Mired for God

My millipede nighmare is back. That sucker really knows how to stomp on me.

If you can filter out the fear, the unconscious willingness to be comforted with an illusion, the downright scary mix of dream and sensation that passes for consciousness in most of us, the magical short-cuts and other weaknesses of the mind, most of the evidence that remains speaks in the favor of the atheists and agnostics. But aren't we lonely then? We live among each other and we live in the world. The framework of living is then relationship...we have some kind of relationship [stranger, lover, aquaintance, hero etc] to each person in our life and we have a relationship to the world as well. The continuity, the basic sanity of these relationships is greatly aided by the convenient concept and apparent utility of "person" or "soul" and if we find ourself in dialog with someone who, for their end of the conversation, supplies an unpredictable, disconnected sequence of utterances, possibly responsive or total nonsequitors then we perceive a crazy person or a broken soul and pitying or fearing them, withdraw from engagement. Only the true and loving adept can hang on for the ride with the broken soul and emerge still sane. But even the adept would have no place to start in a relationship with a world that had no soul of its own. And no place to end.

There is little difference between reaching for something that is not there and reaching for something you see so poorly that you cannot know that it is miles above you. In either case, it is exercise the soul sorely needs. The difference and danger is that if you suspect there is nothing up there, you might stop exercising. You might just give up.