The world today is a ripe marketplace to manufacture a solutions-based philosophy about the meaning and purpose of life. No other time in history has there been so many literate people with disposable incomes and the technology to multiply and distribute that philosophy so quickly as it is today. The bridge between civilisation at its wits end and the next spiritual evolution is filled with enterprising people who understand systems and mass reaction peddling talismans and maps to that destination. How does one separate the genuine spiritual teachers from the con-jobs?
There are a few correlating themes which helped create this ignorant and destructive existence we're all in today. One of it is the addiction to quick-fixes and painless remedies. Preferably, these fixes will require little personal responsibility while imparting a false sense of superiority and spirituality in the process. These spiritual junkies are easily identifiable - by performing a set of rituals or chanting something in a tongue you don't speak, putting on some instrumental music, lighting incense or 'breathing' becomes a pursuit towards something - towards a goal.
So many people believe that reading a book or a few hundred books and pursuing something religiously will enlighten them or bring them closer to a higher level of spirituality, a deeper meaning to their existence. My recent experience tells me that every pursuit arises from ambition. Every ambition arises from discontentment, dissatisfaction, incomplete understanding, vanity or dysfunctional behaviour. Coming from such a premise, how can anyone ever discover the truth? How can anyone discover the truth if you already have in your mind an idea of what you're looking for?
When you have an idea or question that you are pursuing, the mind will filter in the things which matches that belief system. If your need is to find security and salvation because you fear death and loneliness, your Truth will lead you to what is convenient. If your need is to distance yourself from the pain that growing up with certain traditions and values have caused you, you will flip to the other extreme and your Truth will emerge for you that way. If your need is to find consistency and security in what you already know, you carry on with the truths that your traditions have taught you. In almost every way, by seeking, we will never find the Truth.
The sayings we hear that "Truth will prevail" already tells us what we need to know about Truth; that it is something that will go on existing even if you fight against it or even if you refuse to believe in it. It is something that will exist even if you deny it and it does not need your conviction of it to exist. The same way you do not need to believe in oxygen to breathe it and have it sustain your biological survival. Oxygen will still exist and your body will still know how to inhale when there's enough of it and suffocate when there isn't.
Wisdom will always elude the fool who seeks it. Simply put, the more you think, act, behave and believe in things, traditions or views which you think will show you to be wise, the more foolish you will be. How can a person who already has an idea that he is wise ever open themselves to other things which may actually lead to wisdom unfolding? Wisdom can only unfold to the person who does not attempt to seek it out, usually out of a need to not seem foolish.
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