February 13, 2024
Dear Leland and Everett,
I notice I’ve been writing a lot about God and scripture lately. I’ve written briefly about my spiritual beliefs before, but not with this regularity. I sense it might be worth updating a bit regarding where I am on my journey.
For one thing, we probably need to talk about God. My assumptions and/or explicit beliefs about God are pretty limited. I sense that God exists, though I also sense humans have no capacity to fully comprehend God. We can see reflections and manifestations, and can hear echos; but our brains just aren’t capable of imagining what God might look like or sound or be like. Partly I suspect we are limited by our ability to sense three dimensions; God may well exist in a space consisting of additional dimensions humans cannot perceive. I believe God is not bound by time, whereas humans perceive a world in which time is fleeting and moves only in one direction.
Partly due to the limits of our perception, partly to our limits of imagination, but perhaps mostly due to our deep desire to feel a sense of control, we have a tendency to put God in a box. By this I mean we tend to create mental models of God which we can in fact understand, and in the process put imaginary constraints on God’s capabilities. Spiritual exploration means, among other things, coming to terms with the incomprehensible nature of God and surrendering the illusion that we might logically know.
So why do I believe God exists? For lack of a better explanation, I sense God’s presence. Perhaps more accurately, I feel a connection to what Christians would describe as the Holy Spirit (and goes by other names in other religions): a field of energy flowing in and around and through us. And in a manner I can’t adequately describe, I sense the energy flowing around and through us connects to a larger source, which I call God. Put most simply, I sense God’s existence in my meditations. I have only the faintest understanding of God per se, but also sense that God invites me into relationship. This invitation into relationship includes surrendering the illusion that I have control over myself and the universe around me. For whatever reason, I find we must make space for God’s presence in our lives by surrendering the aspects of ourselves, typically born of fear or sadness, that block our ability to receive what God wants to communicate to and through us.
To the extent that I am willing to surrender my illusions of control, I open myself up to knowing things that I can’t fully explain, but know. A skeptic might argue that I delude myself in believing I can know things without being able to explain them (and how I came to know them). Perhaps they are right; part of surrender is holding a loose grip, resisting attachment even to our own ideas.
And what is the benefit or purpose of this relationship of surrender? I’ve only experienced glimpses, but my sense is that we experience otherwise unimaginable peace, harmony, connection, and flow. I sense this is the path toward healing and wholeness. Interestingly, peace/harmony/connection/flow sound fine to most people, but aren’t nearly sufficiently motivating to let go of our attachments (and especially our perceived grip on reality). And while healing and wholeness might sound more compelling, they are typically not compelling enough for our egos to let go of our illusion of control over our lives and our surroundings. I’ve seen mystics posit that most people don’t advance beyond a certain point in their spiritual growth without a major shock.
My experience was different. I felt life slowly closing in around me. I kept pursuing all the avenues I expected would lead to happiness, but kept experiencing dead-ends. I felt more and more constricted and hopeless. And then a little door appeared. I didn’t realize the significance of the door at the time. In fact, I ignored the door. I had mentioned to your mom that I wanted to hire a life coach; one day she informed me she met a life coach in a professional training she attended. I brushed off the coincidence, assuming I should do research to find the ‘right’ or ‘best’ coach for me. Weeks later, your mom introduced me to a podcast episode where the guest outlined the coaching practices they created; when I expressed my curiosity and enthusiasm, your mom pointed out the coach she met specialized in this format of coaching. Perhaps reluctantly, I recognized that finding the ‘best’ coach (which I didn’t even know how to do) on some imaginary future timeline probably mattered less than meeting a potentially interesting coach now.
That coach introduced me to body awareness and internal exploration. Eventually that exploration morphed into what I call visions (effectively visual, interactive meditations). These visions exposed me, for the first time, to sensing that I could ‘know’ things without being able to explain how or why I knew them. And so I’ve continued on this spiritual path, recognizing I didn’t want to go back to the constricted world I left behind, but increasingly aware that I was surrendering my ego’s illusion of control as the cost of pursuing this new path. This process has not been easy or ‘fun’; in fact it’s the hardest thing I have ever done. And yet I’ve been able to pursue the process with relative calm and equanimity.
I outlined the beliefs I’ve developed on this journey here, so won’t belabor them other than to say that they have not changed. I will merely add:
I believe we are called to be our own savior. We can stop looking for external sources (parents, jobs, companies, friends, spouses, therapists, consumerism) to bring our lives meaning and fulfillment; those are all ultimately dead ends. I’ve read my fair share of self-help books. They can be immensely useful, and the authors are typically well meaning and helpful; ultimately however, we do not find fulfillment following the paths laid out for us by others. Then again, don’t take my word for it. If you are finding meaning in your current journey, by all means, continue! Just be on the lookout for the dead ends.
Fortunately, we have all the tools we need to find our own connection to God; in the process we find and follow our own paths. We need the help of others, of course. But by forging our own relationship and setting our intention to know God, we build the capacity to know the help we need and when to accept help to remain on our path. Moreover, we develop the discernment to know the difference between accepting help overcoming obstacles on our path and getting pulled into following the paths meant for others. To be clear: our paths will at times intersect, and it will at times make sense to follow others. Again, with practice you will develop the ability to discern when you are temporarily following the path laid out by others, and when it becomes time to forge your own path.
