David Teachout's Blog, page 27
December 26, 2012
How Deep Does the Surface Go?
At the behest of several friends of mine I recently read "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. For those who haven't read it or seen the recent movie adaptation I will refrain from coming out with a complete spoiler but hints are inevitable so be forewarned. The story follows a young Indian man who, after a childhood amongst animals in his family's zoo and exploring several facets of religion through the instruction of a Muslim cleric, a priest and a minister, finds himself shipwrecked and adrift on the sea in a boat with a Bengal tiger. The story is fantastical, melancholy and brimming with insight into the human condition as only a child through harrowing experience can tell it. The ending is, so as not to spoil it completely, quite unlike the story that comes before it and yet provides a new depth which requires another read-through, to look upon the fantastic with eyes wide open though now a heavier heart.
The story is not an apologetic for any particular religion or definition of god. When confronted by the cleric, the priest and the minister, Pi can only stammer in affronted confusion "I only wish to love god." To this succinct and largely empty response (since we have no idea what the boy means by "god") the three custodians of their particular religious mysticism have no reply and instead go about their lives though now with a wary eye on their former student. Juxtaposed with the ending, where the fiction is replaced with a horrific reality, one can see the author attempting not to make a case for the existence of any particular god but pointing the reader towards an appreciation for the story-telling need in humanity to give meaning where none is immediately present. Out of this inevitable projection comes not a deity but religion and spirituality in general, not a judgmental being ready to define the world for us, but an intrinsic quality of the human person to make life more palatable especially in the midst of tooth and claw.
I have written before of the human being as story-teller in the entry from 11/08/2012 "Self-Image As Story-Telling." There I note that self-deception is at times a legitimate enterprise but one of which consequences will effect not only deceiver but those whom that person comes into contact with. Authentic decisions, such as they are, can only be made based on truth and deception denies truth from being seen. Martel in "Pi" asks the question at the end, when authority figures hear both stories and choose to go with the fantastical one, whether a collective acceptance of deception serves a purpose in a similar way that it serves a purpose for the individual. There are truths which we all wish to hide from, truths which especially in emotionally difficult situations, we may not want to at first if ever know. The parent sees an approaching doctor and collapses, crying out "no, no, I don't want to hear;" a friend laughs and talks of their goodness despite a string of relationships broken and destroyed declaring a more nuanced reality; a person prepares for sleep and feels the yawning abyss of darkness reaching out promising oblivion and prays they wake up remembering their dreams. We protest and create wonderlands to hide and cover ourselves with rainbows, hoping the image stays strong enough to get us through the turbulent waters. To this end we do, whether individually or as a society, offer up the fantastical and so Martel makes his point in having authority promote the fantastical.
However, as any good writer does, the central point is never merely one-sided. The child Pi is very well aware of the brutal reality of the voyage he undertook, can with cold dispassionate voice recall every minute detail of his undertaking, every scream and gurgle, every gasp of horror and drop of blood. The fantastical story he creates does not ever make him forget his ordeal, it does not expunge from memory the events that shaped the rest of his life. Rather, it serves as a veneer, a veil carefully laid over his experience that if one looks closely the reality becomes clearly seen. The veil exists to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless sequence of events.
Here is where the genius of "Life of Pi" resides, in noting how even in the midst of our creative impulse we never forget what lies beneath and inextricably connected to the story we're telling. There comes a time in the story-telling where Pi finds an island and almost stays but realizes soon enough to do so would mean death as the vegetation would eat him alive, the island in its entirety being a trap for the unwary. So it is with our stories, if they are dwelled in too long, thought of as the only truth that exists, we succumb to their allure and waste away, eaten by our own energies.
Whether in our individual stories or our socially-created ones, we serve always the need and drive within us to create meaning and thus serve within and as the universe by providing what it cannot do in itself, give it purpose. As we are the universe itself thinking, the stories we create shape our perception, give us values to identify with and fight for, and cast into conscious space an infinite variety potential stages to dance our lives upon. To think that any one story is the sum-total of experience however is to succumb to the ego and fall asleep in the midst of seeming peaceful greenery. To serve life and therefore ourselves and each other, we do well to remember the veil but also what lies beneath. Dedicating our lives to ever greater levels of understanding means always asking how deep the surface goes and at times making peace with our Bengal tigers.
