The Tentmaker

"Allah is non-being and being, existence and non-existence. He is the relative and the Absolute. All these concepts return to Allah, for there is nothing we can comprehend or write or speak about that is not Allah."
- Abd Al-Kader

"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge."
- Jalaluddin Rumi

There are many lenses and viewpoints that one can view the dichotomy of religious vs. secular life. It can be viewed from the view of inter-family issues, professional challenges, personal conflicts and moral dilemmas. The contradictions found in both ways of life are total and unavoidable. The best one can do is to draw a line in the sand as each issue arises and have the ethical integrity to not cross it. It isn’t easy, but then who ever said that it should be? It is my opinion that just as darkness allows us to appreciate the light, evil allows us to appreciate good, so to does the mundane and pitfall-filled secular life help us to appreciate the pureness and beauty of a religious life.

Inter-family issues abound when one sets his feet on the religious path. It is inevitable that some (if not all!) of the people that comprise your family will either not understand or disapprove of a Gnostic religious life style and/or religious goals, no matter how spiritually you phrase it. When you as an individual determine that you in fact want to live your life with a religiously inspired moral compass, then you must apply it to every facet of your life. My decision has lead me to many new ways of thinking and reacting to situations. Considering my old “chip-on-the-shoulder” way of navigating personal relationships, these changes have been most welcome by members of my family. However, as I get more comfortable with my emerging spirituality, my new way of looking at life creates some uncomfortable situations as people try to figure out if I am joking or if I am serious. If I am joking, then they don’t get it. If I am serious, then they don’t understand. So far this has all succeeded in creating an ever-widening gap between myself and everyone else. My recent decisions to become vegetarian, my staunchly pacifist leaning on issues of politics and war, and my visible prayer of thanks before eating have not helped this gap either. But the greatest difficulty is that my choices now seem to highlight the flaws of my family members. As I choose to not eat meat, for example, on the grounds that the meat industry is needlessly cruel and that animals need not die to feed me, it forces them to look at their own decisions. This can and has lead to guilt of which I am wrongly accused of causing. These are my choices and I cannot control how these choices make others feel about their own choices. I am not placing myself in a position of judgment, I answer when asked, nothing more. Patience and understanding and a certain “smallness” are required at times. The secular aspects of life will always constrict the religious.

Depending on ones chosen secular profession, strong ethical problems can arise for one of strong religious and spiritual leanings. As a graphic designer this is rarely if ever a problem directly, but for instance, I may be forced through my work to support a car manufacturer as they are major client of my employer. As a spiritualist, a humanitarian and a environmentalist (all of which go hand in hand with a truly spiritual traveler for love of the Mother will always be profoundly present) supporting a technology that is so devastating to the our world and whose use is so prevalent in Western culture as to be virtually entrenched into that way of life can be a difficult ethical burden to bear. The realities of this life is that we must “live” in this world created for us by the Demiurge and the Archons for absenting oneself into a life of a monk or hermit is, in my opinion, the easy way out. So if we accept that we must live here, then we must accept that it is not always a nice place and we will often be placed in situations where to stick to our ethical guns is to create suffering, which is the opposite goal of a spiritual life. As a graphic designer, jobs for companies that aren’t selling something to somebody for someone else are very rare. I try to level out my design karma by volunteering the same skills to organizations that give back. Maybe it works and maybe it doesn’t. I’ll know when I leave this dream and not a minute before. A wise man once told me the story of the man and the poison arrow and it is a lesson I remember every day.

Internally as well one can expect ethical clashes between what your consciousness and spirit wants vs. what your ego desires. The best example is one of materialism. Spiritually on a higher level I understand that things and clothes are an impediment to my overall growth and my ability to transcend this dream but my ego still places an inordinate amount of worth into this things. Granted the battle waged over this topic is slowly but resolutely sliding to spiritual side but there are still some overwhelming ethical issues to be determined and resolved. For instance, where do clothes come from? It is a well-known fact that most of the large clothing manufacturers employ the use of sweatshops in poor countries around the world. If your tag says made in Chine or India, you can bet your last dollar that it was made by a person making 45 cents an hour with inadequate working conditions in circumstances that can be likened to slave labor. But despite this truth my ego still wants to feel pretty, so off I go to the Gap and Old Navy and Wal-Mart (I hate that Wal-Mart is actually corrected in the spell check of Word) to buy the cheapest clothes I can find because that is all I can afford. How does one resolve this prevalent ethical dilemma? I have to wear clothes so if I cannot buy them from these organizations, from where do I buy them? Information on local clothiers are slim as well is information on large clothing manufacturers manufacturing practices. Here in Western Canada as well, most locally made clothing is of a decidedly hippy, bohemian style and my ego just doesn’t jive with that. And this is just one of many seemingly insurmountable issues. Does one just do the best they can and buy only what one needs? Do we sacrifice appearance for what is right? Does it really matter to anyone but me? If we all stop buying sweatshop clothes and the whole industry falls apart, will those people in China and India thank us? More questions than answers as usual. I guess the best one can do is draw one of those lines I spoke about earlier and do your best not to cross it. Ultimately, how you feel in your heart about your choices is the true measure since in the end, it is between you and God.

Now all of the above is from the standpoint of an individual spiritual traveler, navigating the best they can the pitfalls and trials of a necessary secular existence with the desired and chosen spiritual transcendence. But what if the individual seeks to become a priest? From experience so far, I can say that the added burden of seeking priesthood is twofold. Firstly, one must battle the misconceptions and opinions the term “priest” creates with ones friends and family. The one thing that everyone can agree on is that becoming a priest requires exponentially more dedication inciting the questions “Why take it that far?” and “Why isn’t following a religion enough?” And secondly, the goal of priesthood implies a perfection of spirit that increases the pressures that one places upon oneself. It creates a new level self-expectation to adhere to ones chosen moral compass that can result in such internal dialogue as “Is chicken broth really eating meat?” and “If I just buy this one shirt, am I betraying something?” As I said, ultimately we are the greatest judge of our own actions if we are true to ourselves and do not shy away from knowing ourselves completely. Once we begin to start cutting corners, we only betray ourselves and that, in my opinion, is a greater crime than having no ethics at all. It is better to stand for nothing then to claim to stand for something and then seek to fool yourself that it is true. It is this that is the greatest obstacle of successfully being the Tentmaker, but it is in no way insurmountable. In fact, I sure I will find that the secret to surviving the secular vs. religious showdown is right in front of my face and so simple as to be laughable. I am convinced that God has a wonderful sense of humor.