Sit – N – Spin

Sometimes, often even, I wonder about the direction my life actually has. I’m doing things, and I’m happy, but often enough I glimpse how very little control I actually have over anything. I think most people are on one side of me or the other: they either feel like they’re the one pulling all strings, or they feel entirely powerless.

I feel within myself the ability to grab all the strings I want, but then about the time I do, I decide not to yank as hard as I had previous thought I might. One way this manifests is in my book-buying habits.

I love buying books. A lot. And I do it as frequently as I am able. Even when I shouldn’t, or don’t actually have the money, I’ll still go book hunting. Recently, on Valentine’s Day, I decided that I needed more books. I’ve been working my way, with much focus, through a few others I’ve been meaning to finish and had been feeling a sense of accomplishment… so, naturally, I need to add to the pile again.

I bought a number of books – all of which I’m pleased to own now. One was a steal AND a gem. I mentioned it on Facebook. Another is titled, “Shuddha Bhakti” by Swami B.V. Tirtha Maharaja. The others include a study guide for Sanskrit ( my religion’s sacred language), a version of the Shri Ishopanishad by Swami Prabhupada that matches the other books by him that I already own (I’ve had other copies of Shri Ishopanishad, but I was particularly pleased to find a hard copy that is the same size, etc… of my other ISKCON books), and lastly I bought a large black tome titled, “Jesus Christ Message to All Nations.” It’s fabulous. It’s some kind of gospel written by Warren Jeffs and pretty much bitches out every nation currently on our globe. It’s apparently a message that Jeffs channeled for the Lord God, who seems really upset and angry. Threats abound in this book. Unfortunately complete sentences, proper punctuation, and coherent thoughts do not. Amused, I read some to my beloved where God is supposedly warning the USA about her relationship with China and the Koreas. Fabulous stuff, although he wasn’t nearly as amused. I only bought the book to place it on my bookcase next to the Book of Mormon I have – which itself is only even in my home because after my father’s sister-in-law passed more than a third of my family joined the Mormon church. I don’t think the Mormon Church is any more a cult that the rest of Christianity, but this Warren Jeffs stuff seems to be more along the cultish lines, and a find like this book was too precious to pass up.

These book purchases are indicative, though. Imagine being a grocery store cashier and someone comes through your checkout lane with whipped cream, dental floss, a package of ink pens, and four tealight candles. Truthfully, I think most cashiers don’t give customers’ purchases a second though. But if you were a cashier, and you DID pay attention to what people were buying, and those items were what a single customer bought… WTF? Such randomness, no? I mean what’re the chances someone’s going to consider a trip to the grocery, start a list of items needed, and think, “Let’s see… Just ran out of whipped cream. Better get more dental floss. I’m getting low on ink pens, oh, and yes, I need FOUR tealight candles.”? Totally random, and you can’t even argue it.

But that’s me at any book store.

And I think it’s why I often feel like I have the ability to pull a million strings and get somewhere and go someplace and do something, but it’s also why I sometimes feel like I’m not actually pulling any of those strings. For instance, if I bought ONLY books on Mormonism… by now I’d be a damned expert. And the same can be said about a number of things I choose to study. What usually results, though, is that I end up knowing “a whole lot” about many many things, but end up knowing everything about nothing.

As frustrating as this is sometimes, I often feel like I’m still a little ahead of the game – but never as ahead as I’d like. All of this, serves as a constant reminder to me of the potential my life (and anyone else’s) has. We all have a billion strings we could be pulling. And also a reminder of my laziness. The Gita says that no effort is ever wasted when one exerts it toward betterment and realization. But one has to actually make the effort.

Om Shanti

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The Night I Bit Clear Through My Tongue, or Pot/Kettle/Black

In class recently I had the wonderful experience of dropping eaves on a nearby conversation taking place between some of my classmates.

Those chatting were three in number.

• One mid-late thirties white (mostly) heterosexual male who is nearly as broad as he is tall, although rather firm, and also mostly unintelligent. (For the record, I’m totally making an assumption about his intelligence, I can explain as much, if requested, although it’s neither here nor there.)
• One middle-aged white heterosexual female/wife/mother of numerous small humans. A happily self-proclaimed “army brat,” who married another such individual, and with whom she raised even more army brats. She’s rather chatty in her own way, and seems inclined toward needing to impress others.
• One middle-aged black heterosexual male, far taller than he is wide. Aside from his shared military history with the others, I’m not very familiar with stories of his own background. I think he’s married, or rather was, and now has a chip on his shoulder regarding this.

