My Grey Soul

I'm reading Karen Armstrong's Spiral Staircase. She entered into a Catholic convent to become a nun, to find God, but left after seven years due to health problems. She went on to Oxford University, and even though she enjoyed the academic side of her new world, she couldn't quite fit into the outside world of the 60's. This is her book about her "climb out of darkness". It's written honestly, brilliantly, and even though I'm neither a nun, nor an Oxford graduate, I can relate completely when she talks about her spiritual struggles. I think the story she shares is human, everyone goes through similar phases of desolate despair, seeking liberation, and finding fulfillment.

Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights

Courtesy: http://penwith.co.uk/artofeurope/bosch.htm

"Almost certainly, hell was simply the creation of infirm minds like my own... That was a wonderful and liberating thought, but what if God was also a mental aberration? The ecstatic, celestial visions of the saints could be just as fantastic as my own infernal sensations." --Karen Armstrong

I can totally relate to what Karen says - I think this myself many times. Heaven and hell are within me, God and the devil are within me. Compassion and crime are within me. Sin and saintliness are within me. I, like most other people on this planet, am trying to climb my way out of darkness into light, forget the past and step into the present, disregard my nightmares and dwell on my dreams, but it's not that easy, is it?

It's not always as easy as black and white, to distinguish between right and wrong, the joys of the soul versus pleasures of the flesh, what feels right versus what is right, whispers of the self from the temptations of the mind. What felt right five years ago may not feel right now; what is right to one person may not be right to another; one person's wish may be another's person's vice. What gives context and meaning to these rights and wrongs is where a person is on their own evolutionary path. There are no specific places that are heaven and hell - heaven, I believe, is simply peace of mind; and hell is simply a place in my mind that still needs to heal, learn and grow. The devil that drives me to do things is entirely in my mind, and the God that guides me is wholly within my soul. As narcissistic as this sounds, my whole world begins and ends with me, within me. My climb out of darkness into light is my path from myself to myself.

Asatoma Sadgamaya

Tamasoma Jyotirgamaya

Mrityorma Amritangamaya
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

(a Sanskrit prayer that means: Lead me from delusion to truth / From darkness to light / From death to immortality / May there be Peace always)