Sacred Skeptic

Excerpted and adapted from "God On Your Own: Finding a Spiritual Path Outside Religion, Live Better Longer" (Jossey-Bass, 2006), with permission.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. —René Descartes, Discours de la Méthode

My hand quivered as I prepared to open the envelope. The documents had arrived in the mail at my new address two days earlier, but I waited until now, with my mind clear and my courage plucked up, to open the large white envelope with regal Vatican postal stamps in the upper right corner and the crest of the Holy See in the upper left. From other brothers who had left the order, I had heard about the declaration of dispensation and the impact it was likely to have on me.

By that time, six months after informing my religious superiors that I wanted to petition a release from my vows, I was living back “in the world,” in a small rented apartment a thousand miles from my monastery. I lingered there in a kind of suspended animation. Although I had left monastic life, until an official dispensation arrived I was still living under the obligations of my vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

As you can imagine, it was a peculiar time for me. I had left my community, which is all I had known for eight years, and was living by myself. I felt uprooted, dislocated, and utterly alone. In addition to leaving my religious order and my solemn vows, I had also given up my religion. In my mind at the time, the two were the same. I could not continue in conscience practicing my religion because my misgivings about it were what led me to renounce my monastic calling.

“Insofar as we are able . . .” the letter began. The words sent a chill through me. As I explained earlier, I had made my perpetual vows directly to God, not to the Catholic Church or my religious order. Here was the church saying that, as far as it was concerned, I had no further obligation to live the vows. But the implication was that unfinished business remained between God and me over the sacred promises. I did not know it at the time, but it would take years for me to come to terms with the first line of my formal dispensation.

The document, emblazoned with the impressive papal coat of arms, marked the end of one phase of my spiritual journey and the beginning of another. Slowly, I would pick up the pieces of my life and start the process of trying to build a personal spirituality on the ashes of my experience in monasticism—and in religion. I had known since I was a child that I had a calling to seek my creative Source. Now, with a painful but rich and powerful spiritual experience behind me, I was about to continue my search.

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The Seeker questions everything. A skeptical viewpoint is the best resource for starting to create a personal spiritual way of life. You may find this radical approach difficult to contemplate, and even more difficult to activate in yourself. You may also consider it somehow disloyal or dishonest. Would-be seekers, shrinking from this important spiritual task, may take cover in the paradoxical notion that by seeking they are being sinful—as if sin were not a fabricated idea and part of the very system they are fleeing for spiritual freedom.

Fortunately, we have numerous role models for seeking at this important time in history when we are leaving the limitations of religion and beginning to explore spirituality in different ways. Seekers have always been with us, inspiring us to go out on our own and look for spiritual truth. Recently, in response to the yearning that so many of us are feeling to chart our own spiritual course outside the traditional routes, many writers and thinkers have been appearing to help us in our search.

You are already aware of these seekers. They range from scientists such as the late Carl Sagan to medical doctors such as Deepak Chopra, Larry Dossey, and Andrew Weil, from social commentator Marianne Williamson and psychologist Wayne Dyer to theologian Matthew Fox and spiritual teacher Ram Dass.

Over the years of my own seeking, I have admired these charismatic seekers and their work; occasionally I have had the opportunity to meet some of them and discuss their vision. One of the most impressive was Shirley MacLaine. The first time I met her, she and I were out in the country near Santa Fe attending a private workshop on the subject of faith healing. A Philippine healer was demonstrating how he dug his fingers directly into the stomach of a sick person to pull out cancerous tumors and other harmful tissue. Later that day, we would receive one of these “faith operations” from him.

Continued on page 2: 'we had forgotten that we are each divine...' »