playacting the part of profundity? Would you give your life for what you believe? Are you willing to suffer for it over a long period of time, the way, for example, Christians and others are suffering from Islamic Arab atrocities in the Middle East? The way the Jews have suffered everywhere, clinging to their ancient religion rooted in a place they were banished from for nearly two millenia?
I don’t mean to be cruel, but it is hard for me, sometimes, literally knowing no one who lives in the places I live, who sees what I see. I am ripped apart daily, and reassembled. And so it goes. It is not quite true to say I suffer, therefore I am, but it is true to say that I choose to suffer, which means I have chosen a difficult path.
My work continues, and I feel I am making progress. I will take on the world alone, if need be.