by Greg Kincaid
When she leaned over, a strap from her black halter-top slipped off her shoulder. Ted gently put it back.
14
The two humans and the two dogs set off on an evening stroll up the steep mountainside. The sun was beginning to set, and its horizontal rays illuminated the wildflowers that were spread across the meadow, adding sprinkles of red, blue, and green to the rocky landscape.
Ted’s question about the nexus between religion and spirituality was difficult. Angel had tried on churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques as if they were shoes, but she had not been able to find her glass slipper. Angel also knew that her upbringing and education had profoundly affected her attitude. She saw herself as a welcome guest at many destinations but at home in no place in particular or at all places in general.
Angel grabbed Ted’s elbow to make sure she had his attention. When he stopped, she sat down on a large rock and motioned for him to sit beside her. A wisp of spiderweb was stuck in his hair. Angel reached over to remove it and said, “You asked a good question at dinner. The relationship between religion and spirituality is confusing. My mother used to say that religion was for rich folks that wanted to avoid going to hell, and spirituality was for poor Indians that had already lived there and wanted out.”
“You mother sounds interesting.”
“My father used to tell me and my brother that our mother was like a rainbow. She had many colors. It was his way of asking us to forgive her dark hues. He knew that little girls should not grow up waiting for their mothers to sleep off hangovers.” Angel’s voice cracked slightly and she paused. “She was absent from my life in that way. So when she died, nothing really changed. The absence just persists.”
Angel did not cry, but it was clear to Ted that she was going into a sensitive area. Before, the chronic problem with alcohol on America’s reservations had seemed very abstract. Now, with Angel sitting beside him nearly in tears, it felt immediate. “I’m sorry.”
Angel regained her composure. “I will say there was no shame in my mother. She believed that the only way to climb up to heaven was to fall down on earth. In many ways I owe her a great deal for that insight.”
Ted turned his head sideways, slightly surprised. “How is that?”
“Even with all of her drug and alcohol problems, she had a certain spiritual wisdom. My brother and I played on the floor and listened to the sobbing confessions of broken and healing souls at AA meetings. One day I heard my mother say to the group that she was glad she was a drunk and an addict.” Angel knew Ted would find her statement hard to understand. “She believed that we are all broken and it’s only when our brokenness reaches a certain desperate point—the AA people call it hitting bottom—that we can accept our fundamental brokenness and do something about it.”
“With all due respect to your mother, I don’t want to think I have to crash and burn before I can wake up. Is this the third realization: only broken souls can ascend?”
“I think what she was saying was that addiction is a most acute version of the first realization. To varying degrees we are all unawake, but for my mother and others the drowsiness descends to a drunken stupor.”
Without warning, Angel got up and slowly began walking up the trail. She wanted to leave this discussion of her mother behind. It was too painful.
Ted fixed his gaze on her, admiring the grace with which she moved. Then he got to his feet and followed her.
Knowing that their lungs had not yet acclimated to nine thousand feet of altitude, Angel went slowly and tried to gather her thoughts, hoping to find the best way to communicate the third and final realization to her student. She and Ted were now to the marrow of their first day of work together. Whether he kept at it for another week or even a day might turn on this next lesson. She wanted to do it not just well but perfectly. She found a large log by the path and again sat to rest.
Angel’s confidence was faltering. She wasn’t sure that she was doing any of this right and felt ridiculous for thinking she could show anyone else a way, a path, that she could barely find herself. It was not her message that she was trying to pass to Ted. She was just a medium, a go-between, a spiritual Gutenberg trying to get the word out with the only printing press she had—her heart, her soul, and her mind. All she could do was try. She would have to follow the old adage: fake it until you make it. That would have to be enough for now.
Angel broke the silence. “Ted, if you’re ready, I’ll introduce the third realization. After that, I’m going to let Father Chuck take over.”
“Guest lecturers at Spirit Tech?”
“Father Chuck is first on my list of teachers; he’s been a great teacher to me. You’ll be better off getting the lessons directly from him. I don’t want anything to be lost in the translation.”
Ted was surprised at Angel’s apparent lack of confidence in her own skill. For his part, he felt differently about his guide. “I’m very pleased to meet some of your friends, but Angel, you’re the best spiritual consultant I’ve ever met.”
“I’m the only one.”
“True.” Ted knew that there was nothing in the world logical about driving around in a bookmobile doing whatever it was that Angel was trying to do. However naive, he also found her extraordinarily charming. “You’re just the first one that had the guts to try it. Most of the rest of the world is peddling pots and pans; you’re trying to sell something of true value. What could be wrong with that?”
Ted’s acceptance was like a cool, steady rain falling on wilted flowers. It was exactly what Angel needed to hear. “Thank you for understanding.”
Energized, she began the last teaching of the day. “I have stumbled across a way of thinking about the third realization and how religion ties into all of this. Hopefully, I can get it right.”
“Give it a shot.”