At the beginning of class, as happens often enough, the faculty insisted on an ice breaker. However, instead of being creative with this ice breaker, the faculty simply pulled out Microsoft Excel and, working some columns and rows with one or another formula, shuffled us into three lists and instructed us to mingle and chat, before being shuffled again and repeating the whole thing. Sadly, it didn’t take long for me to realize that i had very little in common, indeed, with any of these three. Though, I will admit the black fellow seemed most appealing to me. You see, of the three of them, he was the only one capable of carrying a conversation with others without turning it, sooner or later, to centering around army/military talk.

Fine. Dandy.

Since then, the three have been veritable peas in a pod. I believe they may actually be on a learning team together, or something, which would account for some of his cohesion to a degree. I’ll allow that, at least. I’ll also allow that, by and large, most of their prattling hardly amounts to much more than mere annoyance. I find myself wanted desperately to interrupt and emphatically request that they talk about something else -anything else. But, alas, I give them their space and attempt directing my attention elsewhere. Tonight was a challenge, though.

The conversation started with the woman, who I’d just as soon leave roadside somewhere, although that wouldn’t be very nice of me. She had her laptop out and was boasting about her husband’s miliary retirement ceremony (the photos of which she was sharing from her computer), which apparently took place in Utah. After talking about Utah as though it’s some kind of heaven compared to Indiana, she started in on those evil Mormons. <sigh>

She, and the black guy, and the somewhat-flabby-somewhat-meathead went on and on about how cultish the Mormon religion is, mentioning that it’s not Christianity, and they all agreed more than once that they (Mormons) don’t like you much if you’re not one of them, and will try hard to make you one of them. They also chatted briefly about the history Mormons have regarding blacks. Virtually everything they said about the Mormon religion is true. Not everything, but much.

The woman in the conversation finally admitted that she was denied a job while in Utah because when asked what ward or stakehouse she belonged to, she gave the wrong answers. (By her account, she answered with some military number that applied to her husband for her answer to the ward question, and said something like Outback Steakhouse for the other answer) Ultimately, when her interviewer clarified, she answered that she isn’t Mormon, rather she is a Southern Baptist.

And stop. Please, for God’s sake, allow me to explain a few things.

1. Mormons ARE Christians. To deny this is ignorant and mean, and frankly petty. I’ve seen this a lot within Christianity. An example would be when I’ve told someone about how I was tossed out of the Church as a teen for being gay. Often the response I get is something like, “How horrible! Those people weren’t real Christians! Real Christians show Christ’s love to everyone!” Ummm… bullshit. The people who hated me for being gay are equally as much Christians as any others, and saying they aren’t just because they make the Faith look as mean as it is, doesn’t make them bad guys. It really pisses me off when Christians turn on each other like this -another very telling indicator of that religion. Truth be told, the Mormon branch of Christianity is one of the highest educated and most productive. Look it up. You’ll see.
2. Mormons ARE cultish, but virtually no other branch or denomination of Christianity has any room to talk at all, so stuff it. In fact, what 99.99999% of most Christians either fail to realize or choose to ignore is that their own religion literally began as a middle eastern cult that had a knack for either convincing folks to join their ranks or, eventually, killing them for refusing to. Christianity’s very violent and bloody history is full of “Us versus Them” moments, which continue into today. At its dawn, Christianity was an exclusionary minority group, following their own exalted leader, and shunning many of the practices of the culture it sprang from. Mormonism may well be a (ridiculously large) cult, but Christianity -in word and deed- is the very same.
3. It’s particularly and absolutely hypocritical that a Southern Baptist gal had the nerve to say those things, in a derogatory manner, about Mormons. I was once a Baptist, and I could have easily told you why every other religious/spiritual path was doomed for damnation. In fact, I feel comfortable saying that that’s one of the things Baptists specialize in. The last I knew, Baptists were the largest denomination in the Protestant Christian world, and if there’s any one denomination in the Christian religion that’s cultish, exclusionary, and inclined toward hating others, it’s the Baptists. No joke.

Suffice it to say, in an effort to “bite” my tongue for the sake of keeping silent, I nearly bit clear through it. It’s a good thing this class is half over -I’m running out of tongue to bite!

