Awakening

"Siddhartha looked around him as if seeing the world for the first time. It was beautiful, strange and mysterious. Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, sky and river, woods and mountains, all beautiful, all mysterious and enchanting, and in the midst of it, he, Siddhartha, the awakened one, on the way to himself. All this, all this yellow and blue, river and wood, passed for the first time across Siddhartha’s eyes. It was no longer the magic of Mara, it was no more the veil of Maya… Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them."
-- Siddhartha [Hesse]

He was no longer confined to the unified structure of the world that had been presented to him through his religion. The meaning of a thing wasn’t hidden or derived from his interaction or exploitation of it. The meaning of a thing was now in the thing itself. The human construction that he had laid on top of the world prevented him from experiencing life for what it really was—beautiful.

When someone is seeking “it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking… Thus seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal."

Resurgence

I am exhausted of treading in Christianity. What am I to do when my sometimes-uncomfortable questions about God, the Bible, and Christianity’s foundations are received with disinterest at best and disgust at worst? They make me feel that I am at fault for having the questions; I am at fault for refusing to accept anything blindly.

"A person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be."
-- Alan Watts

Coming into Clemson, I was so frustrated with the church and Christianity and my own failure as a Christian that I had this 'attitude of faith' which wanted the truth - the truth at any cost. I suppose this attitude is what separated me from most Christians, and what very likely separates me from most people.

I now find myself in an odd place: I see the beauty and the darkness of Christianity... of religion. For a moment, the beauty overwhelmed me as it once had and I was filled with a desire to return to normalcy. I had strayed so far from everything and everyone that I once knew and loved… and I wanted to return. I wanted to be normal again. And so I was, for a short while.

But I know I’m done with that life now. I thought I could go back, I thought I did go back. I suppose its no surprise though, I’ve been wrong about plenty of things before!

I find myself exasperated with close-mindedness. Any idea that is different is labeled heretical and obviously wrong. Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." I have been relegated to the latter two with almost all of my Christian friends - and for someone who longs for depth, that is a relationship's death knell! We no longer have a connection point because they don't want to discuss ideas or entertain thoughts that are different than their own. But I find that talking with someone who has different ideas and thoughts (and has thought through things to come to those ideas and thoughts) is quite engrossing.

Please, don't be afraid of me - I mean no harm. I wouldn't ask the questions if I didn't think they were important.

“Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.”
-- Paul Tillich