Wading In Restlessness

I waded in restlessness all morning and then I was sucked up into a passing wave of anxiety that tossed me into despair. It was as if I had missed the last turn off before an unfinished bridge and I was still on the road, speeding towards the edge. My hearted raced and I could not sit still. I frantically looked for a place to turn around, unable to slow down my uneasy inertia.

I had noticed the clues before but failed to see the pattern and now undeniable evidence was coming to light that fingered me as the culprit of my own deception. My slogan had always been authenticity yet I only ever paraded beneath the banner of purism. When I came face to face with the reality that the Divine could not be fitted into a systemic formula of propositions I declared that there was no God at all. I was distraught and weakened but still strong enough to turn and walk away.

I have always known that and often taken pleasure in the determination of my will but always under the illusion that I was being authentic. Yet, what does it mean to be authentic? If it is simply being true to oneself, then it is an empty promise for what person can ever claim to be comprised of only one dimension, one desire, one will to pursue a singular goal? Perhaps I was authentic but it would have only been to that part of myself that I chose to acknowledge and thereby placate and if so, was I being authentic or merely a purist?

Rather than embrace the mystery and remain true to my calling, when I confronted the paradox of faith I pandered only to my finite and self-aggrandizing intellect. I chose to lean staunching and wholly on my own understanding. Like a spoiled child, I was defiant, if the play would not be played by the rules I learned, then I would refuse to participant. And it was this blatant elitism that I called authenticity.

But what about my calling? After studying the scriptures to show myself approved I failed to count the cost of discarding my need for intellectual consistency, ironically, falling victim to the very mantra I barked at every passerby who was seemingly unable to surrender mundane pleasures for spiritual disciplines. In my dogged devotion to a particular conception of a perception of a momentary flash of the Real, I sacrificed my only true experience of God. And with that offering of my experience went all of my divine sensitivity so that what remained for me were the faint recollections of an inexplicable passion that had once drawn me deeper and closer into His will.