Learning What I Already Know
I am rarely confused about what I believe. I am almost exclusively internally driven, and I tend to follow my gut instincts way more than logic. Rare indeed is the occasion when I lack an opinion after someone explains a topic to me in enough detail for me to see the big picture. This could be a real problem, but since I seem to have no real internal problem with rapidly and wholeheartedly changing my mind when the situation or my perception of the situation changes, it typically works out very well for me. I don’t blow where the wind leads me. I sprint in whatever random direction has captivated my interest or inspired me—even if it means running in the exact opposite direction.
The real dilemma for me comes in when I have a vague feeling about something but I haven’t encountered enough information to articulate that proto-opinion. This is part of why I read so many books, have so many nerdy philosophical discussions with close friends, and write so many words in a week. Learning about these feelings and inspirations is an exercise in recognition. In fact, to a large extent, my life has been about steady progression and realizing what I already know far more than any Damascus road revelatory incidents.
I say that I became a Christian as a small boy of five or so. That’s when I formally declared that I sought “a personal relationship with God through His son Christ Jesus” and followed that salvation experience through “believer’s baptism”. This is my Sunday School assessment. In reality, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t already believe the things that central to my particular brand of Christianity. I have always sought to emulate the teachings outlined by Jesus, and, as an intensely internally motivated child, I’ve always been seeking that internal inspiration and connection with the infinite that us evangelical Christians identify as the Holy Spirit.
I encountered the teachings of Emmanuel Levinas in a critical theory course during my sophomore year of college in the classroom of Dr. Melvyn New. The I/Other notion of reality and the concepts of phenomenology articulated a truth that I had been struggling to put forward for some time prior. The notion of ethics spawned from this phenomenology directly validated the non-verbal beliefs that drove much of my behavior. The theory geek in me just reveled in being able to finally understand this fundamental foundation of philosophy that I had always stood upon but had never been able to describe—and the theory even explained why my attempts to explain this ineffable truth might even be construed as a form of ideological violence. Levinas explained why it had always been okay with me the way that God’s voice was strangely silent even in the face of its perceived real presence.
I can’t even begin to say when I “officially” became a Buddhist. In much the same way that I’ve always been a Christian and have always understood the importance of existing in the eyes of the Other, I learned somewhere along the way that attachment breeds suffering. I had felt the absence of self before during private prayer sessions, and everything I read just felt like someone had bothered to describe my beliefs to me in book form.
I became a vegan last year not because of any intense life-changing revelation. I always knew that I would be unwilling to kill animals myself. Instead, I decided to bring my external actions in line with my personal but intense internal beliefs.
I understand that my beliefs are a process born of classifying and accepting my beliefs rather than importing them. The moment of recognition is not a moment of genesis; it is a continuation of something that starts years before the realization and possibly even as my consciousness itself developed. I’m nothing more than a swarm of manifesting phenomena, a collection of beliefs that intersect in the now moment. The artistry of living is embracing each revealing brush stroke as it paints the scene.
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