Miraculous Moment: The Journey to Here - Stephen Morris

We live in terribly troubled times. Perhaps people everywhere, throughout the whole of history, have also done so. After all, at the root of our problems, colossal and seemingly insurmountable on a global scale, disheartening and painful to behold on a community one, are greed, ego-centrism, and self-loathing, which takes the form of hatred and violence when directed outwardly, and despair and self-destruction when turned inwards.

Still, many people are able to ‘count their blessings’ and manage to live relatively peaceful, happy, contented lives, experiencing the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows inherent in the human situation. Following the lead of those before and around us, we often live in the absence of serious questioning and critique. It is as if we preferred not to look too closely at what we are doing. Yet, in all honesty, should we not ask if we, ourselves, are not troubled?

It is a pertinent question for all of us, and it is one that has certainly received significant attention in a religious context. To some degree or other each of us has pondered those nagging, philosophical questions that our very existence on earth seems to pose. ‘Who am I?’ ‘Why am I here?’ ‘Does God exist?’ ‘What is really real?’ ‘Is there a heaven?’ Do not these perennial, universal questions sprout from deep inside us, from where we ourselves are, in a very basic sense, troubled? They can be very bothersome to grapple with, and for that reason we tend to let them pass or even block them out. We may all entertain these questions, but who actually addresses them? Who in their lives have committed themselves and made it a mission to solve this basic, existential dilemma and resolved the matter so as to become free and untroubled?

© "The Theosophist" (March 2003) published by the Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai 600 020. www.ts-adyar.org. Reprinted with permission.

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