For spiritual refugees fleeing or hiding from the Corporate Nation around us, a reality called the global economy, mega-business, dishonest and treasonous politicians, angry and aggrieved people, a tsunami of greed, violence, economic and political instability, and collapse of ethics and morality, there is the challenge of a time where more and more people identify more with social status., power and money than with truth, empathy and life itself.
In America, almost everyone is angry and upset about something. Politics doesn’t bother me; there is little there for me now. I see that the very idea of truth and honor and compassion to have fallen into a deep well, a whirlwind of fury, grievance, and selfishness.
Joy, love, and caring for the needy have become a radical and exciting new movement that is growing bigger by the day and which I am only too happy to join. As light follows dark, good follows cruelty and evil.
But there is a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow and every storm. As the qualify of life recedes while billionaires fiddle on their yachts, it seems that age has freed me and given me no choice but hope and meaning in my life.
Because I am forgotten, I am free. Because I am stupid, I can think. There is no movement or party out there for me.
Because I am given no role to play in life, I am free to awaken to a new chapter and energy level. And I have.
For those who seek a spiritual life, our torments, fears, envy, and passion are subsiding. Those feelings have nowhere to go but inside. There is little for us on the outside.
But this is what I have learned:
There are innumerable riches on the inside, inside of us. Now, we finally have the chance to look for them.
The interior life, the search for the sacred and the meaningful, can rise to the surface.
Now, I can begin to see how all that energy, passion, and flaws have drained me of peace and life. I never did belong there, and now I can dance in the streets, shout to the sky, and throw my hands into the air, changing, “I’m free, I’m free, Good Lord, at last, I’m free.”
Free of all that frustration and bile, all those good times blocked by anger, yearning, and disappointment.
Was it worth all of that spleen? Do I miss and lament my successes and failures?
My curse was envy and distraction.
I just wanted more, as I was taught to do. It seemed the only choice I had.
That was all I saw around me. There is only one natural choice left for me.
Again and again, I got what I wanted, only to discover that when I got what I wanted, the joy never lasted very long or felt very good.
I never did change.
One day, staring in the mirror, I said out loud: “You know the trouble with you, my friend? You see the same face in the mirror whenever you get what you want and get where you want.” The problem was the same. The look in the mirror was always yours.
That was the problem whenever I tried to run. I always came along.
Not until I was old enough to change could I look in that mirror and see somebody I liked and wanted to hang around with.
There are lots of blessings in my life now. I have everything I need and want, nothing I don’t have (except maybe one of those werewolf canes to help me walk up hills. I want one of those.)
Mone of my wrong turns and wrong paths and side trips were wasted. I learned something from each one of them. I found that life is a puzzle that is never finished, we just live it one piece at a time, and I finally put enough pieces together to start living it.
To come into the fullness of life, to live a life of meaning, takes so little.
First, there is no choice. Either go inside and find my spiritual and true life or go off into the woods and die. There is nothing else for me now. And the idea is exciting. This means I can search only for the good things in life and stop charging after the bad.
I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to learn this, but I am grateful that I did learn it after all.
I have only one job now; it’s the only available one. I need to do nothing other than look for the best in me and do as much for the world as I can while I can.
Could it be as simple as that?
