a watercolor masterpiece
There’s one-upmanship in every human endeavor. Even spirituality.
Ironic but not surprising.
The same energy that drives us into other pursuits such as career, wealth, family, fame, and power drives us into spirituality. You learned this by direct experience.
It’s fair to partly blame society for it. From a young age we’re subtly threatened with the prospect of failing at our lives. We soon realize that there are socially accepted ideas of what a good/successful/proper/respectable life looks like. Failing to fulfill this ideal means being a failure. And no one wants to be a failure because being a failure is not O.K.
We also notice that some people are better at some things than others and that being better than others will earn you approval, acceptance, praise, appreciation, love. Then it hits you: to fulfill society’s ideal you must be better than others.
Now you have something tangible. A practical philosophy: just outperform others to the best of your ability.
A dark cloud hovers into view when you come to learn that being better than others is not always easy and perhaps even very difficult.
For most of us there is a time when we try. We give it all. We burn every inch of ourselves to fulfill society’s ideals. We compete with others, often unaware of it.
Some of us manage to do it. We fulfill these ideals and everyone and their aunt tells us how awesome we are and that we should be proud. But that kind of praise wears thin.
What are we left with then?
A nagging sense of discontent. Something feels off. Our life feels like a lie. We lied to ourselves. We lied when we claimed we wanted what everyone told us to want. We lied when we denied our own voice in favor of someone else’s. We lied when we kept going when we actually wanted to stop.
When we reach this point, chances are good we stumble into another endeavor — spirituality.
Your entry point makes a difference. Having your first exposure to spirituality through New Age stuff versus Buddhism stuff, for example, will be a different experience. Just as a side note.
No matter your entry point, sooner or later something happens: a spiritual identity develops. Suddenly you’re a spiritual person no longer concerned with the lower material desires of sleeping sheeple.
At some point, you might meet other spiritual people. At first, y’all might be super happy and nice around each other. But soon the Dharma dueling begins.
You start talking about spiritual concepts. Disagreements happen. And you notice an urge bubbling up inside you. You want to be right. You want to be better at this spirituality stuff than this shirtless hippie smelling like a 5-day overdue shower.
Obviously, you hand it to him. You dismantle his shaky metaphysical house of cards and enjoy the admiring gazes of the other hippies.
You did it! You were better than him! Well done!
You feel good and wise and smart while the other guy is shrinking in spiritual inadequacy. You notice that this suits you. What if you could finesse people like this endlessly and perhaps even get idolized and paid for it?
So you go where spiritual people congregate and start adding your mustard (it’s a German saying). You’re good at talking the talk so people soon start projecting. They see understanding and wisdom in you. They ask — nay! demand — that you give talks. Damn right, they do.
Now you sit in front of a small group of people and share the Dharma. All these faces nodding in agreement. Everyone’s mind blown by your sagely words of wisdom. And boy, does it feel good to be in your shoes right now.
And things are progressing nicely. Bigger gigs. Book contracts. Groupies. You’ve become a major player in the realm of spirituality. Some say the major player.
Now this spiritual role has become your main identity. The thing you live for. But you are so caught up in it, you feel like you forgot something important.
What was it?
For the love of spirituality, you can’t remember what it was you forgot. So you try to forget that you’re trying to remember what you forgot. And it’s easy to forget because everything’s really groovy.
But the turning point was bound to come:
You are giving Satsang. Big crowd. People are loving it — lots of cheers and tears. When it’s time for questions, you let people come upfront where you sit on a mahogany chair. And then it happens:
One particularly devotional fellow gets down and starts kissing your feet. And you let him!
To everyone assembled it might not seem too crazy. After all, foot kissing has a long tradition in spiritual circles. But you know that whichever tradition encourages this isn’t your tradition nor a tradition you want to be affiliated with.
While this guy is slobbering all over your feet, you feel a heavy, hot ball of lead settle in the depths of your gut, like swallowing a sun made of shame. The discomfort is agonizing. What have you become?
One thing is certain. You haven’t become what you preach about becoming. And now you finally remember the thing you have forgotten.
It was the reason you got started with spirituality in the first place. You wanted to be real, know truth, free yourself.
Instead, you became a person who lets others kiss his feet for Christ’s, Buddha’s, and Krishna’s sake!
This was your wake-up call. The catastrophe you needed to remember the vital point.
In that moment the pain and suffering of having someone smooch your feet reach an almost unbearable crescendo, and you recognize that which has always been.
The scene continues but the middle is gone. The intermediary ‘you’ was just an elaborate magic trick.
You see that what you really are was never any of the roles you’ve been playing, not even the elevated role of wise person. You’ve been perfectly undefined all along. You recognize that what you are eludes all definition and yet allows all defining to take place unflinchingly.
This is what you had forgotten — the simple truth of being, all-encompassing.
You finish Satsang. In fact, you’re finished with Satsang in general. And while walking home, on those saliva-covered feet, in your heart, you shower the feet kisser with gratitude. Not you, but he, has been the guru all along.
Luka
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