Seeking Ourselves

Good Morning Everyone,

When we seek something in intangible, we often do not find it. Somehow the act of looking gets in the way. We typically have an idea of what the "something" looks like and we set out to find something that corresponds to our idea. If we are searching for God, the Infinite, or Enlightenment, big problem, as we really have no idea what these look like. We only have our ideas about them.

Now some might say, yes, but these ideas are based on text references, such as biblical sources. Others might say, we we have Masters we can go to who will help point the way. Yes, true, but in both cases, the way is not in the picture the text or the Master presents, but in what unfolds as we seek.

Spiritual inquiry requires us to seek without any real idea as to what we will find. This is why it is so very difficult. In the beginning we have an idea, we want to have God in our lives, or faith, or enlightenment. Somehow these things sound wonderful and maybe even necessary to us. Perhaps we have been suffering, perhaps a loved one has died or left us, or maybe we3 just feel something has been missing in our lives.

We go find a book or two or three. Some may go to the Bible, others to books on religion, still others to church, synagogue or temple. We are seeking something. The books, churches, and religious teachers offer us an idea. "Oh, that's what I'm looking for" we say. But it is only an idea. Ideas, like other thoughts and feelings are rather temporary. In our minds and hearts they come and go. They are unstable, even absolute faith cannot last in our mind's eye for very long before it is replaced by another thought.

Many of us placate ourselves with these ideas, this "faith" or "belief" and never go any deeper. We convince ourselves we have found what we are looking for and that is that.

Yet, I suggest this is a shallow faith, it is a faith in the image of something, rather than the substance. This faith only gets us so far. So often this faith is shattered easily by the most ordinary of human experiences. True seekers must go beyond this.

The moment we acknowledge the this terrible truth becomes the moment we are true seekers. Images and ideas are scattered in pieces on the floor and we step out of the boxes of religion into the true light of day. You see, religion paints a picture, but we often mistake the picture for the thing itself. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it still is only a picture and words are just words, and like the coffee spoons of T. S., Elliot, they measure out our lives in a hollow lifeless way.

Our task as seekers is to seek. We must never actually find.

Be well.