Tradition and Its Ills

As a spin-off of my last blog entry, I've been thinking about all the things that God isn't. I believe that our misconceptions around God are what keeps us from knowing It. I believe that the reason we can't know God intimately is that we've surrounded Him - It - with impenetrable layers of ritual and tradition. I got no problem with tradition, as long as it's relevant. There's just no reason to continue a custom if its application is defunct. When someone performs a ritual without an internal awareness of its symbolic content, it becomes superstition. And superstition is a form of grasping that's done in desperation to come closer to God. Hail Mary's, pilgrimages to Mecca, yoga classes, a daily meditation practice–without a felt connection to the underlying tradition, they don't amount to squat. Your time would be better spent drinking Mai Tai's on the beach or shopping at Nordstrom.

Case in point: here's a story for you. A newly wed couple. Young wife cooks her husband a roast. He's surprised that she's cut the ends off the roast, which are his favorite part. Why'd you cut the ends off, darling? (he asks). Why, that's the way my mother cooks it! (she replies). A few months later they're having dinner at her mother's, and sure enough, she made a roast and cut the ends off. Mother, (he asks with trepidation), why do you cut off the ends of your roast? Why, that's the way my mother cooks it! (she replies, in a snit). A few months later still they're eating their holiday dinner, and frail gramma is there, so husband figures he ought to ask the question while he has the chance. Grandmother dear, (he asks deferentially), why do you cut off the ends of your roast? Because my pan's too small! (she replies, then chokes on a mouthful of roast, and dies on the spot).

And that, my friends, nicely sums up what I think of tradition.


Above: Muslim Prayer to Allah, letters cut from Bibles. 2011. Size: approx. 3" square on a paper 8.5" square.

Reluctant Enlightenment

I have a close friend whom I've admired for many years. I'll call her Ann. She's far from an atheist, but I wouldn't call her a "spiritual" woman. Without being in any way pretentious, she identifies primarily as an intellectual. Her pursuits are within the mind; she's constantly reading books and articles in her field of interest, attending lectures, and feeding her intellect anything that it fancies, which generally falls within the field of psychology and science, sometimes delving into art. She's a fascinating woman, and I've never tired of talking with her. Our discussions move mostly within the realm of psychology, touching upon mysticism, but since that's not very interesting to her, we never advance very far down that path.

The reason I bring it up is that Ann's going through the Self-realization process. The full-blown, in-yer-face, up-yer-spine, out-yer-crown experience of ecstatic awakening. I get all giddy (and jealous) just thinking about it, but Ann is pretty dismal. She never asked for this; it's not her thing. She says that the experience is at odds with her scientific nature, and not something that she cares to pursue. Her meditation practice is simply a way to relax her mind. She never intended for it to open a doorway to this; indeed, enlightenment is a concept which until now has been questionable at best for her analytic mind. But she's smart enough to know that despite her internal discomfort (which has been acute), she can't deny the effect that it's having on her disposition. She describes it as a deep, disturbing shift in her internal navigational system.

Now, some of you may think that I'm wryly talking about myself. You know, that old "I have a friend....." ploy, the oldest trick in the book. Rest assured, if any of the above had been happening to ol' Madge, you'd have read about it by now on my blog, and I'd have had T-shirts made to commemorate the occasion (similar to the one pictured above). I might've really gone wild and bought an ad in some uber-spiritual zine, and sold little Madge Buddha Magnets (Meg-Mags®) on the internet. Nope, Ann's a real person, and she's not liking her present circumstance. She's sort of heaving a big sigh, resigning herself to the big shift happening in her life, and moving into the mode of "allowing". Allowing herself to experience this friggin' weird thing that she never believed in.

I for one am blown away by it. It confirms that which I've quietly suspected all along, and now am ready to post it on a billboard. This:

God awakens wherever, whenever,
and in whomever the hell It wants to.

Period.
Class dismissed.

How's that for holy rolling? Maybe I'll start a new religion. Just what the world needs, huh? But mine will be the gosh darn truth. I'll tell everyone to quit yoga, quit meditating, start drinking more gin & tonics, sleep with your neighbor's wife (hey, King David did! Heck, he even had her husband murdered!), just do and read whaddever you want to do and read, and forget about the whole damn spiritual thing. Unless you're seriously interested, in which case have at it, but don't be thinking you'll get brownie points by chanting at the crack of dawn. Just do what floats your boat, give it your all, try to have a morsel of integrity if at all possible, don't worry too much if you can't, and wait and see if God chooses to awaken in you. If so, you're golden, but realize that it's got nothing, nothing to do with you. You're basically a worm turd. But you might be a worm turd that God favors. And if you do everything you want to and God never awakens in you, well, at least you had a good time. At least you didn't spend your life reading Kierkegaard and watching the PTL Club, thinking that it would incur God's favor. I'm convinced more than ever that it can't be earned. God's will is a big mystery, more mysterious than existence itself. At least we can take a stab at explaining that. But I know of no one who's attempted to explain God's will without getting either humiliated or creamed.

It's not likely that I'll start a religion. I already got too much on my plate. Pity. The souls of the earth need me. Would that Ann was more outward with her transformation. I could be her manager, and we could have her awaken in every state in the lower 48. We'd make a fortune. Jeez, God's really missing a great opportunity to make me rich.