Fear of the light

A curious phenomenon: attempting to live a spiritual life is not always attractive to outsiders. In fact, it is rarely attractive at all. This is because of the irony that the people who most need to wake up, namely those who are most asleep, are most likely to be alarmed by the actual solution to their nightmares.

The spiritual solution may look cultish, restrictive, and barren. In the world's terms, this is the case: much behaviour appears 'prohibited' or 'proscribed'; the toys of the world (fame, reputation, image, wealth, worldly success) are either absent, hidden, or ignored.

The truth is the reverse: nothing is prohibited or proscribed; thinking and behaviour are set aside merely because they do not bring health, happiness, harmony, love, joy, peace, or connection; the joys are invisible, and the freedoms, impalpable.

Moreover, the freedom from the constraints of the world will appear to be a direct attack on the ego, which, in a sense it is, although it is not the person who is under threat but the ego itself, which is an illusion, so there is no real attack at all. If the person is still identified with the ego, the attack will seem real and be defended against with counter-attack.

In around 1998 I met someone of extraordinary peace. I remember being frightened of him and devaluing everything he was. I now realise, many years later, that he 'had' what I have since sought, but I was too asleep to see it.