Ten years ago, in 2009, I was finishing my seminary career and although I didn’t fully understand it back then, my time in seminary was marked by a dark night experience. I was in the midst of a spiritual depression struggling to let go of quote-unquote ‘right belief’ and say goodbye to the ‘God of Answers.’

As painful as this experience was, it was an absolutely essential part of my spiritual development. Because while there’s a great deal to be learned from the wisdom of others, no one can explain Mystery to us. They can help point the way—but they can offer us no definitive answers. Mystery can be felt. It can be experienced. But it can never be tied down or locked in a book.

I’m fully committed to the path of spiritual seeking—which means I’ll spend a great deal of my life-energy searching after Mystery—even though I know I’ll never be able to pin it down.

My theology is one of skepticism. I’m afraid of anyone or anything that’s too sure of answers. I subscribe to the value of holding it all lightly. As we participate in the institutions of religion, we must hold it all lightly. As we listen to our teachers, we must hold it all lightly. As we study ancient scripture, we must hold it all lightly. As we undertake spiritual practices, we must hold it all lightly.

Please understand, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be serious or reverent. What I’m saying is that we would be well served to remember that everything is always changing, which means the words and symbols we use to describe Mystery are always changing. Take the swastika, which is an ancient Buddhist symbol representing good fortune that was utterly defiled by the Nazis and transformed into a symbol of destruction, hatred, and genocide.

The words and symbols we use to describe Mystery are an important part of our spiritual lives. They give shape and form to the ineffable and spark our imagination, but they will always be inadequate. And when we hold too tightly to them, we can cause ourselves and others harm. Words and symbols can allow for an arrogant complacency—they can allow us to fool ourselves into thinking we understand God. And this can be wildly dangerous. Holding too tightly to our religious stories and symbols we might just become bystanders and perpetrators of suffering and injustice.

But when we can remember that the symbol isn’t the Mystery, but a representation, we can hold it lightly. We can practice non-attachment and avoid the pitfalls of dogma that allow for religious and political abuse and oppression. Symbols are designed to point us toward something that can’t be described. They’re tools that help us understand ourselves, the world, and the unknowable. Searching after Mystery can be like trying to grasp smoke. And hearing of other people’s experiences of the Divine can help us draw closer to our own experience of the Divine. But we must always remember that experience is personal. And that symbols and experience aren’t the same thing.

In a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, Ravi Ravindra writes:

The experiences of great visionaries or mystics and prophets—such as Arjuna, Moses, and John of the Cross—are concrete and real, but when they express what they see, they use words, metaphor, similes, or analogies that are symbolic from our perspective, because what they see is not in our experience. [The great visionaries were] not experiencing symbols; what they experience is very concrete. … [But] having heard the name [they use to describe their experience] we can imagine having touched the face, mistaking words for reality.

Holding the words of others lightly, we can seek our own divine understanding. And remembering that everything is always changing, we can pay attention to the direction that our words and symbols point us. Holding it all lightly we can open ourselves to a divine dance built on introspection and big questions. We can dive into the heart of Love. We can take on the mantle of seeker and bravely release the need for false assurities.

The great visionaries of the past left us maps. We are blessed to live in a time when we have access to so much ancient scripture from so many different traditions.

So here’s my invitation: Take on the mantle of seeker. Let go of answers and search after Mystery. Open up the old books and holding all that you find lightly, allow yourself to be dazzled. Take on the mantle of seeker and search after stories that help tear down your attachments and assumptions and guide you into the heart of Mystery.