Morning pages. Day five. I was hoping to return to the fictional world that appeared from nowhere on day two and developed a little on day four. That will happen. I have no doubt of that. There are idea fragments whirling in the background of my mind and the time to write them into form will come. The time to plan something beyond free writing will come too if I allow it. Not this morning. This month, I think. Today as I sat with my cheap Bic pen I knew I had to write about something else. Did you ever see the video of that Christian "prophetess" telling how anyone who used a Bic pen was living under the curse and how God wants all his people to use pens made of pure god, just like her pen? To me it seems more like the curse they're living after is being indoctrinated so well that they give a greedy woman enough money to afford pens made of God. For me a Bic is perfect. With my terrible version of left-handed writing style most pens smudge. A cheap Bic pen doesn't. I was once dragged before the school headmaster just so he could be shown how bad the way I hold a pen is! With my Bic I'm living under the blessing.
...
A decision: To return to a meditation practice.
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| Begin Again |
Writing about meditation after three fifteen minute sessions and a day and half may seem a peculiar thing. What can I possibly have to teach? What insights can such writing give? Possibly nothing. Possibly none. Yet my words may be able to state in imperfect terms some whys and hows and whos. Why am I doing this? How did I make the choice? And who did the choosing.
I've believed for a while that I needed to return to something. I moved from theism to atheism, at least insofar as I reject the theism I once believed, the view that there is one creator God who intervenes in our lives and world. Or many Gods, but I was firm in my monotheistic certainty even though much of the Bible I read clearly isn't so firm. A college essay asked us, "Was Moses a monotheist?" He wasn't. Most of the heroes of faith in the Old Testament are henotheistic. In simple terms, there are lots of Gods but our one is the best and there will be trouble if you worship one of the others.
A rejection of theism is not a rejection of spirituality or a rejection of spirit even when accompanied by the rejection of a belief in any kind of afterlife. Spirituality cannot be constrained and there are atheist spiritualities, some better than others. In any case, I no longer call myself atheist except when that term is easier to use. Atheism historically has taken a wide variety of forms but now comes with much baggage as a word. Think atheism and many people think Richard Dawkins. He's come to represent the word in many people's minds though it's hardly an ideal association and he's definitely far from representative of the forms and ideas of atheism.
Mostly I use the term "nontheist" of myself, influenced in part by that time I spent "worshiping" with Quakers. I put that word in quotes because like atheism or Christianity it has a much broader possible scope than we tend to give it. When I wrote a few days ago that God is that which creates and when I use the language of God so often to express aspects of life, how can I honestly call myself atheist? Nontheist is better. It gives space for possibilities beyond an atheist or theist dichotomy.
So I'm not a theist and so am definitely an atheist in that sense but that doesn't tell anyone anything about me. To say I'm an atheist is hardly more useful than answering "I'm not Chinese" when asked what country I'm from. It doesn't tell me anything about me either except in remembering the way a particular form of theism was once the centre of my beliefs and meanings.
All of that is a digression. The point is that I am not an enemy of spirituality. I just had to spend time far from my religious past as I realised and worked through some of the damage it had done to me and by extension to those around me. Spirituality, of some kind or kinds, is part of our humanity and to embrace it is to become more human.
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| Begin Again |
Last year I decided I needed to find some practice again, a meditation form free from all religious creeds and dogmas. By chance some good people in the city happened to be restarting an eight week introduction to mindfulness meditation. At that time they were offering it for free because they had been able to access funding by which at least some of their bills were temporarily paid. I'm not going to speak against them or against mindfulness. There are many useful insights there.
It's not for everyone though but it's sometimes marketed and promoted as if it is and further that it will solve all kinds of problems. Sometimes mindfulness has been turned into a destructive monster simply by being oversold, sometimes by being offered as a panacea in a difficult life such as when companies overwork staff to the point of despair and rather than improving work conditions offer a weekly lunchtime mindfulness session as if that's what is needed.
That's beside the point though. The insights and usefulness remain if the malpractice can be avoided. Just don't get me started talking about the thousands of products that now have the word "mindfulness" on the cover or box to boost sales. Mindfulness colouring. Mindfulness jigsaws. Mindfulness sudoku. Mindfulness aerobics. It's only a matter of time before there is a mindfulness Marvel film or something equally as ridiculous. The Buddha would probably join Jesus in overturning some tables.
Much to my surprise, I found this: Mindfulness meditation, as taught by those good people, massively fucked me up.
Their teaching was mainstream, just the kind of thing you would find from Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mark Williams, or other prominent mindfulness teachers and writers. It wasn't bad teaching or mindfulness plus something cult-like. But it still fucked me up. I wrote about all of that at the time, even while enduring it. After a month of daily practice I was a mess but I stuck out the eight weeks, deteriorated, and spent the rest of the year mentally messed up and working hard each day towards recovery and finding something approaching balance again. I don't need to rewrite what already got written. The point is that it was very bad for me.
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| Begin Again |
Even so, here I am at the start of another year still desiring and looking to spirituality. Without dogma. Without complexity. Without ancient religious beliefs about reality that don't make that much sense. Without imposed rules. A spirituality of freedom, reverence, awe, creativity, love, compassion, peace making, unknowing and more.
This much is certain: I do not have that spirituality. Perhaps nobody does, at least not perfectly. It's an aspiration, a broad way of life, the revelation metaphorically of the eternal.
I have much experience. That doesn't matter. This is beginning again. And again. And again. Each day is a beginning even for the wisest of meditation teachers, the greatest creatives and the most extravagant lovers. There is always more to unknow and spiritual insight can reveal that unknowing more clearly.
So I begin again. Choose a practice. Choose a teacher, a guide who won't enforce and who may point in directions by won't pretend they've followed any road to the end. Even enlightenment, whatever that is, is just a beginning.
I've made my choice. I'm not saying what that choice is today. It's irrelevant because my choice is probably not yours and yours probably isn't mine. Spirituality doesn't imply consensus of form, practice or vocabulary. My choice may prove a good one for me. It may not. Time and commitment will tell. Time without commitment will not.
After a day and a half all I know is this. I am too filled with ego, knowledge and confusion to glimpse a sign of the apophatic revelation that comes through and within silence.
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