Love, Knowingness, Bliss

In the category of slightly surreal:

I'm stretched out on my bed after a weirdly emotional reaction to a memory of an argument I had with my father. I have a blackout mask over my eyes so the light from my computer monitor won't distract me from my breathing. I'm listening to a well-known self-help-style guru guide me through the Heart Sutra. I'm trying desperately not to feel like some sort of spiritual hack--a horrible cliche of an ex-Catholic, ex-Christian trying to find some solace in Eastern Traditions. Here I am, a former student of theology in a tradition that prizes intellectual inquiry, a lover of science and proponent of the scientific method, engaging the most new-agey, ridiculous "I'm-spiritual-but-not-religious" activity I can imagine. I'm doing a meditation recommended by my therapist, not by my spiritual director. I can practically feel all my graduate school friends twitching in their sleep for reasons unknown to them

In the category of unsurprising:

I am "intensely cognitive, with a disconnect between my mind and my heart." Alternately, "I need to intellectualize everything with my giant fucking brain." I'll let you guess which words are mine. I've been told repeatedly, irritatingly, constantly, that my being intensely cognitive and prone to intellectualizing the shit out of everything is a coping mechanism, the result of dealing with an over-active and apparently out-sized amygdala dealing with a stoic Midwestern society.

"So what?" Has always been my response. Overly cognitive, I ask you. I search for logic flaws in my emotional reaction to things. If that's a coping mechanism (and I'm not entirely convinced it is) who fucking cares? It's not as if I'm taking drug or drinking or engaging in risky behaviors. Hell, I don't even smoke anymore. I'm still a high-functioning member of society even if it takes me two weeks to process an emotion. Big whoop.

This, I am told, is No Way to Live My Life.

In the category of unfamiliar:

The self-helpy meditation works. I mean, it really works. My breathing and pulse slow waaaaaaay down. I stop crying. When outside thoughts intrude on the mantra of "Love . . . Knowingness . . . Bliss . . . Love" I imagine them as wisps of blue-grey smoke drifting away. At the end of the meditation, I rip off my mask and shut off my computer. I still feel like a religious fraud, but I also drop almost instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep, a new experience for me.

In the morning, I have that gross-morning-after-some-big-mistakes feeling. I'm a little galled by the fact that a SELF-HELP guru's meditation ON SPOTIFY soothe me so completely. Can you get any more prosaic?

In the category of foolishness:

I suspect the universe is laughing at me. I want religion, faith, spiritual attainment to be one way. I want it to be Tenebrae at the Basilica. I want it to be Dante in the original Italian and scored by Mozart. I want it to be meditation in a Tibetan monastery as the sun rises over snow-capped mountains. I want spirituality and fulfillment not to have any relation to my amygdala or pre-frontral cortex or the amount of norepinephrine I produce. That's what I would like. What I suspect, what I know is that faith, for me at least, is not going to be found in front of a German high altar or a Vatican II church. Enlightenment is not going to happen at a Japanese Zen retreat house. Fulfillment will not come by renouncing all that I have and living retired from the hullabaloo of daily life.

Rather, these things are going to come about as the result of getting up every day and forcing myself to eat breakfast. Of going to work and doing my best. Of loving my family and friends and being kind to those around me. And much to my chagrin, what finally integrates my heart and my head, what finally makes me less intensely cognitive, less prone to intellectualizing, will not be dense theological treatises or transcendent moments meditating on the beach. It's quite possible that it will be crawling into bed each night and listening as a self-help-style guru repeats "Love . . . Knowingness . . . Bliss . . . Love . . . Knowingness . . . Bliss . . .Love . . ."