The illness that took him was a surprise to the family: an aggressive cancer that started in his lung and spread to his brain. If he knew he was sick, he never let on. He just kept pressing on, the way he always did. Just the week before, he was typically out in the hot Florida sun working on an air conditioner, as was his life-long profession — even though he had “retired” many years earlier. Without warning, he fell from sitting at the kitchen table, in a massive seizure.

Over the next four weeks, he recovered from being completely unresponsive to being alert but completely immobile on his left side. As he always did, he pressed on, even in Hospice care — asking each day, when they were going to let him go home. He joked with the nurses, as he wrestled through the symptoms of stroke — threatening to bust out the window and escape, hospital gown and all. Each day, he fought, gaining mobility and coordination slowly and gradually in his left side: to the point, he could look at his watch and hold his own coffee. When long-time friends came by to see him, he would confidently say, “Getting better all the time!”

By the end of the third week, he had improved so much, he was nearly able to walk on his own again. The astounded Hospice and medical staff had arranged for a physical therapist after the weekend, and were discussing the possibility of sending him home! Then, over the course of a Sunday, he faded into unresponsiveness. Unable to take food or water, he didn’t recover this time, and passed away peacefully, six days later, with his family by his side.

At the viewing, I recognized the reason I’ve never been to one. For me, the reason I don’t want to be there isn’t about the sadness of loss. It isn’t that I don’t want to be supportive of a grieving family. It isn’t that I am unnerved by the presence of a lifeless body. It’s the fact that the person I’ve known and loved, is no longer “in there.” They’ve taken the journey, and made the transition. Their “spirit” has reunited with the “higher power,” in the form from which it came. It leaves me feeling awkward and uncomfortable, when the spirit of a person is in the air all around me, yet, here I am honoring the presence of a shell. To my mind, it seems almost a disrespectful event, even though I fully understand the closure and comfort it provides many people.

My mind necessarily wanders to the course of the life force, this “higher power,” in all of us, and reinforces my innate belief that we are all connected infinitely and ethereally, even as we traverse this physical world as masses of matter. The spark of life, breathed into the human being, begins with two living cells being united — breaching the cosmos on an infinitely small level, to pull a small sparkle of the “higher power” into an ultimately physical state. That new, living cell multiplies and grows, bringing along with it the soul of a person, as those cells begin to absorb and feed off the material world around them. Those cells grow into a physical being that can sense, feel, and love — the higher power, looking in on itself — the living, breathing metaphor of the stories of Adam and Eve, Jesus, and more.

From the ashes and dust of all matter, mineral, and metal, the biological process absorbs the energies of the material world — from conception, until death, when the material energy that was absorbed is returned to the Earth, to be reabsorbed and decomposed — back into ashes and dust. Along that journey, a glimmer of what is True in the universe takes a ride in a physical body — to experience joy, pain, and everything in between — the only assignment, to take snapshots of the enormously beautiful and marvelously complex.

It is this kind of understanding of life that distresses me — when I worry over money, religion, or politics. Those things don’t ultimately matter, though humankind has built up a culture that forces people to care about those kinds of things, just in order to survive. How destitute we really are, when we live our lives chasing wealth. How misguided we are, when we look to religion for rituals. How foolish we are, when we look to other people to create order.

These kinds of observations about life can only be forged from the fires of many years’ experience. This valuable insight is from Walter Breuning: a man who has lived longer than anyone else currently living on this ball of mud out in the midst of the Milky Way galaxy.

Great Falls, Montana, USA — September 21, 2009

Life begins each morning, whether we have succeeded or failed or just muddled along. Life is a school to learn, not to unlearn.

Life is the creation by God, and if you would know God, be not a solver of riddles. Look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. Look into the air and you shall see him walking in the clouds, out-stretching his arms in the lightning, and descending in rain. You shall see him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving his hands in trees.

Life is a great teacher of truth. What is truth to one is not truth to another. What is true in one country may be false in another.

Life is short but the influences of what we do or say is immortal. There needs to be much more of the spirit of fellowship among us and more forgiveness. The power of gentleness is little seen in the world.

