LIFE AS PILGRIMAGE - 5 - The Secular Search For Fulfillment

There is a fundamental flaw when we attempt to build a whole philosophy and system of self belief, that is all about the personal fulfilment of every individual need of one's Self. And the flaw is essentially, that it runs counter to what reality is actually like. Reality is not there purely to service our needs. It remains neutral towards whatever our desires and aspirations might be. The whole concept of personal fulfillment, puts an incredible amount of pressure and stress on you, as an individual to be your own font of wisdom. You have to work things out, how you are personally going to attain that perfectly satisfying life. The possibility of failure becomes unconscionable, and has strenuously to be resisted. 

Today, social media has only made holding this ideal of personal perfection worse. We are currently all living through an era of semi-paralysing anxiety as a result. And even if, theoretically, we were for one moment to achieve that perfect level of fulfillment, there would be no guarantee it would stay that way. Conditions and circumstances change, they run out of our control. You lose your job, people die, you die, wars happen, climate catastrophe arises, cultures and civilizations collapse. The world is an inherently unstable and insecure place. 

But all of this, was only just beginning to dawn on me, whilst I was living in London in the 1980's. I was this unconfident introvert, that somehow would occasionally make bold intuited changes in life direction. And when these petered out or dried up, I'd move on to something else to aim for, to make my life about. I always appeared to return to the stable point of my own creativity as the point of departure. I had then, as I do now, a wide ranging interest in 'the arts'. I can see in retrospect, that this was a time in my life where the current lifestyle and aspirations I had for myself, was rapidly running out of road to travel on. Creatively and personally, relationships were just not happening. My self esteem and confidence, never that robust, seriously wobbled, and I felt a huge amount of insecurity welling up within myself. Life in general was becoming troublingly   meaningless, and lacking in purpose.

I was wandering quite aimlessly around Camden Town, on a day off.  I popped into a bookshop, that I think might have been called East-West. I'd been in it a few times before, it stocked all sorts of books, about alternative lifestyles,psychology, politics, cooking, art and spirituality in its broadest sense. I was scanning round the shelves, when one book title grabbed my attention - The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. The paradox of juxtaposing wisdom alongside insecurity, made me intensely curious. And once I'd bought and started to read it, the book started to feel like it was written especially for me. It directly addressed my turbulent state of being at that time. 

The Wisdom of Insecurity is a quite basic exploration of the teachings of Lao Tsu,  the mythical founder of Taoism. It also has occasional side references to Buddhism, as both are non-theistic distant third cousins. On rereading it a few years ago, I was struck by how Watt's unhelpfully universalised every spiritual idea he touched upon. He was undoubtedly an inspired communicator, but one who unwarrantedly affected a guru like persona. Nevertheless, this book was responsible for opening my eyes to another way of seeing and interpreting the world, life, and upending the secular ideal of personal purpose. 

I remember avidly reading it during my lunch break. It was a beautiful bright sunny day. I was sitting on a bench near the clock tower in Crouch End.  And one particular sentence just leapt out and resonated with me so strongly, that I had a momentary experience of bliss. I'd had a deep realisation that I could simply let go of seeing insecurity as being a problem I needed to overcome or find a fix for.  Instead I could just relax and be more accepting of it. Embrace insecurity as just the way life can often be. Fundamentally you align yourself to the way realty really is, and cease trying to make it conform to what you would prefer it to be. If you can do this, however briefly and transiently, believe me it becomes a huge relief. 

Consequently I read more by Watts, but eventually found him a bit too much of a generalist. I craved more depth. I avidly read Lao Tsu's, Tao Te Ching, then Chuang Tzu, broached the more esoteric and dense teachings of Taoist Alchemy and the cultivation of Chi. I even had a phase of exploring microbiotics as a result of reading this book. The problem for me in 1980's UK was there appeared to be no living Taoist tradition or practitioners to be taught by, to learn from, or plug into. I read Taoist texts in translation, which, I can assure you, are the very personification of mystical spiritual ellipsis. It was all as clear as mud what you were actually supposed to do, on the level of personal spiritual practice. I learnt a few basic Chi circulation meditation techniques from books, and then felt that I'd got all I could then access. These days, in the age of the internet, finding a way forward would've been a whole lot easier.

Not entirely unconnected to this spiritual experience, I subsequently decided, after nine years of being the lone culture vulture in the ultra busy hub of a newly 24/7 London, I'd had enough of it. I was done with metropolitan life. I wanted to leave the city and it's manic psychology of keep moving quickly so you don't notice the purposelessness of it all. After a few recent summer holidays staying with a friend in Wells Next the Sea, I'd fallen in love with the place, and felt I needed to moved to North Norfolk. What actually happened was that I got as close as I could, by relocating to South Norfolk, to the small quiet market town of Diss on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Where I got a job managing an art shop and stationers. My aim, in moving there was to start my life completely afresh,