Marcel Proust once said, "We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us...." I have spent many years on my journey wandering the fields of religion, philosophy, science, and spirituality for both wisdom and ultimate truth. That journey has been a crazy one that has taken me through a variety of philosophies, ideologies, faiths, and belief systems. In it, I have never strayed from the belief that there is an ultimate objective, a larger "other" that's out there waiting to be found.
Call it God, Jesus, Allah, Gnosis, Buddha, Cosmos, Heaven, Nirvana, Moksha, whatever. The fact of the matter is, there is something that we all sense is greater than us--a larger reality waiting to be grasped, if not at the physical level, at least, on some higher spiritual plane. I, personally, have had too many unexplainable, mystical experiences to believe otherwise. As a result, humans have constructed vast, complex organizational structures designed to focus a collective effort on obtaining this "other" through the use of ceremonies, spiritual practices, metaphysical writings, and common social bonds. Our own particular American manifestation of this is the Christian Church, an organization that, very obviously, has roots much farther than just the boundaries of contemporary American society. Because of the circumstances of my own sociocultural/historical background, this wound up being the vehicle for shaping my own particular spiritual and religious views, for better or for worse.
As a result, I have appreciated and drawn comfort from many of the teachings of Christianity. It is the faith of my childhood and of my family. I think there is much spiritual truth that has been attained through the growth of the Christian religion, in spite of much of the riff-raff that has also been generated by it among its own adherents. Thomas Jefferson once remarked that picking out the most noble parts of the New Testament teachings from the common, vulgar biases of the New Testament writers was like picking "diamonds from a dunghill." There lies among these sometimes savage writings sparkling nuggets of gold that attest to the human ability to ascertain divine truth among the garbage of our wounded, biased psyches.
Which brings me to my ultimate point. A spiritual journey is ultimately an independent journey. One can seek guides, both written and verbal, intuitive and reasoned, and when all is said and done there is nothing to guarantee that the goal has been rightly attained or that the journey has even been concluded, at least not this side of eternity. Whether one travels this road through the well-worn paths of organized religion, or the lonely wooded trails of individual esotericism, there is no right or wrong journey, no surefire flash of inspiration to let one know that they have arrived. There is just...the journey.
It's taken me 43 years of life to understand this. After all of the doctrinal haggling, apologetical defending, endless debating over scriptural and doctrinal minutiae, and the restless fretting and worrying over the fate of mankind's souls, I have finally obtained peace in understanding that the process is the goal. The answer comes ultimately when one understands that peace is achieved through grasping the rationale behind the process.
If there's one thing that's clear, it's that God is a master at weaving the evolutionary thread of the universe into the final, majestic cosmological quilt. Through a process that is undeniably ingenious, he/she/it has set in a motion an ever-changing process that never allows us to nail down the specifics of it all. The unending motion of the cosmological evolution forces us into an unending pursuit of ultimate reality which changes like the cosmological winds. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin articulated this concept in beautiful, poetic language when he said,
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth." (Hymn of the Universe)
If the genesis of the universe is, itself, a process, then it would only follow that the the ultimate teleos of all things would also be a process. One cannot even begin to apprehend ultimate truth if one is unwilling to acknowledge the ever-changing nature of nature. The mere fact that reality is constantly changing and evolving has to be factored into any serious spiritual pursuit of ultimate truth. The goalposts are always moving.
And, thus, I have arrived at the conclusion of my spiritual journey, which is to acknowledge that the journey is never-ending. As it stands, I really have very little desire for organized religion of any kind. I know that there is something there to offer to some, but for my place on the travelling road, there is nothing within the organized church to satiate my spiritual needs. I have no place for labels or categories, and, indeed, there are really none that can fit me at the moment. My Facebook profile reflects my religious beliefs as "Esoteric" which is the best quantifier I can find to describe where I'm at currently. My theurgical and contemplative meditations bring me great amounts of emotional, psychological, and spiritual peace, which, in the final analysis, is the ultimate goal of any spiritual pursuit. Was it not Jesus himself who said,
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matt. 11: 28-30 -- NIV)
Peace is the only marker to identify that one's spiritual journey is well along the path of enlightenment. Does this mean that I no longer read or study, or pursue knowledge? Certainly not. As I stated, I am heavily involved in the practice of theurgy and contemplative meditation, which has centered me and allowed me some control over my inner self. I am also immersed in a deep study of Ken Wilber's integral spirituality, of which I am gaining great insights into my own spiritual evolution and the knowledge that supports it. But I certainly anticipate that my path will move me beyond these pursuits into other, deeper insights. Thus is the nature of the spiritual path.
Martin Luther once declared, when summoned before the Diet of Worms in 1521, that, "Here I stand. I can do no other." Such stasis, in reality, does not exist. One never "stands" in one's spiritual journey. A more accurate reflection of our spiritual reality is "From hence, I journey forward. I can do no other." Anything else is merely delusion.