Misguided Pupil

The past couple of weeks have been an exhaustive exercise of attempted discovery. You Immersed me in reading, and sent me on a journey of the soul. I experienced a great deal of bewilderment and trepidation at the attainment of your objective. But I sit here now, not at all convinced that I have gained anything for the experience. I almost feel as if your message is that enlightenment itself is the illusion, that it is born of arrogance and fear. I am more lost than ever.

I spent last Saturday reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It was a recommended reading of a blog author you put in my path. In many ways, Quinn echoed a lot of the things I‘ve already heard. He authored his opinion of the bible’s tree of knowledge, and came to many of the same conclusions I had come to several years ago.

I really liked the way he offered up historical evidence. He suggests that it is our own devotion to our greatness that has put humans on a collision course with extinction. He did a really good job of showing me, the reader, how we have come to believe in that perceived greatness and what it is that continues to keep us from seeing truth. There wasn’t anything really all that new in it, however.

But there were weaknesses in this evidence, including his appraisal of the herders in the middle east as being different from the agriculturists. Is it not a global fact herders are at least as guilty of destroying the competition of their herds as agriculturalists are with their crops? The leavers he describes live completely off the land. They hunt and gather. They do not farm or herd. They follow the laws of nature. They are subject to survival of the fittest. Is that not the path to evolution?

I felt his most compelling weakness was his conclusion. In the end the message is that humans can turn it all around and become teachers to the animals who will evolve to understand good and evil. Is this not in direct conflict with what you have shown me? Is it not true that all forms of existence (all energy and matter) are of equal importance? All aspects of creation not of equal value? And I can’t help but wonder what knowledge we humans have that we should teach.

In the end, when a great argument is supported by weak evidence, the entire body must come into question. I have come to believe that we know absolutely nothing about anything. The Earth will undoubtedly survive the human race. It will evolve into another form, again, but it will survive. The earth doesn’t need us, nor will it be harmed by us.

I then spent the next week reading After the Absolute by David Gold. It is a second-hand account of what another person believed, and I guess David never “got it”. I will not settle with his account. I have ordered some of Richard Rose’s books and am waiting for their arrival.

David Gold did bring some interesting things to my mind. There are a lot of people out there who want to teach their spirituality, and when one has an uncanny ability to “read minds”, or heal others, his/her message will be given credence by those who don’t listen for themselves. People are afraid to think for themselves, and are easily led by miracles and magic. The true “miracle” is that we are all capable of producing them.

I couldn’t help but think that Mr. Gold painted Mr. Rose as a schizophrenic. I have some first-hand experience with something like that, and a delusion of grandeur should never be confused with a true message from God. A person with mental illness does not have a better connection to God than any of the rest of us.

We should be very careful about following “teachers”. We are all capable of communicating with God ourselves. It is good to reach out to each other and share what we’ve heard, but we have no business telling anyone that we know more, or that we are higher up on some spiritual ladder.

When I listen, I am told that we are all here on our own path, fulfilling our own contracts and learning our own lessons. There are no good experiences in this existence, and no bad. They are all experiences intended to bring more balance to the universe. We are not intrinsically bad, nor are we “chosen”. We just are. We are all that is. We are all God.

Would you have me doubt this?