The story is not an apologetic for any particular religion or definition of god. When confronted by the cleric, the priest and the minister, Pi can only stammer in affronted confusion "I only wish to love god." To this succinct and largely empty response (since we have no idea what the boy means by "god") the three custodians of their particular religious mysticism have no reply and instead go about their lives though now with a wary eye on their former student. Juxtaposed with the ending, where the fiction is replaced with a horrific reality, one can see the author attempting not to make a case for the existence of any particular god but pointing the reader towards an appreciation for the story-telling need in humanity to give meaning where none is immediately present. Out of this inevitable projection comes not a deity but religion and spirituality in general, not a judgmental being ready to define the world for us, but an intrinsic quality of the human person to make life more palatable especially in the midst of tooth and claw.
I have written before of the human being as story-teller in the entry from 11/08/2012 "Self-Image As Story-Telling." There I note that self-deception is at times a legitimate enterprise but one of which consequences will effect not only deceiver but those whom that person comes into contact with. Authentic decisions, such as they are, can only be made based on truth and deception denies truth from being seen. Martel in "Pi" asks the question at the end, when authority figures hear both stories and choose to go with the fantastical one, whether a collective acceptance of deception serves a purpose in a similar way that it serves a purpose for the individual. There are truths which we all wish to hide from, truths which especially in emotionally difficult situations, we may not want to at first if ever know. The parent sees an approaching doctor and collapses, crying out "no, no, I don't want to hear;" a friend laughs and talks of their goodness despite a string of relationships broken and destroyed declaring a more nuanced reality; a person prepares for sleep and feels the yawning abyss of darkness reaching out promising oblivion and prays they wake up remembering their dreams. We protest and create wonderlands to hide and cover ourselves with rainbows, hoping the image stays strong enough to get us through the turbulent waters. To this end we do, whether individually or as a society, offer up the fantastical and so Martel makes his point in having authority promote the fantastical.
However, as any good writer does, the central point is never merely one-sided. The child Pi is very well aware of the brutal reality of the voyage he undertook, can with cold dispassionate voice recall every minute detail of his undertaking, every scream and gurgle, every gasp of horror and drop of blood. The fantastical story he creates does not ever make him forget his ordeal, it does not expunge from memory the events that shaped the rest of his life. Rather, it serves as a veneer, a veil carefully laid over his experience that if one looks closely the reality becomes clearly seen. The veil exists to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless sequence of events.
Here is where the genius of "Life of Pi" resides, in noting how even in the midst of our creative impulse we never forget what lies beneath and inextricably connected to the story we're telling. There comes a time in the story-telling where Pi finds an island and almost stays but realizes soon enough to do so would mean death as the vegetation would eat him alive, the island in its entirety being a trap for the unwary. So it is with our stories, if they are dwelled in too long, thought of as the only truth that exists, we succumb to their allure and waste away, eaten by our own energies.
Whether in our individual stories or our socially-created ones, we serve always the need and drive within us to create meaning and thus serve within and as the universe by providing what it cannot do in itself, give it purpose. As we are the universe itself thinking, the stories we create shape our perception, give us values to identify with and fight for, and cast into conscious space an infinite variety potential stages to dance our lives upon. To think that any one story is the sum-total of experience however is to succumb to the ego and fall asleep in the midst of seeming peaceful greenery. To serve life and therefore ourselves and each other, we do well to remember the veil but also what lies beneath. Dedicating our lives to ever greater levels of understanding means always asking how deep the surface goes and at times making peace with our Bengal tigers.
December 20, 2012
A Mind Gone Terribly Wrong
In the echoes of gunfire, when the soft patter of small feet seem louder in their absence, the heart reaches out in yearning to that moment of innocence, lost now. There is something bone-jarring in witnessing the death of a child, as if death rather than constant presence haunting our steps comes before our eyes in full, forcing us to hear the grinding of its bones, smell the charnel of graves and bear witness with eyes tearing up at an inability to close, unable to shut away the sight which shakes and rattles our constant stories of "not going to happen to me."
The massacre of Newtown stands poised to join that unenviable club of events (like Columbine and 9/11) we remember with poignant detail conjoined with where we heard the news, felt our first thoughts, and still inspires an immediate up-swelling of emotions. A week has passed and I still remember the initial disbelief then shock and sorrow as the information continued to trickle in throughout the morning. The reactions were almost quotidian in their inevitability, banal in the hoarseness of their shouts. Too many guns, not enough guns; societal breakdown, removal of god. The litany went on and on in ever-increasing attempts at ideological showmanship, even now continuing to float like a thick miasma amidst the social sites and Internet.