Remember that life’s length is not measured by its hours and days, but by that which we have done therein. A useless life is short if it lasts a century.

There are greater and better things in all if we would find them out. There will always be in this world — wrongs. No wrong is really successful.

The day will come when light and truth and the just and the good shall be victorious and wrong as evil will be no more forever.

Life itself teaches us to best prepare for that future which we hope for and for that journey to that land unknown, not made by hands.

Everything just is beautiful; everything beautiful ought to be just.

The mystery of the world remains unknown. Our maker alone is the key which unlocks all the mysteries of the universe.

The world is neither a prison nor a palace of ease, but rather for instruction and discipline.

This world has been good to all of us.

– Ill. Walter Breuning, 33°

Reprinted with permission. Thanks to Brent Morris, managing editor of the Scottish Rite Journal®, for permission to print this excerpt. Read the full article here.

Enter psychology: the science of dissecting human consciousness in an effort to understand the mechanisms behind things like emotion, intuition, faith, hope, love, etc. Back in the day, religion held the reins in these areas, providing explanations about and direction regarding social mores at the core of human behavior: i.e., good and evil. In modern cultures, we tend to look toward psychologists to understand the inner workings that drive people to do what they do, and let our religion stand as simply a personal choice for emotional and social support.

Psychology has, in effect, taken the place of religion for answering the questions of everyday life: coping with grief, conflict resolution, crime and punishment, war and peace. While many still look to religion for philosophical principles, the growing trend of turning to science for life-support through things like medicine, education and social policy is apparent and bucks the trend of the last several millenniums.

No longer do we adhere to “spare the rod and spoil the child,” but rather criminalize the rod and stick junior in “time out.” Gone are the days of swift justice: now, the “justice system” makes every effort to rationalize, minimize or excuse gross misconduct. We train ourselves and others to marginalize Personal Convictions in favor of Political Correctness. We like to believe our New World, enlightened thinking is an advancement in the course of evolution and not just simple brainwashing and reconditioning by this New World “religion.”

Psychology, in effect, is not a new science, but the merging and meshing of science and religion.

You can easily find the details of this case elsewhere so I won’t echo them here. However, while I have long had the suspicion Scientology is just a big money-laundering scam hiding behind a veil of religion (which this conviction in France tends to support), I see a deeper and even more serious scenario developing. It has to do with the cognitive way in which we human beings associate ourselves with religion and spiritual practices.

If a group wants to form an investment club and call it a religion, let them. I don’t care. Why should I? It doesn’t affect me, because I’m not buying in. If some group wants to gather together and worship the spirits of trees… again, who cares? More power to them. In “illuminated” societies, that same freedom is granted to people who want to take a serious endeavor into an understanding of this “Order amid Chaos” we call life, and God, and Love — so you take the good with the bad, and I’ll leave making the public distinction between “good” and “bad” to someone else.

From an even wider perspective, the very notion that religious and spiritual beliefs can be summarily canned into different forms and flavors, like products on a store shelf from which we get to choose, leaves people in a psychological landscape human beings historically haven’t seen very often. In this landscape, nothing is sacred — at least not in the ways we’ve traditionally viewed the “sacred.” Compound this diminished sense of “ultimate value” with the immediacy of information in this digital age, and individuals start to take on new personas, void of a platform from which to place personal convictions, but are eager and willing to “lead.” Instead of leaning on sacred beliefs, people start basing their convictions on a “just because” or “it feels good” style of philosophy, and misery loves company.

Whole societies start to devolve from the ground up, from being passionate exemplars of their beliefs regarding things like morality, nobility, and purpose, into malleable, formative, complacent bodies ready to be directed toward and/or by the “next big thing.”

Some might argue that this is a good thing, liberating the mind from the oppression of tradition for tradition’s sake. However, if this is happening, and it is a good thing, I would ask… how does such a liberation of the mind truly make individuals more “free,” when it’s human nature to file into organized tribes? There’s an old saying, “Too many chiefs: not enough Indians.”

