I just got a “like” from a blogger, one of which I am particular proud.  For this man is one of the “godless heathen” that my Christian tradition eschews….a Muslim.  I am pleased that a lot of the “hits” I get on this blog are from people of different spiritual traditions who see, who “grok” something in my blatherings that they find of value.  For spirituality has the pitfall of evolving into a death-trap in which only those of “like mind”…and therefore, “like biases.” are accepted.

I had that comfort as a child; a “comfort” which was mitigated by the realization that, “Oh, there is something not right about this.”  Somehow I knew from early on that the Grace of God, aka “the Grace” of the Universe, is inclusive and not ex-clusive.  This intuitive understanding was present from the early days of my life and instilled into my heart a deep experience of alienation, that I did not belong.  And I didn’t “belong” for “belonging” involved accepting unquestioned premises in which my young and innocent heart could not imbibe.  This was the onset of alienation, from which can emerge complete madness as the pain of alienation initially elicits terror.  It is this terror that elicits a demand for certainty,  a “certainty” which group-think always offers.

I am learning the value of just “being here.”  The ultimate purpose of life is not to find a place in a chaotic world that is often mad…and certainly is now in my country, at least; this ultimate purpose is to just be here.  Ram Dass called it “being here now” and Eckhart Tolle more recently described it as, “The Power of Now.”  “Being here” is, to borrow from T.S. Eliot, a “condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.”  Or as Janis Joplin put it so eloquently in the 1960’s, “Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose.”