At bottom, spirituality is about change.  Religion may be about power and the ability to manipulate it, about control and making certain the uncertainties.  But spirituality is about being changed.  Whatever reasons people have for taking up religion, people seek after spiritual experience because they are dissatisfied with who it is they are. 

 

This is no surprise.  People have been fleeing the human condition since they began to record, or preserve, their thoughts and aspirations. 

 

There are many manifestations of this impulse to escape.  Denial, distraction, addiction are three of the negative ways that have western culture pretty much on the ropes, at the moment.  As we party on, consuming and posturing, we know that we are still living in a Poe story and that the Red Death will unmask at some turn, taking us away from our meaningless--and, contrary to appearances--painful existence.  Even for the most accomplished and successful of us Shelly's summation from a broken statue found in the desert still tells the tale:  "My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings.  Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."  And all around the still and barren sands stretch away.  And we cannot do anything about it. 

 

To one extent or another we are all conscious of this.  We all know that's the score, although we all do our best to deny it or, at best, live around the fact.  There are various responses to this consciousness, but we all have it.

 

It's that consciousness I took to my first Quaker meeting.  I was not looking for God.  I was not looking for a solution to the human condition.  But, after a number of years of regular attendance I began to see one.  I began to see that the solution was a change not in the human condition but in me.  And I began to see that I could make this change happen.  Things might not be falling into place intellectually for me--I still understood what was what with the human condition--but emotionally I saw I was becoming ...  I was becoming.

 

 

 

 

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