Ego is all about discriminating between self and the rest of creation, about forging a distinct individual identity. Ego is a separatist. It often does its work by convincing us that we are somehow better than others: we know better, we have the answers, my way or the highway, and my religion is better than yours because God said so and, by the way, my conception of God is true and yours is bogus. When ego seizes a person’s religion, there is grave danger to anyone in the vicinity.

A repressive regime executes protesters as, “enemies of God.” A jihadist beheads an “infidel.” A Christian sniper guns down a Muslim in the streets of Sarajevo; the examples are plentiful. When compared to atrocities such as those, Hume’s foolishness seems trivial, but it is cut from the same cloth; a fabric in which religious beliefs are woven into a pattern attractive to ego, and then acted on and passed along as if representing absolute truth.

Please God, deliver us from all who abduct Your name in the service of ego.

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Here is the Law Of Silliness: you have the right to enough silliness to make an ass out of yourself, but no right to more silliness than God intended for you.

When searching for examples of how to apply the law I thought about two recent experiences when The Scout and I dropped in on a “metaphysical fair” at a local new age bookstore and shop. There were people in small booths and at tables promoting theories, practices, and tools such as Reiki, yoga, various forms of meditation, Egyptian Healing Rods, and small silk purses which were apparently designed to communicate to your otherwise loose change how important it is to you so that it might attract more money.

Before I go any further with this, I want to establish my credentials for having any opinion at all about how silly any of this might be. At various times in my life I studied the Tarot and the I Ching in some depth, and practiced yoga and Tai Chi. I hired a Feng Shui practitioner to improve the flow of chi in my home. I even ventured into a place that bears were known to frequent in order to harvest my own set of I Ching yarrow stalks. So I am not totally naive nor habitually dismissive of ancient wisdom traditions or of methods that are often referred to as “New Age.”

Back to the metaphysical fair. Two happenings seem ripe for testing the Law Of Silliness. First, I overheard a woman who was the proprietor at one of the tables tell another woman, presumably a prospective customer, that she was selling, “The tools of the Buddha.” I’m not 100% certain of this, but I suspect that the only “tool” of the Buddha was his breath, and maybe also a bodhi tree and a river. I didn’t look to see what the woman was selling, feeling oddly embarrassed about the possibility of intruding on what sounded like a con. I’m sure the woman’s assertion was sincere, but it still sounded like a con. I’d appreciate being enlightened about this if I am wrong.

Second, a young woman in a tiny booth sat at the feet of a seated male customer. She was manipulating his toes and speaking to him. A sign at the opening of the booth advertised “toe-readings.” I don’t know what else to say about this, except to note that toe-reading seems to have gained some traction; a Google search turned up more than 22,000 hits. I don’t know anything about toe-reading and, to tell the truth, I don’t want to know anything about it. I recognize that I am leaving myself wide open for accusations of “contempt without investigation.” I am OK with that.

Now, about applying The Law Of Silliness. First, it says that I have the right to engage with “tools of the Buddha” and toe-reading even if I am making an ass of myself when doing so, which I am pretty certain would be the case. One obvious corollary to the Law Of Silliness is that God has no problem with me occasionally making an ass out of myself. I’ll pass on the “tools of the Buddha” and toe-reading anyway because, second, I am about as certain as I can be that engaging with either of those two enterprises would constitute more silliness than God intended for me.

As for the “tools of the Buddha” woman and the toe-reader, whether or not they are making asses of themselves is fodder for an argument in which I have no interest at all. Whether or not they are engaging in more silliness than their respective Gods intended for them is none of my business. Nice! The Law of Silliness can lead to a place of acceptance.

We all have to figure these things out for ourselves, and I hope I have amply demonstrated how the Law Of Silliness can be a useful tool in doing so.
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Last March I posted a bit of silliness, wrote that “silliness is under-rated,” and then suggested in a comment to a follow-up post that many of us who plow the field of self-development take ourselves far too seriously.

For those who might be silliness-challenged or who worry that their silliness-quotient is too high or too low (especially in the self-development field), here are descriptions of the limits.

One limit was expressed by the character Maude in the 1971 film Harold And Maude. Harold is an up-tight rich kid; Maude an elderly free-spirit. She tells him, “Everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves.”

Another limit was expressed by Wilbert Robinson, who managed the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1914 to 1931. The Dodgers had a pitcher, Clyde Day, who enjoyed celebrating inning-ending strikeouts by flapping his arms and letting out a blaring hog call. Robinson put an end to Day’s histrionics, saying, “A man has no right to be sillier than God intended him to be.”

So there you have it. You have a perfect right to be silly enough to make an ass out of yourself, but you have no right to more silliness than God intended for you.

Does that help?
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