We want to know why, we want to know, to simply know so as to find the bubble of sickness, lance it and move on, warily moving forward hoping we got the problem before it metastasized. I do not hope or even plan to attempt to answer the why of the shooter's actions. I'd written a recent 3-part series on decision-making which should answer why I find this attempt foolishly egotistical even for my vaunted sense of intellectual capability. Doesn't mean others won't try, have tried, and will continue to try. As invariably as it comes in a society hooked on episodes of "Law and Order" and "Criminal Minds," questions concerning the shooter's mindset came up, every citizen becoming an arm-chair psychologist. While thankfully the meme concerning asperger's being in some way a causal factor has subsided in the face of clear testimonial from experts noting violence is not associated with this disorder, there still resides here a point to be taken.
I have written before in this blog, often I have to admit, concerning relationships and how the standard view of mind and free-will is both naive and destructive. Having been faced recently with a quote from Ronald Reagan concerning personal responsibility and recognizing that while I agree with the words, the meaning behind them is considerably different for me than it likely was for him, I realize I need to write about responsibility and will do so next. At this time I want to remind us all of that age-old adage "there but for the grace of god go I."
I am not Adam Lanza, but I could have been and so could have you. I'll wait a moment for the possible screaming this may engender to die down. Clear now? Maybe not, but bear with me. I have mentioned before the mental game I play with people at times in asking them to think of themselves separate from any object, person or event, to form a picture without any social/personal/familial data. It's impossible. Now switch something up. Use the incredible powers of our human imagination to cobble together a different life, one where parents shifted, the town in which you grew up was a different one, where every relationship you've ever had ceased to exist and was replaced with a completely different set. Choices are bound within the context, many the variables of which we are rarely consciously aware, and so every choice you've ever made would be different. The internal created narrative you have of yourself, built over a lifetime of data and more or less consistent when we need it to be, is gone and with it any sense of yourself as you are now. Instead someone else stands in your place and within this imagined reality, honesty should compel you to quiver just a little in humility at how fleeting our sense of self truly is, when the shifting of even a few variables would create someone we'd barely if at all recognize.
I'm not removing personal responsibility here. I'm not casting Lanza into an ethical void-land. I'm simply pointing out that responsibility and the sense of self that it is derived from is not nearly as obvious as we typically think. Ironically, both the left and right of the political spectrum, in their prognostication concerning what is at fault in this tragedy are both essentially saying the same thing: that by changing "x" there would have been an inevitable shift in behavior such that the shooting never would have occurred. Both essentially are stating the absence of a truly context-less free-will, despite both in other moments holding onto the notion with clenched fists and scraping nails. In either case, the reality of the situation leaves us in a quandary of which variables to focus on.
Rather than selecting any particular point, I want to direct attention to the underlying premise anyone engaged in thinking about this event takes for granted, that being the inherent interconnected quality Lanza, and therefore all of us, have in any and all situations, from the horror-ridden to the unashamedly joyful. The time for wallowing in anger and knee-jerk judgment will pass, if it hasn't already. Then comes the task of safe-guarding a future for children who want only to bring home to their parents new art to put up on a fridge. We do them a disservice if we forget in our rush to placate our ideological dictates that we are all in this together, this being life and civilization. The precise parameters of how we are our brother's keeper are in need of discussion and dialogue but not the fact that none of us exist or behave in a vacuum of our own choosing. Separation, from self to community to the spiritual, will never solve anything. Let us have Newtown be more than a name associated with loss but a prophetic calling to create a truly new-town, a place where we find healing in integration and hope in togetherness.
The massacre of Newtown stands poised to join that unenviable club of events (like Columbine and 9/11) we remember with poignant detail conjoined with where we heard the news, felt our first thoughts, and still inspires an immediate up-swelling of emotions. A week has passed and I still remember the initial disbelief then shock and sorrow as the information continued to trickle in throughout the morning. The reactions were almost quotidian in their inevitability, banal in the hoarseness of their shouts. Too many guns, not enough guns; societal breakdown, removal of god. The litany went on and on in ever-increasing attempts at ideological showmanship, even now continuing to float like a thick miasma amidst the social sites and Internet.