Om Shanti

Neti, Neti(Neti)

It’s pretty much been a month since I last wrote here. No good reason exists for this, really, aside from sometimes I feel like I’m about to pop and need to step back from a number of things. As much as I enjoy having a presence here, and as much as I enjoy hearing from you all on here, bloggering is currently an easy thing to step back from. So, with that said, please excuse my distance and my silence, and thanks for continuing to read my words.

The saying, “Neti, Neti” means essentially, “Not this, not that” and is employed be jnanis, among others, in the process of discerning Brahman’s nature and attributes. Because of the absoluteness of Brahman, a truer and truthfully more accurate way of knowing Truth is often found in knowing what Truth is not, thus, Neti-Neti. I sometimes use this when asked where I want to eat for dinner. I might not know what I’m in the mood for, but I can usually tell you what I’m not in the mood for, and so the process of refinement begins as to where dinner will be served.

I feel this concept applies to each of us as we’re on our journey toward Self-Realization, toward our real Nature which is Brahman. Obviously, because of our egos and individual experiences and individual karmas, the most base application of Neti-Neti is as it pertains to our minute, personal, human experience.

In that context, as far as my personal experience of Brahman in my life, I tend to view the episodes in my life as part of this process of elimination/refinement. I have an experience. Does it point to Truth or doesn’t it? Hinting at Truth is something everything everywhere does, so that doesn’t count. But does an experience, or a person, or dogma, or anything…does it definitively point to Truth? If not, learn from it and move on. Such is the case, in my life, for Christianity.

A co-worker, as part of our discussion today, stated that Mormonism is an un-Christian cult. I suppose if I looked more into it I might could agree with this, but that would be irrelevant. For the sake of balance, I responded that in it’s beginning what we now call Christianity was viewed as no different by folks who weren’t Christians. They were indeed, a small dissenting group of people who wandered around claiming their leader is God. Mormons were never fed to lions by the Romans for entertainment, but otherwise there are actually quite a number of parallels between the Mormons and the rest of Christianity. My co-worker didn’t care for these remarks and the conversation ended quickly. Apparently what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the… goose.

I’m currently taking a humanities class in which, as part of a recent assignment, I’m basically being asked to pretend I’m either Christian or Jewish. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say I’m not happy. The concept is just fuzzy enough that the school can get away with it, but the work is still clear. I think part of what’s so vile about this assignment, beyond pretending to be something I’m not, is that I have to pretend to promote and condone what I don’t agree with. Sugar on top? One of my co-students and team mate on this project is a middle-aged woman who is unapologetically Christian and when we were hashing out responsibilities for this project she was quick to point out that not only is Christianity the only religion on the planet that encompasses all others, but that the cross is the only religious symbol which is found in all other religions.

Jesus-Fucking-Christ… this is what I’m dealing with. Before this class is over, there may well be a scene because after allowing my toes to be stepped on a few times by the school’s curriculum and classmates’ remarks, I’m actually quite liable to tell a bitch to go to hell and slide her some hand-written directions.

So, the convsersation today… class work from last week… Now let’s back up quite a bit. Let’s revisit my teen years briefly.

For a short time, during my teens, I was the only Christian in my family. To say I was a monster for Jesus would probably be something of an understatement. My intentions were as noble as they come, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t also vile at their source. I’ll spare most of the details, because they amount to this: I was about as typical as it could get for being a zealous Christian teen. The only way it would have been worse is if my parents were Christian, too.

This business lasted a few years until I was around 17 or close to 18. It was just before 18 that I began makng it known to my church youth group that I found a lot of evidence that the Bible/Jesus/God didn’t condemn gays. I was doing this rather gently and secretly because I intended to work my way into a position to come out to them. However, the youth pastor decided to nip the whole thing in the bud(butt?) and called me to his home one evening.

Sitting in his library, he said it’d been brought to his attention that I was spreading “false doctrine.” I explained, as best I could for being neither an adult nor a Bible scholar, that I didn’t believe Christianity condemned gays. His next move was to asked, “Do you consider yourself a homosexual?” I answered in the affirmative. Upon receiving that answer, he assured me, “There’s no place in the youth group, or anywhere else in the church, for someone like you.”

Sitting on his couch alone, and virtually defenseless, I could do nothing by look toward my feet and begin to sob. In the years leading up to this moment, I had actually done more than plenty to distance myself from my family-for the sake of Jesus. And here, an actual man of god was dismissing me entirely. The following months brought the best that church could offer in “therapy,” which amount to nothing. I had already cried myself to sleep numerous nights because I didn’t understand why I am gay. I sought out hetero porn, thinking it might “stick” and change my inclinations. I had girlfriends. I prayed at home, hidden in my bedroom’s closet (irony, no!?!?), the most private place I knew… and I’d prayed down front at my church’s altar. Nothing-which I’m so very thankful for.

