A thirteen year old blog post that still rings true to me

About a month ago I started working on a book that will be a compilation of my favorite posts from the early years of this blog, 2004-2006. 

Most days I try to find some time to re-read the blog posts that I've chosen, correcting typos, deleting links, and adding a brief introduction that describes how I feel about the post now.

I just came across a post from January 2, 2006 that I still like a lot. Well, actually I still like all the posts I've written on this blog, but I like some more than others. 

Here it is:
---------------------------------

Tell yourself your spiritual secrets
January 2, 2006

It’s a new year. Time to tell yourself your secrets. Especially, your spiritual secrets. I’m sure you have them. Almost all of us do.

You’re sitting in church, temple, mosque, meeting hall, your own living room. Praying, meditating, singing, listening to a sermon, reading your holy book. And from your psyche’s secret chamber a barely audible whisper comes.

It’s your own voice. 

But you don’t want to listen to what it is saying. The voice is telling you a secret. Something that is true but rarely spoken to yourself. Not openly. Not directly. Only in whispers.

Which usually are met with a “shush.”

Quiet down, secret chamber. I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to tell me. Maybe later. Not now.

And yet, the memory of the whisper is more vivid than a recollection of the loudest shout. Once you’ve heard it speak even once, you can’t deny the secret that you don’t want to tell yourself.

I don’t believe in God. (Or Jehovah, Allah, Buddha-nature, the Guru, whoever). 

I no longer am inspired by the Bible. (Or the Talmud, Koran, Dhammapada, Adi Granth, whatever.)

I’m tired of these meaningless rules. (Or rituals, rites, vows, commandments, whatever).

Maybe you’ve never had such thoughts. Maybe you’ve never had any doubts about your faith. Maybe you’ve never wondered if your innermost spiritual beliefs were much different from the beliefs you present to the outside world.

Maybe. But I doubt it. 

We’re all atheists, deep down, for who among us has experienced God directly? The truth is that we don’t know. Our faith in the divine is a pebble resting on the edge of a dark abyss of doubt that we’re deathly afraid to approach.

That whisper coming from our psyche’s secret chamber is an invitation to kick the pebble over the edge and find out what, if anything, will keep it from rolling all the way down into nothingness. 

That whisper is the most honest voice we’ll ever hear, yet we do our best to shut it up.

It’s always struck me as strange that so many people, including myself, say that they want to fathom the secrets of the cosmos, yet are reluctant to lay bare their own secrets.

Seekers of secrets should start their search close to home: within themselves. When we don’t even want to know the truth about ourselves, how can we lay claim to knowing the truth about the ultimate reality of God?

My bet, or gamble, is that if God exists, He, She, or It resonates with truth (I’d say “rewards” but that sounds too anthropomorphic). Hypocrisy is out of tune with divinity, which to my mind reverberates to the rhythm of oneness.

Thus when I break down the barrier between what I really believe and what I tell myself I believe, this unitary truth-telling effort brings me closer to God, not farther away. Such is my hypothesis, anyway.

There’s a lot of energy locked up in secrets. 

Telling your spiritual secrets to yourself is empowering. You don’t need to also let the world know about them. However, I’d suggest that the more your outward life reflects your inward self, the less stress you’ll feel.

Acting out an artificial role is more difficult than playing the part of who you naturally are. In the latter case you have to keep remembering what your spiritual stage name is and what lines you’re scripted to speak.

“Praise Jesus.” “I believe!” “God is great.” “Blessed is the compassionate Buddha.” “Guru’s grace is always there.”

So often we speak untruths, albeit with good intentions. 

It’s what other people in our religious organization want us to say. Or what the organization itself demands be spoken to keep harmony in the ranks. We’re reluctant to rock the boat with the swaying that accompanies the speaking of a secret.

“What?! You don’t believe in _____ any more? What’s wrong? What’s happened to you? How did you come to lose your faith?”

My answer: You’ve got it backwards. I’ve found my faith. Faith in honesty. Faith in telling the truth to myself. Faith in letting secrets out. Faith that sincere doubt is better than hypocritical belief.

I could be wrong about all this. But at least my error will be mine, not borrowed from a holy book. I’m tired of keeping secrets. Especially from myself. 

Comments

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Brian!
Excellent legacy post!
Once we listen to our own thoughts it becomes clear that what we call truth and what we experience are two different things.

We choose what to believe, and our minds can second guess that choice all the time. It was / is a choice based upon whatever information and desires we have at the time. If our information or our desires change, we may find ourselves questioning our old decisions.

But Truth is something else. Truth isn't an explanation of an event. It is the event itself.

That small voice also says "magnificent! Miraculous!" also. But in all cases it's an opinion about something. But that is who we are. We are a bag of opinions and experiences, and physiology. That's reality.

When we understand our experience, that is ultimate. When you see the stars in the sky, that is reality. Ultimate reality, seen from this tiny point of view.

We aren't just opinions. We have experiences. We don't have to interpret them. They are ultimately what they are. Doesn't matter if they fit our or anyone else's explanation. That experience doesn't become reality when we choose believe an interpretation of what it is. It is what it is. And it doesn't become illusion when we decide we no longer like the explanation. It is still there.

For me, Nam is Nam. I have no idea where the beautiful and uplifting sounds come from. I'm not wedded to any explanation. A little focus, there is the resounding Nam. Nam is part of my direct experience of reality, just like looking at the sky. I don't have to have any explanation, which can only be an opinion. It is its own reality.

