head in the sky, feet in the mud: A quiet Tree

I now understand where I may have gotten my feeling of not wanting to do any of the options offered: my dad (thanks malcolm!). He started off wanting to be a math professor, and then, in collage, realizing he wouldn't be able to be the best at it, thought, "what's the point, if I'm not going to be the best?" and went to law school. Finishing law school (at Harvard, no less) he realized, "hey, being a lawyer sucks." and went to the peace core. Which was fun, and got him some good shirts and a problem with spicy foods. And then finally he found a spiritual organization to be a part of, "ah, this is what I want. Get enlightened. Finally, something worth doing."

And that's basically where I landed, abit without the benefit of law school. Spiritual revelation has such a deep and powerful sense of meaning, that every worldly pursuit pales in comparison to the meaningfulness and return on investment in searching for God.

However...

The reason I got myself into all the nature skills I did, was I looked around me and saw a lot of ungrounded people. People who were afraid of living, and so lived in there heads, in there meditation halls, and only interacted with the world as much as necessary to maintain life support. And I saw I was one of those people, deeply one of those people, and I wanted out. Still for my same old reason of spiritual enlightenment, of course, but now that phrase had more significance. It meant something bigger. It meant Life. And that meant the really, truly scary thing, living, had to be faced. So I started facing it. It was scary as all hell and it hurt and I was really bad at following through with it. But I kept pushing, and eventually I looked back, and life was better, really, truly better, for my journey. And that is something that I couldn't say of all my mental-spiritual merry-go-rounds. Spiritual highs are wonderful, but they go. Life is what is left behind. So if you really want all the nice stuff talked about in spiritual circles, you need to bring the spirit to the earth. That is the whole point of this thing called 'enlightenment.'

I mean, reality is already reality, God is already Everything. If realizing that was enlightenment, then that would be a quick trip. What makes it a life long journey, and what makes that realization juicy, is living that reality.

That's what I'm working on now. And it may call for doing something other than 'spiritual' stuff.

I'm not sure whether that means I have to find something I'm passionate about, or if I have to find- oh, ok, I guess I do know, because it can't be that, and it must be more like finding the passionate part of myself. The part that cares, about life, about living. About doing stuff. Maybe I don't have to be passionate about it. maybe it's enough to just quietly love chopping the wood and carrying the water. That seems more doable.

There's a sign on my recycling bin, I didn't put it there, it says, "tree's love quietly." that's true of me, too.