Across the decades I have encountered many people in the category of "serious seeker". Perplexed by life, drawn by a higher calling, they feel a strong need for a religious affiliation, or at least if not a formal affiliation then a spiritual path. This once seemed to me like a perfectly normal, indeed noble, activity, but the eventualities of the cases I have known have made me doubt this. Some cases of 'serious seeker' have happy outcomes, but in a high number of cases the search is ultimately barren.
I will relate one case. I met a man at a cafe in Asia one time, an Englishman, who had traveled to Asia with the earnest intention of becoming a Buddhist. He had studied Buddhism in books in England for years. He related how he had set out with certain requirements. He needed a religion that emphasized peace, for example, and compassion, and the environment, and the brotherhood of man.
His story, though, was that he had lived among monks in Thailand and was shocked and appalled by their worldiness and corruption, their love of money and their disrespectful attitude to women. I could tell he was somewhat broken by the experience. He had traveled half way around the world and had his spiritual dreams shattered. He still subscribed to Buddhist principles, he said, but he couldn't see himself taking refuge in the sanga.
In other cases, serious seekers scuttled off to the various corners of the world to throw themselves into a carefully selected spiritual path. It was short-lived. A few years later I'd meet them selling corporate real estate, hardly a spiritual bone in their body. "Whatever happened to going to Rishikesh and being transformed into a living god by sexual yoga?" I ask. It didn't work out.
The thing I've come to appreciate is that: in most cases you don't choose a religion; a religion chooses you. And as a general rule I would say: unless you hate it, it's not going to work. That is, for it to be real a spiritual path must be inescapable. It must be compelling. Very often it will not be what you want or what you think you deserve. It will just insist. You will fight it and flee from it, but when you turn around, there it is again.
This type of struggle is much healthier than having a shopping list with tick boxes: consumer spirituality. That approach rarely works for finding a religion, just as it rarely works for finding a partner. We see ourselves marrying a sophisticated socialite: we marry the girl next door. It was always going to happen. You cannot plan a religious conversion. It happens to you, not because of you. It is not like selecting a new washing machine or renovating a kitchen.
And beware, I would say, of any religion that flatters your prejudices. A lot of spirituality is an exercise in self virtue signalling. We have a desperate need to tell ourselves how virtuous we are. People look for a religion that caters to their (secular) moral sense and political opinions. If you don't find things that are disagreeable in a religion, it is almost certainly the wrong religion for you. If your new religion is an echo-chamber for your Establishment Progressive values, then all you have is a social club on religious themes.
And, in any case, a moral perspective seems to me a relatively paltry criterion when it comes to a religion or a spirituality. Sentimentality is spiritual death. The hook of religion has to be deep. You don't need a religion to refrain from stealing and adultery. A religion might not even make you a better person. Morality is the shallow end of the pool. Unless you are driven by ultimate concerns, ultimate mysteries, a cosmic anguish, all your religion is is a set of rules. Granted, some people are so morally wretched they need a set of rules or they'll be dangerous, but this only becomes the principle concern of a religion in its decline. It's not the place to start.
The place to start is always a calling. Resist it all you will, it won't go away. Very often it will only happen with trevail. Your world falls apart. In the wilderness, you hear the voice. Better still, it is a slow, persistent nagging. In the Islamic order this is described as a sense of "homesickness". The melancholy of life is a homesickness. This feeling, rather than seeking out something that conforms to your sense of your own virtue, is a much better basis for serious seeking.
But, as they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Which is also to say, when the student is not ready, the teacher does not appear. Readiness, openness, worthiness: this is the proper concern of the serious seeker. Be worthy. And pay attention. There will be signs.
Then, one day, there's a knock at the door. It's the elders. You think to yourself "I fucking hate Mormons" but within a few weeks you're a Latter Day Saint signing up to do your mission in Venezuela. Religion, I think, should be unexpected. If your friends and family are shocked and bewildered by your conversion, it's probably a good sign.
Better still, and most promising of all in terms of spiritual longevity, is when friends and family are shocked and bewildered because you've found your way back to the religion they've all defined themselves against. The serious seekers with the best outcomes, as a rule, go back to where they started. Catholics. Or Anglicans. Or whatever. They resist it for years, but it calls them back. Best of all is when you yourself are shocked and bewildered.
Many of us are given a specific religion, and all of us are given a culture shaped by a religion or religions whether we like it or not. In principle, these religions are wholesome things, and embody an ancestral history of spiritual yearning. In principle, they contain all things needful. We might consider the question of whether we were born to a particular religious tradition for a reason. And equally we might ask if there is a good reason to go elsewhere rather than delve deeper into what one was given. Properly speaking, even in a secularized context, there is a matter of gratitude involved too, as a solid foundation.
It remains common, though, for people to find their childhood faith empty and feel a strong call to some other tradition. My observation has been that a high proportion of cross-cultural religious conversions fail, but those that are successful are often so successful that we can only say they are natural. I know a man of Greek Orthodox birth who found a home in Zen and is utterly and comprehensively adapted to that spiritual culture. One can only conclude he has a Zen soul.
You cannot engineer that, though. Not easily. It only happens when a religion chooses you. You fall into it. For reasons unknown you were born Jewish but there was never any doubt that you'd end up a Hari Krishna. The aforementioned 'homesickness' is involved here. Jewish-smewish, Judaism was never your home. Synagogue left you still feeling homesick. When you find the right religion, or it finds you, it is a homecoming.
It is still difficult, though. The church that chooses you might still be wracked with scandal and a poncy modern liturgy, and you hate it, but it's home.
To the objection that seekers seek because a perfect spiritual path has yet to knock on their door, and that waiting around for a religion to choose you - especially in our current spiritual morass - is a losing strategy, this is where attention comes in. You have to ask the right questions and notice the right things. There are mysterious matters of time and place involved. The literature is full of stories of fools who mistake their spiritual master for a shabby old bum and tell him to move along.
Some of the best cautionary tales for serious seekers are to be found in the canon of Sufi teaching stories. The collections retold by Idris Shah are adequate for the purpose. All of the points above could be illustrated by Sufi stories. What about the dervish who heard about a celestial drink and walked all the way to China to find it? When he arrived, they showed him a camelia, the tea plant. 'What!' cried the dervish. "I've got one of those growing at my home at my back door!"
Harper McAlpine Black
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