The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Spirituality

I’m reading Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. I want to quote one sentence from his introduction:

… I wonder if it doesn’t make more sense to speak in terms of an American paradox– that is, a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily.

When I read that, I was immediately reminded of something that has happened not infrequently in my personal life concerning spirituality. For so many years I had been seeking hard for some answers. Although I had been in the church since I was 16 years old and read and studied the Bible ever since; even though I had gone to bible college and seminary and university to get my several degrees; even though I have been preaching and teaching in the church for all this time, I felt deep down that something was missing. I was thoroughly unsatisfied. The Christian culture I found myself in couldn’t give me peace about how other religions fit into the scheme of things, or how people of other faiths or non-faiths were also on a valid path. I met with spiritual directors and masters from different traditions; I prayed, meditated, contemplated, read so many books from so many streams, wrote scores of journals, all in an attempt to find some understanding and peace. I was an intense, very intense, spiritual seeker.

And I drove my wife Lisa nuts! I remember her so many times saying to me that the more “spiritual” I got, the less attractive I became to her. The more peace I sought, the more agitated I became. The more understanding I sought, the more stupid I would behave. Bottom line: the more I sought, the more lost I became.

I finally realized something I knew all along: there’s no way to reconcile all the complexity of ideas, faiths, traditions, philosophies, and spiritualities that are out there. I finally saw that all these things are ripples riding on the top of a deep current of a concealed unity. The apparent divisions were all unfolding of a deeper and mysterious Oneness. I apprehended the truth that I had to die to all my brain’s attempts to grasp for knowledge. I had to humble myself, die to self, and, in a sense, give up the search. It was necessary for me to, in way, stop struggling to stay on the tumultuous surface and sink, sink way down. It is then and there that I found, kind of by accident, what I had been looking for. And it is far more wonderful than I could imagine or explain.