The Enlightenment Game, Part 1
photo by Julian Fann
My father gave me books on higher consciousness when I was fifteen. I didn’t see it as unusual at the time. He was engaged in his own search, living away from our family, and thought I might want to tag along.
Whatever his reasons, this introduction to the ways of the mind and spirit, set into motion a pattern that would shape my adult life. Unlike many of my teenage friends, I rarely trekked the path to God-like oblivion using mind bending drugs. Instead, I looked for answers in books with titles like Be Here Now, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment, Handbook to Higher Consciousness, and in places like Boulder, Santa Fe, and Big Sur. I attended workshops and conferences, joined salons and support groups. I listened to channels, talked with psychics, got Rolphed, visited acupuncturists, ingested herbs, took yoga classes, meditated, went to India, and did est.
My thirst was unquenchable. My cravings unstoppable. Whenever the restless urge hit me, I would pack up my belongings, quit my job, and essentially turn my life upside-down–in order to seek out a new and hopefully better experience. Like an addict in need of a fix, I wanted something to fill up the burning hole in my psyche. But nothing worked.
The journey seemed never-ending. Where one path ended, another began. When one teacher’s message grew stale, there was always another one waiting to take his place.
Marriage and the birth of my first child only intensified my restlessness. My husband, an adventure-seeker himself, was a perfect companion. My son simply adapted to his arrival into a rootless life. Our family became drifters on the New Age Highway. It looked as though we would never settle down or focus on a real career.
Then we hit bottom: we joined a religious cult.
At the time, I thought I’d found The Answer. Years of fruitless effort culminated into my arrival one warm fall evening at an innocent-looking adult education class at a local community college. It was called “Soul Travel”. The teacher had a Ph.D. after his name and the course description revealed nothing more than an opportunity to learn how to have an out-of body experience. Right up my alley.
I have to admit, I was a little wary when at the beginning of the first class, the instructor starting handing out books with ethereal-looking people on the cover and unrecognizable words throughout the text. Then he asked us to chant and told us stories of beings that existed on “other” planes. My gut reaction was to run away from there. Many people did. But for some reason I stayed.
Six weeks later, my husband and I became members of an eastern-based international spiritual group. I devoured all the books, practiced daily contemplation, chanted and attended local member groups. All of my questions had found a home.
Before long though, my whole world became framed with the cult’s viewpoint of the world and I became blind to other ideas. Eventually, my family relocated to the Midwest to work at the groups’ headquarters. We ate, slept and breathed the teachings. We focused our inner thoughts on our teacher, the leader of the organization. His framed picture adorned our bedroom wall.
Neither my husband’s family nor mine considered this unusual behavior. They had watched on the sidelines for years as we dabbled in new experiences and saw nothing to get alarmed about. This was compounded by the fact that the group we joined resembled corporate America more than a robe-wearing cult. On the outside, the membership looked just like everyday, ordinary people. They weren’t sequestered into a guarded compound. They lived in neighborhoods among non-members. They walked, talked and went to work like everyone else. In fact, nothing about their behavior indicated that they belonged to a fringe religious group. They were masters at this type of deception. A quick glimpse on the inside for anyone who ventured to look would have revealed that they were leading highly delusion lives, in which they believed they were among the chosen few on a journey that would end their cycle of rebirth here on earth and begin their journey to higher planes of existence.
This group was selling was quite a bag of goods. Life everlasting. Freedom from suffering. A special place in the spiritual hierarchy of the universe. Lucky for them, some of us were foolish enough to buy it.
Three years into it when we finally discovered they were lying, and that the founder had committed numerous acts of plagiarism and deception, it didn’t really surprise us. We simply packed our bags and left.
The good news is that the day I walked away from that group, I realized that I was free of my obsession. The enlightenment game finally had ended and the work of my real spiritual journey had begun.
To be continued…
