“Mandala” CC-BY-NC Denaldo Dillo on Flickr.
Recently, on a particularly crappy day, I was returning from a meeting and happened to pass a table set up by the Catholic students’ group on campus; they had a cardboard Pope to pose with. I smiled and walked past but then I decided it was just too amusing to pass up. I turned around and asked them to take my photo — one of them even hid behind the cut out to make it look like the Pope’s hand was on my shoulder (nice, if slightly creepy touch).
When I posted the photo I hashtagged it #spiritualasphalt which I decided was an apt metaphor for those things I can use to fill in the potholes in the road ahead. Discussions with my doctor and my therapist have made me aware that I was under a heavy blanket of depression for large portions of the last 4-5 years and that some of my destructive behavior stemmed from that depression.
With everything else that is changing in my life, and knowing I’ve been circling around the idea of building my own spirituality for a while, I know that right now I need to spend more time in that exploration.
I need to build a positive focus.
I continue to be drawn toward Buddhism. I have been starting to understand the benefits of meditation, just from the yoga I’ve been practicing — most days my practice starts with focus on my breath, seated cross-legged. While it isn’t the same as Zen meditation, it’s a step toward that practice. Recently I have been reading Discover Zen which is a simple guide to incorporating Zen practices into your life. The idea is to read the whole thing, then go back and work through all the exercises.
One of the things that attracts me to Buddhism is the concept of presence and the present; I’ve never felt the need to put my focus on the present more than this past month. When I look ahead, it’s generally only to plan meals and appointments and even then, I am trying to not think too far ahead as it only overwhelms me.
I’ll be honest, another thing that attracts me is the aesthetics; little Buddha statues, Zen gardens, all the stuff that the mainstream has latched on to; but I like them because they serve as reminders — the same as the Ganesha pendants, hammer of Thor, and Ankh. They are symbols and reminders of the spirituality around us; I use them as guideposts.
Pendants work as reminders for me because I find myself touching them through the day, remind me to check my focus, check my attitude, and check my body for signs of stress, anger, maybe even take a moment to breathe and be thankful.
Of course being attracted to something is never a guarantee that it is a good fit.
I recently took one of those online quizzes intended to assess the best “fit” ideologically of a given belief system. I was a little surprised by the results from Belief-o-Matic, but not completely surprised. The top three were United Universalism (100%), Mahayana Buddhism (89%) and Taoism (89%). Other potential matches could come from Secular Humanism (78%), Liberal Quakerism (73%), New Age? (71%) and even Neo-paganism (69%).
I have decided to more actively include all of the above in my spiritual explorations; I have already found an intro to Shamanism that I am hoping to take in later this year. Not the least bit surprising was the three that were at the bottom of the list; all the very male-dominant and conservative groups: Roman Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness, and Eastern Orthodox Christian — all at 0%. Heck, even Orthodox Judaism was a better fit at 3%. I will lose no sleep at leaving those off my exploration, sorry Pope Francis.