Year of Faith

When someone asks me if I’m “spiritual” I always think that what they’re really asking is if I have beaded curtains in my apartment,  or if I adorn my walls with thin abstract tapestries, perhaps subscribe to some kind of new age practice, enjoy incense more than anyone who isn’t a Buddhist really should, or whether or not I am totally 420 friendly.  They probably don’t mean that, but that’s where my head goes.  A spiritual person in my mind is forever going to be that dreadlocked hippie who thinks that every religion says the same thing and whose religious convictions don’t flow much deeper than the discount rack of the closest second hand bookshop.  Granted I live in an area that proudly displays leaflets for meetings with gurus, has no less than half a dozen spiritual centres, and I live just a block away from a metaphysical bookstore called Abraham’s Books.  So maybe I’m in the area of “spiritual” but I’ve never identified with the term.

Calling myself “religious” really doesn’t do it either, it’s all on the other end of the spectrum, someone who reads their holy book every day but doesn’t read New Scientist, who lives a life regimented by a text several centuries out of date when it comes to social laws.  It’s all church groups and inward thinking, and while I’ve experienced a lot of that and it’s often quite pleasant, that isn’t who I am either.

But all that is just an aside about what I really want to talk about.  Today I picked up one of the free papers we have circulating around the city, and what caught my eye was a section on ‘Spirituality.’  Amidst all the advertisements were two articles: a short piece by a local psychotherapist and an excerpt from Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth.”

The first is, well… I’m not sure what that has to do with spirituality.  It’s about racism and how we are all so much better than that.  Pretty much nothing is said about the difficulty of the subject, about it’s history and how it takes it’s form today.  Just, “aw shucks, shouldn’t we all just get along.” Fluff.  But with Eckhart Tolle there was some meat there.

I have avoided this guy’s books and teachings because it sounded like every other self-help, new age, “spiritual” title that comes along every few years.  After reading this small portion, entitled “The Ego is not Personal” I feel safe saying that that is exactly what it is.

All I could see in his words was the stuff he probably cribbed it from- Buddhism, Taoism, a little bit of basic psychology, maybe even a little Dianetics.  At one point he even rips off Nietzsche:

“In certain cases, you may need to protect yourself or someone else from being harmed by another, but beware of making it your mission to “eradicate evil,” as you are likely to turn into the very thing you are fighting against.  Fighting unconsciousness will draw you into unconsciousness yourself. ”

“Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,” has a much better ring to it.  Granted it may just be a coincidence, but coming from a couple hundred words which sound like Buddhism for dummies makes it all the more suspect.

When I see stuff like this I get agitated, and I can’t really tell whether or not that is deserved.  It could very well be that all Mr. Tolle is doing is re-contextualizing the stuff he studied in college, packaging it for a broader audience.  Buddhists have a word for this- upaya, meaning skillful means.  It means that Buddhist practicioners should recalibrate their message to fit their audience.  Talking to a Muslim about Buddhism can be a lot different than talking to a Christian or an atheist, and so Buddhists can be free to use their own means and skills to introduce different people to the dharma.

Eckhart Tolle’s message is essentially that thoughts and the mind get in the way of our own happiness, that we spend so much time thinking about other things rather than being present, therefore real contentedness eludes us. Instead we should, through various means like meditation, do our best to ignore those thoughts and centre ourselves in the now, in the present moment, and we will discover that that moment can be just as fulfilling and enthralling as that distant goal we are always hoping to achieve.

This isn’t news to anyone who has taken a basic introductory course on eastern religion and philosophies.  This is Buddhism, this is Hinduism, this is Jainism, it is Taoism, heck it could even be Confucianism.

Tolle and I both seem to agree that the point of religion should be the cesation of suffering.  If his books has managed to do that for even a few people then fine.  But people keep calling this guy a spiritual master as if he invented something new, and I haven’t seen any evidence of that.  Further investigation is required, I think.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’m getting sore about this because I saw two pieces in a paper dedicated to “spirituality” that could have been written by someone in highschool, and damnit I could rock that job.

Time to write a proposal.

Honestly, just watch this special comment by Keith Olbermann, or read this piece on the Huffington Post, they say everything I wanted to and more.  My thoughts and summary are after the break.

