Meditation on a Broken Laptop

Last week, two days after I decided to go on a blogging vacation and vision-quest, I dropped my laptop on the floor and broke the screen.

In the past, if I had broken my laptop during a time of seeking wisdom and insight into God’s will for my writing practice, I would have taken my unfortunate accident as a sign of some sort. Confused and aggrieved, I most likely would have concluded that God wanted me to quit writing.

I was obsessed with looking for signs  from God and “laying fleeces” during a period of time in my life. I look back now and call it a period of madness. My faith caused me to develop a legitimate psychosis. I was unable to trust objective reality; I constantly worried that I was missing some tricky communication from the spiritual realm.

I do not struggle with that anxiety much anymore; I just don’t think about it, “the spiritual.” I still believe that there is a spiritual realm that influences daily life, but I don’t acknowledge this belief to myself until I am forced to do so—by an evil dream, or a serendipitous meeting of an acquaintance, or if I’m stopped by too many red lights when I am on my way somewhere and the anxiety starts churning. Against my will, I start to wonder, “What does this mean?”

And even though it broke my brain a little, I still miss my charismatic faith at times. I miss the passion of it, the loudness, even the language. But now, when I pray, I feel some resistance from a primal and protective place deep in my lizard brain. I think I fear that opening that door will suck me back into the wilderness, to wander among invisible devils.

So I was lying in bed this morning, just waking up, half-thinking, half-praying that God would give me guidance for a blog experiment that I have been working out in my imagination. And a phrase came to me: “Do what you think is good.”

“Natural” or “spiritual” thought? I’m not sure. And what is better, I think I’m okay with that. I think.

About these ads