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Equal
Explanations (July/Aug 2005)
There's
a fine line between belief and an obsession. Between spirituality
and religion. In America, seventy percent of us believe in the
Devil. When we look around at the degradation of our way of life,
we need to have something to blame for the darker side of existence.
It's always
easier to point a finger than to take a look in the mirror.
The other day,
I'm walking down the street and am told by a man I have never
met that the causes of my problems reside in my inability to find
God. The man's sign and pamphlets let me know he has all the answers.
Thanks but no thanks, I tell him. Whatever floats your boat, whatever
works for you, can't be expected to make sense to everyone. Life
is a little too complicated to have just one interpretation.
Maybe the problem
is that we're all trying too hard. Maybe the problem is that we're
all too afraid to stop thinking long enough to look around and
appreciate.
The other day,
the door bell rings and I find a couple of teenagers dressed in
suits and gold nametags eager to convert me. These door to door
salvation salesmen want to help me find the light. I invite them
in and ask them to have a seat. They request to read from their
scriptures. None of us are very interested in what we have to
say to one another, but we pretend to be. I tell them, in order
to be redeemed you first have to be convinced that you are damned.
The greatest
limitation to being human is that we're trapped in a reality that's
dictated by our sensory apparatus. Imagine explaining sight to
someone who has been blind their entire life. Sometimes, it might
take more than one set of metaphors to do the trick. Imagine that
what we perceive as we go about our day to day lives is a small
fraction of the greater whole.
I tell these
two would-be do-gooders, that I believe there are many paths leading
to the same place. I tell them, that in my mind, there is no separating
the divine from the profane. Heaven and Hell, creation and destruction,
are all a part of the same process. "God" is just a
word, a symbol, used to describe something that is so far beyond
our capacity for understanding it can never be quantified in a
logical way. This "God," I tell them, is something that
we are all a part of. Look around, and it's easy to see that everything
is connected. Read one book on quantum mechanics and you'll never
be the same.
What happens
when the person we think we are, the character we play, and the
name we go by, all end up being nothing more than a variable used
to keep track of an ever-changing tide of consciousness? What
happens when we begin to admit that our egos are illusions, and
our personal beliefs are only analogies? Today, there are approximately
19 major world religions which can then be divided into over 270
various subgroups and denominations. So, I tell them, if everything
is all a part of the same Universal fabric, then there can be
no one right answer.
When the zealots
grow tired of the debate and get up to leave my humble abode,
no one is changed because no one was ever wrong.
-Jason M Glover
Editor
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