`Playing God´
`You need to quit playing God!´ This is what I heard more than once in my early years of recovery from alcoholism. It precipitated an undifferentiated jolt, like an earthquake deep under the sea bed, although the meaning of the statement, and the associated possible consequences, went way over my head. Perhaps I did not want to understand.
Apocalypse Now
Generally speaking the meaning of this (nowadays emotive) term, with its roots in Old Greek (apokalyptein – “uncover, disclose, reveal,” from apo “off, away from” + kalyptein “to cover, conceal,”) refers to `drawing back the veil´ in order to see things differently, perhaps even moving from `perception´ to `vision´, and hence from `illusion´ to `truth´. This rang a bell with me when I remembered what Wayne Dyer used to say about `not seeing the world as it is, but rather as we are´
Paradox
While it is true that the spiritual path is open to everybody, not everybody follows the call. Some never even get to hear the call. This remains one of the great mysteries, to be simply accepted as a characteristic of the human condition.
Our True Element
For most of my life, I fell prey to the very widespread illusion that the cause of all my problems is ‘out there’. In practical terms, it unfolds roughly as follows: Whenever I experienced `irritation´ in the world `out there´ (when my plans fell through, when I didn’t get my way, regretted the past, feared the future, or when I adjuged that I was being treated unjustly of unfairly, etc.), I reacted by exerting more force to `kick the world into shape´. Despite my heroic efforts, it rarely worked.