There may be ten million opinions about one experience. But the experience is what it is, singular. It's not anything else.

We are connected. Our experience and opinions are molded from events and our past. We think we think and move but we are being moved.

When we see it, even a part of it, just experiencing it, that's ultimate reality.

The explanation is always a belief, and that is a choice.

But the experience, whatever it may be, is the experience. Nothing can change that, regardless of the label.

So when you are in church and are reacting to the sermon, noting the parts you like, and doubting other parts that may seem wrong or simply foreign to you, that isn't truth, just your opinion. The sermon, those words, right or wrong, is the reality in that moment. A guy or gal standing up front is saying words that represent ideas. The reality is that they are talking and you are listening.

The rest is opinion.

[Jesse]

That is a really good one. It applies to those of us in religions we don't believe in, and also those holding beliefs, being in relationships or seeking statuses they don't care about. Self confession is crucial. If I were more honestly confessing and listening I'd probably be a hermit.

Funny that you like everything you wrote. I've never liked anything I wrote and have deleted dozens of blogs and social media accounts when they started to get noticed slightly. Except on twitter. They've been banning me since 2015 and stealing my right to go away on my own.

At one point I started writing a book about the necessity to diversify investments far beyond the general rules of thumb about sectors, and go far more abstract and in depth about geography, politics and time.I told some IT guy about it and he said it was unnecessary and to just "buy good stocks." So I decided to maintain my perpetual hopelessness about the human condition and not waste words.

You have been writing good stuff for years and it seems you have not given up completely on humanity as I have. I'm grateful for that cause this is one of the very few blogs I read anymore.

[Jesse]

Spence, it's really funny to read your comment as if I have no clue who you are or what this blog is about, and that I'm coming across this word Nam thinking it means you're a veteran of the Vietnam war whose war experience has melted into a kind of uplifting theology and maybe the sounds of gunfire became a permanent part of your spiritual psychosis.

Try to top that run on sentence if you dare.

[Michael]

Brian that’s weird, you get a 13 year old to write your blog.
🤔🤔🤔

[Mike England]

Yes
I too love what I have written on this blogsite.
My Choprabollox are my best work.

Dr Eugene Genetics has given me a most honourable seva.
It is not such a simple or straightforward task to bring the finest Ancient Modernist Spiritual Wisdom ever recorded into the digital age.
His teachings have been enjoyed by many, now enlightened. The dark cloud of disillusion has been replaced by a silver lining of dis-illusion.

The deepest Truth comes to us from the Highest Realm.

[Dungeness]

Try to top that run on sentence if you dare.

No thanks. The abhorrence of gunfire and run-on's goes very deep.
PTSD also covers the affliction "post traumatic sentence disorder".
Oh gawd, I think an attack is coming on.

[Dr Eugene Genetics]

Yes indeed.
My young Paduan may well “love his posts” but he posts recklessly.
I may take his phone away from him again.

[Meditator]

At times I feel alien in this world. I have to push myself with the people around. I feel lonely and thats the truth i see in me and nothing more. All the rest are reactions i have to effect for survival and time pass .

I had to believe some faiths as RSSB to know my actual subtle self if any as it is claimed in the scriptures as Bible, Guru granth Sshib. Kuran that our self is basically a droplet of Huge only oneself as God.

Think that we will remain helpless in many ways till our pleasing release from these bodies which we expect by way of RSSB path and its Masters.

[Spence Tepper]

Jesse, it is the sheer genius of your comedy that you would read Nam as a viet Nam vet... An addiction, a trauma, that he just can't get past, and submits to, his only lasting happiness.

[Jen]

Look deeply into your dog's eyes.

There you will see true love and feel the reflection of soul connection that makes life worth living.

Cheers
Jen

[Tinkie Fairy Gyani]

Well said Jen!
😻😻 My TRUE "Masters!" Who absolutely control me !🙏😇🧚

[anami]

As a follow-up, I didn't go to satsang on Sunday after all but found some history on 10-40 45th Road, the RSSB-A building in NYC that sold for $26 million. It used to be a location for Fisher Radio Corporation. Here's the service manual cover for an old tuner. The same address is in print at the bottom...
https://images.app.goo.gl/fiX2kvMf6rtEPtk68

[anami]

Correction: 11-40 45th Road

[Sonya]

Thoughts on Atheism. Funny and sometimes true:

https://strangenotions.com/is-atheism-a-religion/

[Ned Lawrence]

These thoughts usually show early in the morning before whatever pre-programmed thinking comes into play. I've studied so much of different religions and paths that it is really difficult for me to believe any one of them is true, so I usually end up confused, which may be a strange blessing. What I usually hold on to is that the only tangible improvements in my life have come from me applying reason based on experience, rather than faith and obedience.

I think the Abyss of complete nothingness is more of an effect of the belief system itself. It's like a drug addict trying to imagine life without drugs. It's only a nihilistic abyss because the addict has no reference point.

[Amar]

Just wanted to share a quote I found:

Søren Kierkegaard:
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

What a profound statement, so few words, yet so true.

[Sonya]

I think at the core of our being is the desire to be happy. So much can be said about this but the most important truth of all is we can’t be happy if we don’t desire or respect the rights of others to be happy as well.

[Jesse]

"we can’t be happy if we don’t desire or respect the rights of others to be happy as well."

Fact Check: False