Excess and Illusion

I was over at a friends yesterday and she is finally online from her apartment. She had the cable modem and it was connected, but we couldn't get things going from the USB port. So, I brought an Ethernet cable and plugged it in that way and off it went. I didn't have to install drivers or anything. Thank God.

I don't have cable at home, so we had been watching the Food Network all afternoon. Interesting, but I'm sure I've gained at least 10 pounds watching all this stuff being cooked. They had a contest called "Food Network Caters Your Vegas Wedding." I was absolutely blown away with how much food could be consumed in a single event. It was the type of feast that one should attend at least once in their lifetime, but not too many times or one would end up making Shelly Winters look svelte.

The majority of my friends, straight and gay, are so absorbed with eating, looking good, getting laid or some other activity to excess that they have lost all perspective of something larger within themselves. I would be lying if I didn't admit that I sometimes am just as guilty, if not more so.

When one starts to search for and begins to walk a spiritually oriented path, the temptations of the world seem to increase in their intensity. I suspect that when one begins to see through the illusion of what we perceive as reality, a mixture of fear of the unknown and our attachment to things, kick in to try and hold us where we are.

In the movie "Little Buddha" this is illustrated as the temptation of Siddhartha by Mara (the personification of evil) who sends his beautiful daughters to tempt the awakening sage in an attempt to keep him attached to the illusion. In the Judeo-Christian religions, we call this entity Lucifer, the Devil and/or Satan (which basically translates to the Adversary) and in Hinduism, while it can be referred to by many names and ideas, Mother Maya is the personification that I can understand the most.

There is a story that says that Satan is actually the guardian of the gate of Heaven, testing souls to see if they are ready for entry. If he finds them lacking, he sends them back to Earth. So, his title of Adversary is earned but is in the service of God (talk about demonizing the opposition).

When we look at these characters, we tend to judge them as evil or bad. But the fact is, they perform a necessary service in creation and for us. It is said that Mother Maya creates the illusion of this world in sadness, knowing that it brings pain and sorrow to her children, us. But it is through the lessons and experiences of the illusion that we eventually become aware of something higher than the illusion.

I find it interesting that the one universal point that every single religion agrees upon is the one point that we all count on but ignore. We count on it to get us into heaven, our next life or whatever our personal view of the afterlife is, but we live our day-to-day existence completely outside of it. What is this universal agreement? No matter what you believe about the source or purpose of this existence we call life (except for those who thing we wink out into nothingness since they believe life is nothing but a chemical reaction) we all believe that we are an eternal living soul that temporarily inhabits a physical body.

Try to view the world and your life from the position of that eternal entity and it will amaze you how much less stress and strife there is in your life. We'll get into original sin and how it relates to this entity at a later time...