Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Pitfalls and tragedy

I feel sick, but It's not the sick of sniffling noses or puking guts. No, this one goes deeper. I feel a spiritual sickness, but not the sickness of loneliness or too much material desire or not enough God in my life. It is the sickness of living in a world surrounded by so much ego and misinformation that it can be almost impossible to navigate through the good stuff with dignity and class intact. Don't misunderstand, I'm as much a player at this game than the next one and I make no claims to having figured it out. In fact the older i get the less understanding I have of how things might work. Instead I try do do what inherently feels correct by me and the unspoken "rules" of the world. All I know is what harmoniously works and what doesn't.
Anyhow, I won't derive too far from the point of this post. There is some sickness in me and i need to release it. I can think of no way to cushion or pretty these words up so I'm just going to just barf it out.
I am sick to death of people using their spirituality as an excuse for shitty behavior or failure to take responsibility for their actions!! 
Too often I see people getting caught in the intricate net of spiritual seeking only to have their true heart suffocated by stupid idealist belief systems memorized from a book or passed on from some apparent "guru" figure with an all-attractive ego. This is called letting go of your essence and i see no merit in it. Our highest guru is our own self and there is nothing that we can take with us after we shed this gross matter physical form save for that which we have experienced as ultimate truth, and even then what is truth? The point is that we don't know, and when someone claims to know then they are walking backwards lying. You cannot possibly know a "truth" that is not linked to direct experience. These people who meditate for a couple of months and emerge with all of this insight into self, that's all well and fine but when it becomes an act of walking around like king shit, wearing it on your sleeve and calling it your self.......that to me is sickness. Wide eyed hippy drug hoovers who think the sun shines on the cracks of their ass because somewhere along the line they grew a fucking banana and maybe offered it to a homeless person, and now they're "compassionate meta earth children". Yet try to fit your way in to one of their little dance parties and chances are, if you're name isn't Sunflower and your fake dreads aren't the specified length than it's alienation time until you go away. You're probably even pegged as "that creepy guy". Well meaning folks who have significant power that goes to their head, making them slightly off kilter and mentally unstable, they are the most dangerous. They are the ones with swaying power and ability to rattle off any old idea and if someone is there to listen, it will undoubtedly stick. This then becomes "truth" and these cheerleaders run around trying to convince anyone that their truth is key and all that everyone else believes is ignorance. It is the ones who tell you that they are right and you are wrong, speaking in riddles and obtuse terms, backpeddling and having answers for everything no matter how contradictory, they are the sickest ones out there. This sickness is rampant, taking many forms and varying degrees of attractive persuasion. 
I understand how easy it can be to lose your shit when you start to gain a sense of personal power. Kundalini rising and chakras spinning, we think we're on top of the world. We start to "predict" things before they happen and those right people/situations occur seemingly at the perfect time. It feels like we are in the flow of things, and quite literally we are. Presence is an amazing and powerful thing that holds many gifts, but it is not the end of the search, and this is the pitfall i find so tragic. A little bit of power and understanding can destroy the heart and turn a perfectly capable human being into a callous self-serving dirtbag. A deeper look into some of these new age cultish yoga communities will tell the tale clearly. For only $15000 YOU TOO can have supreme enlightenment equal to or BETTER than 7 years of spiritual seeking in Tibet. Just give up your sense of right and wrong or any other morals you may have gathered while on this earth and join your new friends.....YOUR people.....your spirit family! Have a wife and kids? Who needs them when you're living in the light???? Marriage vows? Trample them into the ground because they're "keeping you down". Responsibilities? Pshaw!!!!
Being a little harsh am i? Yeah, well I feel that I've seen and heard enough to be entertaining these thoughts and emotions. It may not be fair and I'm aware of my judgements here but I don't think that I'm completely crazy in feeling this way. 
Though all i can go on is from my experience which is very little, but I've always been pretty low key about this stuff. 
My beliefs are firm but not rigid. They are based in the reality of what i can see, smell, hear, taste and feel. All else is a story made up from numerous points of inspiration gathered along my timeline. It is simply that, a story being written. A tale spun for the sole purpose of making this journey as a human less confusing. We need structure and we need answers and we need them NOW! This is the tragic pitfall. Because there are so few answers you cannot possibly know how things truly are. I find it much more romantic to let it be a mystery than to get stuck on the details, large strings of cryptic words and open ended riddles. Things just are and will continue to be long past our death. Some solid truths may be revealed but things still remain as they are. As one is meditating endlessly on the inter-dimensional portals and all of this ridiculous crap you can't directly experience, the world keeps spinning. Beauty passes by and is missed by those with their heads in the clouds. Opportunities to go deeper into the question and zen of things are passed by for a quick fix hole filling workshop that leaves you broke and asking even more questions. Seekers are ignored and hearts get broken because of our incredibly selfish nature and need to get there first so we can sit on top of the molehill and tell it like it "is". 
There was a time when we could be humbled by our experiences and I know that this is still true for many, but somewhere along the line in our crazed media friendly internet connected fast fix world a lot of us lost touch and it makes me feel sad.
Perhaps I am reacting a lot here and very likely I am full of judgement, but I feel sick. Sick of the complexities, sick of the lies, sick of the promises, sick of the morally bankrupt claiming to have it all figured out. 
There are so many who swear that we are ascending to the gates of heaven on earth faster than ever before, but I'm not so sure. I see far more of us asleep and daydreaming about a place we might like to end up then actually doing the gritty work in order to get there.
But life is still beautiful, and I will continue on despite what i may see around me. And at the end of the day I give thanks and do my best to offer love. It is the only cure.
N