(more…)

So I’ve moved into a new place, and I’ve been trying to get some kind of internet connection happening but apart from a dowsing rod made from CAT 5 cable and some twigs or a sizable bribe I’m no closer to that goal. This is why you haven’t been seeing any updates. That and well, other things, but primarily it’s because I have no reliable and convenient port into this great network of tubes. Needless to say, I’m still doing the project, Buddhism was a success, Paganism not so much, and I’m really looking forward to Jainism in July. Something about asceticism is really appealing to me which is why I think Buddhism went down so well.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop near my new place right now, trying to download some TV shows, and catching up on all those pieces of internet that are not easily accessible via my iPhone. Across from me two gentlemen are sitting at a table and going through what look like reiki movements. Waving and shaping the air, one of them folding, molding and gently passing something to the other, who receives it in kind and breathes it in. It’s called energy healing, touching without touching, convincing the mind and the body to to settle, concentrate, think about light, think about compassion, and breathe. It wouldn’t matter if there were something passing between them, the physical and mental components of the act would be enough to have some effect. The is something the Buddha understood, you give the mind half a chance and it will unjumble itself, defrag, untangle, relax. No one’s going to get tense if you give them your undivided attention and engage in an act of kindness. Well, mostly no one.

His friend has left now, and he is giving a demo to the man sitting next to me. He does this all the time, an otherwise unremarkable looking young Caucasian man, carrying on the technique of his teacher. Once that guy has left he moves on to me, and trying to be an ambassador to this strange unknown country, of course I say yes. He waves his hands, and I keep one eye open to watch the movements and try to correlate that with what I feel in my cupped palms.

While this is happening I am reminded of a girl in my high school biology class. She had sensitive hands. She could detect the residual heat of objects with her fingertips- pens, loose change, things like that. When my teacher heard about this he wanted to see her in action, so we set up a line of quarters, and while her back was turned one of us would touch a coin, and she would touch each in turn and point out the correct coin every time. She could even do it when her fingers were floating above the coins, and even when we didn’t quite touch them ourselves. And when, at the teacher’s insistance, we didn’t touch any of them, hoping perhaps to catch her bluff, she would pass her fingers over the coins and then look at us in consternation, catching us instead.

His name is Davin, and as he asks me to imagine golden light collecting in my hands as he finishes waving into them, I wonder if something like that is happening now. Is some ancient, prehistoric part of my brain waking up, like a rickety old trap in a temple full of relics, activated by a presure plate of mystery and myth, forcing me to become receptive? I ask the question beause I don’t believe that anything out of the ordinary is happening in these exercises. I have come to understand that no matter how much I immerse myself in this, no matter how much I give in to all of this, I will only ever see a man waving his hands at me.

But despite that, my hands get warm and begin to tingle, and I imagine a golden light, pouring from me and into every other living thing.

I can’t help it.  That last post made me think of this.  One of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite television series.

Just because I’m not writing here doesn’t mean I’m not writing.

I’ve been doing the Year of Faith for four months now, and there is an obvious pattern emerging.  Month one was good.  Satanism wasn’t perfect, but it felt good, it felt like I was making head way and I was pretty happy with it.  Taoism in February was brutal.  Everything felt like it was dragging, writing was forced, my interest waxed and waned.  Then everything turned around in March. Baha’i was great, it was easily my most productive and insightful month of the year.

I’m on month four now.  Bet you can’t guess how I’m doing.  Bet you can’t figure out that I feel burnt out, that I can’t focus, that I every time I try to bring something to the blog or realign myself with this new religion that things  are just frickin’ dandy…

I’m choking on Sikhism.  It isn’t anything about the religion.  It has a rich and interesting history and philosophy.  There are plenty of helpful people and many gurdwaras and communities to visit, but I’ve dropped the ball.  I’m twenty days into the month and I’m nowhere.  In light of this pattern I may have to reevaluate my schedule, or try to make more of an effort to plan ahead.  Having a more fixed schedule helps, so maybe I should be looking further into the future before the month is up.

I’ve decided to stop my month of Sikhism. I’m going to take some time to work on other things, and set up the schedule for May.

People always say that in order to succeed you need to get used to failure.  I have always assumed that this meant external obstacles- things that I have no control over.  What it really means, for me, is to get used to falling short of my own expectations.

It’s okay.

Starting the week off right with a new post!  Woot!

This week Kotaku is covering religion in video games and I could not be more excited. Their first treatment of the subject isn’t terribly awe-inspiring, but I think it hints at ideas which have the potential to be delicious, much like a pie with a filling that you have not yet encountered.  I know that pie, as a constant, is sublime in its blissful effect, and yet I see this new combination of fruit and pastry and am given pause.  Will it be all that is true and dear to me of past pies?  Of fruit, sugar, pastry and whipped cream?  Will these things come together into something that is worth my time?

I hope that the answer is a resounding, “Oh God, yes.”

