In 1971 I read "The Teaching of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge". This fueled an already extant desire for a "master", a teacher, a guide who would reveal the secrets of life to me. I was fascinated by the way Don Juan supposedly used psychotropic drugs to teach Castenada. Though I found these stories inspiring at the time, my own many subsequent experiments with various psychotropics yielded no wisdom of any kind.Though I didn't realize it then, what I really wanted was a pain-free life. This subconscious desire led to a long search in diverse realms. When I finally came to the Christian faith, that's really what I wanted too. But the Christian life is hardly a pain-free path, what with the repeated emphasis on death-to-self. Death is often very messy and painful.
Even this blog may be a sort of an attempt to find a shortcut to personal peace. It's as if I am saying, perhaps if I "start over" spiritually I will find an easier way. For better or worse, that's just not going to happen. That's not to deny the value of deconstructing my faith and examining my life. But this will not suddenly make life easy, or even much easier in any meaningful way.
I am old enough and realistic enough to realize that life is inherently complicated. There is no free lunch. There are simple answers, but no easy ones of any value. Every solution is merely the choice of a different set of problems. So I need to get over the idea that I can find a way to cheat on life. Parts of life will be inherently difficult and/or unpleasant. If I want to find freedom from fear of the pain of responsibilities of life, then I need to recognize and embrace those fears. I need to experience them to move through them. I've done it before. It involved sacrificing the pursuit of "magic", that is, simple answers which circumvent the natural systems of cause and effect.
It's tough to be an adult. Adults can still play and savor the wonder of life, but there is a cost. And, there is a cost to attempting to protect oneself from pain: numbness, disconnect, spiritual death, lifelessness. I often stubbornly resent and resist the pressure to be a grown-up. I can continue live as an old adolescent in many ways, but not without sacrificing some of the benefits of being an adult. Most often those benefits are long-range. The focus of the child and the adolescent is usually on immediate personal gratification.
4 comments:
this is a classic post
i was thinking about all this today ( minus Castenada, but i did read that and am currently something eerily similar)
Very insightful, Gary...something I needed to hear. I'm going to be thinking about this for awhile.
The frustrating thing for me is that I've learned this lesson many times before. Then it's as if I lose sight of reality and drift right back into denial. My only hope is to believe that God is involved in this process, and that ultimately, the transformation is out of my hands. I need to follow another piece of my own advice: recognize and celebrate the positive momentum on the journey. Take small steps. And take them one at a time. Tonight I feel a bit defeated and all of that advice may sound correct, but it's very difficult to embrace it at a visceral level.
Sometimes I try to see this process as a chasm between where I am and where I want to be...I can look at the other side from every direction and every perspective, I can conjure up ways to build a bridge some other means to get there...it's not until I realize that I can't create a way to get there...getting there simply requires taking a step off the ledge and believing God will put something under my foot (and He does).
While you know how I hate using platitudes, it's getting to a place where I'm willing to take a "step of faith". And no one else can judge how long it takes for me to be ready to take that step - it's between God and I - or let's say mostly God nudging or urging and me making excuses - like about going to church, for me - and me finally getting to a place where I stop making excuses and just "step out".
I don't know if that's helpful to you where you are, but it's what came to mind.
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