Revitalizing Spirituality

Spirituality is dead.

The only form of spirituality that exists is a cheap imitation of quick fixes, equivocal movements, and occultish eccentrics. The corpse of spirituality is spinning in its grave over these shoddy simulacrums. What can be done to resurrect spirituality so that it is no longer some well meaning but mysterious practice of the past?

 A revivification of spirituality can be achieved by a return to the body. On the surface, this seems to be a contradiction, a paradox incarnate. Spirituality has been warped and pigeon-holed by the modern world to the degree that it is suppose to be something different than this material world. We have set up a false dichotomy between mundane reality and transcendental reality. But if we look back to the archaic traditions, what we discover is an intuitive and tacit understanding that the doorway to the spiritual lies through the body.

These cultures may have had a mythology/philosophy with the pretense of a dualistic reality but in fact they were consciously aware that the road between the two was seamless. These cultures had concrete and practical techniques for achieving spiritual ecstasy around which a mythology was built. But our modern world has lost the techniques while maintaining the mythology, misinterpreting the symbolic myths as the reality in and of itself. Because of our ignorance of these techniques and experiences we have mistaken the finger for the moon. In order to breath life into the cold corpse of spirituality, we need to rediscover the archaic techniques which gave birth to experiences which inspired the subsequent mythology. The techniques available to us are as varied, nuanced, and sophisticated as any chemists laboratory. The gamut runs from meditation and rhythmic drumming to prayer and fasting, from breathing exercises and physical ordeals to mantras and psychedelic substances. Notice that each and everyone of these techniques is a unique and effective way of perturbing the body's normal equilibrium and balance. Even meditation, considered by many to be the purest form of inducing spiritual experience, involves the systematic reorientation of brain chemistry as demonstrated by brain scans.

Thus, in order to revitalize the notion spiritual dimension we need a realigning of our fundamental metaphysical position; we need to feel at home and comfortable with our own bodies rather than alienated or imprisoned by them. It is no denigration of the sacredness of spirituality to say that it has its roots in the material world, specifically in our body. In fact, the opposite may be true: it may amplify its sacredness. If the the spiritual dimension truly were one unique and separate from our here-and-now existence, then what importance would it have for us? Much like two fish bowls side by side, the life of one does not impact the life of the other.Why and how could it mean anything to us when we are embedded in the physical world of the here-and-now?


But if spirituality were to be a dimension present in matter, then it would be of infinitely more value. And this is what I speculate is the case--as above, so below: meaning there is only a unity and a continuity between the spiritual and the earthly. So if we want to rediscover meaning and purpose, we have to re-establish a respect and deference towards the body and its placement on earth. We have been misled by the enterprise of science into believing that matter is dead and inert stuff, that nature is mute, and that meaning is an abstract illusion imposed by us. But if we alter our understanding of matter to make it magical, meaningful, and communicative through the direct experience of spiritual techniques, then we will realize that all of those qualities--eternity, meaning, and unity--which we searched for in the immaterial heavens, can be found around us if we but readjust the lens through which we are perceiving.

As human beings, we are one part angelic, one part primate. The modern world has grown sick by favoring one and neglecting the other--scientists tell us we're sophisticated monkeys but still just monkeys and priests tell us we're quintessentially divine. Spirituality is not the exception to matter, it is the rule-- we just have a tough time of seeing it that way. Spirituality in the here-and-now requires a reintegration of these two aspects through the rediscovery of ecstatic techniques which elicit spiritual experiences that can successfully unite mind and body, spirit and matter, and the divine and the earthly.

The Plurality of Being

Thursday night I had an experience that could only be described as spiritually silly. Then Sunday I had an experience that was, by all measure, a brutally visceral unleashing of emotion. It was reflecting on these two experiences that lead me to the following conclusion: being (human) is a plurality of dimensions.

It seems obvious (almost to the point of nonsense) to point out that being human is a complicated enterprise comprised of multiple dimensions. As humans we must, at once, balance between our physical health and our mental health, our earthly needs and our spiritual needs, our individuality and our community, our masculinity and our femininity, our work ethic and our leisure, etc… The human being is a multi-dimensional being and as such we cannot sacrifice one dimension for another. Every dimension of our being has its proper role to play. Only in acknowledging each and every dimension of our being are we truly human.

