Notice Whether an Idea Unifies or Divides
The word religion derives from the Latin religare, which means "to bind together." I finally fell in love with meditation when I felt it reconnecting me with my real self, with humanity, nature, the entire universe. This experience of oneness, at-one-ment, lies at the charismatic core of every religious tradition. So as you go along your spiritual search, observe the long-term effect of every doctrine and practice that comes your way. If it breaks, shatters, or destroys, it's not religion—its absolutism. That drug'll kill you. Real religion, by definition, makes things whole again. It heals.

"The problem for me," Drew says of his youthful religious experiment, "wasn't that I got high on religion. The problem was that the high was artificial. What I really wanted wasn't just groupthink, it was love. Real love—the kind that takes time, testing, solitude, service, stillness, effort, the whole spectrum of religious practice."

In other words, Do-Be-Do-Be.

So it seems Drew and I enjoy the same natural opiates, that we're following the same basic religious path. We sometimes walk together and enjoy the other's company, but we don't need to be in lockstep. We trust our souls to the embrace of uncertainty, to the reliability of our senses, and to the grand, mysterious impulse that has always led human beings to create religion. Imperfect, foolish, and fallible as we are, each of us seems to be designed—and maybe even guided—to find our own Way.