(A reply to a friend)
I’ve a good friend, a little less than a decade younger than I, who has become an opiate junkie. He is not particularly smart, a talented but unrealized photographer, but not much else. Even his photography is not quite enough for him. Most his jobs have been meaningless - dishwasher, stock clerk, help center operator. His family has always been dismissive of him. They have never
understood him, nor have they really tried to understand him. Since he did not fit their mold, he was discarded. When he first became my friend he was a greasy haired teenager, and over time, he became in effect my nephew. I have his high school tassel; an honored gift from him. Without our support he would never have finished high school. He has met the world through avoidance.
Some part of him has always been aware that the meaning of life is chosen, not inherent. He has a keen understanding that, in the starkest terms, there is nothing to live for, but equally, nothing to die for. So this weekend he is on a men’s retreat, a kind gift from a friend of his family. I hope it gives him a reason to live, for without it, there is no reason to get off the heroin, or oxys or other opiates he has been addicted to. I don’t care if he becomes a raving right winger, or an
islamist willing to blow himself up. I don’t care if the retreat is full of poorly constructed psycho-babble. I care that it give him a light, any light, beyond the dream state of his addiction. I was actually frightened of him a week ago, for he appeared at the door, stoned out of his head. He looked every bit the part of a homeless junkie - dirty, confused, erratic. He is not yet homeless, but I saw the future in that moment, and I was afraid. Here was someone I loved
destroyed by his own lack of personal meaning. The best he could hope for was the next push - and the broken promises that he would get clean. I see so many people of faith: muslim, christian, jew, buddhist, mormon who cling to the shell of their faith. The legalistic observance of
their chosen beliefs. It is the lifeline that keeps them from facing the question of meaning. It provides them answers, packaged and pat.
But it does keep them from the fate faced by my nephew. It takes such uncommon courage just to live, to be filled with a deeply religious agnosticism. I cannot say that the reality I have seen is truth. I can say that it is true for me, and I hope to share that to whomever will benefit from it. I say, cherish the rigidity, pehaps even the bullheaded stupidity of your background. Without it you might very well be in a worse place than you are. You might never have reached the light without it. Your live amongst Mormon surroundings, what you see as their narrowness calls you to be all the more open, all the more vulnerable and honest with yourself. You have seen your truth and your light. They have seen theirs. The agnosticism of mystic life requires that you see and support what is good and light, bathe your surroundings in the truth you have glimpsed, and go forward, invisible, like a dervish, among those whose eyes are filled with dust. Your family loves you, but they may not understand what love implies – freedom. You cannot tell them, you cannot even show them, but you can create the open space for them to experience it. You refer to yourself as hindu in your profile, so I will assume you understand the concept of bhakti - divine love. If a firecracker goes off in a small room, it is shocking. If it goes off in the middle of a desert, not even the sparrows are disturbed.
Bhakti is the ability to be the desert despite the tendency to be the room. As your family throws firecrackers, meet these bombs with the expansiveness of divine love, the expansiveness of the dunes of the great desert. Chant the names of the divine to yourself - vishnu, siva, krsna, ganesh three times before you show your reactions. Do not defend yourself, for there is nothing that you own, no self that needs defending. There is only the love, only the beloved. They do not need
to understand you, but they need to feel the vastness of the infinite. You are the vehicle for the experience, your sadhana is to bear their fear in the bosom of the divine, to manifest it internally and trust its incredible power of transformation.
I was drawn to you very strongly when first I saw your profile. You are so similar to people I love dearly, mormon and other, and I hope my long reply is understood in the manner it was intended, with love, with brotherhood and with good cheer.
I remain yours, with deep love and affection, and with nearness of heart and soul,
Mu'id
[The letter that initiated this response]
i was raised in a Mormon Society, this in paticular family caused me
great pain through my childhood, and it still haunts me to this day. it
feels to me that they are akin to conservative-extremism, if that makes
any sense. i left the church at 18, and here i find myself living
amoung them again. why can’t they [my family] have love without
judgement. it pains me to see them live in their closed off world they
make for themselves.
