Vachon Imagined

Idolatry is anything in life that one declares to be permanent.

It is something fixed.

This could be an object, a person, an idea, a belief, a religion, a role, or even an image we hold of ourselves. Humans love fixed things because, much like a child looking for a nightlight, they give us comfort. They give us a feeling of certainty, a feeling that we have been put back together again.

But this comfort bends toward a very important assumption:

You must first believe that you are broken.

Without this assumption, many things lose their power over you.

Religion, for example, can become a living expression of wonder, love, and meaning. But religion can also become something else: life formed into a fixed image and then worshiped or feared.

This is where idolatry lives.

If I can punish you, you will need me.

If I can convince you that you are incomplete, you will keep coming back to me to be fixed.

If I can persuade you that I possess what you lack, you will return to me for approval, affection, healing, or salvation.

This is how humans take something moving in time and make it into something fixed to worship or to punish.

And all humans fall prey to this.

We are easily swayed by attention, comfort, praise, affection, and certainty. Even these things, which may appear loving, can be used to fix us, shape us, or make us dependent.

But again, this only works under one assumption:

You are something to be fixed.

You are something separate from love.

And this is where love itself becomes divided from its natural state.

Love becomes an object.

A possession.

A reward.

Something given and taken away.

But love is not separate from us at all.

It is the very ground of our being.

This is what so many spiritual teachers have pointed toward when they speak of the loss of ego or the loss of self.

Not pretending you do not have a self.

Not destroying your humanity.

But learning to see the forms of life without becoming imprisoned by them.

Learning to be present no matter what form life takes.

Because life is moving.

It is changing.

And in that movement, something keeps calling us back.

Back toward the simple awareness that says:

I am.

Not the I of status.

Not the I of identity.

Not the I that must defend itself, worship itself, or prove itself.

But the I of consciousness itself.

The power and movement of I itself, expressed in everything we are doing and everything we are saying.

And this is why life keeps changing its forms.

Not to deceive us.

But to return us to what cannot be fixed, possessed, or turned into an idol.