Soul Boom

PREFACE

Here I am. Sitting in my office during the early weeks of the COVID-19 quarantine, furiously outlining the book on big spiritual ideas that I’ve been wanting to write for years. “Now’s my chance!” I say to myself (while wearing the same sweatpants I’ve worn for the past six days with the little stain where I wiped my cinnamon-raisin oatmeal on my thigh). Here’s the big opportunity! Hours and hours of free time to vomit forth a potpourri of ideas on all my favorite topics: the journey of the soul, life after death, the Big Guy Upstairs, and the personal and universal spiritual transformation of society!

The only problem? Me. Rainn Wilson.

Let me be blunt with you, dear reader. I know what you might be asking right now: “Why the hell is the actor who played Dwight on The Office writing a book on spirituality?”

First, let me explain what I mean by “spirituality.”

True story: I recently came across a news headline about some model/celebrity who had undergone some kind of “spiritual transformation.” I was intrigued. After all, I love spiritual transformations! Have had a couple myself over the decades. In fact, I might be having one right now as I write this. Upon further reading, turns out that this model/celebrity had undergone an actual exorcism of some kind in a remote town in Switzerland. A shaman had released some kind of demon/energy from them, and they were finally, on the other side of it, able to practice “self-care” and enjoy yoga and raw juicing from home. Something like that. Which got me thinking about the word “spirituality.” It can mean so many different things to so many people.

To some, spirituality is completely synonymous with religious practice and “organized religion”: church, God, and so forth. To others, it can mean rituals involving hallucinogens. To many, because the word “spirit” is in it, it means that ghosts are involved. To still others, like the model/celebrity, it can mean exorcisms by Swiss shamans.

Let me be perfectly clear: I’m not talking about any of that.

The word “spirituality,” as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, means “the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.” This is exactly what I’m talking about. Way to go, OED! I will delve into all these concepts in far greater detail as the book progresses, but if we are to believe, as I very much do, that we have some kind of “soul” that continues on some kind of journey after our bodies fall away, and that this spiritual essence of who we are is just as real (if not more so) than our bodies—in other words, that this “soul” is the nonanimal, nonmaterial, non-pleasure-and-power-seeking dimension of ourselves that continues in some form after our physical existence ceases—and if this soul exists, then there are certain practices, processes, and perspectives that might help to shape our human beingness, the reality of who we really are. This is what I’m referring to when I talk about the word “spirituality”: this eternal/divine aspect of ourselves that longs for higher truth and journeys toward heart-centered enlightenment and, dare I say it, God.

But let’s go back to the original theme.

Why does a guy famous for playing a weird, officious nerd on one of America’s most beloved TV comedies (and many other offbeat characters) want to write about the soul, religion, the afterlife, sacredness, and the need for society to undergo a spiritual reimagining? Why is the beet-farming, paper-selling, tangentially Amish man-baby with the giant forehead and short-sleeved mustard shirts writing about the meaning of life?

Well, I’ll tell you one thing: it certainly is not because I have anything figured out.

I’m no authority on spirituality, religion, or holiness, and I’m anything but enlightened. Yes, I’ve read and studied a great deal. I’ve suffered deeply. I’ve pondered and contemplated and meditated. I’ve struggled and many times failed. But aren’t writers on spiritual topics supposed to have life all worked out? I’m here to tell you they (we) don’t. Although I have some insights from the work I’ve done, I still get anxious and confused a great deal. I swear too much. I’m impatient with my kid sometimes. I have a big ego that can sometimes subsume me. I compare and despair. I have been (and can be) overwhelmingly selfish and judgmental.

Just ask my wife. (Who, by the way, is far more preternaturally spiritual than I am, believe you me!)

But let’s keep digging a little bit. Why is a former sitcom actor writing some “big idea” text on spiritual transformation?! And why am I (shameless plug), at approximately the same time, hosting a travel documentary series on finding happiness called Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss for the Peacock streaming service?

Before I answer that question, I want to share some context. My life story, the story of my journey toward being an actor, a member of the Baha’i Faith, and a spiritual student/thinker/enthusiast (as told in full in The Bassoon King, my serio-comic memoir of 2015), is a complicated one.