We want to know why, we want to know, to simply know so as to find the bubble of sickness, lance it and move on, warily moving forward hoping we got the problem before it metastasized. I do not hope or even plan to attempt to answer the why of the shooter's actions. I'd written a recent 3-part series on decision-making which should answer why I find this attempt foolishly egotistical even for my vaunted sense of intellectual capability. Doesn't mean others won't try, have tried, and will continue to try. As invariably as it comes in a society hooked on episodes of "Law and Order" and "Criminal Minds," questions concerning the shooter's mindset came up, every citizen becoming an arm-chair psychologist. While thankfully the meme concerning asperger's being in some way a causal factor has subsided in the face of clear testimonial from experts noting violence is not associated with this disorder, there still resides here a point to be taken.
I have written before in this blog, often I have to admit, concerning relationships and how the standard view of mind and free-will is both naive and destructive. Having been faced recently with a quote from Ronald Reagan concerning personal responsibility and recognizing that while I agree with the words, the meaning behind them is considerably different for me than it likely was for him, I realize I need to write about responsibility and will do so next. At this time I want to remind us all of that age-old adage "there but for the grace of god go I."
I am not Adam Lanza, but I could have been and so could have you. I'll wait a moment for the possible screaming this may engender to die down. Clear now? Maybe not, but bear with me. I have mentioned before the mental game I play with people at times in asking them to think of themselves separate from any object, person or event, to form a picture without any social/personal/familial data. It's impossible. Now switch something up. Use the incredible powers of our human imagination to cobble together a different life, one where parents shifted, the town in which you grew up was a different one, where every relationship you've ever had ceased to exist and was replaced with a completely different set. Choices are bound within the context, many the variables of which we are rarely consciously aware, and so every choice you've ever made would be different. The internal created narrative you have of yourself, built over a lifetime of data and more or less consistent when we need it to be, is gone and with it any sense of yourself as you are now. Instead someone else stands in your place and within this imagined reality, honesty should compel you to quiver just a little in humility at how fleeting our sense of self truly is, when the shifting of even a few variables would create someone we'd barely if at all recognize.
I'm not removing personal responsibility here. I'm not casting Lanza into an ethical void-land. I'm simply pointing out that responsibility and the sense of self that it is derived from is not nearly as obvious as we typically think. Ironically, both the left and right of the political spectrum, in their prognostication concerning what is at fault in this tragedy are both essentially saying the same thing: that by changing "x" there would have been an inevitable shift in behavior such that the shooting never would have occurred. Both essentially are stating the absence of a truly context-less free-will, despite both in other moments holding onto the notion with clenched fists and scraping nails. In either case, the reality of the situation leaves us in a quandary of which variables to focus on.
Rather than selecting any particular point, I want to direct attention to the underlying premise anyone engaged in thinking about this event takes for granted, that being the inherent interconnected quality Lanza, and therefore all of us, have in any and all situations, from the horror-ridden to the unashamedly joyful. The time for wallowing in anger and knee-jerk judgment will pass, if it hasn't already. Then comes the task of safe-guarding a future for children who want only to bring home to their parents new art to put up on a fridge. We do them a disservice if we forget in our rush to placate our ideological dictates that we are all in this together, this being life and civilization. The precise parameters of how we are our brother's keeper are in need of discussion and dialogue but not the fact that none of us exist or behave in a vacuum of our own choosing. Separation, from self to community to the spiritual, will never solve anything. Let us have Newtown be more than a name associated with loss but a prophetic calling to create a truly new-town, a place where we find healing in integration and hope in togetherness.
December 14, 2012
"Your" Obsession Is "My" Need
Have started reading "Life of Pi," finally assenting to the insistence of several friends of mine and 50 pages in I'm quite sure a great many entries here will be inspired out of this book of child-like inquiry into religion. Thankfully my imagination is such that while I had a topic in mind already, I began to see how a different tactic could accomplish the same point and perhaps make it better. So rather than pontificating with great emotional angst about the problem of obsessing over past hurts and current passions, the more general and helpful idea of focusing on life's transcendence came over me and with it a story.