While I am personally somewhere between crap, design, and desire, I think this kind of thought process puts “average” people in a dangerous position of association, completely out of touch with the purpose of religion in the first place. Let me explain:

Unless a person lives in a culture absolutely free of religious influences, from the time a person is born until the time they die, there is a sort of ingrained stigmata left to the individual to sort out — one that sets the “modern” human apart from the animal. The “modern” stigmata of religion in general is, in large part, an unsaid obligation of individuals to adopt the wounds of their own particular group, based on any number of transgressions communally understood to have been inflicted, is currently being inflicted, or might at some point be inflicted, on the group. Regardless of the particulars, the obligatory wounds felt by any group, whether environmentally or genetically, result in a series of associations within the individuals within said group, based summarily in the group consensus.

To be put bluntly, racism is the offspring of individuals within groups who feel biased against racially; socialism is the offspring of individuals within groups who feel biased against socially; capitalism is the offspring of individuals within groups who feel biased against capitally; etc, etc, etc.

What does that have to do with “association?”

Primarily, people who believe in and embrace the aspirations of ideas regarding a higher power tend to be trusting, well-intentioned, “average” human beings: content to mull about their own particular circumstances, in the understanding that life’s events are, hopefully and by some “greater” design, not just some big, Cosmic joke. Because of this belief that All is not just some big Joke, people have a tendency to try to understand things mathematically.

If I do “X,” it should result in “Y,” which will ultimately cause “Z” to occur.

For example: “If I piss on the front lawn, it might offend my neighbors, and I might very well be arrested!” While this example is logical, this is the very kind of association that becomes dangerous in terms of spirituality or religion. There are some who are convinced: “If I detonate a bomb on my person in a place crowded with people I disagree with, I will kill a number of them, and it might please my God.” Similarly, some people believe: “If I pray real hard, my God will hear my petition, and grant my request.”

People become deluded in this equation of intent-cause-effect, when it comes to religion and spirituality.

I have myself become deluded in many ways, often wondering, “If I’m doing what I believe is right, and what I do does not conflict with what I believe, why do I not see what I believe to be a successful result?” When it’s all boiled down, this is the ultimate quandary of us all. In seeking an explanation for this particular quandary of intent-cause-effect, we are often shocked and disappointed as to the lack of an answer. Such lack of an acceptable answer leads us down paths of seeking alternate justice, from whatever source we feel we can stir up: politics, family, and especially religion.

We “modern” human beings are slowly killing ourselves with the belief that our beliefs (or lack thereof) are going to save us. Maybe it’s all “hogwash,” but I addressed that last time.

The average person folds under the pressure of a myriad sources of input, and we see an increase in claims of children, and even adults, who “suffer” from “attention deficit disorder.” It seems the price of digitizing the globe comes at the cost of paying attention.

It really makes no difference what area we’re talking about — whether topics like spirituality and religion, or government and finance. Information overload is causing human beings to become devoid of conviction, lacking in motivation, and act with a propensity toward the obscure. The result of this disparity of position and purpose is a society with little ability to organize or prosper.

Do you think this is true? If so, is it by design or just happenstance?

I have inherited some of this Jones’ Luck, whether biologically or behaviorally (I’ll leave that to the psychoanalysts among you). However, because of this inherited trait, I am primarily a skeptic. My first reaction to things is usually one of doubt — like a fish, eyeing every wiggling-wriggling morsel, on the look-out for a Hook. Unfortunately for me, this clashes with another tendency in me: one of insatiable hope and a resulting propensity for taking risks.

These two aspects of my own being are undoubtedly high on the list, as reasons I even put together this blog in the first place. By nature (or nurture: you decide), the very concept of a Higher Power to me is simply a given; there must surely be more to this intellectual existence, than simply a collection of neural files stored in the hard-drive of my brain, derived from what my five senses can gather about the matter I happen to run across. At the same time, I look to the spiritual and religious lines dangling about in the currents of culture, and see they are riddled with Hooks.

So, this quandary: I want deeply to embrace this ethereal unknown, but doubt the things people tend to loudly profess about it. I seek the Light of knowledge and understanding, and it seems what I’ve found thus far is confusion and questions. I am no more convinced or convicted in my beliefs, but no less so either.