Why is this important? Intuitively, we may be aware of these different dimensions but practically or consciously we are not always. Too often we focus our energy solely into one part of our lives. And even if things go successful in that dimension, we may still come up short when it comes to overall happiness. Being in a good relationship, or having a fulfilling job, or being in great physical condition, are necessary for happiness but are not sufficient on their own if some other dimension of our lives is impoverished. Everyone knows the image of a person whose energy burns too brightly in only one sphere of their existence: the genius artist who is poor, the famous athlete who is lonely, the selfless social worker who cannot take care of his or herself, the successful businessman who is estranged from his or her family, the drug addicted hedonist who is disconnected from the world, the brilliant mathematical mind that cannot talk to a girl, the religious zealot who has sexual problems, the social butterfly who is a stranger to him or herself, so forth and so on. As humans, we have a tendency to desire what others have, believing that if only we were taller, richer, or more creative like Jane and John Doe, we would be happy. And yet, a glimpse behind the currents of many of these individuals who possess what we lack, would often times reveal a world as miserable and lacking as our own. Happiness, then, must be the product of a well-rounded individual who can fulfill as many different dimensions of their life as possible.

There are some that have realized that our dimensionality was the root of our discontent and have proponed the idea of eliminating these “extra” dimensions and, like Thoreau suggested, living simply. Living simply is no longer an option—returning to the jungle to hunt and forage on our own seems more like hiding (even if it is a brutally tough form of hiding) from life’s problems than facing them. We have to meet our complexity head on. Furthermore, by what standard could one begin eliminating spheres of existence? Depending on who you ask, you will receive a different answer as to which sphere is the most important and which can be extinguished: meditation urges us to abandon/discipline our bodily needs, psychoanalysts urge us to become in touch with our visceral and instinctive animal needs, politics emphasize our social nature, education teaches us to value the mind, religion advises us that the body is a prison and the true essence of being is our soul, etc.

I do not think throwing ourselves into conflict over our mode of being is the proper way to solve the problem. We need to embrace our plurality and make the best of a complicated situation. As Whitehead cautioned us, perhaps in response to Thoreau, “Seek simplicity and distrust it.” Life, in every aspect/respect, is a plurality of interesting, overlapping, and interdependent spheres of existence. Our discontent is a product of our inability to keep pace with every sphere of existence that emerges. We are complex beings that have to somehow synthesize our physical, emotional, sexual, social, spiritual, visceral, and intellectual needs into one coherent chain of being known as “life/living.” Dysphoria—unhappiness—is bound to arise somewhere. Our task is to negotiate between these spheres, appropriating the proper amount of time and energy to the proper spheres. We will do much better if we embrace the plurality of (human) being, rather than deny it/fight against.

However, as much as we embrace it, our multi-dimensionality is ultimately an embarrassment of riches: we simply cannot keep up with or satisfy all dimensions with the same amount of time and energy. We will always neglect one sphere of existence at the expense of elevating/intensifying another. We are such complex beings that we can hardly enumerate our various dimensions of existence. And not only do we have more dimensions than we can count, the situation is further compounded by the fact that all of these dimensions are interrelated. No dimension is an island unto itself. The odds of successfully negotiating and reconciling between all of these complex dimensions are stacked against us. We, as human beings living in the 21st century, are inherently inclined towards discontentment. It is the very complexity of being that has raised us to the level of divine creatures that is also the root of our inability to be content beings. Our plurality of being is at once our blessing and our curse. It is the intersection of dimensions that affects all aspects of our lives. For example, there are two common situations that prove the point: individuals who seem to have it all—power, looks, fame, money, health, family—can be as miserable as anyone on earth, meanwhile people who seem to have been screwed over by God himself—people with birth defects, physical handicap, poverty, bad luck, and misfortune—can continue to lead optimistic, happy lives. How is it possible that a person who seemingly has it all and one who seems to be a magnet for misfortune can lead lives so antithetical to their external circumstances? It is because these individuals, these archetypes of monism, have internal lives that are radically different than there external lives. The former individual has an internal life that is impoverished and so cannot appreciate the external, while the latter has an internal life that is vibrant enough to invigorate even the worst of situations.

Happiness is about satisfying all dimensions of our being, which is why no one is ever perpetually happy. At the end of the day, we can pick and choose what we feel are the most important dimensions in our lives—whether they be physical, romantic, intellectual, or spiritual—and do our best to fill those outlines with color. But we must do so cognizant of the fact that the shadow of discontent potentially lurks behind every corner of our lives. Our plurality of being is a fire that burns brightly: it can be used to forge a great creation, or it can be our demise. Embrace the plurality of being, knowing that its warmth will also occasionally singe you.

