So much trouble has been set in motion by religion. Even so, religious or spiritual practice surely has been a blessing for some who long to know the truth of what they are, beyond all limiting definition of a self.
In childhood, I periodically sensed a something much bigger, a reality beyond the apparent. It was palpable at times, almost a physical sensation. There was the urge to stretch the roof of my mouth higher, as if straining to make more space for it. I wanted to taste, to contain, what seemed uncontainable. Something seemed to swell inside my small ribcage, when I lay in my dark bed talking to God. Going to church, the container and dispenser of religion, provided a context of sorts, a language and rituals. Sunday Mass offered a framework that seemed to account for the inner experience. Communion was sublime — the mystery of it, and how substantial it felt, beyond the symbolic.
It’s not unusual for a young child to intuit that “regular life” is apart from a larger, more diffuse reality. Early on, before time has come to feel altogether real, before the root of a forged identity has taken hold — before (that is) a child has learned how to be a person, enslaved by thought — there’s inner space, a receptivity to that which does not fit neatly into received thought structures. For a young child, dwelling in the now comes naturally. Momentary experience, not thought, is what rings with authenticity.
At some point, though I would not understand why until long after, something in my growing self intuited the limitation of the religious formulation of things. I chafed against the rigidity that was intermixed with the evocation of vastness. It was time to move on. By then I was a young adult.
When the mind and ego take hold of something they cannot hope to fathom, it’s just a matter of time before it’s mangled beyond recognition.
Many years went by. There was much development, life hitting me upside the head one way and another, pummeling the steadily aching heart in its earnest up-and-down pursuit of happiness. For a while I was devoted to a spiritual practice, having a beloved teacher who was a great blessing in my life. Eventually, in middle age, it came to pass that practices and containers of any kind ceased to compel. Everything fell away, and a clarity entered the picture. It was as if I’d come home to what my young self had known.
Yet this opening didn’t lead me to lose sight of the potential benefit of religion and spirituality. If anything, it led to an appreciation for how these structures perhaps originated, a recognition of the common something at their collective core. That pristine essence, before the start-up of dogma, prior to crippling certainty and its inevitable companion, intolerance. It was easy to see how the reality of being had been distorted over millennia, how humankind had lost sight of that original awe, before concept or word, boundary or definition.
When the mind and ego take hold of something they cannot hope to fathom, it’s just a matter of time before it’s mangled beyond recognition.
* * * * *
In the beginning, long before dogmatism and religious strife spread over the earth, someone somewhere (perhaps a few individuals, across cultures) sensed that formless, tender something beyond, and also within, the ordinary human being. Maybe there was a heartfelt attempt to express that intuitive knowing — to acknowledge its presence, to share and celebrate it. Neighbors were invited to sense it within, to look into each other’s eyes for recognition, with a communal bowing to the mystery.
Those around such a person, recognizing the apparent power embodied there, mistakenly saw this one as different, better — as “having something” they did not. It’s easy to imagine how a religion came into being, when the predominant experience of ordinary life was challenge and imperfection. Yet this person in their midst appeared to be profoundly at peace, attuned to a larger reality.
Then people did what people do. Those around that person made him or her into something special. The adoring followers came up with ideas, with structures, for the mind’s rendering of the truth. Ways were found to spread the word. Containers sprung up in cultures everywhere, inevitably clashing, generating distortion and intolerance.
In its origins, religion only ever meant to be about love. The unconditional sort, unbounded by limiting, divisive ideas. There never was meant to be fear, or separation, or the attempt to control. Only a radical opening to what is here, an invitation to sense the vast formlessness. To feel it within oneself and in others — in all-that-is.
* * * * *
In this life of ceaseless change and uncertainty, starved for the illusion of security, humankind has naturally searched for something to take refuge in, a way to soothe ourselves in the chaos and rampant imperfection. But we seem to have made a terrible mess of things. With the flowering of dogmatism, as religions became politicized, conflict entered the picture of one religion and another. Along the way, the exquisite origin of it all was lost sight of.
The whole mess was set in motion (and has been maintained, for millennia) by the narrow sense of self, that mind-enslaved “part” of a human being not attuned to the larger reality.
In our strained reaching for the appearance of some kind of truth to guide us, we’ve become mired in corrosive certainty, in arrogance. As if our version of the truth was better than that of another sect, some other “-ism.” Yet concealed under the crushing burden of belief and rigidity remains the gold of that original intuiting.
No religion, no structured spirituality, can hope to contain that which is beyond comprehension or definition. In their attempt to enshrine, containers only block the light.
And yet as far as these things go, they can have their usefulness.
If you’ve felt drawn in a heartfelt way toward a religion, or a spiritual teacher or practice, there may be (or was) something there for you — even though what occurs in that setting may not look like what you expected or sought. As with any life development that nourishes and stretches a person, your time in a particular tradition will perhaps come to an end. When nature is allowed to take its course, awareness continues opening and unfolding, so long as there’s no clinging to the status quo. The ultimate value of any system of belief or worship is to lead you beyond itself, into the profound stillness and well-being within.