The Pageless Book

Photo above by Christina Rutz. Photo of statue by Giovanni. Photo of storm by Caio Basilio.

My spirituality and religion have been evolving and changing as long as I can remember. I remember as a five or six year old boy questioning whether God existed at all, and being scared sleepless at the thought of wasting away in Hell. I couldn’t understand how adults could be so sure; I felt as if I was missing a piece of the puzzle. There had to be a secret truth hidden by the adults from my young eye, or so I reasoned. Although I had tried to find it in the Bible itself, and within the cheep Encyclopedia that had adorned our bookcase for so many years, I did not think I was getting anywhere.

During my middle school years, I started investigating meditation, which would later become the corner stone of my spiritual development. By the end of middle school, my relationship with the Christian religion had become strained. Christianity did not feed my need for spirituality, and regarding my beliefs I felt more afraid then comforted. My freshman year in High School was the turning point in my relationship with religion. The English teacher I had was teaching how to interpret the book The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and in doing so, exposed me to Buddhism. Through my attempts in understanding the relationship between this eastern religion and the rule-book for teenage angst, I had seen a glimmer of something for which I had yearned for so long that I had become numb to my hunger. I felt spiritual.

I was positive that I had found the truth, but did not want to discard Christianity without giving it a fair chance. That year, over Christmas break, I vowed to open myself to Christianity one last time to see if it could feed that hunger the same way that Buddhism had. In my teenage mind, a fair chance would be to sit through a Christmas Eve Service, given by a Lutheran Minister that I had only known of peripherally, in the church of my grandparents which I rarely visited. My reasoning was that if I was meant to be a Christian, it would feed that spiritual hunger the same way that Buddhism had. Christmas Eve Service in my grandparents’ church started and ended without one morsel of divine warmth. That evening, I opened my gifts in the grim satisfaction that I was no longer a Christian.

After a conversation with my mother about religion, I was done with Jesus and his teachings. Quickly, my youthful dedication to Buddhism turned to more curiosity. How could I be sure that Buddhism was the foundation of truth if I had not looked into other religions? This, of course, led to an influx of experimentation and seeking out knowledge of other religions.

Over the next few years of my life, a pattern would emerge. I would look into one religion, setting aside what I had learned of the religion before. Slowly I gained an understanding of how all religions and spiritual practices are interconnected. Each of the so-called ancient or “true” religions evolved, and I began to see how they evolved. During this time of experimentation, I learned that each spiritual leader of every tribe had reinvented the spiritual practices of humanity every generation since we had become aware of the divine.

The Gated Emptiness began as an experiment in automatic writing that quickly spiraled out of my control. I wanted to be like the great teachers and reinvent religion for myself. Through long nights and deep meditation, I pieced together the text from flashes of insight. When finally faced with the finished product, I had thought I had finally snapped. The result both surprised and frightened me. I left the document on my hard drive to never be read, completely untouched until recently.

Last winter, I found the Gated Emptiness hidden on my hard drive and studied its contents. Slowly, I became more enamored with its basic message - God does not judge or punish, and that there is a lot more to spirituality than following someone else’s idea of what spirituality should be. It may be archaic in places, as it speaks in the symbolic language of Qabalistic mythology, but the majority of the document is very clear.

The more I look around, the more I find messages similar to what is said in the Gated Emptiness, pointing me in the right direction. Whether it is because of the influences other religions have had on myself or that all religions contain the same kernal of truth, I can say. All I know is that I am here to make the world a better place through teaching others how to relate to the Divine. I am not here to start a new religion, but to help each person find their own faith. To become a servant of God is to become a servant of mankind. I am going back to school to become a Minister. Of all the world’s religions and denominations, the only organization that I had found that allows for the type of beliefs and ideas that I hold is Unitarian Universalism. As such, I will be working to become a Unitarian Universalist Minister.

I realize now that I have always felt that calling, I just didn’t understand. The voice of the Divine is like a whisper; hear it once and think that you are hearing things, hear it twice and turn your head, hear it three times and you follow. That is my experience with the Divine. There will be hard times ahead for me, that is assured. I will be ridiculed and challenged, I will be afraid and lonely at times, and I will come to doubt my faith in humanity and in God - just beyond those times I know I will hear the voice again.

This pageless book, this website, is my testimony of the journey I am undertaking. I am sharing with you my thoughts, struggles, and what I am learning while on my journey to become a Minister. I am doing this because I hope that you will permit me to learn though my interactions with you. Regardless of what I learn, you will have my gratitude. Thank you for reading, and Namaste.