My parents, like so many of their generation, were artsy bohemians in the ’60s and ’70s on a quest for truth, peace, and meaning in their lives. My birth mother, Shay (formerly Patricia) of Weyauwega, Wisconsin, moved to Seattle and became an actress in experimental theater in the late ’60s. She did a play once while topless with her torso painted blue, running around in the aisles and swearing at the audience. My father, the recently deceased (more on that later) Robert “Bob” Wilson of Downers Grove, Illinois, was a painter of abstract art and an author of science-fiction novels among various other pursuits. He would often blast opera music from our 1970s stereo system (why were stereos so big back then!?) while covered in turpentine and gesso, singing along off-key as he smooshed globs of outrageous color onto canvases. Paintings that very few would actually see because he never really tried to sell any of them, so they would stack up in the basement like multicolored pizza boxes. During the day, he would manage a sewer construction office and dispatch rusty trucks to unclog the leaf-filled drains of Seattle. During his lunch breaks, he would haul out a little portable manual typewriter and clack away onto stacks of paper, unveiling over the span of fifteen years around eleven tomes of sci-fi with such titles as Tentacles of Dawn, The Lords of After-Earth, and Corissa of Doom. My stepmother, Kristin, who was mostly tasked with raising me, wore various vaguely ethnic shawls and capes and made fanciful, animal-shaped silver jewelry that she sold at a stall at the Seattle Public Market.

And as if that wasn’t eclectic enough, on their off nights they would attend meetings of the Baha’i Faith, of which they were adherents. They would pray and meditate and study holy texts with other spiritually curious Seattleites. And there were a lot of them back then.

An important note about the Baha’i Faith: Personally, after many years of review and reflection, I have come to embrace the religion of my youth and feel like it contains all kinds of relevant wisdom surrounding the issues we face, both as individuals and as a species sharing a planet. And while this book is greatly inspired by the Baha’i Faith and many of the principal writings of its founder, Baha’u’llah, I won’t get too deep into the details of the religion in these pages. After all, this is not a book about the Baha’i Faith or for Baha’is; it is merely shaped and influenced by some of its spiritual, mystical, and social teachings.

Any student of history knows the late ’60s and early ’70s had a completely different energy than the vibe of the previous several decades. When the whole Norman-Rockwell-Eisenhower-lilywhite-American-dream-Doris Day-Leave-It-to-Beaver-crew-cut-post-World-War-II skyscraper of American culture and values was taken down by an explosive charge of race riots, Vietnam, various assassinations, rock’n’roll, countercultural love, and LSD, all of a sudden the world as it used to be didn’t make sense anymore. People were searching for a different path.

What do you do when the world as you know it falls to ashes at your feet?

Well, the Beatles met with the Maharishi, Cat Stevens became a Muslim, Shirley MacLaine communed with ancient aliens, a young Steve Jobs studied Buddhism in India, everybody was “kung fu fighting,” and countless young people sought answers along nontraditional spiritual paths.

Into this milieu was born gigantic pasty baby Rainn Dietrich Wilson.

My dad often told stories of the early ’70s, when he would be out and about and see, say, a group of young men on a street corner in fringy leather vests and long hair, passing a “doobie,” “jaybird,” or “spliff” (’70s terminology) around the circle, and he would approach them, saying, “Hey, guys. Wanna come over tonight to learn more about the Baha’i Faith? To pray and study different spiritual traditions?” And instead of laughing at him and/or kicking the shit out of him, they would respond with great earnestness: “Sure, man. Sounds groovy! What time?”

These spiritual gatherings in our home would include Buddhists and Sikhs and Muslims and Mormons, while our bookshelves became filled with books by and about Buddhists and Sikhs and Muslims.

We would host prayer gatherings and “deepenings” (in order to get deep), and, in addition to the many Baha’i-inspired songs, we would often literally sing “Kumbaya.” Sometimes while holding hands in a patchouli-scented circle. When Jehovah’s Witnesses would come to our door with pamphlets and Bibles, they would be invited in, and we would host an impromptu Bible study replete with pancakes!

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.’”

I don’t remember what happened after that. But I’ll always remember that story, and, I suppose, when all is said and done, that’s what it’s all about, no? Whether you believe in God or not, whether you’re Christian or Baha’i or anything else, we’re all down here doing our best to build a more loving, just, equitable, cooperative kingdom on this beautiful and sometimes difficult earth. Or perhaps a more personal, peaceful kingdom of God within ourselves? After all, that’s how Nietzsche described it:

Basically my entire childhood was filled with two things: art and spirituality.

