I assume I'm not the only one here who's come to this place... So I'm asking you all, in perplexity, how you dealt with finding yourselves here, if you ever did.

It's a place you get to on a "spiritual path"... perhaps a sort of crossroads. When you started out on this path, you had a lot of hopes, and dreams, of what might lie ahead. All the mysticism and magic in the universe. Transcendence, revelation, ecstasy. Life-affirming knowledge of why we're here.

But along the way, you've discovered that for all the magic and ecstasy there can be, much of what you hoped to find just doesn't seem to be there. You've desperately tried to cling on to anything promising you that you've just missed it, that you just haven't gotten there yet. But it becomes increasingly harder to believe, as you see the writing on the wall. How we create these visions out of our own needs. There's really nothing there. If God exists, he doesn't have a special message for you, or any meaning to give you. There's no cosmic plan. He's as in the dark as you about how we ended up in this mess.

You've spent years of your life chasing after this spiritual vision. Years you could have spent in Dionysian revels, you spent instead buried in the mystic. And the mystic's there, all right--Mind is an endless mystery--but is there really a point to seeking it out? Maybe your "spirituality" was just a cover for your psychological afflictions. A way to dress them up to yourself. And now that you can see yourself naked in the mirror, with no more spiritual costumes to put on, and you see all the scars, all the ugliness--where do you go with that? You're not Jesus, battered for the sake of some cosmic narrative, you're just a mess. A mess without a reason. Just another sad story of unrelenting cosmic loneliness.

You find yourself at this crossroads. Either you can continue on with a spiritual path, knowing that it is not likely to bring you to any of the places you hoped to reach, or you can abandon it. Sure, your spiritual practice has brought you a measure of calm, of balance, of clarity--but if there is nothing really to see or discover, why bother with balance and clarity? Maybe life is more fun, and bearable, without it. Without seeing and knowing so much. Maybe it's nicer to forget. And just find whatever ways you can enjoy yourself until this pointless ride called life grinds to a halt.

Maybe it's better to distract yourself than to look into the abyss all of the time, to see into the suffering all around you, the lies, the emptiness. God isn't going to descend from the clouds and reach out to you anyway. God is just your own consciousness playing games with itself. Why play the straight game, why discipline yourself and sacrifice when you know it all amounts to a giant fucking zero in the end? When there's no one beyond us self-deluded apes that gives a damn what goes on in our tiny corner of the galaxy?

Some people here still seem to be in the honeymoon phase of spiritual life, but some of you had to have gotten here at some point in your spiritual careers. What did you do? What did you learn? How did you choose to live, and how do you feel about that choice now? I know that no one can give me the "answers," but at least knowing what some other people did might help. For all the bazillion Dharma books there are out there, I haven't found a one that really speaks to this.

And I'm not talking about psych issues, or depression, here. That's another, though related, issue. Questions of meaning are what have brought me joy and inspiration for years now, regardless of my mood or state of mind from month to month or year to year. Now I'm coming up dry. I just can't make stuff up any more. This is about confronting the purpose of a spiritual life in a world, and universe, in which there very well seems to be no purpose.