I’ve always been fascinated by religion and spirituality. Life has thrown me into those pots again and again. When I was still a boy, I lived an an abusive and awful situation – to escape that, I read everything I could get my hands on. I was that 12-year-old with a pile of books covering every topic checking out at the library every week. I read a little about religion but mostly I had been exposed to American Christianity and aside from thinking Jesus was a pretty cool dude, I wasn’t very interested. The contradictions and the – I guess I’ll just say it – the evil of the father god that Christians worshipped weren’t what I was looking for. I went to almost all the churches in my town and while there were a lot of nice people I met, there were far more who were total hypocrites. I dove as far as I could into other things but truth be told, the public library in a small Oregon town generally didn’t have a big alternative spirituality or religion section.
Then – jackpot. Some lady my mom knew found out that I was a big reader and delivered box upon box of books to our barn – just for me. I had my own library – her father had died and rather than going through the books or donating them to charity or throwing them out – she just gave them all to me. I sometimes think about that treasure trove and what was lost when I had to make my exit from that facet of my life. It was a hasty exit and I couldn’t bring books with me – but I remember enough of them. There was a copy of the Satanic Bible by Anton Levay, there were books by yogis and Hindus and Buddhists and Judaic Kabbalists. There were tarot cared explanation books and books on the I-Ching and books about psychics and ghost ships and ancient aliens. It was a bizarre collection and while a part of me thinks – it would have been great to know her father who had put that collection together, then I remember some of the other books and I’m glad that I didn’t meet him. I was a pretty open minded kid but there were some books that I wanted nothing to do with and funny enough, I burned them. Trust me, I did the right thing. They weren’t about devils or religion – they were about kids. Nuff said. I had some nightmares from those – but as for the rest – they opened my mind to the entire spiritual world that I hadn’t seen yet.
Not long after I left Oregon, my uncle gave me a copy of Ram Dass’ Be Here Now, his wife gave me a copy of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, and I also found a copy of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha. That’s a nice reading list for a 13-year-old.
Up into my twenties, I continued exploring spirituality with the Don Juan peyote books and Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Books like that. The kind of spiritual not religious stuff you found in the 80s and 90s. Almost wholesome but with an edge. Hitchhiking around the American Southwest, I found a copy of the Tao te Ching on the side of the road. The translation blew my mind. Then, getting back to Bellingham, Washington where I lived at the time, I went in a small bookstore and found the back room filled with boxes books about obscure and mainstream religious movements, cults, magic, and global spirituality. Asking about the prices, the owner told me that if I would organize the room full of boxes that I could fill up a box and take what I wanted. Yes, please. Thank you.
Along the way, I joined cults. I tried out being a born again Christian with the Church of God but found it to be way too culty and closed minded. I didn’t become a Mormon but I read the book and went to some services. I went to Jehovah’s Witness meetings but they creeped me out the most. I got ‘audited’ by Scientologists and read their books but quickly sussed that it was just a money scheme. I didn’t have money and if I got it, I didn’t want to give it to Mormons or Scientologists. I met an Episcopal Priest and almost decided to join his flock based on his intelligent and reasoned conversation but in the pews, I found the same stink of hypocrisy. I was baptized as a Christian at one point as a kid. I got picked up hitchhiking by a former Jesuit priest who had become a Nichiren Buddhist and he gave me a Gohonzen and taught me to say Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. I really like Nichiren Buddhism but when I joined the Soka Gakkai International – I found a big cult of personality that I didn’t want to worship. I met an amazing Sufi teacher who blew my mind with the concepts of mystical Islam. I realized that the language and teachings he shared were what I truly believed – and also fit with Taoism and the fundamentals of Buddhism and the more mystical sides of Christianity and the teachings of Jesus himself. So, when I fell in love with a Muslim girl and had to convert to get married, it was easy for me to say the shahaddah and become Muslim because in my mind, I already was one who simply trusts god. There was that problem with hypocrisy though and what I realized the common thread was crossed all religions and movements. It was that humans (mostly men but sometimes women) took great spiritual truths and over time used them as a control system to take money and power from those who came to learn. The problem (as with almost all things) was humans and specifically with humans who placed themselves as an intermediary between man and god. Every great truth I had come across was connected to several shared themes and one of the most powerful was “There can be no intermediary between you and God.” Buddha said it, Lao Tzu said it, Jesus said it, Mohammad said it, even Anton Levay said it.
Looking at the world around 2018-2020 – I recognized something else. Governments and people were moving away from organized religion. It was becoming obvious that organized religion was – for lack of a better word – a crock of shit. It was designed and used to control people, to exploit people, and to take power away from people. So, around that time, people had begun to move away from it. Which was great!
