Withdrawing from the World

When really difficult or truly bad things happen to people they usually have two or three choices in their lives. They can either die, go insane, or withdraw from the world to try to make sense of their lives and to heal. There are truly inspiring remarkable stories about people who live through these kinds of experiences and become an asset to the world. One of the most remarkable of these is St. Francis of Assisi for which San Francisco, California eventually became named after. His experience was to be injured and to almost die in battle and at the same time to temporarily lose his mind (severe battle fatigue or post traumatic stress disorder). But through this experience it turned him into the famous Saint we all know of today who started the Franciscan order in the Catholic Church based upon poverty and helping the poor even though St. Francis came from a very wealthy Italian family.

I was looking at my own life through this kind of prism today and looked at how my life experience often made me withdraw from the world. So, that even though I have now been married three times with three biological children, two step kids and two God daughters, I also have mostly kept to myself, a few friends and to my family always. I have never really been interested in living in big cities (after I grew up) and I have chosen to live in mostly only the most beautiful places I could find in California, Hawaii, and New Mexico. So, a very public life has never been my style as being someplace often very remote and beautiful always worked the best for me over time.

When I was young and in my 20s people often asked me, "Why don't you start a religion?" And my answer to them was: "People around the world have enough religions to confuse them already." This is my genuine thought today. "People are more confused by religions than helped by them on an individual basis. On a group basis religions often pacify humanity like drugs or alcohol within a certain region. But when you clash the ideas of one religion against another World Wars can and could result in the future. So, in the end religions may be the cause of the extinction of the human race as they clash."



Therefore, I said to my friends, "I will not start another religion because it will only become another potential cause of the permanent extinction of mankind." Instead I will write about enlightenment and through my own personal experiences study all religions and write about what I find to be the best synthesis of all the best parts of them all in my own life.

When you change the question from, "What religion are you?" to "What is your spiritual path?" often what happens is that two people who might have argued before can discuss their life experiences without argument. Because how can you argue with someone who is discussing their life spiritual experiences like they are a vacation or an adventure?

By changing the question you stop all arguments by sharing your personal experiences in a whole new context. Then, instead of people becoming enemies they become potential friends.