Today I took the day off and went into Den Haag, just for the fun of it, and thus find myself sitting in this sidewalk cafe pondering the weighty topic of fun. The subject comes to mind because I'm still thinking about what I'd invent as "secular spirituality." Although I'm still more than a little light in the loafers as to specifics (maybe I'll write about that next), one thing I think would be key is that practitioners of my version of Open Source Spirituality should look as if they are having FUN with it. I think that's key to any successful pathway to self discovery.
One of the reasons I bailed on the TMO was that it had stopped being fun for me. An oh-so-serious seriousness had descended on the joint. It was work, work, work to get as many people to start TM as possible, or at least enough to earn sufficient ATR credit to go on a course, where you could work work work to get enlightened. The occasional "celebrations" held at National or in TM centers were on the whole about as much fun as a wake, and without the whiskey. Even Jerry had stopped telling jokes. Time to leave. So I did, with no intention of ever becoming involved with another spiritual path, ever. I wanted to see what the "outside world" had to offer in the way of fun. It was the early 80s, and L.A.; there was a lot of fun to be had. And then I ran into some folks I'd known from the TMO who told me that they'd met a spiritual teacher they liked, and had begun studying with him. I would have been completely uninterested except that I couldn't help but notice the change that had taken place in these people since I'd last seen them, about a year earlier. Back then they'd been as much fun as a funeral, On The TM Program to the max and not looking as if they were enjoying it very much. Now they were vibrant, laughing, cracking jokes, and obviously having a good time with their lives. That interested me, because up to then I honestly hadn't associated that level of having FUN with one's life with the spiritual path. I decided to go see this Rama guy and check him out. The day I was to see him, I stopped L.A.'s premiere mecca of spirituality, the Bodhi Tree bookstore. It's pretty much where everyone in town would go to get their literary spiritual fix. I knew a clerk there, and she had told me that she and her fellow employees often amused themselves by trying to figure out which spiritual trip their customers were affiliated with. Some were easy to bag, like the Sikhs or the Hare Krishnas, because they were always in costume. Same with the Rajneeshis, because they all wore the same variants of red, orange, and purple. Other trips were harder to bag from the "vibe" of the customers. I mentioned to her that I was going to see Rama that night, and asked her what the clerks' concensus was on them. She said, "Oh, they're by far the easiest to identify." I asked why, and she said, "They're happy. They look like they're having a good time on the spiritual path. You have no idea how few students of other traditions I can say that about." Her insight proved to be true. Studying with Rama -- at least in those early days -- really was FUN. Yeah, we'd study meditation and hear talks, like everybody else in town, but we'd do weird shit like go to Disneyland together. Or to a disco. Or to the desert or similar places of power. We'd dress up in tuxedos and evening dresses (I would be one of the ones wearing the tux, BTW) and have fancy formal dinners. Occasionally we'd even go to Hawaii or to Paris. Fun. Fun was even considered a good indicator to look for in one's practice of mindfulness. The rap was, "If you're not having fun with your life, the energy of enlightenment is blocked; it cannot flow through you." In an odd way, this credo equated MMY's "stress" as the thing that prevented the realization of enlightenment with *not having any fun*. And this condition, unlike the more undefined "stress," was easy to get rid of. If you found yourself in a bit of a spiritual rut, with your meditations and realizations less shiny than you wanted them to be, you could break out of this "spiritual writer's block" at any time. There was a patented Rama technique (no trademark symbol) for doing so. And it was a real bitch to practice -- just go out and do something fun. It worked like a charm. It was as if the simple act of having fun was the stress remover that TM always claimed to be. Spend a few hours laughing and enjoying yourself, and suddenly your meditations were back to profound again, and your life was back on track. It still works like a charm. That's why I'm in Den Haag today, taking a day off to do some cafe writing. That, oddly enough, is one of my ideas of fun. It's not that my meds are less than shiny lately or that my life feels "off" in any way; everything's been pretty great. Today I'm practicing the "fun technique" just to spice up an already shiny day and maybe inspire me on a particular project. And y'know...the best thing about this technique is that even if it doesn't work, I'll have had fun practicing it.