Except for one thing. I believe we, as humans, have an innate need for the spiritual. It gives us something. It provides a necessary anchor to be self aware humans and allows us to overcome impossible things both in the world and in ourselves. There is a space inside every person where faith and belief in a power greater than what we see physically in the world exists. And when we simply delete or cancel or turn and walk away from all religions, all spirituality – it leaves a void. A vacuum. An empty space.
Nature loves a vacuum. Something always comes along to fill it. What I saw coming to fill it was social media and dopamine fixes from doom scrolling and living online. TikTok was filling the void – with whatever the algorithm decided to fill it with.
So, being me – I decided to construct a philosophy that would fill my own void so that I wouldn’t get sucked into the abyss of corporate controlled and government sanctioned social media group think. This is how Baoism was born.
I poured over everything I had ever read or learned or heard or felt. I tried to distill the great holy books down to the essence that they shared across all boundaries and borders and what I came up with was this.
We are all born with an innate knowledge of what is good for us, for our community and family, for our world. We naturally understand when something is not good for us, others, the world. Over time we learn to ignore that knowledge. We learn cultural and interpersonal rules that fly in the face of what we know. We distort our own reality field.
And we stop listening to our own internal compass. Worse, we stop sharing and teaching and taking responsibility for others. What I came up with existed in every great philosophy or religion. It’s not new but I’m phrasing it in my own way.
We know without someone else telling us when we do things that are ‘bad’ (as defined above) and we also know without someone else telling us when things are ‘good’ (defined by not being bad). I didn’t really like the use of the terms good or bad so I created new ones. Bad things became ‘Tox’ (as in toxic) and good things became Rox (as in ‘that Rocks!’). So here is the core of Baoism:
Stop doing Tox.
Start doing Rox.
Help others to stop doing Tox and start doing Rox. (as I am doing right now).
That’s it. Simple. And the biggest key is that no one else gets to tell you what Rox or Tox are. You know. I’ve had lots of people say things to me like “But what if I think killing people (or doing some horrible thing) is Rox?” and my answer is that no one truly thinks that. They may be delusional, they may have been conditioned to think that they think that, but inside, when you find the voice – everyone knows the difference between Rox and Tox.
Some people though – they need to have the path laid out for how to find that voice in themselves. So, I laid out some – not all, just some of the ways that you can find that clarity. None of them are new. In fact, the great spiritual teachers have already given all the answers to this.
Prayer. Between you and whatever your greater power is.
Meditation.
Exercise. Yoga. Tai Chi. Movement.
Being in Nature. Aligning with Natural Cycles.
Art. Creation. Music.
Service. Helping others, giving, charity.
Community. Food.
Then I thought, how can these helpful tools be given to more and more people? How can these be brought naturally into people’s lives? And that’s when the word ‘holidays’ popped in my head. So I created the Baoist Holidays. Each of them designed to bring a specific action that can help people become closer to hearing that voice – or as the SGI Buddhists say – to help polish the mirror.
The full moons were an obvious start. The solstices and equinox were another. Then I decided to go further. So I created holidays that celebrate music, games, food, art – and critical thinking. I’m sure some of my holidays didn’t hit, but overall, I’ve found great joy in most of them. They are check in points for me – they help me to remember what is important to get my head on straight.
One of the most important parts of Baoism is what I didn’t put in it. I didn’t put a leader in it. I didn’t put a human authority in it. I didn’t put in a decision making body. In Baoism, you are the leader. You are the priest or priestess and ultimate human authority. You are the decision making body. Not me – definitely not me. I’m a teacher, yes, but not one who creates rules you have to follow. And guess what, by virtue of the Baoist Creed above, I’m just one teacher, you are another, and every other practicing Baoist is a Baoist teacher. I gave the role of teacher in Baoism a name, Baoji. Every practicing Baoist is by virtue of the creed, a Baoji. I created some funny holidays about Baojis too because why not? It should be fun.
There is no single person who sits on top of the pyramid while everyone else bows and sucks their toes. I created Baoism but I’m just a simple practitioner, a flawed human being doing his best to become a less flawed human being, and trying to help other flawed human beings do the same thing.
The absolute last thing that I want is to be the ‘Leader’ of Baoism or the Grand Poopba Funicular or the Pope of Baoism or anything like that. We cannot have human leaders in spiritual matters. This is where almost all the problems arise. You must be your own leader – and I must be my own leader.
That’s what I have to tell you today. I hope that makes sense. I hope you all take time during the coming days to reflect on who you are and how you can be a better Baoji. I want for you to be the absolute best version of yourself that you can be. I want to meet you and love you. I want you to meet me and love me. Let’s fill the world with Rox, do our best to eliminate Tox, and step by step bring about a paradise where every person we meet is a Baoji that we instantly love for who they are.
Be Happy.
CD