Master or Slave?

Recently, a close friend said to me, “It seems like you’re just waiting for someone to tell you what to do.”

Her statement echoes a string of thoughts that I had been dealing with for a while now. The main thrust of the issue falls neatly, perhaps a bit too neatly, into a simple dichotomy: Am I a leader or a follower?

The question itself is somewhat flawed because no one is strictly and unanimously a leader or a follower in all aspects of their life. A general may lead an army while kneeling towards his wife. A team captain may command her teammates, while submitting to her teachers. A person may submit to their spouse when it comes to food preferences while asserting herself pointedly when it comes to religion. In essence, our life is the negotiation of concentric dimensions that constantly overlap like a sort of Venn-diagram of life at large.

However, when the issue at hand is over the direction of one’s life, then the issue becomes more pressing and forces us to take a harder line and make a clearer distinction. Our future is the most important thing we possess: if there is any realm of life where we should strive to be a leader, this is it. However, not everyone is born or raised to be a leader. Those of us with a natural proclivity towards following who try against their will to lead, create a dissonance within themselves: a conflict between what they are and what they would like to be.

But where does this “natural proclivity” come from? Is it that we are born either timorous or adventurous? Or is it that we are raised to be either obsequious or autonomous? And does free-will ever enter the picture with this question? Should we embrace our dispositions of character? Or should we fight the good fight and try to wrestle control into our hands? Is our identity ours to create? Or is it a preset outline that we have to “fill in/flesh out”? Who am I and where am I going?

Lately, I’ve been running away from the idea that I am (un)naturally a follower. I always believed that I was a natural leader by nature and that “society” was holding me back. If it wasn’t my parents, then it was my school, or my friends, or my culture, that was responsible for tying me down and preventing me from spreading my wings. But now I’ve reached a point in my life where these external impositions have by and large disappeared as serious concerns. I am done with school. I have a job. I don’t have to listen to my parents. Etc… And yet I feel as trapped and as helpless as I did when I was surrounded by those boundaries.

Asserting his or her own power, the master commands their life and is a creative force much like an artist. Demurely, the slave fawns over the piece of art created and stands back with restraint as a witness.

It is true that my natural tendency is to fall in line and obey the common trend. My disposition is that of a sedated servant. But if I am to remain faithful to my whole being, then I must also remain faithful to that glimmer of defiance within me. I may never be able to change the fact that I am a slave and a follower. So, I must change who and what I pledge my allegiance to. Rather than kneel under the weight of my parents, my society, and my culture, I must become the servant of my passions.  

But until these words becomes acts, then it all remains to be mere sophistry rather than artistry.  

On happiness

The most obvious things are also the hardest to pin down. Happiness remains as obfuscated as an idea can be. Happiness is often misidentified as being synonymous with being comfortable, content, and even-keeled. Nothing could be further from the truth. Happiness—true happiness that resembles a kind of heavenly bliss—is a fleeting state that we come in and out of. It is not, and cannot, be a state of being or an attitude. The absence of discomfort, pain, and tension does not indicate the presence of happiness. Happiness is the result of working for or towards a specific goal. It is an unintentional byproduct of being engaged in an activity. Pouring endless hours into an art project, practicing nonstop for an athletic event, reaching deep to untapped potentials of energy—these are activities that result in a person being happy.

On the flip side of this, to be happy in the highest, most fulfilling sense of the idea, one has to risk misery. Being happy requires courage. Happiness is the result of tension, stress, and activity. Sometimes we pour more energy and emotion into something than we can hardly bare, only to have it backfire on us—broken loves, lost athletic contests, fumbled aesthetic endeavors, etc. Because ecstatic happiness brings with it the risk of ultimate misery, people avoid it altogether. Quick fixes, television, junk food, and the internet have come to redefine happiness for the modern world. Happiness is confused with that which comes easy and with “the absence of pain.” The television zombie will never experience the happiness that an artist does; the couch potato will never experience the happiness that an athlete does; the wealthy and privileged whom have had everything handed to them, will never experience the happiness that a hard-worker does.

The highest forms of happiness resemble experiences of a transcendent nature. We completely and utterly lose ourselves within them. It is ecstasy in the fullest sense of the word. The self is so engaged by the activity that for that instant you are the activity no matter what it is: you are the canvas, you are the melodies, you are the sport, you are the pure and engaged energy.

