A2- Wednesday, Sept. 30, 1981 - North Shore News

strictly personal |

Someone asked me the other day what religion
I was, and, you know, they stumped me. Good

question.

I was born a Roman
Catholic, but decided in the
wisdom of my early teens
that God couldn't possibly
exist since the world was
such a cesspool of hatred.

I lapsed into nihilism and
existentialism — at one time
or another trying on just
about every philosophical
“ism” around. In the end, as
far as I could tell, they all
seemed to involve systema-
tizing your delusions ac-
cording to one formula or
another.

Through this period, the
only teachers who made any
sense to me were the Zen
Masters.

“Oriental philosophy”
seemed to offer a nice way
out of the dilemma of having
to choose whether to believe
in God or not. The Zen
thinkers seemed to be saying
we need merely to be aware
of existence, without any
judgements or ideas about it.

Aha. I could relate to that.

Then, in my early 30s, to
my utter astonishment, I
Started noticing miracles
occuring all around.

The first miracle was
aoticing that everything was
a miracle.

In a book published some
time ago I wrote down a des-
cription of this discovery:

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“I was sitting by a stream.
Spring bads were
from the trees; the stream
was icy, transparent, moving
glass; the light placed a halo
around everything, and
instead of secing just water
and trees and sunbeams, I
was secing the most elegant
miracle every devised.

“For most of my conscious
life I had assumed that
miracles and God and magic
and the Real Mystery were
somewhere out there,
around the corner in another
realm, and all that was here
was the left-over muck of
reality.

“But now it was reality
itself — that tangible or-
dinary stuff you could touch
and smell and hear — that
was the full-blown Primary
Miracle happening right
before my eyes. There was
no mystery any longer —
reality was the mystery, and
there was nothing
mysterious about it at all.

“Here it was. God and the
world were one. The only
mystery was the gravel I was
sitting on. True magic was
the bud on a tree.”

Since that experience, I
have considered myself a
born-again something, but
Im still not sure what.

An informative book,
from the point of view of
getting a perspective on the
whole question is William

988-8545

by Bob Hunter

A born-again WHAT?

Quality

James's The Varieties of
Religious Experience, which
warns that mystical revela-
tions are too personal to ever
be properly communicated
— So it ts futile to try.

Be that as it may, messiahs
and saints
and Bodhisattvas galore

«have all over the

landscape of history, leaving
mountains of testament.

Reading through some of
it, I have Swended for the last
decade to feel close to
Buddhism.

Sull, I find the teachings
of Seth — as expressed
through medium Jane
Roberts — to be as authentic
as any mystical voice, so I
can't really consider myself a
Buddhist.

There’s the problem,
when it comes to defining
one's religious beliefs, of
what to do wi with all the other
en y tea: a
host of guras who can't be
blamed for their followers.

It goes without saying that
the teachings of Jesus Christ

transcend the. political
history of the Catholic
Church, and that

Mohammed had visions far
more profound than those of
his mullahs.
I hear the truth in their
words too. And others whose
names weren't even signed
to their works.
So what can I call myself?
No particular religious Label
feels quite right.
Yet ballelujah, I believe!
Jast don’t ask me what
precisely.

Mechanic
thief
sought

POLICE in West Vancouver
are looking out for someone
doing extensive work on a
Volkswagen engine and who
helped himself to the parts
he needed.

A woman who left her
1972 VW Beetle parked with
a for-sale sign on it in the
north laneway behind the
1700 block Marine Drive
between Sunday and
Monday evenings got a nasty
shock when she went to use
the car. ,

She found the do-it-for-
less mechanic had taken her
carburetor, distributor, coil,
fuel pump, air cleaner and
other engine parts, cutting
several wires in order to
remove the pieces.

The loss is estimated at
$500.

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