WhereNext

Recent posts have, hopefully, demonstrated big changes in my mindset and emotional stability. A profound awakening has lifted me out of my rut and set me on a new path. But where is this new road headed?

For the past thirty years I’ve worked to overcome chronic depression, and other emotional challenges. There have been some successes, and some excited moments, but low moods have remained stubbornly clamped over my heart. Twenty years ago, attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings convinced me to look for a ’spiritual’ solution. I toyed with Buddhism, but ended up in the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, which had been the spiritual heritage of my maternal ancestors. Since it demands few doctrinal beliefs, it fit me well. But although I attended countless Meetings for Worship, and many weekend retreats, my so-called spirituality remained an intellectual exercise. I liked the idea of deeper forces in the cosmos, but I never felt connected with anything more than curiosity.

Ten years ago I enjoyed my first set of spiritual breakthroughs, during a diagnosed ‘psychotic episode’. Some of them had a Christian theme, which prompted my conversion to Roman Catholicism. After five years or so, my glowing convictions about Christ faded back into the atheism of my upbringing. Once again, I found myself in need of a spiritual home, only now it seemed clear that lasting belief in supernatural concepts was beyond me. Even with another try, Buddhism remained a poor fit for my personality and philosophy. Tenets about reincarnation would have been easy to sidestep as a Western Buddhist, but the emphasis on reason, although laudable, reminded me too much of science. Rigid scientific thinking seemed to be part of my problem.

Two weeks ago I had my second series of spiritual breakthroughs. During them, ideas that had been building in my mind for many years coalesced into an empirically based worldview, but one that did not rely on scientific reasoning. It came to me by wordlessly, without resistance, embracing known facts about what it means to be a human. After the epiphany blossomed, I pulled out the book, 365 Tao by Deng Ming-Dao and read a few random pages. To my amazement, the texts articulated a worldview nearly identical to the one that had flooded me after years of struggle. The book had been buried in my little home library the entire time, but I had never opened it before. (Although I had often meditated on the shorter and more cryptic Tao Tse Tung.) There were minor differences in perspective, but in essence the end result of all my grappling had been on my bookshelf the entire time. Taoism seems to have roots deep in a receptive awareness of nature. I reached my similar frame of mind through opening myself, without resistance and with as little ‘thought’ as possible, to the awesome sweep of proven biology and physics (it’s no coincidence that I have a Master’s degree in biophysics).

Taoism is based on an abstract idea (The Tao) that stands for an all-encompassing, endlessly mysterious, and deeply consistent animating principle. There is little if anything blatantly supernatural, at least not in the little Taoism I’ve read so far. My experience remains hard to articulate, but it came from taking all my knowledge of our physical and biological nature, and allowing it to sweep through my heart. Doing so prompted a soul-saturating awareness of the ‘rightness’ and ‘interconnectedness’ of creation.

It needs to be emphasized that I don’t rule out the possibility of overtly supernatural phenomena such as ‘God’ or reincarnation. However, I learned that such beliefs are not needed to support a spiritual awakening every bit as profound as my one of ten years earlier, at which time the idea of God had been central.

When I began my spiritual journey, it would have been impossible to predict that it would end like this. All I could do was stumble blindly until the pieces fell in place. Possibly, I could have picked up 365 Tao a decade ago, and been spared the struggle. But it is more likely that the words would have remained veiled until a designated and unpredictable moment when my eyes were opened.

It is hard to overstate the value of the awareness that has come to me. It has melted away my petty, egoistic concerns. It has given me faith that the universe is benign, and that despite the inevitable traumas of life, I will be safe. It has prompted me heart to literally ache with the desire to help others find peace. It has swept away decades of depression and cynicism. And it only invokes truths that most rational and educated people would accept.

So what is my next obligation? Where do I go from here?