I worked for a couple years at a supplement store, peddling for nearly any would-be self-healer various pills, powders, and liquids that, based on scanty or mismanaged scientific research, were lauded as potential cures for everything from the common cold to cancer, though the labels were with the technical acumen of a host of lawyers careful to never say "cure," hence why "supplement" is all the rage. Reminds me of commercials seen in childhood of a sugary cereals being promoted as part of a balanced breakfast but the picture has juice, fruit, toast and milk added. In either case, such pandering often left me in a state of moral crisis, one that I sought with some difficulty to assail by delivering (much to the consternation of upper management who caught me on occasion) recent research on products and being quick to point out that the intent given to the product is often just as if not more powerful than the product itself. Incidentally it was during this time that my love-hate relationship with Oprah (who makes the antics of sales peddlers mere trinkets to a vast menagerie of finely cut jewels) began. However, I digress and need to return.
The story takes place on one particularly dull day when a man entered my story with a look of concern and hesitancy on his face. In a voice full of meekness he inquired as to whether I knew which way east was and if he could do his prayers in my store as he didn't want to be a bother to people out in the mall. I'd like to say that it was from a state of benign and loving enlightenment that I said yes, but honesty compels me to admit I was so shocked by the request I simply said yes without thinking much about it. Within a couple minutes the man had done his meditative calisthenics and with a now beautiful smile on his face thanked me and left my store.
In the wake of 9/11, albeit having also spent the previous couple years engaging in a constant struggle with philosophy and religious theology, I had moved from the fundamentalism of my teens and family and turned into the embrace of an empty landscape called atheism. In no way do I wish to say atheism, which I still identify with, is empty in the sense of meaningless, but empty as in a vacuum of space. There are as many forms of atheist as there are Christian, except for the atheist she or he has merely taken a next logical step to total atheism as the monotheist has with all the rest of the gods. In this spirit of mind, distant from my personal bout of anxiety-assuaging fundamentalism and beginning to look at the religious impulse itself in all its forms, I still felt an instant concern at this Muslim having asked to pray in my store, but following up this irrational and utterly human response was yet another reaction, that of curious wonder.
I had seen my fair share of cosmic-inspired emotions, the face taking on the slack beauty of a person forgetting for a moment that their ego is truly not the center of the universe. Indeed, I had experienced a few moments like that myself, but all of these experiences were rarely connected with people of a separate faith. Why this is, is for another entry. Suffice to say, seeing the look on the man's face was a profound moment for me, one that years later still gets recreated in my head accompanied by an internal orchestra delivering a musical crescendo. The feeling of transcendence, that connection with an ineffable oneness, which I had seen in so many others, felt in myself and now saw in someone of opposite ideological leanings, helped me identify within myself a deep need, existent for quite some time but not wholly realized, to understand and identify with the human impulse to constantly seek out this feeling and once found, wallow in it like a bee in honey.
Let's face it, when we enter into a new relationship, particularly the romantic kind, the feeling of egoless-ness which often comes about is a glorious thing. Polyamorists, in our constant need to label everything, have coined the phrase "new-relationship-energy (NRE)" and it is both the bane and abject joy of everyone practicing this lifestyle. Before I go on, let me clarify where I'm going, since the whiplash that may have occurred as I went from religion to relationships could be painful. We, as human beings, are in constant search for relationship, of any and all variety, and religion, with its powerful synchronicity of social and emotional energies, is at core about relating, whether it be to an imagined deity, a social group, a family, or truly all of the above and more. The transcendence which often gets far too simply associated with religious feelings is manifested in relationships as well; a comparison of ecstatic language used in religious rituals and the accompanying feelings, with that of sexual experience could fill a large volume of literary research.
So, back to the meandering trails of my consciousness, the precipices and valleys of religious experience is not so difficult to map onto that of relational reality. There is the moment of initial connection, the brain deciding to take what was intended as a field-trip and turn it into a safari of epic proportions, with NRE washing everything away (sometimes even our cherished ethical standards) and we feel we must, simply must pursue this connection. On the flip-side of this is when a relationship ends terribly and there persists a need to pursue the now negative emotions to the exclusion of all else. We humans are, if anything, righteously consistent in our quest for self-abnegation. Call it religion, psychopathy, irrational obsession, NRE, or any host of other terms/phrases, the end result is a recognition of a sometimes frantic dedication to making the drips of cosmic joy into a flood.
And here is the beauty of humanity. Wait, what?! Yes, the beauty. There are any number of examples in which one can point to the horrors perpetrated by religious or other seemingly transcendent ideologies, but none of these are identical to the pursuit itself. Keeping those examples in mind as a caution, I can instead choose to pull my awareness towards a consideration of the positive examples of this innate human need. As the reverend of my spiritual center noted a while back in the midst of a faith crisis, the current absence or negation of the faith points to its existence before. Sometimes we need to break down a current mental obsession to note a previous, more life-giving iteration. In the midst of that moment of transcendence, whether it be religious, social or relational, whether it be one of joy or anger, the point of connection to existence is not that particular moment but how it directs with a ghostly-hand to the recognition of our shared need to find a similar experience. In that we can identify with integration and peace surrounding a storm.
