A Confession and A Calling

Rising to the challenge of Being in an Age of Distraction

I wish to confess my struggles to you.

I wish to share with you my deepest yearning… and my deepest fear. They are one and the same.

After seven years of writing, I believe I have established a relationship of trust with you, my readers, whereby I can speak with ruthless honesty about myself. And so I will. What I am sharing now is both a confession… and a calling.

I’ve been the spiritual iconoclast for so long that I seem to have forgetten that I started upon this path not to oppose but to enable. There is a jewel at the heart of existence waiting to be discovered by each of us. Yet, it is concealed beneath so much delusion and distraction that most will only get a glimpse of it in their lifetimes.

The primordial forces of being and Maya, clarity and delusion, are forever vying for the attention of awareness.

Maya is the hypnotic architecture of distraction. Being is the silent substrate beneath it. One captures. The other calls.

When I look out at the world and the trajectory human society has taken it is clear that our species has doubled down on delusion. With the information age, with the advent of artificial intelligence and the rise of the ‘attention economy’ - it is no longer a secret that “awareness” is the resource at stake. And the whole world is competing to capture it. For awareness is the one true power in this universe and s/he who controls our awareness lays claim to our power.

Maya is loud. Convincing. Addicting.

She promises rewards and threatens punishment to keep our attention focused and undeviating.

She seduces with brilliance, novelty and noise. She promises transcendence but keeps us spinning in abstraction.

Look around.

We are on the cusp of inhabiting yet another layer of delusion. A hyperreal virtual realm that people will one day conflate with being reality. Where the spirit is reduced to a brand and the attention span, a commodity.

And being? Being doesn’t compete.

Being pulls softly at the attention with subtle reminders and spontaneous inspirations. Strange serendipities and moments of surrealness.

It waits - for a sliver of space to appear, in the seemingly endless barrage of distractions, to make itself known.

Being doesn’t capture. It doesn’t demand. It doesn’t convince.

It invites.

And, when it touches our attention, it has the power to dispel a lifetime of delusion.

Today, I see a world in which the spiritual impulse is being sanitized out of existence. The world wants our productivity, not our presence.

The awareness of being. The deep desire to orient one’s life, one’s perspective and one’s value system in tribute to it. Such things are irrelevant, even nonsensical, to this world.

Most of what constitutes “spirituality” today is just Maya in sacred drag. She is our collective ego. And she is crafty, adaptable and will do anything to maintain her dominion over awareness…

And yet, opposing forces birth evolution. As delusion intensifies, so must devotion. As distraction expands, so must depth.

We must become that counterbalance. By keeping that spiritual flame alive within the collective human heart even as it flickers within the tornado of cultural shifts and technological transitions.

This brings me to my confession of my deepest yearning and fear…

When I was in my early teens, I sat in a dark room and whispered the words, “I want to know God”. Something heard me and my spiritual path began.

In my twenties, amidst deep suffering, I experienced an awakening. Being revealed itself to me in its full splendor as the foundation of all things. My reorientation and devotion to being began.

In my thirties, I had a dream of a black panther. Terrifying, even though caged, it stepped through the bars and embraced me. “Now go tell the people”, it said. I began sharing my reflections publicly on the internet.

A few nights ago, in my early forties, I saw the panther again. This time emaciated. Docile. Fading. And I knew: I have let the wild in me wither. I have succumbed to complacency. I have protected my freedom by withholding my fire.

That dream was a call to take the next leap of faith, no matter the risk. To up the ante once again.

I believe - no, I feel in my bones - that I am called to a greater responsibility. I always have been. Yet, I am also daunted by it. I’ve hidden behind my critiques of institutions, my refusal to gather community, my suspicion of adoration and projection.

Because I’ve seen what happens when spiritual authority goes unexamined. I’ve seen great teachers crumble under the weight of their own image, seduced by the very power they swore they’d transcend.

For when Being chooses you, Maya takes a special interest in you as well.

She is subtle. She flatters. She tempts. She uses fear and praise in equal measure to twist your clarity and integrity. And your ego is her undercover agent. Implanted within your sovereign spirit, to influence you in her favor and draw you deeper into delusion.

Can I accept such responsibility without becoming corrupted by the power that accompanies it?

Part of me says, ‘no’. Better to remain in solitude communicating such things from afar. Yet another part of me knows that such hiding only reaffirms the ego. For I take on this responsibility not to “save others” but because my own becoming depends upon it…

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I want to share a vision with you.

For it is as much a collective vision as it is a personal one.

A vision that inspires me and repels me in equal measure.

A vision that has existed for some years now, yet one that I have hesitated to talk about for fear of appearing a hypocrite.

My vision is of a space in this world devoted to being. A physical place. A virtual space. Or a combination of the two. A space that does not belong to me but is enabled by me. A space where people gather not to follow but to remember - together.

A school - not in the conventional sense, not a place of answers - in which we gather to learn the art of being. To guide and support one another in orienting our lives in tribute to it - even in the midst of the everyday, the mundane.

There are no teachers in this school - all are students. Being is the only teacher. My role is to facilitate.

The School of Isness.

While walking my dog a few days ago - the name came to me unexpectedly, while I was preoccupied with something else.

In that moment, I knew it was already real. I had only to find my way to it…

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It is one thing to harbor such yearnings and fears - it is another to express them so that they can no longer remain hidden. It is the first step on the path towards its reality.

Yet, I cannot do this alone.

Not just because I lack the resources. But because I lack the courage.

And because this vision is not mine alone. I know many secretly share it.

So, I ask each of you now if this is a vision that you also share. And if you wish to collaborate with me on building it together.

If this speaks to something in you. If this ignites or even disturbs something within you - I want to hear from you.

Not just encouragement. Truth.

Critique, challenge, skepticism. All of it is welcome.

Because you are the counterweight that keeps this from becoming a stage.

You are the counterbalance that keeps me honest and gives me the courage to take on such responsibility.

If there are those among you who feel called to build this together, then it is already happening.

Let us find our way to it.