I’m a seeker. I’d be tempted to say ‘professional seeker’ if there was a career to be had in it. While others have been busy building careers and fattening their retirement accounts and freaking out about politics, I’ve been digging into what the hell it means to be alive. And I’m flummoxed by the fact so few share in that fascination. But to each his own.

If you’ve read this far, chances are good you’re a seeker too. Welcome fellow rare breeder.

Now that we’ve gotten this far, let me sneak ‘spiritual’ in there, because that’s really what I am, a spiritual seeker. (Like ‘God,’ spiritual has a tendency to trigger folks.)

To me, spirituality and God aren’t necessarily the same thing. Far from being a Santa Claus in the clouds (thank you for that, Joel Goldsmith), God is It, the One, the All. God IS. Everything else is an expression of It, but not separate and apart from It.

Spirituality, on the other hand, acts as a kind of metaphysical junk drawer into which the seeker can add items collected from his so-called ‘spiritual journey.’

(I should note here that if you’re a hard-core religionist, this likely isn’t for you. But if there’s a tiny crack in that ‘belief’ system, a whisper of doubt, welcome to Seeker Land.)

In other words, the sky’s the limit when it comes to spirituality. Any and every religion (or aspects of them) can be tossed in there, along with mystical teachings and near-death experience accounts and the latest revelations from quantum physics and cosmology. Anything and everything that raises an eyebrow and leads me deeper into contemplation of self or life belongs.

At least for a time.

Because what’s also increasingly clear to me, and helps to explain the name of this site, is the most startling revelation of all: that the ‘Doug’ doing all this searching and seeking is itself the one and only impediment to truth. To Truth with a capital ‘T.’

As the good folks behind Advaita Vedanta (‘one without a second’) will tell you, there is absolutely no evidence that you or I or anything else in the universe exists. At least not the way these minds of ours imagine it. And the thing is, our own sciences are pretty much telling us the same thing. Nothing is as it seems.

So ‘beware of the Doug’ means just that: I’m wise to beware of this Doug thing that imagines itself a white, heterosexual, male human being with a life story and bad knee and, well, you get the picture.

Anyway, whether you stick around and read some of these posts or subscribe or even opt to contribute, I wish you well on your own particular spiritual journey. It’s tough stuff, to say the least, but if you’re anything like me, you know you don’t have a choice.