More on Who-I-Am: Running Themes Part I

Come to thing of it, I've always been
sowing The Seeds of Love,
just like Tears for Fears. Tortured,
Light-seeking seeds of Love.

*Lightbulb!*  Whoa, new idea!  Contemplating.... hmm.... yes.  Yes.  I can see it now.  Dude!!!

This is the first of at least two more blog posts reviewing some lifelong running themes -- ones that make the prospect of joining the Ministry make a lot of sense, in retrospect.  (I always was a wordy writer! ;)

Academia: Always the Same Theme

...The meshing of Spiritual Philosophy and Pop Culture is indeed one of the reasons I went to grad school. 

Oh, to be a multi-disciplinarian! My graduate program was the height of getting an MA without having to specialize in any one thing. I was still looking for a way to make money as a philosopher. But analyzing the spiritual in everyday media (from movies to marketing) is such a part of my person, I didn't even think to separate it out at the time. I didn't even think until recently to separate it out!  It was just a hobby -- no, less than that -- just this thing I do.  Stuff I notice, and enjoy noticing.  You can't make a livelihood out of that.

So I dabbled in a number of enjoyable pursuits and put together an assemblage of coursework that would have served me very well had the tech bubble not burst when it did. Alas, that ship has sailed, and I would have had a lot more job opportunity than I did when I graduated. But I wouldn't have been satisfied. Let's look back, shall we?

...Write an overlong paper on Moby Dick as a metaphor for spiritual transcendence -- not because I read about it anywhere else, but because that's what I saw when I read it, and carefully analyzed the entire text? Get an A+ from a professor known for never giving an A?* Can't make money doing that.

...Write a paper in grad school comparing Super Mario Bros. II to utopia?  Slipped in some really trippy spiritually-related bs? Still amazed I got away with it, and got an A? Can't make money doing that!

...September, 1995: Spend an all-nighter teaching myself HTML, putting up a website on Geocities, and within days, waxing philosophical on the "Quest for Self" in a metaphysical sense.  Oh, if only I could find that old site on Retrocities, I'd love to know what those essays said. At the time, I was actively wondering if I could make money doing that, but I didn't articulate it to myself well enough to be able to follow it through with any success.

I wrote a lot of spiritually-themed papers through-out high school, college and grad school. They were not religious, although the texts may have been religious. In college it was my specialty, and I'm sure I even worked it into my music major. I was always very concerned with neutrality, and would never write my papers from any opinion other than "This spiritually based or related topic can be seen here in this work consistently if you view it through a certain intellectualized perspective." I was trying to expose Light to the world even then, without being caught doing it.

Musical Tastes: Always the Same Theme...

I loved musicians who could also sneak it in without getting caught - except by people like me!

My musical tastes are varied. Everyone's musical tastes are diverse and complex! There was, however, one "genre" of pop music that absolutely drew me in, deeply, that calmed me, soothed me, spoke to my soul.  I call it a "genre" but "pop" is about all the artists had in common, other than the decade. I would rack my brain to answer Why those particular artists, What did they have in common, What could my idol-worship on their music reveal to me, about me?

Well, one commonality was obvious. The songwriter/performers all wrote openly about their own personal inner struggles with religion, agnosticism, and spiritual awakening.  More importantly, they wrote about themselves, in a very personal light, and that is to say their recognition that they are worthy because they are Light.  These were NOT Christian artists. Oh no! Christian pop was an anathema to me.  So fake, I couldn't stand it. (Well, except maybe for Flood by Jars of Clay.) But, if the artist was coming not from a place of Religion, but from a place of pure inner discovery -- I was in awe!  The songs often spoke about depression and disillusionment, but they also spoke to an inherent knowledge of the divine within, all of which I shared with these artists.

I also was still hiding my memories of personal trauma from myself. I write about that here and here. Today, I also understand why I was inexplicably drawn toward artists who were likewise self-tormenting, and searching for the Light they knew to be inside. 

Friends and Family: "Duh! Do it already!"

My close friends and family are all probably reading this and saying to themselves, "Well, like, Duh!"

For them, none of this is new. They have lived it with me.

Many of my friends - and all of my really close ones - can speak intelligently on spiritual topics and society and pop culture. Because we talked about the intersection of those things. A lot.

Often, we knew we were talking about something inherently spiritual, but we had to make up a vocabulary for it. We discussed what we new of God, of Nature, of our own auras and energy fields. We played ESP games (before adulthood clouded our inner vision) and discussed God and Man and Captain Picard's relationship with Q. We loved television and movies and we talked at great length about the journey of the soul and infinity and oneness and eternity as they were expressed in everything from Star Wars to the Matrix Trilogy to the X-Files. 

Come to think of it, I think many of us were drawn to sci-fi and fantasy because of that genre's ability to explore such matters ("magic! the great unknown!") without having to pick a team, as it were. Neutral territory, ripe with explorations of the Human Soul.

I still watch everything through this lens. The whole world passes through it. Does everyone's? I don't know. You tell me. It's just in my nature. (Please tell me!)

Coming in Part II: The Library That (Almost) Was, Several Brushes with Professional Religioning, and This Is Not My First Time Considering Seminary, Nor My Second or Third Even: The Calling.

(That was more a reminder to myself than a teaser for you LOL!)

*Remembered this morning that I did not get an A+ on that paper. The A+ was for my Wordsworth Journal (i.e. subjective stream-of-consciousness dribble that proves you read the assignment), for which he asked for 5 pages and I presented 11. Dudes, it was all about transcendent spirituality too, of course it was, it was Wordsworth!  I got just an A on the Moby Dick paper. As you can tell, I'm still very proud of that grade!