[Lovebook]
If you believe there is a Truth that human beings can relate meaningfully to, how do you know how meaningfully you are relating to the Truth?
I think there must be more to this life than relative truths. But I think the Truth must be Absolute and unlimited, and my thinking possesses neither of those qualities. So how can my thinking gain insight into the Truth and know that it is gaining insight and how much insight it is gaining?
I walk around all day long talking to myself. “What should I do? What should I do?” “How can I live in a way that is any good? How?” “Who can I be with?” “How can we humans keep from destroying ourselves? How?” “How can democracy and transparency win?” “How can we avoid nuclear Armageddon?” “Why won’t she go out with me? Or was it a vain glory to suppose she might?” “How can we keep Trump and his enablers from destroying US American democracy?” “What to do about global warming?” “I am so lonely.” “I can’t do this anymore.”
I think I’m going crazy talking at God all day long. But how else can I get the Light to say anything to me? The Light doesn’t say anything to me, though. All I ever get is sometimes me telling myself about some romantic interest — but through a daydream that it is actually the Light talking to me about my longing for a soft, steady hand: As if the main topic the Light wanted to discuss with me was my own obsessive, selfish preoccupations: As if the Light of Kind Resolve and Joyful Insight shared my narrow, self-obsessed focus! What use is that sort of self-deception?
The thinking is magical, not spiritual. I’m failing spiritually. I’m losing my way. I want to go home. I want to quit. I am tired all the time. There’s no one to talk to. I am talking to myself.
How can I get God to talk to me? How can I know what to do? How can I keep from wasting my life? People don’t know what to do. I’m just a person. My wisdom is relative unless it connects to an Absolute Truth, but how can I connect my thoughts meaningfully to an Absolute Truth? And know I’m doing so? And how well I’m doing so?
I say we’ve inborn principles that we know are True more fundamentally than we can either doubt or explicate their Truth:
We should feel/think/act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, kind, compassionate, open-hearted/-minded, generous, sharing, together, joyful.
We’re all in this together.
I reason that the only possible way for us limited creatures to feel/think/act meaningfully is if there to be a Light/Truth shining within and through all things, and if we can gain whole-being insight into that Truth. [With “whole-being insight” I mean ideas, feelings, and a Light/Truth all interacting imperfectly (as interactions between limited and unlimited powers must be) but yet meaningfully together.]
I cannot emotionally or intellectually prove that there is such a Light/Truth, or that I can organize my ideas and feelings around It meaningfully. But it seems like I could gain a whole-being experiential proof of such a state of affairs:
I could organize my ideas and feelings around the Truth better and better until I had enough whole-being insight into that and in what way it’s truer to say “I know we are all in this together” than it is to say “I don’t know anything.” And this would be the beginning of wisdom and direction towards more active insight into how to feel/think/act.
But I make no progress.
I meditate a little. I ask the Light to enter me, but don’t really want It inside. What I want is to curl up into a little ball and be hugged and made safe and absolved of all this scary grown-up hopelessness that I’ve wandered into by getting to the age when you cannot help but notice there is no Santa Claus.
Santa Claus was actually just a nice story they told us kids! What?!
The truth is, the nukes are still eager and ready to fly, the seas are rising more and more, diseases are piling up, democracies are cracking, and in my own little tiny life I don’t know how to live in a way that I can feel OK about and be happy inside of.
Dear God,
What now?
I don’t know what to do.
I imagine you do.
I’m getting older and drifting further and further out to sea.
The ocean’s sloshing on all sides; waves getting higher; water colder.
What should I do?
What is insight?
I’m lonely and tired and live in fear.
Sincerely,
Your Would-Be Servant
PS:
Then you wake up a new day
You have your tea and toast
Cajole The God
Natter at the blessed influences
Daylight pulls you along
What is going on?
Why are we here?
What should we do?
Are we fooling ourselves
More
With inklings
of Good
Or Static Storms
of Doubt?
What is the sweet spot
Between blind doubt and blind faith?
Please help us do a better job
Author: Scrubs Tubbs
Editor: A. Whistletown
Producer: B. Willard
Copyright: AM. Watson
This is a Something Deeperism essay
Websites: From-Bartleby, PureLoveShop
Our Books So Far: Superhero Novella, A Readable Reader, First Essays, First Loves
[Lovebook]