Letting go; Emanations, Reflections (Part 1)

Note: Last night when I started this entry, I thought it would be much shorter. I seem to have gotten caught up in reflections of the past. Still, that being said, I’ll go with it. I admit to having a certain curiosity where it is all leading. For those of you who read this blog for the tarot readings, feel free to only read those ( i should be doing the first reading associated with the Death card either tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest)

It feels strange this time around. Watching people getting so caught up in…culture? concrete mundane reality? the matrix? The cultural reality tunnel that dictates that each person give the same unconsidered knee-jerk responses that their peers do? It seems like a good deal of my life has been trying to find the right</strongreality tunnel for myself. The one that I could cling to. The compass and center that could guide me. Only to find that…
Lots and lots of answers that seem to work for other people don’t work for me. Oh they all feel good for awhile. Faith is an amazing thing. I have met people with faith that glowed like a campfire on a cool summer evening and I just wanted to warm myself by that fire and gain that kind of conviction for myself..
I could list all the answers I’ve tried that I’ve seen work for others but I have a sneaking suspicion that it would sound like the lyrics to John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” None of those tunnels worked for me. I’d get caught up in them and eventually some contradiction or something that just didn’t jibe would arise and each time an inner voice would speak to me:
“Go”
“Wha…?”
“It’s time to go!”
“But what about…?”
GO NOW!!!!
“OK”
and whatever situation I was in, I would leave by the fastest, most direct route out of there.
I followed similar paths going from organized religion (Jewish) to Scientific Atheist 😉 (I was 15) to believing myself an agnostic, open and exploring everything (including satanism to get on the nerves of my baby sister’s fundamentalist nanny I was 16.).
When I was 17 my best friend and I left our homes in CT and decided that we were going to see if there was life outside of high school. We ended up in San Francisco through a combination of hitchhiking and Greyhound and promptly joined the Unification Church (the Moonies). Well, we only had $20 between us and they did offer a free meal ;). I ended up staying with the Moonies for five months (my friend had left after 3 due to parental duress). I immersed myself in them, believing that at last I had found an answer that this was a path I could take. But then the questionz crept in. Little contradictions in the behaviour of the people running the church. Inconsistencies between their system of beliefs and their practices. . I went to the California head of the church and told him about my confusion. He told me that at 17, I should be more interested in baseball than in spiritual matters??!!! Not long after that the voice inside me said “go’ so I left and went back to my father’s house in CT.
I felt shattered. For five months, I had tried on a whole new way of looking at myself and the world around me. I believed that I knew how everything fit together and now….? I was pretty sure that I . no longer buy into the beliefs of the Unification Church but then what did I believe? I felt like reality had pulled the chair out from under me. .
I didn’t get a whole lot of sympathy from my family or the people around me. My father and step-mother seemed to feel that I should be repentant and apologetic. I felt like I needed some understanding. Couldn’t they see that I was not the same kid who had left five months before? Couldn’t they tell that I did not perceive them in the same way? I did a lot of yelling that spring. Also a bit of negotiating. My friend and I had left in December I had been a junior and he a senior in the CT prep school that we both went to. I went in and talked to the Assistant Headmaster and His Wife, the Dean of Studies at the school and arranged that If I took and passed a combination of summer courses at the University next door and a few other courses with teacher who was willing then I could rejoin my class for Senior year.
Around a week after I returned, I got another surprise. The friend whom I had left town with John had found another answer that worked for him He had accepted Jesus Christ as his saviour…..

As trite as this may sound…the hour grows late and I grow tired. This will probably be continued. Feel free to comment, question, or anything else you may wish.

One thought on “Letting go; Emanations, Reflections (Part 1)”

  1. Gary…. thank you for sharing. Maybe all of us at a young age go through this confusion, and not just with spiritual paths. I really do want to hear more. I’ve been away.. “away”.. for so long that I almost missed out on this post.

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