Beyond Ego Noise

Entry-level religion shelters the masses from existential reality by providing a larger, collective identity, with minimal personal investment - "the opium of the people". Belonging to the particular religion or sect, is the main attraction - provides a group ego, the sense of belonging to a tribe, unearned pride.

However, deep understanding & embodied spirituality are considered suspiciously different, even by members of the same religion or sect. Religions have always given their own saints & mystics a rough time, perhaps analogous to internal auditors or whistle-blowers who try to keep large corporations honest.

Most entry-level religions are exclusivists i.e., those who think exactly like us are right, all others are wrong, (& most likely damned). On the other hand, saints & mystics, having transcended dualism & paradoxes, "see eye-to-eye" with peers from other, even very different belief systems. As examples, Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk, wrote that the person who most closely shared his spiritual vision was Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen monk; Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was also very close to Thich Nhat Hanh.

It's a real privilege to have access to the inspiring words of spiritually-evolved people like Anthony de Mello below, who appear to have evolved well beyond divisive, fear-based, egocentric, partizan rhetoric.

Silence is not the absence of sound,

but the absence of self. Anthony de Mello

"Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry asleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know, all mystics – Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.”

Anthony de Mello. “Awareness. The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.” Doubleday, NY, 1992.