I worked for a couple years at a supplement store, peddling for nearly any would-be self-healer various pills, powders, and liquids that, based on scanty or mismanaged scientific research, were lauded as potential cures for everything from the common cold to cancer, though the labels were with the technical acumen of a host of lawyers careful to never say "cure," hence why "supplement" is all the rage. Reminds me of commercials seen in childhood of a sugary cereals being promoted as part of a balanced breakfast but the picture has juice, fruit, toast and milk added. In either case, such pandering often left me in a state of moral crisis, one that I sought with some difficulty to assail by delivering (much to the consternation of upper management who caught me on occasion) recent research on products and being quick to point out that the intent given to the product is often just as if not more powerful than the product itself. Incidentally it was during this time that my love-hate relationship with Oprah (who makes the antics of sales peddlers mere trinkets to a vast menagerie of finely cut jewels) began. However, I digress and need to return.
The story takes place on one particularly dull day when a man entered my story with a look of concern and hesitancy on his face. In a voice full of meekness he inquired as to whether I knew which way east was and if he could do his prayers in my store as he didn't want to be a bother to people out in the mall. I'd like to say that it was from a state of benign and loving enlightenment that I said yes, but honesty compels me to admit I was so shocked by the request I simply said yes without thinking much about it. Within a couple minutes the man had done his meditative calisthenics and with a now beautiful smile on his face thanked me and left my store.
In the wake of 9/11, albeit having also spent the previous couple years engaging in a constant struggle with philosophy and religious theology, I had moved from the fundamentalism of my teens and family and turned into the embrace of an empty landscape called atheism. In no way do I wish to say atheism, which I still identify with, is empty in the sense of meaningless, but empty as in a vacuum of space. There are as many forms of atheist as there are Christian, except for the atheist she or he has merely taken a next logical step to total atheism as the monotheist has with all the rest of the gods. In this spirit of mind, distant from my personal bout of anxiety-assuaging fundamentalism and beginning to look at the religious impulse itself in all its forms, I still felt an instant concern at this Muslim having asked to pray in my store, but following up this irrational and utterly human response was yet another reaction, that of curious wonder.
I had seen my fair share of cosmic-inspired emotions, the face taking on the slack beauty of a person forgetting for a moment that their ego is truly not the center of the universe. Indeed, I had experienced a few moments like that myself, but all of these experiences were rarely connected with people of a separate faith. Why this is, is for another entry. Suffice to say, seeing the look on the man's face was a profound moment for me, one that years later still gets recreated in my head accompanied by an internal orchestra delivering a musical crescendo. The feeling of transcendence, that connection with an ineffable oneness, which I had seen in so many others, felt in myself and now saw in someone of opposite ideological leanings, helped me identify within myself a deep need, existent for quite some time but not wholly realized, to understand and identify with the human impulse to constantly seek out this feeling and once found, wallow in it like a bee in honey.
Let's face it, when we enter into a new relationship, particularly the romantic kind, the feeling of egoless-ness which often comes about is a glorious thing. Polyamorists, in our constant need to label everything, have coined the phrase "new-relationship-energy (NRE)" and it is both the bane and abject joy of everyone practicing this lifestyle. Before I go on, let me clarify where I'm going, since the whiplash that may have occurred as I went from religion to relationships could be painful. We, as human beings, are in constant search for relationship, of any and all variety, and religion, with its powerful synchronicity of social and emotional energies, is at core about relating, whether it be to an imagined deity, a social group, a family, or truly all of the above and more. The transcendence which often gets far too simply associated with religious feelings is manifested in relationships as well; a comparison of ecstatic language used in religious rituals and the accompanying feelings, with that of sexual experience could fill a large volume of literary research.