“For our purposes, let’s assume there are five major religions in this, what we might call the modern era. Two are culturally based and three are creed based. To be a Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, you simply adopt a belief system. Let’s restrict my discussion to the three creed-based religions and throw in a little Native American spirituality on our pilgrimage together. Is that okay?”
“Four religions are more than enough for me,” Ted said. He smiled and added, “Besides, I don’t want to deal with a turban or a yarmulke.”
“As I suggested earlier, our work together builds one realization on top of another.”
“Sounds like math,” Ted observed.
“When you get this next realization, Ted, you’re going to have a revelation. It’s a big one. Much of what seems crazy to you about religion, politics, and life will start to make better sense.”
“I’ll listen carefully.” Ted’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm; he wanted to know more. “Go ahead. Tell me this important third realization.”
Angel closed her eyes and began. “A gun sight has both a vertical and a horizontal axis. Without both axes, the sight is flawed.”
“Got it,” Ted confirmed without argument.
“Likewise, we need to define and identify a vertical and a horizontal axis for this work we are doing together to wake up. Religions or spiritual schools of thought can be seen as the vertical lines on my scope. We’ll look at Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Native American spirituality. Obviously, there are more schools or religions and an incredible number of splinter groups within each religion, but for now let’s keep it simple. Along these vertical lines are horizontal notches that one might call levels or grades, which we travel along as we mature and become more awake or aware. Some say there are six; others say nine, or more. Let’s keep it easy and just focus on six. This is the spiritual side of the equation.”
“How is that?” Ted asked.
“Do you remember this morning when we spoke of awakening as a process existing on a spectrum?”
“Yes,” Ted answered, “I remember.”
“It turns out that we can measure with a reasonable degree of certainty
the awareness that each of us has obtained along that spectrum. There are patterns. It’s still a bit crude, and I suppose not everyone is in total agreement on this, but a consensus is definitely emerging. The levels define the spectrum from less awake or aware to wide awake or fully realized. At the lower levels the personality has not yet matured or opened up to its fullest potential—it is still pretty much asleep—while at the highest levels we find souls that are more actualized or awakened.”
“So why is it helpful to know the spiritual level?”
“No matter where you are on the spiritual spectrum, with a little help you can gain more awareness, or move up the levels. Essentially, we all have the potential for spiritual genius or full awakening. Any decent geographer knows that you have to realize where you are before you can chart a path to where you want to go.”
“So what does this gun-sight analogy have to do with picking a religion or knowing the difference between religion and spirituality?”
“Let me explain by asking you a question. If your parents were picking a school for you, wouldn’t they want to make sure that they both picked the right institution and placed you in the correct grade with a skilled teacher?”
“Sure,” Ted answered, shrugging.
“It’s the same for us. We must find the best institution or school, but we also have to put you in the appropriate grade. You see, Ted, there is first-grade Catholicism and sixth-grade Catholicism. Same with the rest of the religions. If I show you sixth-grade Catholicism and first-grade Islam, what will happen?”
Ted got it. “I would naturally assume that Catholicism was more sophisticated.”
“It would be like conducting a spelling bee between first graders at P.S. Mecca Elementary and sixth graders at St. Mary’s and then, from the number of correct answers alone, asking you to pick the better school.”
“I see the problem.”
“If I introduced you to Mrs. Smith’s sixth-grade classroom before you were ready, when you were still trying to learn the alphabet, what would you think about her curriculum?”
“I might assume that Mrs. Smith was teaching gibberish.” Ted had a sudden realization. “We do that all the time, don’t we?”
“All the time and on many different levels. And Ted, do you know who makes the most fun of the first graders?”
Recognizing a rhetorical question when he heard one, Ted said, “Tell me.”
Angel’s voice rose as she swatted at a fly stubbornly resting on her nose. “The second graders! And now you should be able to recognize one of the biggest problems in the world today and the reason why we find it so hard to talk to each other about religion and politics. But just in case you don’t, I’ll tell you. We assume that our differences are at the vertical level—which religions or even denominations within religions we choose to follow—but in fact our real differences, and the root of much of the tension in the world, rest in the horizontal levels that mark our spiritual progress in awakening, or the progress we’ve made in ridding ourselves of the harmful aspects of our ego-bound Mr. Digit personalities.”
Ted thought a moment, then said, “I think I understand what you’re saying, but why does it cause a problem that your awareness is at a different level than mine?”
“The fact that we are evolving at different rates is not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
“The problem is that most of the world has stopped evolving at all. Most of the world’s population is developmentally stuck at the lower levels of awareness, and no one is out there showing them the way up the ladder.”
“And you’re saying that they can’t really do it on their own?”
