Reflections of Myself

I’m in a reflective mood late this evening, and like usual, am finding it very difficult to sleep. Brandy sleeps more than I do, these days.  In my late night hours, as with many people, I believe, I reflect at times. I’m at the point in my life, full adulthood (I hope), where I am in some kind of weird steady state. I’m old enough not to really be “young” and not too close to middle aged either. The one thing it does give me is some perspective on my life in my teens and twenties, and thirties that probably would have been valuable back then.

One of the key things that I think I finally have some perspective on is spirituality, both in general but also in the particular of my own circumstances. For many of the people that I deal with on a day to day basis spirituality is a complete non-issue. This doesn’t lend itself to a lot of conversation about it but does give ample room to ponder. I was not raised with any religion. I don’t recall ever wondering anything about it. I just went through life experiencing as much as I could…oh, and I did! The scientific materialist paradigm was definitely well and truly established in my mind. Embedded deep within family is the Western, and Eastern Born again Christians, as well as Southern Baptist Christians.

Through some exposure and circumstances, I wound up studying Neurophysiology, Quantum Physics, Metaphysics, the UFO phenomenon, Astrobiology, Evolution of the Conscious Universe and my own Spiritual Growth. I began to challenge the values of spiritual experiences or the validity of esotericism or neopagan faiths.

In many, if not most, ways, they are as entirely valid as any other spiritual path. In fact, the other side of this is that mainstream faiths are just as made up, overly intellectualized, or dreams and desires cloaked in spiritual trappings, as anything that you will see in the curbs of every culture. The only real differences that I see are how long these faiths have existed and mainstream acceptance of them as being normative, which I feel are projections, holograms from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time. Leaving aside the views of the movie What the Bleep do we Know?, where Buddhists approach and overall theme (now and in the past), Buddhism often takes a rather agnostic approach to larger issues. Where does the Universe come from? Where do we come from, most specifically? While teachers and traditions as a whole largely sidesteps the issue. Buddhism is really concerned with the arrow and the pain and suffering it causes.

After the film's release, and reading the book Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham by Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks which teaches the fundamentals of the Law of Attraction as relating to physical structure and to how matter develops with people's thoughts (both conscious and unconscious) and how this can dictate the reality of their lives, (Creating Your Reality) whether or not they're aware of it. Essentially "if you really want something and truly believe it's possible, you'll get it. With this fundamental ability, comes responsibility because by putting a lot of attention and thought onto something you don't want could mean you get it.For me, I found so much of my spirituality to be either given to me in an unquestioning or unreflective manner, to be taken as given on faith, or, really, to be a form of wish fulfillment or play acting (creating your reality).

In the end, I think that my goals are multifold. The romantic desire for their to be something more is still there, with my adoption of the Mahayana desire to help others as well as myself; to, in fact, eventually practice for the good of everyone. The other goals are to seek and realize truth, in all of its forms, especially the truth of my existence, which is a human existence, not spiritual.

The methods of doing this also, I hope, make me into a better person if practiced diligently and with awareness. At the end of my life, whether it is soon or a long time in coming, being a better person and having the impact of that affecting the world is more important than my own selfish emotional needs and/or desires.

We are not Human Beings on a Spiritual Journey, but rather Spiritual Beings on a Human Journey.

Peace, Love, Joy & Light

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