disillusionment

Do you think disillusionment is a universal experience? I suspect so, and I'm curious about it.

Jeffrey Kripal, my favorite scholar of religion, tells his graduate students, "You have no business being a scholar of religion until you have lost at least two worlds." When I first heard him say this, I felt it was true, and not only for academics. It made me reflect on my own personal journey.

A few days ago, I enjoyed a podcast interview with Dr. Sravana Borkataky-Varma, who practices and studies Shakta tantra. She spoke of how her graduate studies of her own tradition "lifted the curtain," and what she saw was "not necessarily pretty." The host, Seth Powell, also a scholar of religion, said that his first two years of graduate school resulted in the "deconstruction of those essentialized and romanticized ideas" he acquired through his years of yogic practice. It had been "existentially dismantling."

The word I use is "disillusion."

As I reflected on my own disillusionment with religious and spiritual traditions that I've practiced and studied and that have been deeply meaningful to me, I felt that there was a benevolence behind the pain. Because disillusionment is painful. I continue to process these disillusionments, but my most recent experience gave me a new perspective.

After a decade or more as a student of the Diamond Approach, I suddenly found that I had lost all interest in it. Was it time for something different? Was this another fork in the journey's path? But as I sat with the dryness and vacant feeling, I realized there was no longing for anything spiritual. It wasn't a question of finding something new and different. Everything in the spiritual/religious universe had absolutely no meaning, no gravitational pull.

Unlike other experiences of disillusionment, I didn't feel any sense of loss. I wasn't upset or depressed or adrift. It was as if the gas tank was empty.

Was this some kind of conclusion? I didn't know. Or had I reached a level in my spiritual journey where there was nothing else to long for, no higher state to attain? That didn't seem right. I didn't feel complete or fully awake or whatever term one might use for spiritual attainment.

What to do? Should I leave the Diamond Approach? I could save the money I spent on retreats and such and maybe travel or improve my home. Do I keep attending retreats, individual sessions with my teacher, book groups? I recall showing up for one book group and saying, "I have no idea why I'm here. I have no interest in anything spiritual." Yet, there I was. And I continued to maintain some contact with the Diamond Approach, despite this shift.

What on earth was happening? That was my lodestar: curiosity. I simply remained interested in what was happening. For six months, I kept wondering, what was this state? Not why, because "why" is a conceptual question, and I was interested in the direct experience.

In the past, I had felt compelled to leave whatever path I was on when the gas tank was empty or the engine erupted in flames. I knew this time that the path I was following with the Diamond Approach could embrace this experience. It wasn't a signal to leave; it was a signal to use the tools I gained through this work--curiosity, openness, interest, non-judgment--to stay with what was happening.

And finally, things shifted again. I didn't wake up one day in a different state. I just noticed that I was signing up for a teaching that a few weeks ago would have been of no interest. "Huh. What is happening?" Slowly, I regained some affinity with the spiritual journey, but something had changed. There was no longer any feeling of lack or striving or moving toward a far-off destination. I was following what was unfolding, as curious about my own journey as I would be about another's.

There is a benevolence in disillusionment. It doesn't always resolve in the way my most recent experience did, but as I look back on my history of disillusionment, I see that I have gained a capacity that I didn't have before. Now, I can remain interested. There isn't a need to react, to withdraw, to fight, to despair. Nor, I should say, is there a need to orient toward the benevolence. Just let it be. Let it be.