A Horse With No Name

A mystic has informed you that across a vast ocean of water eternal happiness awaits. You gaze at the water from the beach, painfully aware that every attempt you’ve made to find happiness on this side of the water has failed, so why not? You immediately set out to lay claim to this everlasting reward – on horseback. Such is the face of human spirituality.

Know thyself and the truth shall set you free. They are among the best known, yet least-understood words in spirituality. Most people think they understand them. I certainly thought I did. But I didn’t. Chances are good you don’t either.

Polls tell us that most people consider themselves ‘spiritual.’ Millions of us attend religious services and millions more engage in some form of spirituality.

Yet suffering keeps arising. Cancers form, wars are fought, babies die, mortgages must be paid, earthquakes spawn tsunamis, marriages grow stale and we all end up dead in the end.

This absence of a tangible reward to all that spiritual effort prompts many of us to give up. We grow angry with or altogether abandon god and anoint ourselves ‘agnostic’ or ‘atheistic.’ Or we create patchwork ‘New Age’ spiritual movements and supplant ‘god’ with ‘the universe.’

The more earnest spiritual seekers ratchet up the intensity. We memorize commandments or Zen koans, chant mantras and visualize chakras, we listen intently to a guru or pore religiously (ha ha) over spiritual texts, we gobble down mushrooms with Don Juan or gag down ayahuasca with a sweaty shaman or cook ourselves to death with the James Rays of the world. We rub raw the rosaries, penitently wail at the Wall, wage jihad against the infidels and yet god continues to ignore us and the universe obliviously marches on.

It never occurs to us that we’re trying to ride a horse across the water, that the central deficit to the human spiritual journey lies in the vehicle through which that quest is conducted.

Picture ‘Susan,’ a vaguely unhappy, middle-aged woman who increasingly feels herself to be in a funk. Her marriage has grown stale, her children don’t need her as much, the happy hours aren’t quite so happy and the mornings-after are taking their toll. Her career is fine but clearly not the answer to what ails her. She’s had some mild health problems, perhaps one or both parents have died, and the predations of time are taking a toll on her body. Mildly religious since childhood, her life has been too hectic for any real spiritual searching. But now, out of answers, she becomes more earnest in her search.

Susan knows that Jesus, the Buddha, etc., said the truth lies within, that the key to genuine happiness lies in knowing oneself. So Susan commits to “finding herself,” and off Susan goes in quest of the truth about herself. Along the way Susan may eat, pray, love, but in the end those turn out to be just as temporary as the perfect marriage, dream home, perfect children, rewarding career, and sexy physique. The horse is never going to get her there.

The problem is so utterly obvious we fail to see it. Susan reads or hears the words, “Know thyself” and her brain interprets them as: I, Susan, marketing manager, heterosexual white 42-year-old married American woman, mother of two, residing in Clifton, Virginia, daughter to John and Mary, sister to Steve, dimpled ass and aching tooth….” In other words, Susan has fruitlessly set out to find her self with the same self that’s seeking that self. Dogs at least occasionally catch their tails – poor Susan doesn’t stand a chance.

So what’s the answer? For starters, Susan – each of us – must set free the horse and start the process of deconstructing everything she thinks she knows about herself.

The most obvious place to begin: Her name. Susan. “Soo-sun,” she says. Now….

Who gave her that name? It was inherited. Ok, out with the name.

What language does our unnamed heroine use to articulate that word? English. Did Susan teach herself that language? Did she ask to be born American (or a heterosexual white woman, for that matter, to those parents, in that home, in that neighborhood)? Ok, let’s get rid of all of those.

How did this entity physically articulate that word? With its brain, tongue, mouth, lungs. Did the entity create those things? Who or what manages them now, keeps the heart beating, the lungs respiring, and so on? Check those off the list.

So. What’s left of our spiritual seeker, the one yearning to “know itself”?

NOW the journey begins.