Who knows what lies beyond our current understanding of this universe, of this experience we call our 'reality'. At this point, a best guess is all we can hope for. We can read, we can study, we can practice, we can isolate ourselves from society, we can sacrifice, we can repent, we can suffer. We can submerge ourselves up to our necks in camel dung, fling ourselves from heights, frighten ourselves, laugh, cry, vomit, pound the ground and scream out loud, get drunk, get high, shed blood, starve ourselves, give away all we own, become penniless, look different, feel different, walk, talk and act differently, surround ourselves with different people with different ideas, reject those who think differently. Find love, find compassion, find religion, find that new pair of shoes you just can't live without... Does any of this bring us closer to the ultimate goal? For, it is a goal. Make no mistake, the goal of the spiritual being is to return home. Ask any guru if they've arrived home yet. If they say they have (regardless of how joyful their exterior may be), they are not your true guru.
Despite dedicating everything we have to this pursuit of spiritual freedom, most of us, particularly in North America, are raised with this goal-oriented mindset. Like getting into shape. We pay a gym, we hire a trainer, we change our eating habits and reject those who don't follow our new healthy ideals. A year later we're back to the same weight or more, our former friends and family are gone and you're no closer to your goal than you were when you started. On top of that you've rejected whatever organization you belonged to and branded them a bunch of crack-pots.
It's the same with happiness. Why is this? We wanted lasting joy really bad. We still want it. In fact, we want it more and more the less we feel we have it. But, we donated to the Church or other similar organization, we put our time in praying, we've dumped some old clothes in a bin behind the box-store after shopping. So then why don't we have IT yet? It makes us so frustrated we could just punch someone...wait. I thought this was a quest to find lasting joy, not increasing frustration.
Years ago I began my own spiritual journey... Notice I said, years ago. I looked at it like any long journey. 'They' all say that's what it is. So I prepared myself for a long, arduous trip, picked up my shiny new journal and hunkered down. Like a hunter waiting for that trophy buck. The problem? Ten years later I was still just around the corner from lasting happiness.
But, I was even more determined than ever. All those years of searching and all the things I added to the list of things I needed to do in order to be eligible for entry into the joy club. This included but wasn't limited to regular attendance at the religious organization of choice, monetary donations to said organization, spiritual friends, renouncing a lot of things, numerous texts allowing me to follow the doctrine laid out by said organization, more texts in case I've missed something, a Guru, clothing that would identify me as a person following a particular belief, more jewelery and implements of worship and reminders than I could carry (that would also identify me as apart from those who didn't believe what I believed), candles, journals, statues, and a spiritual attitude that I would mostly use when I was around the other spiritual people I knew, while still giving the finger to total strangers in traffic and the like. At the same time completely missing the joy I had set out to find in the first place.
The conclusion I've come to at this point is the more good feelings I surround myself with, the more good feelings will arise inside of me and be emitted from that central point to the universe, the multi-verse if you will. Like photons created within the sun taking 1 million years to reach the earth. They were created within the core and eventually came bursting out, reaching the earth in just over 8 minutes to continue to sustain us all without asking for anything in return. In contrast, the more bad feelings are cultivated; the more attention is given to those feelings, the more they live and grow to affect everything on the outside of ourselves.
One of the first movies/documentaries I watched that helped me see things from a different perspective is 'What the Bleep Do We Know'. It took me watching it multiple times to really get a grasp on all it's theories and I'd recommend doing the same. One thing it suggests is that we can become addicted to feeling a certain way. Like being addicted to cigarettes or alcohol, the positive neurotransmitter factories and receptors in our brain cells that respond to our emotions and produce chemicals like dopamine, die off or are not reproduced if that feeling does not occur. At the same time you are creating more negative neurotransmitter factories that only produce bad feelings. Essentially, a lack of feeling good is literally the death of feeling good. Like I said, I watched it more than once :-).
There's strength in numbers and I'd be honored to have you join me in my quest to find the light inside...
No comments:
Post a Comment