Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? 1

I’ve been seeing –as I’m sure you are too- people taking up spirituality in various guises these days. I am still confused whether to call it spirituality, mysticism or plain religion, but I am tying to refer to the anxious (and I mean this in the medical/psychiatric sense of the term) search for some inner kernel of our soul that will, once found, will somehow trigger every possible positivity, imbue our universe with meaning, thereby enabling inner and worldly peace. Some try their luck in known practices such as meditation (in its myriad of forms), Rei-chi, Yoga, Crystals, Horoscopes, the Occult, Sufism, the Cabala, Gnosticism; the list, as you know, grows long. I am not going to go into the why’s, as I think anyone reading daily papers has, at one point or another, come upon the same self-reflexive, self-flagellating confessional as to how modern life disseminates anxiety and guilt, driven by a system built on individualism and competition, so on and so forth. The reasons are, to me, of secondary importance; however, this fascination with mysticism, or at least the act of filling all one’s ‘leisure’ life with spiritual practices indicate to me a strange and interesting object of study in itself.

(to be continued)