The "Spiritual" Journey

Good literature tells a story. Good literature communicates something about the characters, their world, and the things they believe. Often the characters may start out with a series of false assumption. The character is flawed in this way. Then through a “spiritual journey” the flaw is revealed. The character must face a challenge that destroys the old assumptions, the old lies, and replaces them with something new, some new truth, that is hopefully more profound, more meaningful. This truth has the ability to profoundly transform the character or their world in such a way that the old life is left behind.

I wouldn’t say that this characterization of literature is all encompassing. But it is a formula that I frequently encounter. Whether it is the battle against mortality in the children’s book Charlotte’s Web, or the quest for redemption in the recent novel The Kite Runner, this formula makes its appearance.

So let me ask you a question. What lie do you believe? What so-called truth are you holding on to that is, in fact, a deception, self inflicted or otherwise? I ask this question because I had a moment the other day, while I was talking to a friend, when I realized that I have been telling myself a story that might not be entirely true. The fact that it was a partial truth made it all the more insidious because as anyone knows, the most powerful lies are the ones made up of truths. I can’t tell you a lot about this conversation, but suffice it to say that at some point my friend was making an all too familiar lament that life was not turning out as expected and that this was made the more bitter because they have tried to live a spiritual life, to be close to God, and that God, for what ever reason, had not acknowledged those efforts.

I say this is a familiar lament, because I make this kind of plea in my prayers all the time. I do not, as some are able, pray to god for comfort. I never have, and I wouldn’t even know how to begin. Rather, I pray to god for power, or, if you will, empowerment. I suspect, as divine dispensations of power are in rather short supply, that this is the root cause of my disappointment. My “spiritual journey” or whatever you want to call it, has frequently taken on the form of trying to rid myself of those obstacles that stand in the way of my feeling powerful, and while this is not always the case, I am sure that this is at least in part, the lie I tell myself.

I grew up in the Christian faith, and because the Christian religion is often thought to be solely about personal salvation, I frequently think about myself. Further more, we live in a time when “personal religious experience” and “private belief systems” draw upon our culture’s radical individualism to define the essence of any religion. My own current beliefs are a patchwork quilt of Protestant Christianity, Gnosticism, Buddhism, Al-anon, and Jewish mysticism. Religions, which, for the most part, have at their core, ideas of community, and compassion for others, and are not just expedient paths to eternal life for solitary individuals. In Christianity, for example, Christological titles like Some of God or Christ were not used to imagine Jesus' personal divinity, as if becoming god were the most important thing that could happen to a person, they were instead used to describe how Jesus had become “king” of a “kingdom” to which all people belonged and in which all were equal.

It is hard for me to admit this, but my spiritual journey, self-labeled, is a blanket term I use to feel good about my relationship with my higher power, and has little to do with any sense of profound spiritual truths that have been learned.

I don’t know what, if anything this helps. But I do know that convincing myself that I am “enlightened” or that I am ‘aware” or “awake” has at times caused me to loath my Higher Power, and so I suspect, the phrase has outlived its usefulness.