“Most people, and unfortunately almost all of the world’s religious and political parties, fail to recognize that our life goal should be spiritual progress along the vertical axis and not arguing over our differences in dogmas and beliefs along the horizontal axis. As a result, the world is chock-full of first and second graders arguing with each other about their religious and political differences. The world is mired in petty conflict and destructive violence to the point of destroying itself. The human spiritual psyche of most of the world has been devolving into a one-dimensional, flat place, with our self-centered human ego as the head cheerleader screaming its worn-out chant: us versus them. That is why so many people are bailing on religion, frustrated with politics, and hoping for a new world order, something different.”
Ted thought a moment, then said, “It’s entirely too early to know for sure, but I think this third realization is a big one. I can see how getting this one point could really make a difference in our lives.”
“That’s good, Ted. Realizing is indeed a paradigm shift. It is more than a mere knowing or comprehension. That’s what we need you to experience.”
“Well, don’t stop. I’m intrigued. Please continue.”
“When you dig beneath all of the destruction, poverty, greed, and ignorance, you’ll see this is where the disease originates—lack of spiritual development is another way of saying we live in a selfish world, and it’s our challenge to be less selfish. First-grade Catholicism may seem trite, but let me tell you, sixth-grade Catholicism can knock you on your psychic rump faster than a shot of whiskey with a pint of Guinness for a chaser. It’s the same with the other religions. It’s a scary journey for these first and second graders of the world to find the upper-grade classrooms. The longer they linger, the harder it is to move them upward. No one is there to take their little hands and lead them down the hall. There are no directional arrows painted on the walls to allow them to find the way on their own.”
“So why aren’t there more spiritual consultants traveling around. Why is the world resistant to this message? Do you have to get behind the wheel of Bertha and run into them, like you did with me?”
“There is a strong host of impediments to our graduating to the upper levels. We might call this collection of forces evil. It would be easy to describe that evil as simply our natural survival instincts and a culture mired in selfish thinking, but that answer lets people like me, and maybe someday you, off the hook. We need a new, unified spiritual path along the vertical axis that arises independently of our religious affiliations on the horizontal path. We need to create a better map that is generally accessible to the world. Some of us have gotten together and are trying to share this message, but it’s harder to communicate than we imagined.”
Ted returned to his earlier question. “Why isn’t religion doing this for us?”
Angel sighed, wishing it could be so. “Many of the world’s religious institutions not only fail to show you the path to Mrs. Smith’s sixth-grade classroom but, I’m afraid, often discourage the journey too. Can you tell me why?”
Ted anxiously waved his hand in the air, accidentally striking the tree he was leaning against and dislodging bits of bark that rained down on them. Angel smiled, flicked the pieces of bark from her brow, and said, “Go ahead, Mr. Day. Tell me.”
Certain he had this one nailed, Ted blurted out the answer: “They are in the business of selling us the boats we need to leave behind once we have reached the shore.”
“All right. You got it. At the higher levels or grades, the values and beliefs pushed by many organized religious communities to their mainstream first and second graders become irrelevant, even impediments to growth. It is in this context that the Dalai Lama says that religion—the horizontal axis—is not so important. He means it is awakening—the vertical axis—that is important.” Angel thought a moment before continuing. “It was also in this arena that Jesus was brilliant. We’ve lost sight of the fact that Jesus was a religious revolutionary. He was trying desperately to push his community of followers from their first- and second-grade thinking about mores, God, and laws into a more radical and higher place. Like the Buddha, Jesus was the sixth-grade teacher of a millennium. This is how religion so often fails us. It stuck Jesus on a horizontal plane and turned him into a religion instead of a savior.”
“How does the saying go?” Angel remembered the answer to her own question. “Christianity hasn’t failed us; we just haven’t tried it yet! The historical tragedy of Jesus’s life is that his legacy has become mired in first-grade, thinking, and that’s hardly his fault.”
Ted looked confused, so she continued. “Let me put it another way. To convince the first and second graders who primarily populated the world two thousand years ago, and unfortunately still populate so much of our world today, that Jesus was the real deal, his followers just made him out to be the biggest, toughest, fastest first grader out there, and many continue to bang that drum. All religions do this, though.”
“You mean virgin births, jihads, walking on water, rising from the dead, demons, and all the stuff that seems to dominate so much of religious thinking?”
“Religion needs to do more for us: help us move up the ladder of awareness—getting beyond the first-, second-, and even third-grade levels.”
“Still,” Ted said, “it seems like humanity has evolved a long way in two thousand years. So isn’t the trend away from these lower levels?”
“It is hard for many to let go of the prepackaged reality that religion offers. Focusing on true spiritual growth is a rather scary venture.”
“Letting go of knowing?”
“We’ll talk about it later, but God as magic is one of the hallmarks of the first level. At the upper levels the goal is to experience the divine in this life, in the here and now, and not get bogged down in the terminology of the human biographers of Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, or anyone else. While this information was helpful, crucial really, in the early stages of our development, it is not the end point of the journey.”
Ted scratched Argo’s ears and continued, “I’m not sure I’m following every single thing you’re saying, but I must say it’s interesting, and it could very well explain a lot of the craziness in the world.”