Jim June 11th, 2009
What follows are a few mistakes I’ve made in my spiritual evolution and lived to tell about it. Referring to these as “mistakes” may be unfair. What I’m about to describe is fairly normal, probably unavoidable, and perhaps even necessary at the time. I own these choices as part of my journey these past few years. As it turns out, these choices didn’t defeat me. I refer to them as “mistakes” because they don’t seem to be very productive as a regular practice, and I would not intentionally repeat them again.
1. Fundamentalism
The term “fundamentalism” is probably most associated with ultra-conservative, legalistic Christians. However, I’ve discovered there are progressive/liberal Christian fundamentalists, Atheist, Agnostic, and Humanistic fundamentalists, Buddhist, Muslim, and Jewish fundamentalists, and New Age fundamentalists. What I mean by “fundamentalist” is postulating your belief system, philosophy, understandings or experiences as superior to others, which means others with different beliefs, understandings or experiences are either wrong or deceived.
In my case, I left Christian fundamentalism behind but managed to create a different fundamentalism around whatever my new understanding, concept, experience, or discovery was at the time. In other words, each step of enlightenment became the new “it” or standard that I judged others by. I wasn’t necessarily nasty or belligerent about it but there was a certain silent pride and arrogance to it.
2. Over-correction
You are driving down the street and notice you are about to go off the road into a ditch. Your reaction is to grab the wheel and by over-correcting, you fly across the road and off into the ditch on the other side. By avoiding one ditch, you managed to steer right into another. It’s no secret that any person who feels led astray and betrayed by their religion is likely to become it’s biggest critic. It’s not uncommon that in such cases the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. For example, a person lives many years under the oppression of religion. In reaction to this, they over-correct and become an Atheist. There are lots of options between a hideous concept of God and concluding there is no God at all, but when you over-correct you skid by all the stuff in the middle and just go into the ditch on the side.
By the way, please don’t hear me saying that every person’s beliefs are the result of over-correction. I know Atheists who are not guilty of over-correction - they are Atheists because they have done their due diligence and have genuinely concluded that the existence of God is neither possible nor useful. Another example may be someone who concludes that the Bible isn’t a “supernatural” book and over-corrects to the view that the Bible has no value at all. For me, I have had some instances of over-correction. For example, organized church and religious rituals were not meaningful for me, and as a reaction I concluded all organized church and religious rituals are intrinsically meaningless and has no real objective value for anyone.
3. Insecurity
Insecurity can express itself in a strong need for your beliefs and experiences to be validated by others. How do others validate your beliefs and experiences? By agreeing with or sharing your beliefs and experiences. And so it’s not brain surgery to see that people who don’t agree or share in your beliefs and experiences are a threat to your sense of identity. You feel invalidated. It’s very difficult to truly accept and learn from another as long as your need for validation is running the show. What happens is that you begin dividing people up on sides. You want people on “your side” because that makes you feel secure and validated. People on the “other side” are seen as the enemy. Needing to be “right” is often a issue of insecurity and needing validation from others. Trust me, I made a fine art out of this.
4. Laziness
I don’t mean for the word to sound as harsh as it might seem. Here’s my point. Most people want a formula or magic bullet. They are not truly willing to do their own due diligence at a soul level, and would prefer someone just give them the answer. They are hoping for a formula that promises that if you do ‘A’ then ‘B’ will happen. Paradox, mystery, ambiguity, abstraction, self-honesty, vulnerability, humility are but a few of the things many people would like to avoid if possible, and would rather just have someone figure things out for them.
So, what mistakes have you made? In other words, what things have you discovered along the way that you’ve recognized as a hindrance in your journey? I guess it might require a dose of humility to share this sort of thing. I sometimes wonder if these kinds of issues hinder our truly learning from each other, and even accepting each other.
Consider this post to be the kind of thing where I’m asking you to draw upon your experience and wisdom from your journey. What have you learned? What would you have done different? Looking back, what mistakes have you made? Where do you see that you might have spared yourself or others a lot of difficulty? What is the wisdom you would share that we could all learn from? Every voice is welcomed regardless of where you are right now on your journey. People may be on totally opposite sides of the spectrum. Fine! I really hope we get responses from people who represent the entire spectrum.
So, what mistakes have you made?
(photo by Peter Heilmann)