I know many good people. Very very dear people to me, who happen to be Christians. Many of these folks would claim people like those others “aren’t real Christians.” That’s simply not true, though. These Christians who are dear to me, I think exhibit the purest Christianity, but chances are great that the vast majority of all the other fellow Christians on this planet still say my old church is correct. In fact I know this to be true, even in my life today. It wasn’t enough that I was literally kicked out as a teen (I had to sign some paper, too, after being asked “one last time”), but now as an adult Christians are the leading reason for why I’m unable to marry the man I’ve dedicated the biggest chunk of my adult life to.

As disappointing as this is going to sound, and forgive me for sounding jaded/hurt/judgemental, I’m convinced that nearly everything Abrahamic is violent and destructive. Throughout world history, into today, and in many places in my own life this has been the truth of experience. When I consciously and conscientiously seek Brahman, and encounter most things Abrahamic, the “still small voice” within invariably chants, “Neti, Neti.”

Om Shanti

vaishnav Ganapatya or ganapatya Vaishnav?

Something has crossed my mind a time or two since my recent vacation … but I’m not sure how to express it. Please forgive me now for any instances of wordiness or talking in circles.

In pretty much all of the Abrahamic Faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’i) you’re either in or out. One of them, or not. Then, once the necessary distinction has been determined, there’s a definitive “what kind” which must usually be decided as part of the sealing of allegiance. Reformed Jew or not? Shiite Muslim or Sunni? Protestant Christian or Catholic or Eastern Orthodox? And even after that, further labels or distinctions are often applied. So you’re a Protestant Christian… Are you a Baptist, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, an Adventist, a Lutheran (just to list a few)? (The last few sentences are by no means meant to be exhaustive.)

The catch is that, almost always, you have be “that” or “not that.” As far as I’ve experienced, you can’t well be a Lutheran and a Baptist. Actually, I know that one’s true… I was a Baptist in my teens and recall far too well that Baptists have ironed out to the “T” why all others are likely to fall somewhere short of the pearly gates. That example aside, I’m still going to assume that one can’t be a Quaker and a Presbyterian or a Sunni and a Shiite. You can’t be Catholic and Protestant, can you? Someone correct me if I’m mistaken, but surely not.

As with many other things, Hinduism offers a staggering amount of freedom. There is definitely an expectation that you will assume responsibility for your own progress; even with a guru’s guidance, the work is your’s. Beyond that, in many many instances you’re free to adhere to the sadhana or sampradaya which most closely suits you. And… this may well involve mixing and matching. (This is not to imply that Hinduism is a willy-nilly kind of religious path. Many instances within Hinduism, a person is indeed free to mix and match according to their individual inclinations and karmas, which is hinted at in the staggering diversity shown in the selection of devas and devis from one home’s mandir to another. But they still are required to exercise true bhakti, in some manner or another, to actually have an experiential relationship with The Divine.) With the permisability of so-called mixing and matching within Hinduism, I’m wondering whether a person can can be one kind of Hindu and another kind of Hundu. This perplexes me a little.

As an aside, but related no less, on my Facebook page I indicated that I’m a “Hindu with Buddhist leanings.” What I mean by this is that Hindu is the shape of my face, and buddhist is whatever shape or style in which I chose to grow my facial hair. Yes, the facial hair is a part of the face and at times is more noticeable than at other times. But it’s still one small aspect of the composition of my face as a whole.

It works to be a Hindu with Buddhist leanings because, technically although often just barely, Hindu and Buddhist are two distinct and different things. As long as you have apples and oranges, you can say you prefer apples with orange juice or oranges with apple juice. But there’s no such fruit as oranpple (orange-apple) or an apprange (apple-orange). And so, it might be said I prefer apples with orange juice. I’m clearly one thing, with a side of another. Point taken?

What about being two kinds of the same thing, can you? “I’m a staunch Baptist, but also follow Lutheran doctrine/dogma.” Umm…probably not. But what about within Hinduism? Is it possible that a devotee can be a Shaivite and a Vaishnav? What if I’m a dedicate Ganapatya (Ganesha is Mahadeva), but join a vaishnava sampradaya? Conflict of interest? I somehow doubt it, but I’ve yet to encounter the logistical specifics. Someone help me out here!

Om Shanti