Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution

by Rainn Wilson

I remember one time, when members of a particular sect of Christian Protestant came to our house on a Sunday afternoon, my father asked them to describe their concept of the kingdom of heaven. A well-groomed man with a Ned Flanders mustache said, sipping some coffee, “Well, sometime in the near future, there will be a great rumbling from above, lightning will strike, and there will be terrible storms. The sky will open up, and down will come Jesus Christ on a cloud with a great trumpet blast. There will be an incredibly beautiful city with gold and silver turrets that descends with angels on it, and this is the kingdom of God. The good Christians will get into the city, and it will float away with Jesus to be with God, the Father, and the rest of the people will be left behind, left on earth to perish.” And then he politely responded with something to the effect of, “What is the Baha’i concept?” My dad, a wise spiritual teacher and public speaker, responded, “Well, in a lot of ways, it’s very similar. There will be great storms and lightning and thunder, and the skies will open up. Down from a hole in the clouds doesn’t come a city or Jesus or anything but rather a bunch of bags of cement. Some shovels and hammers. Bricks and mortar and nails and lumber. And finally, at the very end, a note floats down on the breeze and lands on top of all the supplies. It reads: ‘Kingdom of God on Earth: Build-It-Yourself Kit.’”

this!

The Imam Ali says in a famous hadith (sacred saying) from Islam, “People are asleep as long as they are alive. When they die, they wake up.”

In summation, perhaps suffering, tests, and difficulties are actually the reason for this material existence, and finding joy while in the midst of them is our life’s greatest and most important challenge.

From my feeble understanding, this concept of Wakan Tanka is the creative force that binds and generates life. That exists beyond time and space. It is in no way anthropomorphic. Wakan Tanka is not a dude, being, entity, or demiurge. It is the mysterious power of the seven directions: north, south, east, west, up into the sky, down into the earth, and, finally, the seventh direction, the internal (inside the chest, the heart, the soul). Wakan Tanka is the God of our ancestors and binds us to them and is experienced in connection to the wind, the sunlight, the grasslands, and the water.