I’m still not married to my path being explicitly Christian. Indeed, I have come to trust my own connection to and communication with God more than anything else. But what I have noticed, now that I have tuned into my own intuitive capabilities, is that one can pursue a mystic Christian path. Christianity offers us the tools needed to find our relationship with God. I don’t assume Christianity has exclusive access to such enlightenment; indeed I suspect all major religions offer a path. But Christianity has lost its way (and in this way I doubt Christianity is unique): we have come to mistake the rules of Christianity for the purpose of life itself. We misunderstand that the rules are merely guideposts meant to point us on the path to relationship with God, not the relationship in and of themselves.
Jesus regularly chided the Pharisees for their obsession with rules, and their lack of genuine relationship with God. I sense we live in similar times. Christians today obsess over the rules of Christianity, and have generally lost the ability to pursue a deepening relationship with God. The growing ranks of non-believers (a term I’ll use to loosely cluster atheists and agnostics) similarly obsess over the rules of society (be they laws or just norms and mores), and generally lack awareness the possibility of a direct connection with God exists.
In this way I am reminded of a couple of passages that struck me recently. The first is the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15: 11-32), wherein the rule-abiding son protests the screwup brother being celebrated for returning home. The second is the story of a Pharisee host who objects to Jesus allowing a woman ‘sinner’ to wash his feet with her hair (Luke 7: 36-50). In both of these stories Jesus (in the parable of the Prodigal Son, via the father) chides the rule-follower. Reading these passages now, I realize Jesus points out how we take false comfort in rule-following. By following the rules, we keep ourselves in proximity to God, and confuse proximity with relationship. The father of the Prodigal Son reminds the brother that he maintained access to all the father’s gifts, with the implication being the brother has yet to fully partake. The brother remains close but keeps God at arm’s length, assuming that being close is good enough. The brother has yet to understand he needs to let God in, in order to accept the gifts God offers.
When Jesus says to the Pharisee “the person who is forgiven only a little loves only a little”, he’s pointing out that the obvious sinners in some way have it easier: their sins are obvious even to them. It is not so hard to identify and surrender obvious flaws to God, precisely because these sins are so obvious and limiting. The rule-follower has it harder: he or she maintains the illusion that they need not be forgiven because there is nothing to forgive. The rule-follower uses the following of rules as a shield to avoid confronting or surrendering their own weaknesses.
And so here we are: a society dominated by rule-followers, be they Christian or non-believers, who mistake the rules for the purpose. We (and I very much include myself here) hide the aspects of ourselves we don’t like or secretly believe to be unloveable behind a veneer of rule-following. We assume that following the rules will lead us to security, love, and abundance. And so we mimic the Pharisee and the brother of the Prodigal Son: in proximity to relationship with God, maintaining the illusion that we are on the path to wholeness, but in truth hopelessly lost.
The path out, I have learned, is a purposeful exploration of the areas of ourselves we hide. The parts of ourselves we don’t like, believe to be sinful, or assume to be unloveable. In my case (I assume like countless others) we become so successful at hiding these parts of ourselves that we genuinely forget they exist. But if we set the intention and dedicate the space, God will help us surface the parts of ourselves we’ve hidden. In the process we learn to surrender those parts, treat ourselves with compassion, and develop the capacity to love ourselves. And when we begin to love ourselves, we begin to find the capacity to truly love others and the world around us. The compassion we direct toward ourselves is the compassion we direct toward others, and vice versa. But before we can fully experience the compassion, we have to know ourselves. Only after we acknowledge and accept those hidden aspects of ourselves can we truly love ourselves; until then we only maintain the ability to love an idealized (e.g. false) version of ourselves. We intuitively know the idealized version is false, so we live out of alignment. The misalignment bring us the pain and suffering we experience, as we resist the parts of ourselves we don’t wish to see (primarily by loathing those traits in others).
So this is where I am, and the point from which I continue to explore. It’s possible I’ll discover I’ve become untethered to reality. It’s possible that this exploration too will be a dead-end. It’s certainly possible God doesn’t in fact exist, though we’ll never be able to prove one way or another. Regardless, my sense is that there is something timeliness in the exploration and pursuit of relationship with God, in finding and walking one’s path. It’s possible these are just useful tools for how to live life. I don’t think it’s coincidental that Alcoholics Anonymous, a famously effective organization at helping individuals overcome addiction to alcohol, encourage participants to identify the Higher Power they will they use to identify the aspects of themselves they wish to surrender to the Higher Power: it just works. [Indeed, I’m struck reading the 12 steps Alcoholics Anonymous follows, and how closely the steps align to my own healing journey.]
I’ll continue to update on my evolution, in part to show you how messy personal exploration can be (in current parlance, “how the sausage gets made”). We typically tell stories after the journey is complete, identifying the key moments (or what we perceive to be the key moments), and excluding those apparently unnecessary twists and turns and dead-ends. In the process, we often leave out key details because we don’t recognize their significance. By documenting my steps as I go, I hope to give you the ability to discern what is of use and what is not, even if what resonates for you differs from what I remember after years of trimming the experience in my memory.
I love you both.
Love,
Dad
Letters to Leland 