For so many men, the spiritual path is a road for those who don’t know how to be their own fathers, who crave to relive the crisis of clashing with authority, to retest themselves, perversely enthralled by the strange virtues of the bully. There’s an erotic self-hatred in it: it feels good to rub yourself raw and then to rub yourself away against an absolute. It feels like justice, like what you deserve. Your right to be here is liminal in the shadows of the temple, the church, Geshe Michael, Abraham, Roshi. But the shadow also protects you and makes you invisible if you are too fearful to grow.
