Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Man: I want happiness.
Buddha: First remove 'I'...that is ego. Then remove 'want'...that is desire. All that remains is happiness.


You get up, you go to work, you come home, you eat dinner, and you go to bed. There has to be more to life than paying bills until you die, right?

Of course there is. There hasn't exactly been a shortage of people telling us as much, over the millennia. Not just the heavy hitters, Buddha and Jesus and Muhammed and such, but the myriad people who have also embraced their true selves and brightened the world in so doing.

I've been blessed to come across many such people in my short time of limited awareness...people who make a difference, lights unto the world ("enlightened" would be a fair description), souls that have touched and enriched mine and many others besides. I know...I don't believe, I know...that I will discover many more. I strive and struggle to be one of them myself.

I've read a fair number of 'spiritual' books since I was a young adult. Some have stuck with me to the point that I quote them in my mind and on the page with some frequency: Neale Donald Walsch's ...With God series is probably the most prominent of those. Others merely brushed my awareness and didn't leave a lasting impression. Regardless, many of the truths in them are merely different expressions of the same Truth, just as most religions, at heart, are the same.
It's blasphemous in nearly every one to suggest as much, of course. God forbid (ha-ha) that someone else might have a valid path to enlightenment.

My metamour Mark lent me a book he said had a profound effect on his spirituality: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach. I'd heard of the book, but only barely. For some reason I thought it was a five hundred page doorstopper. It isn't. It's actually only 37 pages long, with large print and wide top and bottom margins. The edition I read was fleshed out to 112 pages with many pictures of gulls flying. I read it in about half an hour.

That was a profitable half an hour.

You may know the story: Jonathan Livingston Seagull yearns to fly. To fly free of his Flock, free of their endless preoccupation with scavenging for food, to fly just because flight, for him, is his highest expression. He's ridiculed by his peers for endlessly refining his flight technique, seeking greater speed, agility and control. Upon breaking the seagull speed record, he's banished from his Flock for 'reckless irresponsibility, violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family'. Cast out to the Far Cliffs, his spiritual awakening and subsequent journey truly begins, and eventually leads him full circle and Beyond.

The book spent 38 weeks at #1 and broke all hardcover sales records. It spawned a feature-length movie (critically panned, albeit with a Grammy-winning soundtrack voiced by Neil Diamond). It's also generated, like most things spiritual, its fair share of vitriolic misreadings. (This linked review perverts nearly every core message of the book, and indeed stands as a perfect example of the kind of contempt the desire to elevate yourself and those around you is held in.)

Seagull's messages resonated with me. I have long believed in 'power with, not power over', and that true enlightenment is revealed in enlightening others. And as an outsider to many of the world's games, for good or ill, I've certainly the "price of misunderstanding" that Jonathan alludes to: "they call you devil or they call you god".

They liked the practice, because...it fed a hunger for learning that grew with every lesson. But not a one of them...had come to believe that the flight of ideas could possibly be as real as the flight of wind and feather. 
--Jonathan Livingston Seagull, p. 76

That's why spirituality doesn't seem to catch hold: because many of us, even its devoted students, often find ourselves questioning, wondering if there's any real value in such esoteric, impractical teachings. After all, our world places a premium on practicality. Love thy neighbour is all well and good, but it doesn't pay the bills, does it?

No, it doesn't. But that's not what it's for, and the practical-minded people need to understand this.

We as humans are cursed with binary thinking: 'either/or' rather than 'both/and'. That binary thinking has infected our world to an alarming degree. If you're not religious, you must be an atheist; if you're not with us, you're against us; if you're not this, you must be that.

There's a passage in Conversations with God (pdf) in which the author is asking "God" if various kinds of sex are okay in God's eyes. (It's important to note that this series repeatedly tells the reader NOT to blindly believe in it, but to simply accept OR reject what it has to say on a sentence by sentence basis. "Either way, you'll have arrived at your Truth".) Also note that the 'God' in this series often mixmasters up pronouns and descriptions of Itself in order to break you free of imagining God in one (male) role.

Here's the response:

First, let’s be once again clear that nothing is disapproved of by God. I do not sit here in judgment, calling one action Good and another Evil...
Now—within the context of what serves you, or disserves you, on your Path of Evolution, only you can decide that.
There is a broad-based guideline, however, upon which most evolved souls have agreed. No action which causes hurt to another leads to rapid evolution. 
There is a second guideline as well. No action involving another may be taken without the other’s agreement and permission. 
Now let us consider the questions you’ve just asked within the context of these guidelines.
 “Kinky” sex? Well, if it hurts no one, and is done with everyone’s permission, what reason would anyone have to call it “wrong”?  Loveless sex? ... Let me just say this: Loveless anything is not the fastest way to the Goddess. Whether it’s loveless sex or loveless spaghetti and meat balls, if you’ve prepared the feast and are consuming it without love, you’re missing the most extraordinary part of the experience.
Is it wrong to miss that? Here again, “wrong” may not be the operative word. “Disadvantageous” would be closer, given that you desire to evolve into a higher spiritual being as rapidly as you can.
--Neale Donald Walsch, CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD, BOOK 1

It's not about EITHER being spiritual OR practical. It's about infusing your practicality (and everything else in your life) WITH spirituality. It's about approaching everything from, and with, love. What form that love takes is up to you. It could be, as it was for Jonathan Seagull and a few exceptional souls in my experience, teaching. It could be massage. It could indeed be sex. It could be almost anything, so long as it comes from your highest expression of Who You are.

I'm still seeking that highest expression. I may never find it, but at least I'll never stop searching.

"There's only us
there's only this
Forget regret
or life is yours to miss...
No other path
No other way
No day but today"
Jonathan (Larson, not Livingston) -- RENT, the musical