Making Sense of the Senseless

A little over a year ago, on December 7, 2011, I was flying home from my mission in Brisbane, Australia. I was so excited to go home and to apply what I had learned on my mission: time management, goal setting, obedience, etc. I knew that I would be happy. I had a friend that had told me she liked me. I was sure we would date, and because we were such good friends, we would probably get married. I was excited for my future.

It didn't take long for reality to come careening in. My first date with my friend didn't last longer than a movie. My projected future was falling apart as I realized I didn't only not have feelings for her, but for any girls at all. I felt distant from God even though I was doing everything I was supposed to. I just didn't know what to do. Life took me in directions I wasn't planning: I decided to get a job in California on a whim, and that led to getting a job in China later in the summer. But throughout it all, the questions were still burning in my mind. And I feel like throughout the whole year, I fluctuated from feeling a constant slight dissonance in the back of my mind to full out discord at the forefront of my heart. And I never really felt at peace or happy with where my life was going.

Those feelings reached an apex when I was in Europe in October. I remember one moment close to the end of my trip when I was thinking about life after the semester ended. I was originally planning on going to Europe closer to graduation, and it was what I had really been looking forward to in college. That was soon to be over. My mission was done with. I had no prospects of relationships with girls, not only in the near future, but ever. I felt only bleakness when I thought about Church. I had no idea what to do, and in that moment I had the heart-sinking realization that everything I had ever looked forward to in my life had already passed, and I was left to deal with that knot of emotion still so deeply entrenched in my heart.

Somewhere in the last seven weeks since getting back from Europe, I found peace. I think it began in the second week from getting back when I first read "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I highly recommend it to everyone. Emerson's main thesis is that we need to be emotionally self reliant and look for truth and integrity within ourselves first before turning to sources outside of ourselves. While I was in Europe, I was extremely depressed. It felt like the days were dragging by slowly, each one taking with it a part of me as it left, draining my emotional energy and my ability to really care about anything.

And I think that one of the most difficult parts of the entire process was making sense of the senseless reality I was facing. I had been taught my whole life that if I did this and that, I would be happy. On my mission I taught the same principles to people; they changed some peoples' lives, and didn't even slightly stir the hearts of others. Our mission president taught us that "true doctrine changes everything." Well it didn't seem to be changing me. It only seemed to be sending me down the lonely rabbit hole of sexual anorexia and the resultant psychological difficulties. It made no sense. I had felt the spirit. I had felt God. Why was none of this clicking?

For me, I finally began to make sense of it when I read this passage from the teachings of the Buddha:

Do not believe anything:
just because it has been handed down for many generations,
just because it is spoken and rumored by many,
just because it is found written in religious books,
just on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Only accept what passes the test
By proving useful and beneficial in your life.

Once a the student of a Zen Buddhist Master asked him what he should do if he met the Buddha walking down the road. The Master replied "kill him."

I don't think he really meant to physically impale him, but more in the vein of Nietzsche when he said "kill your heroes." What the Master was trying to teach his student was that the only true Buddha is within. "Buddha" really just means "enlightened one" or "awakened one." And so when the buddhist teachers say "the Buddha nature is within," what they mean is that the only power that can make sense of the senseless is inside of us. For me, that means the power of self-determination; to realize that I can act for myself and not be acted upon.

One of the paradoxes of Mormonism is that it teaches you to follow your heart only when your heart tells you that what it teaches is true, and then tells you that your heart is lying to you if it says anything else. Positive emotions that confirm what the prophets say are labeled as the Holy Spirit, while positive emotions in any other direction are deviant. I believe that true integrity is found in being true to your own conscience above everything else. And I've found that in the last seven weeks as I've truly placed myself in the driver's seat of my own life, I've found peace and happiness beyond what I've experienced before. Instead of just accepting things as true because people say them, I apply that criterion: to only accept what proves useful and beneficial to my life.

"Hell, in my opinion, is never finding your true self and never living your own life or knowing who you are."
-John Bradshaw