So, back to the meandering trails of my consciousness, the precipices and valleys of religious experience is not so difficult to map onto that of relational reality. There is the moment of initial connection, the brain deciding to take what was intended as a field-trip and turn it into a safari of epic proportions, with NRE washing everything away (sometimes even our cherished ethical standards) and we feel we must, simply must pursue this connection. On the flip-side of this is when a relationship ends terribly and there persists a need to pursue the now negative emotions to the exclusion of all else. We humans are, if anything, righteously consistent in our quest for self-abnegation. Call it religion, psychopathy, irrational obsession, NRE, or any host of other terms/phrases, the end result is a recognition of a sometimes frantic dedication to making the drips of cosmic joy into a flood.
And here is the beauty of humanity. Wait, what?! Yes, the beauty. There are any number of examples in which one can point to the horrors perpetrated by religious or other seemingly transcendent ideologies, but none of these are identical to the pursuit itself. Keeping those examples in mind as a caution, I can instead choose to pull my awareness towards a consideration of the positive examples of this innate human need. As the reverend of my spiritual center noted a while back in the midst of a faith crisis, the current absence or negation of the faith points to its existence before. Sometimes we need to break down a current mental obsession to note a previous, more life-giving iteration. In the midst of that moment of transcendence, whether it be religious, social or relational, whether it be one of joy or anger, the point of connection to existence is not that particular moment but how it directs with a ghostly-hand to the recognition of our shared need to find a similar experience. In that we can identify with integration and peace surrounding a storm.
December 11, 2012
We Are Not the Humans You're Looking For, (Decision-Making, part 3)
There's a common story concerning three blind people who approach an elephant, one grabbing a leg, another its trunk and another the tail. Each then describes the beast that they believe exists and of course none of them get it right. Notice however that the only reason we know the people are inaccurate is because we're told that the creature is an elephant at the beginning. The recipient of this story is given a small form of omniscience here and then the story-teller uses the narrative to wax poetic about whatever point is desired to reach. I'd like to go to a different conclusion here though and declare that all of them are correct. Without a context, without someone telling them or an outside observer possessing sight, there wouldbe no real reason to declare any of the people wrong. They could go about their merry way with nary a moment of doubt concerning their truth and from within their world, they'd be utterly correct in lacking that doubt. Only in combining their perspectives, in rejoining the group that they originally arrived as, do they have the possibility of expanding their awareness and coming closer to accuracy. Here then we have two conclusions from the previous expositions on decision-making: one, context is very nearly everything when it comes to revealing truth and two, only in joining with greater humanity can we begin approaching a larger awareness of our lives and an accuracy concerning our existence.
To recap simply, we have gone through an exposition on the nature of decision-making, noting how for all the power we as a species gives to reasons there is no sense in which any offered exist in a direct relationship with the shift in behavior or the initial action. There's a mystery here where the precise moment in which neural connections are made is forever outside of our conscious awareness, such that reasons exist at best as potential explanations and at worst merely provide a context out of which the behavior was selected prior to awareness, very likely a combination of the two to be perfectly honest. In addition, these reasons do not exist context-free, there is no sense in which objectivity defined as being absent of environmental connection is in any way coherent. Reasons exist within a vast contextual pool of information, some known and a great deal unknown, all of which forms the nests (to use Ken Wilber's term) or baskets of an interrelated and integrated universe. We cannot escape this reality, cannot think outside of it and behavior is dependent and determined upon all of it, though only in the sense of being within a natural and materialistic existence not in a pre-determined linear connection. There is freedom here but it is not the freedom of a context-less being but one where an increasing awareness of interconnected reality within the human necessity to create relationships brings about a greater space for behavioral possibility.
I've mentioned at the end of each of the last two entries in this series a slightly vague declaration of the consequence of residing in this understanding of reality, noting how anger and frustration can be replaced by grace and compassion as we reside in a spiritual consciousness of integrated reality. This is all well and good and hopefully brings a smile to the face of more than just I, but it's ridiculously lacking in specifics. Honestly, I don't intend to provide a great deal of specifics, rather focusing on principles which can then be applied to everyday experiences. The individual analyses that can be done will, in keeping with the philosophy, be determined by the context of the situation including the people involved. I have my moments of celebrating a rather healthy ego but even that will halts in the face of attempting to answer every conceivable potential situation.
As mentioned initially, there are two conclusions: context is nearly everything and within community/relationships is found the space to expand our awareness and thus our behavioral potential. When we confront someone, including ourselves, both of these principles should be front and center, providing parameters for the cascading emotional responses giving our brains a bath. The way we hold our bodies, the words we "choose," the tone of our voice, the connections we have with the other person, the events that happened earlier in the day or week, the memories being recreated as the brain makes connections between the current situation and past experience, all of these are occurring at the speed of synaptic connections, electrical impulses so fast they give us the illusion of instantaneous consciousness and a sense of the present.
