Do I Even Exist?

  It might seem like a ridiculous question to ask, but I’m serious. Let me explain…

I was raised in a Christian home. When I was 4 years old my Mom ‘found’ Jesus (or He found her) and from that point on we were church going peeps. Being young and vulnerable I never really questioned what I was being told to believe – or at least not out loud. I had doubts in my mind of course, but I was far too scared to voice them for the fear of burning for all of eternity in a burning hot pit of fire. I always prayed to God, for fear of rotting in Hell if I didn’t, but I couldn’t help but wonder if He/She/It was really there. (Are you there God? It’s me, Growlbert.)

One of the first things that I did when I moved out of the house was buy a Satanic Bible. That’s right I took a dive straight into I the opposite end of the spectrum. But I didn’t stay for long. I was pretty disappointed in what I found there and so my Satan loving phase ended even faster than it began.

That was years ago.

Since that point I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that I believe. I’ve been doing this for years. And I must say that I’ve gotten a little closer…to nothing. That is to say that I don’t feel like I am any closer to having any concrete beliefs, but I have grown more comfortable and sort of okay with the idea of not knowing (anything).

 For a while I tried on different religions and various spiritual practices, but I quickly found that they all sort of fit the same. It’s like putting on what you think looks like a different shirt only to realize that the tag still reads the same – it’s the same brand name just a slightly different cut or color.

The problem for me is the dogma that accompanies any sort of organized religion or spirituality. In my opinion things get weird when dogma enters the scene. It makes me feel trapped. I don’t like being boxed in – at all.

Recently while cruising Amazon.com for books on lucid dreams (an obsession of mine) I came across a book called Awakening to the Dream . It was a sort of coincidence that I stumbled upon it because it’s not even about dreams. After reading a bit of this book online I knew that I wanted to buy it. A week or so later it came in the mail and I read it the same way that I eat apple pie: slowly, savoring every bite.

This book is a simple – yet deeply beautiful – explanation of what’s called Non-Duality  (or Advaita). There are no practices to follow. In fact the whole idea of the book is that there is nothing to do because there is no one to do it. The idea is that there is no ‘you’ or ‘me’ – there just IS. Don’t ask me to explain what that means, because I can’t. All I know is that some part of ‘me’ (even though apparently I don’t exist) seems to understand the concepts presented in this book.

It’s a similar idea to that presented by Dustin Hoffman in I Heart Huckabees when he is talking to Jason Schwartmans character about the ‘blanket truth’ . The blanket is all that exists and while there are many things that pop up in the blanket (hamburgers, orgasms, etc) the reality is that “everything is the same even if it’s different”.

So what this means is that you are me and I am you. Everything is connected. Which means that everything is the same. There is no separation only the illusion of it. If this is true than there can only be ONE. But one what exactly?