Oh yeah, and dysfunction. I forgot to mention that. Lots and lots of family dysfunction. And low self-esteem. And a complete and total lack of any conversation about feelings or the fundamentals of basic human emotional interactions.

Because, at the end of the day, as “spiritual” as my family appeared, there was a complete absence of loving expression in our house. Did my parents (including my birth mother, Shay, who took off when I was two and who I didn’t really get to know until I was about fifteen) love me? Yes. Most certainly. To the best of their limited, traumatized ability, my parents attempted a piss-poor fumbling love for me and, occasionally, each other.

For my dad and stepmom, there were dinners and TV watching and gardening and dog walking—in other words, all the ingredients of a loving family. But there was no actual bond in their marriage. In fact, when I asked them when they knew their union was a mistake and they didn’t actually belong together, they both said that it was within a year of their wedding—in 1969. So they did what any two mature people of insight and level heads would do: they stayed together fifteen more years and then got a divorce the second I left for college in 1984.

The entirety of this childhood tapestry created in me one cockamamie suburban cocktail of bohemian weirdness and emotional dissonance on a galactic scale.

In fact, as a teen I would watch how other kids would act and interact while at a restaurant or a school event. I would then copy, word for word, gesture for gesture, how they would behave and emulate their seemingly “normal” human interactions in order to learn how to fit in better. Kind of like what an alien in human form would do in order to learn the mysterious ways of the Homo sapiens. If, say, a teen would say to another friend-teen, “What’s up, my man!” and give him a friendly one-two pat on the back, I would try that same gesture out on a couple friends of mine: “What’s up… um, my man!” along with matching friendly pats, to see if I could interact with the same effortless casualness.

Needless to say, it worked out perfectly.

So yes, my childhood shaped me this way. This strange petri dish of experiences—this recipe for weirdness—set the stage for the question at hand: Why is the guy who played Dwight writing a book on religious and spiritual ideas?

Another answer to the “why” comes down to this: I almost died. If not for certain tools, concepts, and teachings that I have found on my own spiritual search for balance, healing, and perspective, I would not have made it into adulthood. Or become a successful actor. Or written this damn book.

I’m not going to get into any gory details, but in my twenties and thirties I dealt with many mental health issues that caused me incredible pain and hardship. After graduating from college, I suffered years of debilitating anxiety attacks and to this day have an ongoing anxiety disorder that I have to monitor and work on with great seriousness and care. And therapy. Lots of therapy.

I have undergone long periods of time when I was clinically depressed. There were times I reached emotional lows from which I felt I would never escape. I even seriously contemplated suicide. Thankfully, I always got therapeutic help when I needed it and love from some amazing friends and family members, and I had a profound partner in my wife, Holiday Reinhorn, who supported me with great empathy and strength.

And then there’s the other demon of mental (and physical) health: addiction. After some bouts with drugs and alcohol dependency in my twenties, I was able to quit with the help of the Twelve-Step Program of recovery. Pretty much anything you can get addicted to, I have struggled with at one point or another: food, gambling, porn, work, codependence, social media, and debt. Even caffeine and sugar. (And now it’s my frigging iPhone!)

For me, it all comes back to that perpetual subterranean rumble of anxious discontent, probably stemming from childhood trauma, that I continually attempted to soothe and escape using external solutions. Over and over again, to no avail. Because you can’t fix internal imbalance with alcohol or chocolate chip cookies or video games or weed or sex or even Instagram, Candy Crush, and Amazon shopping sprees.

It took me a long, long time and a great deal of therapuetic work to discover the spiritual, emotional, and psychological tools I needed to understand and eventually quell that inner discomfort and chronic imbalance.

Like so many spiritual seekers, I “hit bottom” but eventually found a way forward, a path toward recovery and tranquility. Out of this darkness, I went on a spiritual journey to help me in my quest for the truth. I investigated religions and spent many hours reading holy texts and secular works on the spiritual path. Meditating. Searching for God. For meaning. For something beyond the material. For transcendence.

In a nutshell, I spent many years in my twenties and thirties on a private, personal spiritual search, which led me to read most of the holy books of the world’s major religions. I’m no scholar or expert by any means, but this quest for the truth compelled me to study the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada and other writings by and about the Buddha. I also read up on many Native American faiths and belief systems and caught up on some basics of Western philosophy. I got deeply reacquainted with the faith of my youth, Baha’i. I prayed and meditated profusely, attended various religious services, and dug deep into many central, profound questions: Is there a God? What happens when we die? Do we have a soul? Why do all these idiots watch The Bachelor?

