I realized today, after a theological conversation with my sister the other day, that in regard to religion my only dogma is to have no dogma. I think of it like this: I know two things: myself and God. The rest I’m not really too sure about, so I do my best to figure it out in moments of grace, divine inspiration, etc. but mostly stay unattached even to those outcomes. It softens my feedback to others and it informs the answers I get about what serves. What I mean is that I think absolute Truth(s) can be felt and experienced, but cannot be adequately explained in words, and that reminds me that, even though I might give someone constructive feedback, I don’t know the “Ultimate Way” or “the Absolute Truth.” I only know what is true for me in that moment, and they only know what is true for them in that moment. But somehow we always unconsciously try to screw up that very simple arrangement because we are afraid or insecure and so we guard ourselves in various ways.
I think that’s where people get frustrated a lot; they may have felt and experienced the divine, the Truth, and they want to share it with someone else, so they try to do it in words and it doesn’t work, and then they get hurt because by trying to explain something so intimate to another, they exposed themselves and became vulnerable and then weren’t reciprocated or understood, and they got wounded. Any wound we have comes from a time when we were led to believe that we are not divine. And really, when people talk about wanting to feel seen and heard by other people, what they’re really talking about is that they want the divine within them to be witnessed and honored. They want their own connection with Truth to be witnessed by others who have done the same thing in a different way but nevertheless “get it” when they see someone else doing it. They want to be Grokked.
But it’s hard to grok and feel grokked in a social system that operates on fears and insecurities. In an economy that is driven by advertising designed to make you feel inadequate without a certain product, the wounding comes early and often. And I believe that those and the various other wounds are the birthplace of dogma. Because of the wounds, people unconsciously learn to protect the divinity within them, and these protections look different for everyone. But the most widely-used defense, in my experience of observing myself and the world around me during my lifetime, is dogma.
There are all different kinds, but I think that most of the internal suffering I see in people manifests itself in clashes between different dogmas. Democrat-republican, social conservative-fiscal conservative, Believer-Atheist, etc. And frankly, those three examples are even perfunctory, because they don’t have to be these big institutional dogmas of things like organized religions or political parties. We each make our own little personal dogmas out of all the labels we consciously or (mostly) unconsciously hang on ourselves and others. “I’m a _______ kind of person, and NOT a ___________ kind of person, therefore I will or will not do this or that.” And for each decision down the line we go, making mostly unconscious choices from instant to instant, never stopping to think or open ourselves to a different possibility. And at every stop down the line, our shadows grow and grow, and therefore exert more control over us, and our wounds morph and morph into monsters that we wound others with.
Well, I’m pretty much through with that cycle, it wasn’t very fun. So I thought of this little proclamation and wrote it for myself on the whiteboard in my room: Give everything in your life; every idea, label, bit of knowledge, structure, way of life, et cetera; give everything permission to fall away at any time, then watch what sticks as you listen only to your direct experience of Truth (God, the Universe, Gaia, Spirit…). I used to worry about what would stick, stemming from concerns over the goodness or evil of human nature. But in my experience, the things that stick are usually, by the Universe’s design, the good, the soulful, and the peaceful things. And this is an ongoing commitment to the present moment, a work that has no end because it’s not linear. The more this commitment is fulfilled within the moment, the less suffering there is for you, and the more light you can bring to the world, with less and less need for reciprocation and/or acknowledgement. When everything has the permission to fall away at any time, your capacity to Absolutely Love the things that are there in each moment, in a fluid and playful way, is so increased, and Loving this existence is the only task opposite of suffering. We will not be able to do it all the time, because we’re human, but may we live amongst an air of forgiveness for that.