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This is it. There is only this. This is all there is.
Anyone who has stepped away from the belief system of their upbringing and gone in search of their own has taken a good first step. At the risk of appearing, uh, self-serving?, self-aggrandizing?, self-something, I would say that the fact that you’re here, reading this, is, at the very minimum, a strong second step. If you just wanted to have a nice life, you’d probably be somewhere between a casual meditator and a follower of online nonduality teachers of the TIITIOTTIATI variety. (titty-oh-ti-AH-ti. Insert your own titty joke here. Don’t make me do everything.)
(I don’t know what “This is it. There is only this. This is all there is.” really means, but I don’t offer enlightenment-in-an-hour sessions either, so what do I know? Maybe if they repeat it a few million more times I’ll finally get it. Wouldn’t that be the cat’s knees or the bee’s pajamas or something?)
It’s okay if you’re into spirituality to become happier or to be looked up to like people you look up to, or if you’re just trying to get a better handle on things. Maybe you want to get to where you “get it”, where you have a click of the mental dials and see the profound truth of TIITIOTTIATI for yourself. Super. Whyever you’re here, here you are. At the risk of appearing self-something, well done. You’re in the right place.
Childhood is too little and enlightenment is too much, but adulthood is just right. Not easy or fun getting there – a tricky bit of self-annihilation involved – but adulthood is what every human really, really wants, whether they know it or not, because adulthood is the natural and rightful course of human development. Not enlightenment, which is somewhat idiotic, and not life in the sewer-dungeon, which barely qualifies as life at all, but development into one’s full human potential. That’s the game. That’s what we’re playing for. That’s why you’re really, really here, whether you know it or not.
Maybe you were just window-shopping when you got sucked in by vanity in one of its many forms, but even if that’s the case, it might be just the tip of the iceberg; it’s what lies beneath that you should wonder about. Your intro is irrelevant, it’s your outro that matters. Whether your reason for being here is authentic or artificial, hate-based or fear-based, unhealthy vanity or healthy self-loathing, is irrelevant. What matters is not why you’re here but that you are here, and where you go from here.
Awesome pep-talk over. Stop reading and go write something.