Waiting for Godot/Where is my Guru?

Like any other good, if late-born, Hippie, I was always drawn to Eastern spirituality...Hinduism mostly, though I looked at the Quran and familiarized myself with Buddhism. The problem was that emotional deprivation and psychological wounds almost always rendered my spiritual forays suspect:  was it God for God's own sake and spiritual liberation I was seeking, or just a way to lose myself; a way to hide in Something Greater Outside Of Me, or in other words, a Parent Substitute, that I really wanted?  Everything in the realm of truth and beauty is paradoxical. My understanding of paradox is:  two things appearing to be opposite, or contradictory, or in conflict, which are both true. These apparent contradictions are reconciled in a transcendant reality. (Thesis, antithesis, synthesis).  For example, the two, seemingly opposite, dominant aspects of God would be Mercy/Grace and Rigor/Judgement based on the moral law (Chesed and Gevurah).  To humans these appear to be opposite qualities but if I say, God's justice is merciful and His mercy is just, I am making a true statement. If I say that in God, mercy and justice are the same, I am still telling the truth. They are true statemrnts because God's will is perfect.  Likewise I can say that unless you die there is no life in you, or:  we surrender to win; we keep what we have by giving it away; we attain joy only through suffering, etc.  As in dreams and poetry, paradox manifests somehow infinite layers and applications of meaning simultaneously. Like true art, poetry, or a dream/vision, the mystical encounter must change you. If you were not changed, then you were not really wanting to change and were blocked from transformation. 

What is the paradox of spirituality? For me it was  a sincere desire for God (a relationship with Whom, I viewed as freedom) continually being thwarted by overwhelming personal psychological damage.  Anytime I sought to immerse myself in esoteric teachings there was a huge caveat attached that defeated any hope for a good result: NOT APPLICABLE TO DAMAGED PEOPLE.  For example, most applied spiritual paths require tremendous discipline, consistent application and practice, and most especially, a Teacher or Guru to guide one (or at least a Fellowship, Community, or Church).   Some of the Westerners who journeyed to India and elsewhere in order to seek alternative spiritual paths were able to transcend this difficulty, as for example in the case of Ram Dass, and likely in the case of Jai Uttal. Yet there were so many who lost their way to cults such as that of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (OSHO), Bikram Choudury, the Buddhafield, etc.  I am sure that if I had journeyed to the East (literally or figuratively), in search of a guru or a Sufi master, I'd have been one of those ending up in a cult...And it never seemed as though reading and studying on my own was ever going to change me much...Once I visited the ISKON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) temple here in Houston. I had been to the gift shop but never been present for a devotional service. I found a lot of beauty there but could not bring myself to any type of willingness to pay homage or obeisance before any of the dieties represented in the temple. I recall reading about the struggle to bow to his guru recounted by one of the Westerners-gone-Eastern; I believe he reconciled himself to it with the thought that his guru was a manifestation of God, and saw the necessity of prostrating himself as a means to increase his love...I can understand the uses of surrender, but I cannot do it before any human person, let alone, authority, even as a representative/incarnation of God, or as a means to glimpse the divine nature within my guru, and thus, myself (and thus, others)...

The closest I came to a personal surrender to a personal God was in Christian churches. Jesus, and later, Yeshua, is the only guru I have ever known..Yet I have increasingly become so intolerant of religion and so condemning of the fruits of religion, that I could not now submit or seek a path of spirituality within a Catholic or Christian Evangelical tradition.  What remains for me is to sit in the back pew and have my little talk with God, alone.

Legalism seems to be present in all organized religion, including Hinduism and Buddhism. That is to say, when it comes to devoting oneself to a Practice concerning the spiritual life, so many teachings become directives, even unto the most seemingly superficial and minute details, upon which one's salvation/liberation/nirvana is said to depend:  You Must Do This Or Else.  Spiritual movements seem to  begin with ecstatic, mystical eruptions of grace, renewal, and conversion (teshuva), and end with calcification, legalism, paralysis, spiritual stagnation and corruption.  You go from Bal Shem Tov, and dancing and singing Chasidim loving all people and creation and rejecting legalism and end up with modern Haredi Ultra Orthodox who spit on children, and Rabbis who wrap themselves up in plastic sheeting on airplanes to prevent themselves from being defiled by molecules shed by women which are floating in the air around them.

Of course the ultimate paradox is that usually it is the wounded or somehow unfulfilled individuals who are most motivated to seek God or spiritual liberation...yet at the same time it is the most damaged people psychologically who suffer the greatest obstacles in their path to maturity and actualization and the attainment of spiritual liberation. Which is the reason, I guess, that my Higher Power is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, and a Wonded Healer.  All that is left for me is to keep going and to accept What Is, and to trust that if I act in accordance with my spiritual principles, living as much as possible in the Now, and keeping as honest as possible by grace, all will be well.  

1. parrot/ox t-shirt 

2. Ram Dass

3. Spirit Room CD cover, Jai Uttal 

4. Tree of Life, Kabbalah 

5. Last Supper, painting by Merab Abramishvili