Facing the Abyss vs. Buying the Mural

  A consumer guide to spiritual choices nobody asked for

Threshold of the Unnamed – Rendered by the author in Midjourney

I've come to a weird, random observation today, as I often do when the weather is too warm and humid for my own good. The process of building any kind of spiritual life is a lot like shopping. And to abominably oversimplify the matter, you’ve got two main products on the shelf to choose from – The Abyss™ and The Mural™:

• The Abyss™: Comes with existential dread, an occasional sense of being stared at by the void, and (if you’re lucky) moments of raw, unfiltered truth that rearrange your molecules a little bit. Side effects include insomnia, journaling in the middle of the night, and annoying other people by constantly saying things like, “But how do we know reality is real?”
• The Mural™: Brightly colored, easy to install, and guaranteed to hide any terrifying questions behind deceptively cheerful paint. Comes with bonus potlucks, matching T-shirts, and a sense of belonging with lots and lots of other Mural users. Just don’t ask why the mural smells faintly of mildew or what's actually in that potluck casserole.

Most spiritual people I've known throughout my life, understandably, go for The Mural. It’s user-friendly. It so often comes your way via a smiling salesperson. It looks awesome in photos. And the Abyss? Well, it doesn’t even come with a warranty, and what passes for customer support is literally just... deafening, frustrating silence.

But here’s the thing about The Mural. It might sound like the better deal at first, but sometimes the paint peels. Sometimes it outright cracks on a level that's impossible to ignore, and you realize you’ve been staring at drywall this whole time. 

And when that happens, the Abyss is still waiting for you there, like that one weird friend you have who doesn’t text back for six months but will almost certainly show up at 2 AM when your life falls apart.

The Mural Option: Comfort at a Price

Like I said, The Mural has its perks. It’s safe. It’s predictable. It tells you what to think and how to live. And if I'm honest, that can be really appealing when the world feels like a dumpster fire (and when doesn't it). The Mural will never look at you and shrug before saying, “We don’t know what happens when you die.” And it has this very nice brochure with diagrams, thank you very much.

But comfort isn’t free. The cost of The Mural is your human curiosity. It’s your right to ask the kind of questions that don’t have quick, well-packaged answers. It’s the muscle of critical thinking, which atrophies if you don’t use it. And if you do start poking at the moldy corners and the little patches of peeling paint, you will almost certainly find yourself shamed back into line. 

In other words, The Mural is lovely until you notice how very fragile it truly is.

The Abyss Option: Uncomfortable but Honest

The Abyss absolutely does not care about your comfort. It's not going to hug you when you’re scared. It won’t hand you a pamphlet while silently smiling at you through kind eyes. It’s just kind of... there, dark and deep, refusing to make things easy for you or anyone else.

And yet, The Abyss is honest. It doesn’t sell you answers that it can’t back up. When you face it directly, something shifts, even if you're not immediately sure of what. You realize that uncertainty isn’t death but... possibility. You discover that awe can indeed coexist with terror. You may even realize eventually that sometimes they’re the same thing.

The Abyss teaches you resilience, forcing you to build meaning with your own hands instead of waiting for someone to spoon-feed it to you. And it forces you to decide what’s worth living for, not because someone promised you heaven points, but because you’ve looked into the darkness and chosen anyway.