Forget the Talking Snakes; Get Rid of the Flare

“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

It’s easy to blame the loneliness of the spiritual path on the reluctance (or refusal) of others to join in the journey. But it’s more than that. It’s lonely in part because it’s so damned difficult staying on it.

I mean, here you are inquiring within, maybe doing some meditation, seeking compassion and forgiveness in your heart whenever possible, and then you wander out of your yoga class feeling magnanimous toward all only to discover that a particular member of that population has smashed into your car and driven away without leaving a note. Amazing how fast all that fuzzy Oneness evaporates.

The point being, the spiritual path is lonely in part because even its most loyal and ardent followers have a habit of racing off into life’s emotional wilderness every time someone or something pokes one of their buttons. And boy do we humans have our buttons. (I picture the restaurant manager in “Office Space” demanding more ‘flare’ on his wait staff, those unsightly buttons metaphors for all our emotional attachments.)

That’s the thing about spirituality: It’s not just something you ‘do’ when it’s convenient; an hour in church on Sundays; a rushed expression of gratitude before meals; a heartfelt prayer at bedtime. Many of us who operate under the rubric of being “spiritual, not religious,” find it easy to dismiss the weekly churchgoers who otherwise behave boorishly all week, but miss the fact that we more or less do the same thing.

I got a big taste of all this over the past week when I lost track of some of those buttons and then behaved like some half-deranged lab monkey being shocked every time someone pushed one of them. My habit (as I suspect it is for many of us) is to awaken in the wee hours and agonize about it all. If I surrender to the mental torment, I replay the words and actions over and over, emotions churning, frustrated with the world. If I turn inward, however, the old mental habits and the ephemeral nature of those tortured thoughts are seen through and, like that, they dissipate. Funny how I can ridicule the dog for failing to learn that the doorbell does not require madcap barking only to more or less do the same thing when my own buttons are pushed.

John Lennon famously noted that “life is what happens while you’re busy making plans.” The same can be said of spiritual growth. We mistakenly believe that the trials, travails and temptations that will lead us astray are going to be of the burning bush, talking snake variety. A bit like the folks who think a returned Jesus will be played by Matt Damon or the Dalai Lama versus, say, the homeless guy whose gaze you avoid each day on the way to work.

But that’s not the way it works. You’re going to be tested close to home. I mean, that’s the whole point, it’s emotionally compelling to you. Chances are that talking snakes aren’t part of your baggage but maybe someone cutting you off in traffic is. Or as someone recently counseled me: If an individual treats you poorly that’s his karma; how you react to it is your karma.

It is interesting to note that those who undergo the so-called ‘life review’ during a near-death experience almost uniformly report back that in the presence of that all-loving light, “it’s the little stuff that matters.” All of life’s big moments, the achievements and accomplishments, the homes and money and jobs and medals all were meaningless. Instead, it was the patience shown a frustrating child, the tenderness toward an ugly dog, the commitment to forgive an enemy.

And that’s the point to all this, isn’t it? That the stuff our minds tell us is important, that matters, that we need to get emotionally defensive and even aggressive about, is meaningless. In fact, it holds us back, keeps us trapped in the same cycle. In the “Dark Night of the Soul,” we are told that it is our allegiance to these beliefs that keep us separated from communion with God (or, if you prefer, enlightenment).

In more recent interpretations of the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus’s admonitions to turn the other cheek if someone smacks you, or to give the man stealing your shirt your coat and pants too, are explained this way: Jesus wasn’t trying to make us better human beings. He was trying to help us overcome our karma. If you react to these things, you doom yourself to repeating them (in this life or the next or the one after that). You don’t react to the guy smacking you across the chops precisely because it’s your karma – by reacting you keep it alive.

It’s only by seeing through these trials and tribulations, by letting go all these mind-generated emotional attachments, that we at last “overcome the world” and become free.