Archive Post : Imagine (9/16/2011)

I’m sitting here, cheekbones glistening with a cry I didn’t know I had in me. I’ve listened to John Lennon’s “Imagine” somewhere around 125,000 times, I’m almost certain. Sometimes it makes me cry, sometimes it makes me smile and other times I just sing along and don’t even realize the poignancy of it. But after the question posed in our eastern religions class about the concept that every religion believes… no… factually KNOWS that there way to “God” is the only way. Passionately knowing that they are right and everyone else is wrong. That’s the very essence of conviction, right, and more specifically, central to keeping one’s faith.

If I pull away, from the way I was raised, the idea that I have been conditioned to and try to be open it still is a baffling concept. How can they all be right? How can only one be right? How can that notion actually exist in the same place. WHO is right? This isn’t a question of tolerance. It’s a question of FACT.

Let me start here. At the base of this, really, I don’t know what’s out there. I know there are vast amounts of space. I know that there is ground… sky… a sun… a universe… I know that below me is a deep descent through various layers of matter which leads to a core. I don’t have proof of a higher power and even if I believe “He/She” is there or want to BELIEVE he’s there, it just isn’t tangible in the physical sense. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY of knowing who is “right”, in the factual application of religion. It deals with those things we cannot touch or see. The spiritual path is based on something occurring inside us. Conviction is very real and very powerful but you cannot touch or see a conviction, only the effect of it on the carrier. All these religions, believing they are right and the rest of the world is lost, it can co-exist because no amount of oppression, restriction, war, famine, disease, anger or love can take away what you feel and what you KNOW.

In the last year, well… in the last seven years the person I am and the person I am becoming is evolving. My journey to being enlightened, to being a better human, to being closer to a meaningful “sacredness” is based not on having to know I’m right. It’s based on accepting that no matter what lies beyond this blink of a life I am connected. Connected to the Buddha, connected to Jesus, connected to the person I sit next to in class, to the people in undeveloped corners of the world that I will never meet. We are all here, experiencing this. I don’t know who is right but I don’t feel lost. I feel a part of something beautiful. That within this “suffering” of a life, I am, in fact, able to hold it in the right place and am learning to live in the right way. The tragedy to me is that people kill other people over these sorts of convictions or on a much smaller level, people judge so harshly and hatefully because of them.

“…you may say, I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one…”