Say good-bye to Shangri-La

Osel Hita Torres, who, at age 14 months, was chosen by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of a Tibetan spiritual leader, has decided to abandon his Buddhist order.

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine the pressured life he led, taken from his home and family, growing up unto watchful and expectant eyes? Eyes that looked to him for early wisdom and enlightenment?

Can you imagine living an existance totally cut off from the modern, secular world, to have adults around you seat you on a throne and consider you a god incarnate?

Can you imagine the internal torment he must have endured to have come to this difficult decision?

Can you imagine the loneliness of his existence?

Can you imagine the courage it required to leave this order, the only structure he ever knew?

Now age 24, he likens his life to living a lie and now calls himself a “spiritual scientific agnostic.” Wow. Wow. I find the paradoxical label of “spiritual…agnostic” most intriguing.

He is now studying film and catching up on the world outside his monastery.

Confession#97: I wonder how many of us just follow mindlessly the religions, traditions, routines we have been taught, so deeply ingrained in our psyche that to deviate follows with it a feeling of such betrayal and debasement. How many of us have the deep courage to shut out the noise of the religion we were raised in, seek solitude, and listen, really listen quietly to our own hearts and souls and minds, and follow what they reveal to us. Us as individuals, not the collective chant of the herd. If, in the silent solitude where the soul dwells, that same form of worship of our youth reveals itself, so be it. If not, can we walk to any different drum beat? Can we walk to the beat of OUR own drumming?

Confession #98: I wonder, what can a god tell me when he does not know first my world?

Confession #99: I wish Osel Hita Torres well.   Namaste ("The light within me honors the light within you.")