While working and living at Shambhala Mountain Center, I got to attend many pricey spiritual retreats for free.
On one retreat I was sitting in a circle with a group of 5 or so others and we were instructed to meditate quietly together on this question: "What are you most afraid of?" After a few minutes of reflection we were instructed to go around the circle one at a time to share our answers in a few sentences. You could not comment or reply or react to what others said, only listen.
When it was my turn to speak, I said, "My worst fear is making the wrong decisions. Not knowing what to do. Not knowing what is right."
At that point in my life I was 20 years old and had no idea what I was doing. I dropped out of college, used my student loans to wander around the US on a spiritual quest, ran out of money, and was now suffering from the neurotic self-obsession that happens when you spend too much time alone ruminating... ahem... meditating on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.
I was also struggling with fundamental beliefs about what matters most in life. I was caught up in a new age cult that believed that the world was going to end in a few years and nothing really mattered except their approach to the spiritual life. Many friends I made were concerned for me and would give me some pushback on my beliefs.
On one occasion I irritated a fellow coworker to the point where he woke me up at 5am one morning to vent his frustrations to me. I'll never forget looking up at him towering over me as I was still wrapped up naked in my sleeping bag on the floor. The only thing I remember him saying was, "Jason, everything you say comes totally out of left field."
Certainty
One benefit of many spiritual traditions is that they can help give a sense of security in one's actions and ease some of the uncertainty about how the future will turn out.
For some this means letting faith be your guide that everything will turn out okay and you really don't even have to worry about it. In the same vein is the belief that everything happens according to a divine plan, so again, don't worry about it! Others may have higher demands of responsibility such as rules of moral conduct, rituals, and other guides to living correctly.
On one extreme end of this are practices aimed to give you as much 'certainty' as possible. Things like astrology, numerology, tarot cards, i-ching, pendulums, and other divination tools are good at making you feel like you have direct access to the divine answers to anything you could imagine.
In my case, I was indulging in the new age practice of listening to my "higher self." It's kind of like having a guardian angel living inside your head, and you can communicate with it however and whenever you like. Some would say that this is where your gut feelings and intuition come from. A common way to speak to your higher self is to think of a simple question you want to ask, and then let it echo in the silence of your mind until a voice, image, sound, or other answer appears.
For example, if you are driving down the road and see a person hitchhiking, you may ask "Should I pick them up?" A spontaneous "Yes" or "No" may immediately come to mind.
Wrong Way
Any spiritual practice can turn into an obsessive compulsion. Every single decision in life, no matter how mundane, can become subject to one's perfectionistic quest for safety and certainty.
I remember standing at the lunch buffet and staring at a pan of mac and cheese. I wondered what section of the pan would be best. As I reached out to scoop from the top right corner my inner voice shouted out, "NO! Wrong! Scoop from the top left!" I was confused and asked, "Why?"... "Uhhh... because! Just do it!" And so I did. Was the top right corner poisoned? Was there some divine amount of calories in that top left corner? I'll never know.
Eventually these interruptions and demands for taking the 'right action' began to get on my nerves. One evening I was walking down a path I had taken hundreds of times, and in the center of the path was a thin aspen tree that you had to walk around.
As I approached the tree, the voice came in, "Go right!" I again asked, "Why?" Images flooded into my mind of all sorts of negative butterfly effects that might result from taking the left path. Maybe I'd stub a toe, or fall, or kill an insect by stepping on it (I took a vow not to kill). At that point I had enough, and decided to do an experiment to see what would happen if I disobeyed my 'higher self'.
I started turning left, but the voice warned me, "No! Wrong way! Go right!" I didn't listen. I kept walking towards the left side of the tree. The voice grew louder, "NO! WRONG WAY! GO RIGHT! GO RIGHT!" but I pressed on. I passed into the left side of the tree, my adrenaline spiked, a jolt climbing up my back, and my hair raising on end as I began to disobey the "Right way", literally and figuratively. Nothing happened.
Thus began my rebellion against my 'higher self'. For every instruction it gave me I would deliberately do the exact opposite of it. Weeks passed and eventually the voice grew more and more quiet, and at some point it stopped entirely.
Song of the Week
Relevant whimsy.
Thanks for reading :)
-Jason