Some would suggest I’m only floundering in indecision, saying, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” and that is true! Yet, I am not so ‘quandaried’ that I’ve hesitated to take the journey — more like I’m many miles down my path, in the middle of No-Man’s-Land, looking in every direction and wondering if I’ve somehow gone off course. The things I have learned through seeking the Light, in my own way and with my own faculties, using the teachings of others as a sort of Tourist Guide, has led me to a point where the things I feel are True are in conflict with what institutions of Wisdom claim as Truth — perhaps not even so much in conflict, rather similar but in a different Light. To that point, maybe I’m right where I need to be.

So, if I am right where I need to be, moving in the direction I need to be moving, following the call of my own spirit seeking the Light of Illumination… why then, is it so uncomfortable? It may be no coincidence, the message delivered yesterday morning by the pastor of the church I attend dealt with the story of Jesus and the rich man who came seeking Light. The rich man asked what he could do to reach the precipice in his spiritual path to which Jesus replied: follow the Law (don’t steal, lie, disobey your parents, etc etc). So, when the rich man said he had followed all these Laws, Jesus told him to give up everything he owned and give it away to the poor to find the light, then pick up and follow Jesus. Of course, the rich man just left, disappointed with the answer.

I see the value in divesting ourselves of mineral and metal, wealth and status — these things are stumbling blocks; a source of spiritual separation from seeking Light. Very few can take wealth and status and adapt them into stepping stones toward a Seeker’s path, as Jesus pointed out, with the camel and needle. Perhaps the goal is not to be poor, but rather to hit rock bottom: to have nothing left to lose. With nothing left to lose, we are then free to move forward, fully committed to the goal.

Perhaps this, too, is a source of my personal quandary. I’m part-way down the path of a journey, having kept a bus-pass back to the beginning in my hip pocket — in case I’m not really on the right path. I believe, but not so much that I have fully committed to Seeking Light. On a tangible level, that’s why, though I desire to spend my time here discovering and discussing the Seeking of Light, I devote most of my worry and concern toward trying to earn money, and like many in these times, not very successfully. So that too leaves me unsatisfied… perhaps the ultimate quandary.

I have big hopes and dreams for fulfilling the destiny of Me, in tune with the Light. But the Luck I’ve inherited leads me to think: “Yes, there is a Light at the end of the tunnel… but it just might be a train.”

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On one hand, I’m still seeking and wondering and asking and concluding. On the other, the more answers and conclusions I reach, the less informed I realize we all are.

Recently, I’ve wondered what I would ask, given an audience with someone such as, “The Pope.” So many revere such a man as ultimately connected with God, yet I wonder: what does such a man wonder and conclude to himself in private? I imagine something very similar to you or me — this life-mystery we cloak ourselves in, while we fumble about trying to find meaning and purpose, is woven of a fabric none of us know aside from personally and ethereally.

So I continue to seek and wonder and ask and conclude, of my own volition. Yet, so many spiritual words guide we humans to disregard our doubt, to quash the questions, to forge ahead in faith by bubbling with belief. Knowing, deep-down that what we’ve been told is true, that we can trust, and that events work out to a greater design than we can understand.

Is it all hogwash? Like the Pope, I don’t know. Is it true? How can any one say, without knowing?

This strategy is used in politics to keep a citizenry at odds with each other, rather than unified in purpose. It is used in business to reduce the strength and effectiveness of a competitor or even internal forces. It is most commonly associated with the tactics of war, but is just as effective in tactics of “peace.”

No matter whether you feel the current state of world affairs is a struggle over politics, money, or religion — a single fact remains. We humans are a house divided, and a house divided will not stand.

Though politics and money are also at the root of our divisions, my personal goals have little to do with them (except maybe to do away with them altogether). I have no need of a “government” to tell me right from wrong or try to save me from myself, and all the wealth I need is just enough to live comfortably alongside my neighbors who can do the same. That leaves one thing I feel is both important and divisive; religion — the “business” of spirituality.

In religion, there is an old saying: “Seek and you will find.” Those particular words are most often associated with the Bible, but the principle is universally applied in every religion to the human aspect of spirituality (NOTE: the principle does not necessarily apply to reading glasses or car keys). So, I spend quite a bit of time seeking the truth about my own spirituality and how it compares to the common human condition, but what I find is troubling.