I am so excited by the prospect of discussing this topic that I’m having trouble finding the right words.  And this is saying something above and beyond my usual lethargy when it comes to bringing content here, because I have been trying to put these ideas into writing for a few months now.  Suffice it to say, I think that video games are a great medium for story-telling, art, and entertainment, and that while it is often difficult to convince people that religion is an important force in the world which merits our attention, I think it would require less rhetoric to convince people that it has an incredible canvass for myth, a rich context in which many entertaining and valuable stories can be told.

And if there is one thing I would like to see more of in video games, it’s better stories.

I’ve been trying to write about this all day. It’s slow going,
I’m taking every opportunity I can between customers to type what sounds like nonesense into my iPhone so that I can put this onto the blog. I feel frazzled, a bit jittery, not myself. Just need to get this written down while the memory of it all is still fresh.

I’ve never had what I would call a ‘religious experience.’ I have felt indescribable feelings of itense awe and emotion when confronted with amazing pieces of art or inspirational words and performances, but never anything that other people have called religious. I have never had that feeling of the unseen Other that most people describe when they fall to the floor and begin speaking in tongues, or however people get through these sorts of things.

After my post last night I couldn’t sleep. This isn’t anything new these days. For the better part of the week I haven’t been sleeping properly. I was worried about the next month, thinking about God, nothing new. I don’t know what happened next, whether or not I managed to fall asleep, but I remember becoming aware of something terrible, something horrifying. I couldn’t move.

My jaw was clenched shut, and I think I may have been shaking, but I definitely remember everything getting rather… ugly. It was like the colour and life was suddenly being sucked out of everything, and even though it was dark I felt assualted on all sides by this distortion, this perversion of eveything around me. I must have been shaking by that point, shaking despite my repeated attempts to move, to turn my head away, to close my eyes.

Looking back now, I’m reminded of Karen Armstrong, about her autobiography where she described what it was like to suffer from seizures before anyone had diagnosed them as anything other than manifestations of deep psychological issues. She wrote about how everything went dark, how everything turned into sickly, ghostly forms that terrified her just before she would black out. On hindsight his may have been what I was experiencing, but I can’t say that I’m entirely sold. Karen Armstrong never said anything about hallucinating voices.

I couldn’t understand what it or they were saying. It wasn’t quite English, wasn’t quite human, and wasn’t really one voice. It was… difficult to describe, and even more of a trial to experience. To be frank I have never been so scared. Whatever this voice was, it was all around me, making me claustrophobic, pushing me down into my bed. It was so strong I thought I was going to die, that I was being crushed to death by each indecipherable utterance.

Waking was an experience in itself. I went from a state of sheer and utter panic to that of waking from a pleasant nap in a single moment. The last thing I remember was thinking that I could almost understand what was happening, that I could almost make sense of my pain and of what was verbally assualting me, and then I was waking up. It was like the whole thing had happened to someone else.

I almost leaped out of bed, my mind completely out of sync with my body, convincing it to flee, to run, to hide, to fight, to do anything but lay still and pretend it was all a dream. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to convince myself of that. But really, does it matter? I don’t know if I would be any more at ease knowing that this was some trick or misfiring in my mind than it was some… thing else. The only reason I’m equating this with something spiritual is because it happened in the context of the Year of Faith, and I cannot help but make that connection.

Whatever it was, I’m certain that I never want to experience anything like that ever again. Ever.

I like to think of this as a space where I can share a variety of stories, articles, and various little things about religion that I have found useful on my journey or are just plain awesome.  To that end, here are some links that have been gathering dust in my browser.  I hope that this will be the first of many.  Enjoy.

Sam Harris Talk at Authors@Google- If you enjoyed the TED talk I posted, this is a slightly longer version followed by a fairly intelligent Q&A.

Sam Harris Responds to His Critics- An essay by Harris addressing major concerns with his thesis that science can help us answer moral questions.  If you hadn’t guessed by now, I think the point he’s making is kind of important and worth some attention.

10 Things Christians and Atheists Can (And Must) Agree On- An amusing article that I think nails a lot of the miscommunication and presumption that occurs between believers and the faithfully challenged.  Found via my friend Angus on Facebook.

Paint Your Faith- An interesting art project where a small group of artists takes over an unused wall to create a mural depicting their interpretation of what faith means.  And it’s coming to Vancouver!  Squee.

Baha’i Rants- A really good blog covering all things Baha’i. I discovered it late in the month, but I will be following it in the months to come.

I haven’t been posting lately, so instead of my words I give you a TED talk by Sam Harris, who you’ll be hearing a lot about come October.  This isn’t strictly Baha’i, but it is about religion and how we make moral choices and I enjoyed it a great deal.  At the very least it will provide some food for thought.

Enjoy.