This is why the leisurely are the ones with existential ailments. A person whose life is completely devoid of pain, discomfort, and struggle, is also devoid of meaning, purpose, and true happiness. Philosophy may be an activity reserved for the leisurely but happiness is an experience reserved for the disadvantaged.

The mind and the self

Epistemologically speaking, the mind is a paradox because it is at once the thing we are most familiar with and the thing which we know least about. It is actually this familiarity which prevents us from knowing it. Consciousness (and the self) is what we have known our whole lives; it is, literally, the world we grow up in. Consciousness, like water to a fish, is what we have known our whole lives and is therefore invisible to us. To think of it differently: consciousness (and derivatively so, the self) is the lens that we have used to examine reality our whole lives. It is the only lens we’ve ever had. But because it is the only lens accessible to us, we cannot examine it. The lens cannot look back upon itself in much the same way that a mouth cannot eat itself.

The mind is not what it appears to be. It is not a transparent landscape. Just below the visible surface things quickly become cloudy and muddled. The mind is multifaceted in its dimensions. On one level, it is merely a reflection of the environment. It is the digested and metabolized information that comes in from our senses. On a different level, the mind is a continuous stream of free-associations: perceptions lead to random memories, which lead to random thoughts, which inspire random musings, etc—a relentless concatenation of interrelated links. On this level, our mind is constantly going, a never ending stream of consciousness, that often times continues without our (self) awareness. On a different level, the process of thinking is completely and utterly unknown to us. What we are familiar with are the “answers” that pop up but not the process by which they are formed. On a deeper level, the mind is determined by thoughts, feelings, and emotions that are subdued and unconscious. And finally, on a higher level, our mind seems to be blessed with powers that are almost angelic in stature and on a lower level, we clearly do not seem to be anything more than sophisticated primates, as visceral and primal as the next animal in the jungle.

Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, James, and other philosophers and psychologists argued for the idea that the majority of consciousness remained hidden beneath the surface. Sometimes the mind is the reflection of the environment but sometimes it clearly is not. It is subject to intrusion. Fully formed thoughts, emotions, or ideas seem to pierce our consciousness and demand our full attention, as if we were suddenly possessed by a muse. My own life is littered with countless examples of being overcome suddenly with the urge to draw something, write something, think something, or do something. I’m sure you have experienced this in your own lives as well. I have found that these bursts of creativity are the most productive and precious things that I have. Their quality and value is greater than anything that I’ve deliberately and begrudgingly forced myself to toil over and create. There is a variety of Buddhist philosophy that believes that enlightenment is something you can only prepare to receive and not something you can actively attain. There is an element of passivity to this thought that is reflective of the mind in general. Consciousness used to be the one thing that we had completely possession and ownership over. But that does not seem to be the case.

This problem of our mind’s content is further complicated when the mind is perturbed from the outside. For instance, when the mind is under the influence of psychedelic substances, these aspects of hidden-ness and novelty are amplified and emphasized. In the psychedelic experience we come face to face with a perception of reality that is completely and utterly astounding in its alien-ness. The experience seems to functions under different rules, with different content. Images and thoughts that never typically pass through our ‘sober consciousness’ flood us at an alarming rate. I am using this drastic example of psychedelic experiences because it helps to emphasize and illuminate the point that I am trying to get at, which is this: the contents and capabilities of the mind remain largely underutilized and untapped, forcing us into a new conception of the mind and self-hood.  

So if the mind is on the one hand merely a mirror of the environment, and on the other hand a passive receptacle for random thoughts, where exactly does that leave “the self?” We’ve always considered “the self” to be the decider, the chooser, the arbiter, in short, the mover and shaker of our mind and body. But it is clearly obvious that the majority of the time, this “self” is merely a passive witness. Half the time we think that we’re thinking we are actually watching ourselves think. Where does this notion of selfhood and me-ness fit in? Who am I? Where do my thoughts come from? How can I do what is right? Do I have a soul? Why do I do the things I do? … Follow this line of questioning far enough down the rabbit hole and you will find yourself uncomfortably present in unfamiliar territory where self hood, free-will, control, and individuality are idyllic illusions. These are hard thoughts to swallow for Westerners. 

Deeply examining the mind is avoided because it leads us to conclusions that are incongruous with our Western ideology.  This is exactly why we have summoned up enough strength, ingenuity, and courage to travel outward to the moon but have barely scratched the surface inward into the soul.