The more I learn and uncover about the nature of human spirit, the more frustrated I become with religion. While religions are presented as avenues by which people can collectively connect and commune with the divine aspects of this world, it is readily apparent religions are simply businesses with a spiritual disguise — the evidence being the focus on each one’s individual brand of governance and focus on money as a necessary resource to do the “work” of their respective god. As a result, even religions that arguably started off as a way to unify people toward becoming “better” have wound up in a global menagerie of division built upon division, leaving people at strife with one another clamoring to proclaim their own views are “better” than those of others.

This state of “spirituality” is like placing a million invisible walls between people, places, and ideas — walls that move, shift, and multiply almost unnoticed under the influence of politics, money, and especially religions. Whether this situation is by design or coincidental or a hybrid is for another discussion. I want to focus on the reality that the situation exists, and what we could or even should do about it.

Assuming a higher power does universally exist, as most every religion proclaims and I personally believe, the walls of division created by the religious ideologies of the world does a great disservice to those who aim to seek and find. After all, when most people make a decision to “seek,” their first stop is religion. Some skip around from church to church within a certain religion accepted culturally. Some hop from religion to religion trying to find the right “brand” to suit them, but even finding the right “flavor” and embracing a certain “style” is less than ideal, assuming there is a universal higher power common to all Creation.

Even in a culture of tolerance, where individuals believe their religion is the only “true” one but elect not to crusade against people who disagree, it seems sophomoric and spiritually immature to take a stance that the existence of a universal higher power is a given truth then reject someone else because they call that higher power by a different name, read a different book, or follow different rituals — more walls.

Very few people disrobe from religion and seek spiritual understanding from wherever it may be found, including religions, philosophy, art, simple human interaction, meditation, etc. I am one of those people, and I try to promote the concept that, if there is only one true higher power, it serves us well to approach the subject from a position of subjective objectivity — meaning, these divisions between us on every level, especially a spiritual level, are unnecessary and are stumbling blocks toward our understanding of what this higher power is, how we can apply it, how we can experience it, and how we can move forward as human beings in harmony and solidarity of purpose within it.

I say, “Tear down the walls.”

It is the place human beings go internally to seek an external essence in times of stormy tribulation. It is the invisible energy human souls cry to in thanks and praise when joy overcomes and overwhelms. It is the still, small voice of guidance and encouragement, when logic fails. It is an uncommon warmth welling up from inside when the physical world is blistering cold. It is the cool breeze in the stifling heat. It is the uncanny sense that chaos has order. It is the sparkle in the eyes of a child.

It is a part of us, and apart from us. It is… what it is.

Jews name it Yahweh. Christians name it God. Muslims name it Allah. Hindus give it many names. Wiccans name it a Goddess. Native Americans name it the Great Spirit. Capitalists name it Money. Liberals name it Freedom. Conservatives name it Control. Leaders name it Power. The rich name it Security. The poor name it Providence. The weak name it Hope. The strong name it Ability.

Do you see where I’m going with this? The higher power has many names, and many faces. Yet, through it all, it exists kinetically inside the soul of every human and in the glorious world around us.

Sometimes it is evidenced quietly and subtly, other times with force and grandeur. Some people live simple, unaccounted lives and make a difference in the world untold by human voices. Some people make small contributions, and are lauded for their work. In every situation, the higher power courses and pulses through the actionable matter of human beings, even though at times it is abused and distorted by self-indulgent will in intentional discord with a more noble purpose.

Awesome as it is, it exists quietly waiting for human beings to seek it, find it, and live it — or notice it, neglect it, and polarize it. It exists, while human beings make choices to imbue lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride — or make choices to be loving, sparing, generous, industrious, patient, gracious, and humble. No matter the situation or action, the higher power sits ready and waiting.

It is seated at the core of the universe and radiates to the infinite reaches, encompassing and existing in everything — full of all potential and promise, being made real at the actions of Creation… being made negative in Hate, or positive in Love.

The higher power is something we all have a responsibility to acknowledge, embrace, and then act accordingly. Our choices and actions are the face, voice, and evidence of the higher power.