Eric Grey

I have spent a lot of time thinking about religion and spirituality in my life.  From a very young age, I felt called to understand the ultimate nature of reality.  I've also looked for some way to explain bad things in the world, including in myself.  Why do nightmares happen?  Why do I have hateful, lustful, sometimes evil thoughts?  Why do people harm one another?

So, for a long time, there has been seeking.

I was raised atheist/agnostic, with few examples of religious life around me.  So, I did the seeking mostly on my own.  I did some work in Wicca, did a lot of different types of meditation, spent a little over a year practicing a very conservative form of Islam, was baptized in the Episcopalian church (married under its auspices, too) and have sat in a variety of zendos and temples.  I've gone through phases of being all, "Nature is my religion," or "Helping people is my religion," and of course back through the doors of agnosticism and atheism.

I find it difficult to "have faith" and have understood for some time that the really good religious traditions don't demand it.  This includes Episcopalianism and many forms of Christianity that many people around me would readily dismiss as being "about believing something."

As hard as I find it to have faith, I find it even more difficult to live life without a solid ground of believe about the universe under me.  I am a seeker.  I seek the peace that lies in the center of reaching for, and finding, understanding.  That understanding doesn't have to be complete - it just has to suffice.

A quick side note - the explanations of science (including the ancient science that lies at the root of Chinese medicine) does most of what I need.  I find tremendous solace in the out of doors.  In the subtle movements of feather and fur and leaf and root.  So, when I've flippantly said, "Nature is my religion," I've meant it mostly.

But, ultimately, I come time and time again to the airy embrace of Buddhism.  Mahayana, mostly.  I find great peace there, in those teachings.  When I mix them with my deep connection to this planet, and add a sprinkling of Integral theory - things start to clear up a great deal.

This project I'm undertaking - this transformation.  It has this type of spiritual practice at its core.  I don't have to DO anything just now - no need to make radical changes in my practice, waking at dawn for an hour of meditation or anything like that.

No, instead, I need to begin - again - the careful practice of mindfulness.  Of noticing what is present in every moment.  Then one's head becomes free from worry, doubt, malice.  Or, rather, it becomes more free.  That seems like enough, for now.

/Image Credit : Joaska 

Some of you may find interesting my other little posterous space.  There I talk about my struggles to live a virtuous life.

standingonshoulders.posterous.com

Thanks.

"You can just see your whole life unfolding in front of you, can't you!"

As we work on buying our first house, and settle into the next phases of our businesses, and watch our daughter grow into the kind of person we had always hoped. As we observe the sunny Portland spring fake-out and recognize that it's wonderful, and that it won't last, and that the not lasting won't last. As I watch Orion for a little while and reflect on the reality that the stars affect us from the inside, if not from outside. As I contemplate advanced directives and what my house will be like when I'm old and what the world will do with this crazy energy we've got going.

It's true - it's unfolding. I like it that way.