On Religion and Spirituality
EWR
For most of my adult life I have had religion and spirituality entangled in a way that has prevented me from getting a clear eyed view of either. The former arouses distrust and suspicion and a sense that, if I am not careful, I will slip back into the maelstrom of guilt, shame and coercion that characterized my childhood experience of religion. The latter, in contrast, has always drawn me towards it with a sense of promise, enlightenment and redemption.
My earliest memories were of a child-like reverence and pride of being among the chosen. A fast track to heaven not available to heathens and infidels (and, most emphatically, Jews). I recall building a makeshift altar to Mary on the radiator in my bedroom during the month of May since that was the month that honored Mary. The centerpiece was a statue of the Virgin in what I recall was a beatific pose. I was delighted to find out that June was the month for Jesus, and I had but to substitute an equally pious statue of Jesus to continue the ritual for another month.
Obedience was the cardinal virtue at that age; poverty and chastity would have their moments later on in life. There was always the looming question in a devoted Catholic households about whether God would choose you to follow the religious life. It was a call that, if it came, you dare not ignore, under threat of eternal damnation, or so I thought at the time. I imagined the call being like the thunderbolt that had allegedly struck Saul on his legendary road to Damascus, and I kept waiting with a mixture of dread and resignation for it to happen to me.
I was so embedded in this cultural milieu that I never questioned the reality and veracity of it for a moment, it simply was the way things were. Until my second year of college. I was enrolled in a Biology class taught by a Dominican priest (clad in one of those lovely white habits) who had a gift for inspiring students with his lectures. He assigned us readings in science and cosmology (or so my memory goes, although now I am wondering what that had to do with biology). The books were Fabric of the Heavens and The Architecture of Matter by Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield.
The effect on me of reading these books was profound. It opened my mind up to a whole new world of possibilities and literally shattered the narrow, superstition-bound ethos of my Catholicism. These books not only had the ring of truth, they had the weight of science behind them. The effect was both liberating and disorienting.
I began, with much trepidation, de-programing myself from my Catholic beliefs and practices, which turned out to be quite a challenge. I felt that I had to refute the idea that the existence of God could be proven beyond a doubt. So I began reading books that dealt directly with this question, books that found the “proofs” unconvincing and ultimately lacking merit. I also began reading the existentialists, who largely considered the matter settled - there is no God - and expostulated that the real test of philosophical integrity was to accept this and live with the consequences. Albert Camus became my priest and mentor.
Giving up the practices was even more difficult, largely because they were so emotionally infused with fear and guilt. The most formidable challenge was to stop going (indeed to force myself to stop going) to Sunday mass. This was the cardinal sin and the surest road to eternal damnation, a notion that still had considerable sway over me. It also had the weight and heft of my overly devout and intolerant-of-disobedience father behind it. It led to a confrontation that, had my mother not been there to intervene, might have gone badly for both of us. As it was, she was able to persuade him that I had to go my own way in this matter, and he relented.
I was somewhat dismayed when I realized that it was equally implausible to prove that God didn’t exist, and the best one could hope for was to accept a split decision. Eventually I settled into a skeptical agnosticism, where I reside to this day.
Spirituality for me seemed to rise up from my disillusionment with Catholic ideology and the frisson of my newly embraced agnosticism. As I searched for a new foundation for my beliefs, I cast about the alternatives. Cold scientific materialism didn’t have much appeal, and existentialism left me depleted and exhausted. So at some point I turned eastward like so many others. The first stop was Ram Das Be Here Now. He was into psychedelics and altered states so I allowed that he must be the real thing, even if he talked about god. Plus he had the right detractors: Christians and Nixonian politicians.
It was a short hop from there to Yoganandya’s Autobiography of a Yogi. Yoganandya wrote with such authenticity and warmth that it was impossible not to get drawn into his gentle, life-affirming, all too human circle. John Lily’s Center of the Cyclone and Carlos Castaneda’s Teachings of Don Juan followed quickly and gave some framework for my experiences with LSD and psilocybin. I began a quest to experience higher states of consciousness.
I was initiated into Transcendental Meditation and sat with the likes of Sri Chinmoy. I took a courses at the New School for Social Research on Yoga and Altered States of Consciousness. I went so far as to take an individual meditation instructions from the teacher in the Yoga class. None of my efforts were sustained in the long run, I was sampling the offerings, not looking for a commitment.
All this culminated in my year of living dangerously, going south to attend a program in humanistic psychology. It was a seminal year for me, not only for the extensive readings and immersion into the human potential movement, but also for forming new relationships with people from very different places than I was used to. Discovering experiential learning was for me spirituality without the trappings of religion, a chance to embark on a counter-cultural adventure into the human psyche. I made the most of it while simultaneously picking up a masters degree, which somehow legitimated the enterprise.
The graduation ceremony consisted of going into the woods and ingesting peyote and making conversation with the great spirits. Post graduation we all met somewhere along the way and sat with Ram Dass in a meditation session that still stands as my most mind-expanding experience not involving psychedelics.
And then, suddenly, it was over. We graduated and dispersed and there’s was no place to go to continue the quest and no one to do it with. I gradually fell into a hippie lifestyle of working, getting high, and playing music, and the quest was forgotten. I soon after met the woman who was to be my future wife and, while we shared a common love of psychology and ex-Catholicism, spirituality was not a part of our life together, and so it dropped out of my life.
So all of this lay fallow until ten years ago, when I accompanied my sister to a mediation group that was meeting in my neighborhood. My wife was dying and I was looking for something to connect with or reconnect with. Buddhism had this appeal because it was non-theistic and emphasized an empirical approach - mindfulness - and the importance of finding out for yourself what was your personal truth. I became a regular attendant at the weekly sits and felt like a member of the community or sangha, albeit with a reluctance to consider myself a Buddhist.
I began to meditate again on a regular basis and reading the mindfulness literature searching for inspiration and validation. I initiated a book club which I dubbed “Adventures in Consciousness” and which focused loosely on various ways of thinking about consciousness; scientific, philosophical and religious (primarily Buddhist but also Hindu and Taoist).
This is where I find myself today, wanting a spiritual practice I can own and feel at home in. I have a persistent reticence to joining any one group or community or to identify with one particular point-of-view. And I remain open and curious about the full range of human spiritual experience.
