FROM ROSE-COLORED LENSES TO SOMETHING ELSE

In my life I have had many beliefs and have seen existence through the lenses of such beliefs. One can believe so strongly and intensely that one’s own experiences are used as proofs of such beliefs. My systems of belief have been quite varied and often on different levels, as it were, simultaneously. I have believed in “God” from Christian, Hindu, Theosophical, Gnostic and other frameworks, as well as Buddhist, “natural” and American Indian perspectives. I have “followed” Jung, Trungpa, Blavatksy, Steiner, Bailey, Gurjieff, Krishnamurti, and others, and once interpreted life from an astrological perspective. At this point I don’t have belief in such “systems,” though some of them remain of interest. My view now is more “zen” in its focus on “emptiness of self” and what might be called the “falseness of thought, self-concept (or all concept), and so-called knowledge.” I now tend to observe everything, including what I call myself, more than to decide on the “truth” of anything, though I still do seek to “understand what life is,” what I am. To understand is to have greater control of life itself, which is to say to survive, the prime instinctual directive of existence. There is no getting around this, but rather getting right into it. To live our lives, we must live them, which is to say, we have to “get down and dirty” (a paradoxical Gnostic concept). We must know “impurity” to thus attain “purity,” or be able to actually experience and see our ego selves if we are to be able to get beyond it. And, to be quite honest, I wonder if it is simply foolishness to think or believe there is any “getting beyond it” at all. I don’t think it’s about “transcending ourselves” at all but rather just going through the stages or process of our existence(s) very much like a flower growing to maturity; Hinduism in particular sees the lotus is  as an apt metaphor: born in and of the earth, rising up through the waters of feeling and emotion, breaking the surface into the light, then opening, blossoming. Much more to this, obviously, but my point is that it’s all about being.