Day 252: Spirituality, bitterness and spite

09062013

I have been visiting a lot of buddhist temples and shinto shrines while I have been in Japan, and I have made a habit out of doing the traditional prayer ritual at some of the places I visit. I have used this ritualized way of slowing oneself down to bring myself back to breath and to “map out” who I am and where I'm at during the moment of prayer, and I have made small commitments and realignments while doing so. So instead of wishing for all the good things from a god above I have made assessments on how to actually work my way through my challenges.

During my visits I have also come to re-address spirituality. On some of the temples/shrines I have had experiences where I have sensed the “energy” of the place – something I did a lot when I was more into spirituality and which I'm still not sure to be a genuine sensation of something present or a paranoia created in my mind. What I have noticed to be growing out of this, though, is a bitterness towards habitualized spirituality, religion and prayer.

In Japan the main religions, buddhism and shinto, are practiced mostly out of habit, and people who are actually “into” the religion are considered a little bit odd or old-fashioned, just like in the culture I grew up in. Regardless of this it is common to visit the temples/shrines at least during the big holidays to wish for a long, healthy and prosperous life – to get the blessing of the gods, you know, just in case.

I have noticed myself starting to resent the places that are really big and popular among locals and tourists, marking them as “having lost their spirit”, something that I sense to still be present in the smaller and more remote locations. I have been growing spite towards the people who walk through the temple areas snapping pictures, buying amulets, praying for their fantasies to come true – and I have not realized that I do not know what all these hundreds and thousands of people actually experience within themselves – that I have been creating and believing an unfair generalization with which I have separated myself from others in order to feel “special” because “I know” and “they don't”. I have also made “them” different from myself by not considering how the desire to ask for assistance from gods and spirits is created out of reasons that are fully comprehendible to me because I am a human being just like the others; the others are just like me in an earlier stage of time, but I would rather resent them than sympathize with them because I have not come to terms with my own fears and uncertainties.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with anger and sadness to the loss of purpose I have seen in places that have been dedicated to spirituality, which to me represents contemplation, humility, presence, meditation, gratefulness and self-awareness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with anger and sadness when a place that used to be dedicated to spirituality in the sense I understand it has become a place to buy yourself a ticket to heaven and salvation – not realizing that religion itself is founded on fear and the attempt to save oneself and that these temples/shrines I have visited have most likely never been dedicated to spirituality in the sense I understand it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to uphold an idealized image of what the spiritualized places have been in the past so that I could blame their current state on the people that I find in them today, not realizing that these places have already been founded and built on fear and greed and that the ideal I believe in may have not ever existed – and that the responsibility for their usage and status cannot be shoved onto anyone but all of us who accept and allow it to continue existing that way.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I have reacted with anger to what I have seen at the temples and shrines, to channel my anger and frustration onto the people who are present and filter my perception of them through my reaction of anger, thus creating a mind-map generalization titled [people at holy places] which contains the attributes [ignorant / lazy / self-centered], through which I have then seen everyone to be contained in this generalization and separated their actions and motivations from myself, not seeing, realizing and understanding that the reasons for their actions are such that I myself have lived according to and would still be fully capable of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to people “defiling” the places I have defined as “holy” when I have perceived and believed their motivations to be “unpure” - not realizing that I am looking at the other through my reaction of anger and thus only seeing what I want to see (separation).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe my definition of “holy places” unquestioned.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that a location anywhere in the physical reality is just a location – a place in time, space and matter – and that all other meanings, purposes and values for the place are created in the conceptual reality which is not actually concretely here in any other way than through the actions we accept and allow ourselves to commit.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that “holy places” are holy to me only because I have decided to believe so.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that while it is alright to have these “holy places” as a symbol or a reminder of the qualities I wish to develop in myself, it is self-deception to believe my interpretation and usage of these physical locations to be “the one and only truth” according to which everyone should live.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by being angry at people who utilize the “holy places” in their own ways I am demanding the world to live “my way” instead of looking at what is actually being done and whether or not it is best for all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the people at “holy places” by making myself blind to what moves them to act the way they do and to be there in the first place.

I commit myself to no longer judge the people at the “holy places” I visit - be it temples, shrines, churches or mosques – and to instead place myself in their shoes to see, realize and understand why it is they are here and what it is that moves them – and I commit myself to do this within and as the realization that these people are no different from me and are motivated by the same fear that drives me.

I commit myself to study religious and spiritual practices from within the realization that my perception of their origin has been idealized and that I do not actually know how these practices have been established.

I commit myself to carry responsibility for the consequences of the practice of religion and spirituality by not participating in practices that I see to have harmful consequences and by becoming aware of the consequences of the practices that I do attend to.