my spiritual practice

As I have often told you people, only partially tongue-in-cheek, my basic motto in life is "love is free, love me, say HELL YES." But sometimes a person looks around and feels like just perhaps they should seek out a higher level of spiritual and philosophical advisor than, y'know, Flea.

As you also know, I am a heathen. I've firmly rejected my religion of birth, not that they want me either, and nothing has come along to take its place. I often feel like I am a distinctly non-spiritual person. That I don't have the ability to have what anyone would call "faith." I like the concrete and the logical. When I am confronted experientially with something that is beyond the concrete--for instance, what we in the bodywork world would call "energy" and what people in the religious world might call a "soul"--my immediate reaction is that there is a scientific explanation for it that we just don't understand yet. I have felt other people's energy when giving a massage and felt that energy shift, and I have been with my mother at the moment of her death and felt something there and then something gone, and I rationalize that as some kind of electrochemical field that we don't know how to measure yet but that people can perceive if they're feeling. Just because I can't believe in something that's woo-woo.

But, like I said, sometimes a person wishes they had some sort of more spiritual life. So I'm kinda looking into Buddhism. I always thought I could never be a Buddhist because I am too materialistic. I like my stuff. But I'm starting to realize just from my beginning explorations of this that I was mistaken. Buddhism doesn't necessarily mean renouncing all your worldly goods, rather renouncing your attachment to them, i.e. thinking that they are what will bring you happiness. I *think*--and I could well be wrong--but I think that what Buddhism teaches is that your satisfaction has to come not from your things and not from other people, but from within yourself. Since I've been trying to go in that direction anyway, mentally and psychologically, I can get behind that as a spiritual idea.

So periodically I go to the bookstore and look at the 500 different books on Buddhism they have and buy none, because I don't know where to start. There are probably as many schools of it as there are denominations of Christianity. The Dalai Lama has written a crapload of books for the lay person, so maybe that's a good place to start. But with which one? It's all very paralyzing.

And on the non-book-learning side, I actually have two friends (one closer and one not-so-close) who both do this Buddhist chanting that is from some obscure school of Buddhism I never heard of. The not-so-close friend is very into it; she holds the meetings or services or whatever they are called in her apartment sometimes. My closer friend, who goes to these chanting meetings, isn't so involved, but she likes it very much. She says of all the different forms of Buddhism she's been around, it's the most diverse. All the others have been composed solely of the kind of white, middle class, uber liberal hippie type people you would stereotype American Buddhists as being. And though my closer friend fits the stereotype, she enjoys having a wider experience. I mention all this because I was invited to go to one of the chantings, primarily because I was meeting up with this friend after it, and it was like, oh, if you want, you can come early and chant with us. I demurred only because this was earlier this fall when I was totally crazed and I didn't think I could settle my mind for it. I hope refusing once doesn't mean I'm never invited again, because I think I really would like to at least try it.

So that's my (so far) plan for becoming one with the universe. I'll report back if it happens. And I welcome any alternate suggestions for my spiritual growth. Not that I think *you* heathens will give me any. Peace!

xoxo