At one time in my early twenties, I fancied myself a spiritual seeker. I pored through books on eastern and western religion, philosophy, wisdom, and success. Outside of general education and idle thoughts on the world and myself, none of these works did me any lasting good or made me any happier.
In fact, only two things have made me feel happy, satisfied, and energized. The first thing is to remember reality. This life is it. This is what we get. It's actually quite an amazing life, and reality is almost unfathomably wonderful.
The second thing is to work.To me, work covers everything from reading to running, and from professional tasks to in-home fix-ups. When I work, I tend to be more active and more social, and it exhilarates me.
Spiritual seeking is not reality based, and it's not work. To seek is to denigrate reality because the seeker wants more or wants something else than reality. Seeking is work, but it's object is to cease working. The seeker looks to acquire something that will render seeking unnecessary. The seeker wants to arrive to a place where s/he can receive: receive enlightenment, receive peace, receive happiness, and so on.
People are enamored of seekers. They fashion seekers as romantic heroes, but this veneration is an old lie. A foolish, harmful lie.
Don't be a seeker. Be here and now. And let's work.
"Hello Seeker! Now don't feel alone in the New Age, because there's a Seeker born every minute."--Happy Harry Cox in Everything You Know Is Wrong (Firesign Theatre)
ReplyDeleteGood post. Your first paragraph mirrored my own experience, except that I feel that I got some good out of going through the process. I don't regret it--but I wouldn't recommend it, either.
None of those books did you any good?
ReplyDeleteMaybe you read a lot of duds, but my experience is that there's plenty out there that can take you further along the path. Now me, I read jockographies. Some are trash, but many have kernels of wisdom.
I remember reading the memoirs of an offensive lineman who was an All-Star in the 70's. The kernel of his wisdom was in how he described Dick Butkus, the Hall of Fame linebacker. He said that Butkus was the opposing player he worried about the most. Why? Because other players he faced would hit the blocker as hard as they could. Butkus, however, understood that it was not how hard you hit the blocker, but how hard you hit the ball carrier that counted.
And that is a piece of wisdom I have carried with me throughout the years.
Anon.,
ReplyDelete"And that is a piece of wisdom I have carried with me throughout the years."
Carrying wisdom is one thing. Applying it is another. Benefiting from it is yet another.
Yes, having a sense of purpose and goals is the most important component to happiness and psychological wellness, by far. And work provides that purpose.
ReplyDeleteBut it's obvious that religion provides a much greater sense of purpose. My purpose in life is to make God eternally happy, and to perfect myself morally in all ways.
Other forms of purpose are also nice. But they are finite, since our lives are infinitely shorter than the infinit duration of God's existence and happiness.
This is the theme of "Elul": Ani Lidodi V'dodi Li. My goal in life is to make God happy, and His goal is to make human beings happy.
"My goal in life is to make God happy."
ReplyDeleteResearch says that this amounts to saying your goal in life is to make yourself happy.
I sincerely wish you luck in attaining your goal consistently and frequently.
I wonder if we all felt as though we were living purposefully and in successful pursuit of goal then maybe we wouldn't feel the need to suggest that one sense of purpose is "greater" than another.