Full Bellies

Recently, many of my friends have been voicing their disappointment in themselves for their lack of "desperation" and "hunger" for God. They say that they want to be "on fire" or "thirsty" for the Spirit, but that they can't muster the necessary effort or take the time to attain this state of desire. Their quagmire is a trifle mis-guided to me (although, I must admit, not unfamiliar). I submit that they (and myself) are not wanting or desirous because they are already satisfied spiritually. If we can agree that most everything that is temporal and physical is simultaneously spiritual, I can proceed to make my case. We spend most every moment of our waking hours attempting to appease those elements of existence that can never be quieted: basic physical and emotional needs. Guess what? We are splendidly successful! This process repeats itself until exhaustion forces us to our beds. That, brothers and sisters, is entirely natural. Our ancestral predecessors did it until their dying day and so shall we. Rest easy.
. . .wait. . .
There's something missing. A lingering, pestering thought in the back of our minds reminds us that somewhere, someone said that there was more to all of this. We, North Americans, probably think of the Bible. And yes! EVERY last one of its authors was absolutely convinced that the Spirit could be reached at a deeper level of consciousness. This was most often accomplished by practicing some sort of asceticism or devoting extraordinary attention to the over-used anthropomorphism, voice of God. They gave up their lives: social, marital, familial, etc. And their words mean so much to us for a reason, and not just that they might be from God. It's because in a profound, metaphorical sense, they were from a different world. Often we are reading the words of an un-liked, impoverished, persecuted, and ostracized man who was speaking to an equally un-liked and usually rebellious group of people. . .yes, I mean a Jewish prophet. Also, many of us have been moved by the words of early Christian writers, whose lives were characterized by mysticism or shaped by a monastic lifestyle. The same is true for them. They wrote from a different world. We gain from them, but. . .
Until we enter their world, we will be unable to attain their desire or their "hunger". I believe that most of us will be content to ride this mental roller-coaster for the rest of our lives, believing the lie fed to us from birth. . .from pulpits. . .from friends. . .that we can exist in our comfortable world and, at the same time, have as powerful a spiritual life as those men and women before us, of whom we read and have our inspiration.

Unfortunate.

Oddly enough, I have found a deep hunger from an unexpected source. It's not what you might think. Ask me about it and I'll share.