When I first began to explore my own spiritual path, I mistakenly imagined I would be wiser and happier if I could perfect my separate ego. When I meditated, I vainly attempted to inflate my illusion of a separate self. I imagined my enlightened self floating free like a balloon above my suffering and boredom. I did not realize I had unwittingly pre-booked a crash landing somewhere down the road. For, unless our religion or spirituality comes to terms with the reality we encounter in our everyday ordinary lives we are doomed to disappointment. Worse, we can spend our lives making excuses for why our efforts do not really work.
Our goal in meditation, yoga or prayer should not be for our separate egos to reach new heights of bliss and wisdom. Our focus should be on coming home to who we really are and to our interconnectedness with all that has life and being.
The distinction between these path of personal enlightenment and universal love is similar to the distinction some have made between “shallow” and “deep” ecology.
Fritjof Capra distinguished between “shallow” and “deep” ecology by saying that “shallow” ecology is human centered. “It views humans as above or outside nature, as the source of all value, and ascribes only instrumental, or ‘use’, value to nature.”
Capra described “deep” ecology very differently:
“Deep ecology does not separate humans – or anything else – from the natural environment. It does see the world not as a collection of isolated objects but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all human beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life.”
Our spiritual lives, too, can be “deep” or “shallow.” Whatever our idea of enlightenment or salvation is, we should find our roots in the real world and for the benefit of all.
Salvation, or enlightenment, is not a jailbreak from our own pain and from the problems of the world. “Salvation” is awakening from selfish illusion and realizing that we are cells in the one common body of life. When we stop imagining ourselves standing on the shore of the river of life, when we find our home IN the river, our problems are all transformed.
What we are needing is not a new and better world somewhere else, but a deeper, bigger and more joyful experience of the reality we already have.
There is no higher heaven than universal love.