Soul Boom is not a gut-spilling, soul-wrenching personal biography by any stretch. (I’ve already written one of those.) I just wanted, in the preceding pages, to give you a taste, an amuse-bouche, a sampling of my singular and peculiar prehistory. Today, I’m proud to say that the unusual backdrop and breeding ground of art, religion, self-loathing, and social dysfunction made me who I am. Plus, it made me a good candidate for the role of Dwight and the many other misfit parts I’ve played as an actor throughout the years.

And so the journey continues!

Aspects of this personal spiritual quest are explored in the Peacock television series Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss, in which I set off across the globe to see if there might be any lessons on happiness to be learned from other cultures.

The same “Life’s Big Questions” that haunted me in my twenties was the inspirational cornerstone that led to my eventual founding of SoulPancake, a website, YouTube channel, and production studio that specialized in creating uplifting content and sparking dialogue about the beauty and drama of being a human. Our best-selling book, SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions, was a creative workbook based on many of the profound spiritual issues and inquiries I grappled with in my youth and continue to wrestle with in the following pages.

I believe exploring “Life’s Big Questions” is an exciting and important part of our fragile and exhilarating human journey. I have seen this again and again—in my study of various religious traditions, in my life as a Baha’i, and in my work with Geography of Bliss, SoulPancake, and the podcast series Metaphysical Milkshake, which I host with the amazing author/provocateur Reza Aslan. And my personal battles with mental health demons have given me firsthand experience in the high-stakes pursuit of meaning, purpose, and serenity from a spiritual perspective.

Besides, none of the other people who are way smarter and wiser and more spiritually evolved than me seem to be writing a book about this stuff, so why the hell not some weird, spiritually curious actor?

So… OK to move forward on the old booky-wook? Have a bit of clarity on the personal reasons that led me to create Soul Boom?

Good. Just one more thing then. Beyond my personal interest and journey, there’s a bigger “why” behind this endeavor. My principal and overriding motivation for writing this book is not as introspectively personal as the tapestry I’ve just laid out. The truth is found in these words:

As all the existing organizational systems around us break down, we need answers. We need solutions. We need hope. Unity. Love. Compassion. All that gooey, profound stuff that is so easy to sneer at and dismiss in our cynical, fast-paced, modern world. Yet I sincerely believe that humanity, in order to evolve on both the individual and the societal level, needs a total shift in perspective and a seismic change in how it undertakes pretty much everything. This is the “reshaping” necessary for “human salvation” that the great Baha’i leader and writer Shoghi Effendi references in the above quote.

I hope you’ll consider this “big idea” to address the world’s problems. Perhaps the key to healing the world’s chaos and pain lies on a spiritual path. Perhaps there are spiritual tools and religious concepts out there that can help us on a societal level, as well as in our own personal transformation. Perhaps a spiritual metamorphosis is required for us to not only thrive but to even survive as we sit at the precipice of annihilation.

So, gentle reader, what topics are we going to tackle in the ensuing chapters? Some really light material: pandemics, death, God, religion, holiness, consciousness, suffering, social transformation, and the meaning of life. That’s about it. We’ll go on sacred pilgrimages to Jerusalem and the Baha’i holy land as well as into the distant future of humanity. We’ll tackle small topics like death and God and consciousness and the soul. We’ll converse with aliens and break down everything that’s currently breaking down in society, and we’ll even create our own new, awesome religion. Basically, I’ll be throwing a lot of spiritual spaghetti against the wall, and hopefully some of it will stick.

I hope this book will ignite discussion and inspire you, gentle reader, to view some universal spiritual ideas through some different-colored lenses. Sometimes silly, sometimes profound and earnest, I will attempt to explore some very old ground with some very new perspectives.

Plus, because I love quotes, along the way there will be a myriad of fun, inspirational sayings from dead people far wiser than me. Quotes like this one:

And this one:

This book will be a wide-ranging smorgasbord of ideas—spiritual and otherwise. Take what you like and leave the rest. Some concepts I hope you’ll jibe with and others perhaps not so much. But it’s the beginning of a discussion, I hope. A touchstone. A spark. And eventually? A much-needed personal and societal transformation.

A spiritual revolution. A boom at the soul level.

But where to begin?

Let’s start with television.