traveling far enough

.
Aldous Huxley once wrote approximately

If the intellectual travels long enough and far enough, he will return to the same point from which the non-intellectual never started.

I wonder if the same thing might be said for the spiritually-inclined:

If the believer travels long enough and far enough, he will return to the same point from which the non-believer never started.

Being a non-believer does not imply that agnostics or atheists would somehow get a leg up on believers. Agnostics and atheists have worked pretty hard on their beliefs. Maybe a non-believer is more like a daisy in the summer time, unconcerned with economic downturns, deep philosophies, and warring states. A daisy doesn't care and doesn't not-care. A daisy is just a daisy.

I thought of this when idly scanning the spiritually-linked books gathering dust on the porch bookshelf. How I loved them in their time. How they encouraged me. How they buttressed an interest in which I was not yet quite comfortable ... what if the whole thing is just a crock of shit? What if I followed this path and just drove myself crazy? I didn't want to end up in some rubber room and these books and the temples I visited and the lectures I heard and the practices I practiced all supported me and my uncertainties. Thank you very much.


But eventually, like some knitting or stamp-collecting fad, those books fell back to what they were before I ever needed and relied on them. Something I didn't really know about and something, more important, that simply collected dust.

I'm not suggesting that those books, those buttresses, are somehow bad or useless. They're not. But they certainly do collect dust and dusting is not my favorite hobby.
.