“In their dynamic they resemble an illusion, mirage, dream or reflected image.” That is what The Tibetan Book of the Dead says about phenomena.

If I understand this right it makes a lot of sense and has been something I have been grappling with as of late. Yesterday I felt disturbed by the fact that I could never truly understand reality and that was freaking me out. This one statement just might put many things into perspective for me and possibly start me down a path of healing.

When I was Mormon I had two experiences that I deemed very powerful spiritual experiences. It was one of the reasons it took me so long to leave the faith even when doubts weighed so heavy in my heart that I began to be physically ill.

I had to let those “spiritual” experiences go and with that a chunk of trust in myself fell away. Not only that how could I have been so wrong all of those 15 years that I dedicated myself to the Mormon church? Ouch talk about a punch in the face of being able to discern the true  nature of what is actually going on in my world.

When I stopped believing It was literally like a thick layer of belief fell away in my mind and I saw the world in a whole new way. At first it was freeing, exciting and a massive relief.

While I was in the church I had to go against many of my instincts all under the umbrella that I couldn’t understand gods mind. If something seemed wrong and hurtful some how some way it wasn’t. 

 My first heart break was when I learned that god didn’t condone gay “actions”.  As it is put. You can be gay but you can’t act on it.  It didn’t make sense to me and it seemed cruel. The same with blacks not being able to receive the priesthood. These are just a couple of examples of where I chose to bypass my own instincts on a subject and repeatedly shove down dissonant thoughts. 

But when I left religion it became a paradox. I could now trust those instincts that I had been repressing but I had to discount very powerful spiritual experiences, at least the one I had when I was praying to ask if the Book of Mormon was true.  The other one happened when I asked God to help me feel his love and the love of Jesus Christ.  Both times I had been under an extreme amount of emotional upheaval. It was like some giant hand scooped out all of the pain and filled me with joy. How could I let those go?

I came to the conclusion that something about my mind and body tricked me.  Once I started believing that, my confidence in discerning  reality began to suffer. I even began to wonder how life could be worth living if I had to spend it in a pit of uncertain darkness while  not being able to trust anything, not God, not myself…

The more I’ve studied the more I’ve come to learn that there is so much out there that we just don’t understand. Maybe part of survival and the process of growth towards a greater inderstanding and the removal of suffering is putting a pictue on what we experience. We do the best we can with what we know.

Maybe we learn a little piece of the puzzle.

“All phenomena are naturally uncreated.  They neither cease, neither come nor go. They are without object referent, signless, ineffable, and free from thought”

Well that’s a chunk to chew on and now my question is how does mental illness and disability that affects the senses come into play?

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