How I Found Spirituality and Why I Like Buddhism

Written By Dave Culligan
 
 

I can remember being 10 years old and lying awake all night, just worrying.

It came back in spurts throughout junior high.

In high school, there was a period of almost two years where I just couldn’t sleep.

I’d lay in bed for hours with a hyperactive mind, agonizing and placing absurd amounts of pressure on whatever was happening in my life (sports, school, girls, friends etc.). Then, the longer I was awake, the more the stress would compound and I’d end up spiralling and crying myself to sleep around 5 or 6am.

I had no language for the feelings I was having, I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about them, and I lacked any tools to address or deal with them. In my desperation, I resorted to the only resource I’d ever heard of for spiritual guidance: The Holy Bible.

I don’t remember why, but I asked my grandmother to get one for me. I probably would have felt embarrassed to buy one as a 17-year-old jock who wanted, more than anything, to appear ‘cool’.

She got it for me, and I read it ~religiously~.

Every night I’d read a little bit, then get down on my knees and say The Lord’s Prayer. I would then pray to the version of God I’d been taught to know and believe in; an omnipotent white-bearded man in the sky with unlimited bandwidth to watch and listen to all my bullshit.

I’d bargain with him: “I’ll stop stealing, lying, or being mean to this or that person, if you’ll just let me sleep”. I did this every night. I didn’t bring my bible to sleepovers, but I would still close my eyes and mouth my prayers, working on my deal with God.

After a few months, I noticed it was working. I can still remember the deep relief I felt, to finally be able to relax my mind and sleep.

Naturally, after getting what I wanted out of our deal, my commitment dwindled. I stopped reading and I stopped praying. But I kept sleeping, and I wasn’t worrying all throughout the day like I used to either. I was still anxious, it just wasn’t taking over my life as it had in the past.

Between my final year of high school and my first year of university, I reflected on this experience and the changes it caused within me. In this healthier, clearer state of mind, I realized that I didn’t actually believe in this version of God (like, the upper case G, anthropomorphic god), and I felt that the changes were probably a result of my consistent reflection, focus, and the changes I made in my own behaviour. The energy I was putting out.

I moved on to university where I had high hopes of living my dream of playing football, finding my people, finding my self, being challenged, learning, and growing in all sorts of new ways. It ended up being a very different experience than I’d hoped for.

My university football career was extremely frustrating and disappointing, I wasn’t engaged in my studies at all, and I learned a lot more about what I didn’t like, what not to do, and who I didn’t want to be than anything else.

By my fourth year, the dissonance between my values and nature and the way I was actually living my life had grown to a point where I was starting to hate myself, and where I genuinely questioned whether I wanted to be alive.

Somewhere along the way, a friend had introduced me to Alan Watts and I would listen to his old clips on YouTube for hours. I think I listened to this guided meditation at least 200 times. He spoke about the nature of the mind, about being a human in this life, and about society, all through the lens of eastern philosophies like Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism.

Hungry for more, eventually I went and grabbed one of Watts’ books from the school library. It was called “The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, and I can pinpoint the exact moment that its core message sunk in for me. I was in my room with noise-canceling headphones on (overtop of ear plugs) because my roommates were having a party, when I read the line “you are an aperture through which the universe is looking out at and exploring itself”.

I think this was the first time in my entire life that I truly understood, that I felt in my cells, that I am just one small part of a great big universe––a oneness––in a constant process of exploring and discovering itself. That I am nature. That I am not separate from anyone or anything.

Ever since then, I have never lost sight of that, even for a moment. I have remained enlightened, awakened, utterly egoless and have escaped the pressures and clutches of capitalism and modern society altogether. I have never since been unkind, impatient, lazy, or ignorant. My feet hover, constantly, effortlessly, a few inches from the floor.

I joke.

Since the moment I read that line, I guess I have been awakened to what I believe to be the truth of our nature as human beings, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t fallen back asleep for hours, weeks, or months at a time.

It’s been about nine years since then, and it has been a constant process of trying to balance my secular life with my spiritual needs and health, with my level of commitment to spiritual learning and practice ebbing and flowing with the tides of time.

I’ve gone through periods where I’ve read all sorts of books on spirituality and philosophy (Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Stoicism). Where I have consistently practiced yoga, journaled, contemplated, and meditated. But I’ve also been busy trying to build a ‘successful’ business within a patriarchal, capitalist system, which – when I’m not careful/mindful – can be all-consuming and lead me to lose sight of these great truths I’ve discovered about life and about what really matters.

This is the work I’m doing now.

Trying to find a way to align my work and my business with my purpose and values, so that there is less philosophical compromise and sacrifice in pursuit of financial gain, and more harmony between my entrepreneurial and spiritual endeavours. I’m striving for work-life integration instead of work-life balance, wherever possible.

Today, almost fifteen years later at age 31, I think back to when I read the bible and prayed on my knees at my bedside and, to put it as simply as possible, I now believe I was able to make great changes in myself and my life because I started paying attention. To my mind, to my environment, and to my actions. Until that point, I’d gone through life just experiencing events and reacting to them.

When people ask me why I’m drawn to Buddhism (which seems to be the philosophy I’m aligned most closely with these days) I usually tell them it’s because Buddhism is focused on seeking truth in a world where we’re fed so many lies. Especially as young people.

Examples:
- Make more money, achieve this goal, buy that thing and you will be happy.
- Your leaders (gov’t, bosses etc.) will always take care of you.
- You can always put faith in the adults in your life (parents, teachers, coaches), they know best!

From what I’ve gathered, at its core, Buddhism simply asks us to pay attention. To our breath, to our minds, to the world around us. It asks us to observe, accept, and experience reality as it is, not as we would like it to be.

Buddhism asks me to try to do right. To accept that life will bring plenty of pain and suffering, and that hoping for there not to be pain and suffering will only lead to more pain and suffering.

It asks me to respect life. My own life, the lives of others around me, all life. I let one of those big gross mosquito things out of my apartment last night rather than killing it, and that felt nice.

Buddhism (the kind of Buddhism I interface with anyway) seems not to judge me for my inability to immediately abandon the demands and realities of my life, but is always there to nudge me in the right direction when I make the time and space to reflect on what truly matters.

Hopefully I’ll live a long(ish) life, and this is just the beginning of my spiritual journey. My only real plans for now are to continue to cultivate and act on my curiosities, to keep reading, listening, talking, and writing about Buddhism, spirituality, and philosophy, and to do what I can to pay close attention to what comes up.

If you’re curious to follow that journey, I’d encourage you to scroll down and sign up for my e-mail list. I really don’t send that many, but you’ll get notified when I make a new blog post or when I’m launching a new project.

And if you’re curious about Buddhism, spirituality, philosophy & self discovery, here are a few resources I’ve found interesting and/or helpful:

Dave Culligan
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