“Wait–Come back! The Bible…it’s a COOKBOOK!”

 

No longer having a spiritual agenda, I struggle to occupy my thoughts with other things. This is no easy task, as I’ve spent most of my life–since my early childhood, in spiritual contemplation. I’ve lived the live of a monk, and now, godless, I’m at a loss of what to wrap my mind around.

Get a life might be your first suggestion, and it would be a good one. Perhaps I’ve indulged in spiritual inquiry as a way to avoid life. Now I’m forced to either take action or languish in ennui. I’ll probably mope for a while, since it’s just my way. But not having to worry about how my thoughts might be affecting my life is freeing, and I can move through it without judgment. I’m becoming convinced that there are no wrong choices and no right choices. There are just different outcomes, and they are what they are. All paths lead you to exactly where you are. Duh.

This will get easier.

I stayed up late the other night watching The Messenger, one of the many versions of the Jeanne D’Arc story.
Dustin Hoffman played her Conscience, and the dialouge between his character and Milla Jovovich’s Joan was a revealing, naked account of what Catholics and Christians would certainly interpret as the sin of doubt, and dwindling faith, and what I would call critical thinking.

Joan was trying to justify the events that had led to her circumstances, second-guessing her defense to the tribunal’s interrogation. Of course she had done the right things, of course she was on the correct path, she had seen the signs, and obeyed the divine directives.

“The signs? What signs?” presses her Conscience. “The wind; the clouds, the bells!” says Joan. You can see doubt darken her expression as she realizes how nebulous these phenomena are as signs.

“…the sword! The sword in the field–surely that’s a sign!” She’s found her irrefutible sign from God…she thinks.

“A sword in a field a sign from God?” her Conscience disparages. “It’s a sword in a field.” Hoffman goes on, postulating some of the different ways the sword could have wound up in that field. “For every action there is a cause; nothing exists in a vacuum.” Of course, this would be terribly sophisticated reasoning for a 15th century illiterate peasant girl. But at least in this film, she couldn’t refute the logic; her bubble was burst.

And the whole Joan of Arc story is about bursting bubbles. The English needed to find her guilty of heresy to restore morale and faith to its Catholic soldiers. If God is on France’s side, how can we, the English faithful, believe that he hears our righteous prayers? This conundrum might cause one to question how many side God can take, and if he would choose one faithful adversary over another, what then is the point of belief? And if one cannot make sense of religion as a team sport, then maybe the rest fails in reason also. Here is the slippery slope of doubt that the Church and England wished to avoid with Joan’s trial and execution.

If you find a sword in a field, it’s just a sword in a field.

I prayed to God, asking for a sign one way or another about my decision to become an atheist.

I’m still waiting for an answer.

I have decided after some years of trial and error,  soul searching, and observation, that the ever popular New Age darling of the moment, the Law of Attraction, is nothing more than a marketing ploy, and not a “secret” law of prosperity and happiness.

 Granted, positive thinking can improve how you feel about your circumstances. We always have a choice of how to react to a situation, and to look for the positive in any circumstance will open the heart and broaden one’s perspective.But talking yourself into being happy about something in your crappy life doesn’t change your crappy life.

 

 The claim that our thoughts— at least those that are driven by strong emotions and beliefs, will manifest as real things or events is not a demonstratable, repeatable, proven phenomenon.And please don’t tell me about Lynn McTaggart’s Intention Experiment. Have you read the list of criteria that must be in place in order to send out one’s intention? She advises her readers to check NASAs weather report about the sun’s activity, and to make sure your environment has enough negative ions before you set to task. Funny; gravity, which is a pretty weak force, seems to work without much preplanning and ceremony.

I’m not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though. The principle that ‘like attracts like’ is not a law, but a tool that some people can use effectively some of the time. It may be a lever that some people can pull, but it’s not a law that applies to everyone in all situations. Otherwise, I’d be in a relationship with the man in my visions,  and I’d be pulled over for speeding all the time, not to mention that my fear of dying in a car accident would have at least brought about a fender bender. I’ve had ‘unwavering faith’ that I would have won at least one writing contest and been published.  I’ve been certain that I would have received at least one unexpected check in the mail. But none of these things have come to pass. Not one. 

As I stated in the updated post about LOA and depression, if the law of attraction were impartial and constant, you know, like a real law of physics, then people suffering from psychoses would, in reality, be chased and hounded by real demons and other creatures. People who believe that spiders are crawling underneath their skin would actually manifest spiders. These people really belive these things are happening to them–but they haven’t manifested their beliefs for all to see. They are delusions. This could open up a discussion about subjective reality, but I’m talking about objective, observable facts.

Proponents of the ’secret’ promise that one can manifest money, cars, health, relationships–things that are observable. They don’t promise that ‘it’ll seem real to you, and that’s all that matters.’ Hell, LSD could do that.

 The folks that have made the ’secret’ to prosperity and abundance work for them are the people who’ve written books, made CDs and DVDs, who offer ‘life-coaching’ and workshops to those of us who just haven’t figured out how to make the LOA work. And they’re not giving any of this prized information away in spite of the fact that they could theoretically manifest all the money they want just from applying the LOA.

 

 So what kind of control do the rest of us have on our lives? Perspective is always in our control. How we see things is always a choice. How we react and the action we take is always our choice. We can be grateful for our crappy lives, or we can blog about them.

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Last week at work I reached a breaking point. I wasn’t sure why, and I don’t remember what I was doing, but I just started to tear up and had to fight to keep from exploding into a sobbing fit. I’m unhappy with the pace and content of my life right now, and at that moment I couldn’t contain my despair any longer. It took me by surprise, but I guess I should have seen it coming.

My body has been breaking down these last few weeks. I’ve had joint pain and stiffness that doesn’t go away, I’m grinding my teeth again, and am becoming increasingly weary of the daily tedium.

So as I sat at my desk fighting back tears, tyring to regain my composure so that no one would see my moment of weakness, I thought about what it meant to break down. If I want to know who I am, and what I’m made of, maybe the best way, or maybe even the only way, is through disassembly. It’s hard to say what makes me me, and it’s difficult to define those things that drive and motivate me, when they’ve become tangled together over the years.

Once the facade falls away, the components of the individual are exposed. So what are the building blocks of Grizelda? Hope, fear, love, hunger, desire. Now I see what I have to work with, and can begin to rebuild.