The Doldrums

There’s nothing like nothing to make you reflect on your life.

At the end of this month is one of the largest parties in our calendar, for one of the head spirits of the house in which I initiated. There are all sorts of things that need to be done before that party, from rituals or ceremonies to initiations. For me, at least, the party at the end of this month is one of the most important parties I’ll attend, in part because of what I owe to the spirit for which the party is being held. The lead-up to that party, however, is a whole lot of nothing unless someone does something spectacularly messy in the mean time or flakes on a responsibility, which leaves me with time to reflect.

If you are inclined to doubt, this is when it rises to the surface—and let me tell you, being a priest will give you plenty of time to meditate on doubt as a topic. It’s not the questions about why you’re doing what you’re doing, or what you think you’re doing. For me, it’s the question do you know what you know.

That’s an absurd question, if you know me. If there’s anything more consistent in my life of late than spiritual intervention, it’s dinner.

Meditation on doubt becomes something different in the presence of evidence. It becomes a meditation on the mind, the reliance on expectation, pattern, and emotion. It also becomes a meditation on the influence of those things, how much they color your thought.

A mark of spiritual maturity is the ability to recognize these things and to know them as not inherent to how you think. You don’t have to think them. They aren’t inherent to the situation, nor to your consciousness.

Another mark of spiritual maturity is the ability to not give doubt a foothold in your consciousness.