What we’ve been experimenting with here — well, it’s not your parents spirituality, and it’s not your grandparents spirituality, and so on, back and back, but it may well be your great*200-parent’s spirituality.

How? First and foremost we keep it real chill, real real cool.

How? So we’re like ice cold or maybe a little smooshy popsicle-ten-minutes-out-the-freezer cold; and then we just let loose.

I would call it, “Bend, don’t break sanity.”

I would call it, “Nouveau shamanism.”

I would call it, “Just let it out, man!”

The way it works? All day long you’re chatting with God, you’re chatting with people not there, you’re chatting with the heavens, every little twist and turn you drop into your gut and, say, “is this the way?”, “is she the one?”, “do I do X or Y today?” And then your gut replies, but in a way that unfurls through all of you so you end up with a “Yes” or “No”. And, yeah, you can fudge it, and yeah, you probably fudge it a lot, and yeah, that’s a flaw, but you don’t care, you just keep trying, just keep trying to throw your shoulders back, let go, and listen to your gut.

[I think before you ask your gut anything, you should stand up straight within yourself, push out from within and let the Light flow in and out like breathe!]

How does it work? I’ve seen mixed results in my own practice.

What’s the spiritual basis? Um, pretty shaky, pretty iffy, pretty weak. What you should be doing is meditating and praying for gentle loving kindness and the clarity to do what’s best for everyone. But instead you’re reading deer livers, tea leaves, gorilla knuckles, goat shit, and so on. Yup, you’ve thrown of millennia of spiritual thought and are right back at the most desperate, disjointed, and sprawling shamanism.

Why do we behave this way? How do we justify our actions? It’s because we suppose that there is a spiritual Reality, and people can interact meaningfully to It — just not in a literal/definitive/1:1 way. So then we keep trying to interact meaningfully with the Light by shining it from our bellies out through our whole conscious space and in that spiritual supernova we take our stand and listen for the rhythm. Well, that’s what we mean to do, but then we just keep needing to know if such and such girl will take our hand and keep us safe, or if such and so job will keep us cuddled in the bosom of usefulness with security, or what have you: We can’t take the pressure or the loneliness of careful, non-literal spiritual effort: We have to have answers! We need to hear we’re safe, loved, thriving! We need answers!!

Oh my God, we need answers! And Something Deeperism is so vague. And we want to hear about how we fit in. And Something Deeperism is so outward-focused, so unworried about guaranteeing our cuddly safe little home.

We can’t take opening the doors and standing naked in front of God. God loves everyone and wants what’s best for everyone, but what God thinks is a great life is not the same as what we think a great life is. God doesn’t think it’s a huge deal whether or not you find someone who rubs all your longings in all the right ways. God doesn’t think it’s a huge deal whether or not you get to spend mornings in a coffee shop writing stories and bobbing along to great moments in indie history. God thinks a great life is one spent loving everyone unconditionally, and each moment drawing the logical conclusions from this love. That’s so lonely; that’s so scary; I am so scared. I need to be held; I need to be safe; I need to be kept from harm; I need a nice apartment close to a lot of trains.

Dear God,

Please forgive me my desperate grabs at literal certainties about who I am, where I belong, who should hold my private parts, how I’ll be both successful and fulfilled, how I’ll be both happy and decent, how I’ll be.

Something Deeperism is difficult. I know I should ground it in some kind of coherent spiritual path, but I’m so lonely for so long. It wears me through like a lathe hollowing out a poor old hunk of last season’s oak. I just want someone to tell me we’re safe; and I can only believe that kind of talk from beautiful women, and then not just any beautiful woman, they also have to catch all these other hope-threads just so, and idunno, I really don’t, I just

Listen, God: Please do shape me to your divine purpose. No, but for real!: please do. I’m just afraid that it won’t feel right; or that I’ll end up deluding myself about what your divine purpose is and end up unfulfilled, unhappy, and not even wise or spiritually awake or anything, but instead just delusional about the Path.

Fuck, God: Where are you in all this? We chat all day long, but unbiased observers are convinced that I’m actually talking to myself all day long, and I can see their point — I really can, because You don’t challenge me all that much; I never leave my neighborhood or break out of my routine; I don’t spend much of myself on helping others; and when the going gets rough, I abandon my Something Deeperism and don’t even do a little casual spiritual centering / organizing my feeling/thinking/acting around the Light shining through all things.

Oh, man, how can I make progress in this life, God? Huh? In a way that I can stand; in a way I can sustain; in a way that doesn’t scare me off or make me shake apart like a plane flying too fast?

We need a doable spiritual path for me. What does that look like? Could you just give me a hint? A sign, maybe?