We are often quite like the people in the initial story, each grasping at what we think is the totality of our experience and completely unaware of the vastness of the object we are blind to. A healthy ego knows its contextual sisters and brothers in humanity, knows that without the baskets of being holding individual experience there would be no such thing to write poetry about, become incensed over and feel passionately about. Depending on the person in front of us and all the variables just mentioned, we will respond with aspects of ourselves unknown or rarely instantiated and/or typical and in line with our perceived self narrative. The same holds for the person in front of you in reverse. There is still right and wrong, still potential for dialogue and therefore a progressive increase in accurately describing reality, but the process is found in union, not divisiveness. We are not the humans people are so often looking for, capable of dispassionate analysis and complete control over our lives. Rather, we are the humans we see in every sweet statement of connection, every cry of pain, sorrow, joy and happiness, every thundering discourse from one's bully-pulpit and each and every moment of head-scratching wonder. It is not the fantasy, it is the reality and thus all the more beautiful to experience together.
To recap simply, we have gone through an exposition on the nature of decision-making, noting how for all the power we as a species gives to reasons there is no sense in which any offered exist in a direct relationship with the shift in behavior or the initial action. There's a mystery here where the precise moment in which neural connections are made is forever outside of our conscious awareness, such that reasons exist at best as potential explanations and at worst merely provide a context out of which the behavior was selected prior to awareness, very likely a combination of the two to be perfectly honest. In addition, these reasons do not exist context-free, there is no sense in which objectivity defined as being absent of environmental connection is in any way coherent. Reasons exist within a vast contextual pool of information, some known and a great deal unknown, all of which forms the nests (to use Ken Wilber's term) or baskets of an interrelated and integrated universe. We cannot escape this reality, cannot think outside of it and behavior is dependent and determined upon all of it, though only in the sense of being within a natural and materialistic existence not in a pre-determined linear connection. There is freedom here but it is not the freedom of a context-less being but one where an increasing awareness of interconnected reality within the human necessity to create relationships brings about a greater space for behavioral possibility.
I've mentioned at the end of each of the last two entries in this series a slightly vague declaration of the consequence of residing in this understanding of reality, noting how anger and frustration can be replaced by grace and compassion as we reside in a spiritual consciousness of integrated reality. This is all well and good and hopefully brings a smile to the face of more than just I, but it's ridiculously lacking in specifics. Honestly, I don't intend to provide a great deal of specifics, rather focusing on principles which can then be applied to everyday experiences. The individual analyses that can be done will, in keeping with the philosophy, be determined by the context of the situation including the people involved. I have my moments of celebrating a rather healthy ego but even that will halts in the face of attempting to answer every conceivable potential situation.
As mentioned initially, there are two conclusions: context is nearly everything and within community/relationships is found the space to expand our awareness and thus our behavioral potential. When we confront someone, including ourselves, both of these principles should be front and center, providing parameters for the cascading emotional responses giving our brains a bath. The way we hold our bodies, the words we "choose," the tone of our voice, the connections we have with the other person, the events that happened earlier in the day or week, the memories being recreated as the brain makes connections between the current situation and past experience, all of these are occurring at the speed of synaptic connections, electrical impulses so fast they give us the illusion of instantaneous consciousness and a sense of the present.
We are often quite like the people in the initial story, each grasping at what we think is the totality of our experience and completely unaware of the vastness of the object we are blind to. A healthy ego knows its contextual sisters and brothers in humanity, knows that without the baskets of being holding individual experience there would be no such thing to write poetry about, become incensed over and feel passionately about. Depending on the person in front of us and all the variables just mentioned, we will respond with aspects of ourselves unknown or rarely instantiated and/or typical and in line with our perceived self narrative. The same holds for the person in front of you in reverse. There is still right and wrong, still potential for dialogue and therefore a progressive increase in accurately describing reality, but the process is found in union, not divisiveness. We are not the humans people are so often looking for, capable of dispassionate analysis and complete control over our lives. Rather, we are the humans we see in every sweet statement of connection, every cry of pain, sorrow, joy and happiness, every thundering discourse from one's bully-pulpit and each and every moment of head-scratching wonder. It is not the fantasy, it is the reality and thus all the more beautiful to experience together.
