There is a funny problem in spirituality which is very hard to unravel. It goes like this. The self is greedy and wants to control things. We cannot be happy or help others when we let ourselves be in control. What are we to do with this? Five approaches appear to me.

1) Ignore the spiritual discipline. Continue to do as the self desires.
2) Follow plans of spiritual discipline.
3) Deny the self. Seek spontaneity of action. Lay aside right and wrong.
4) Continue to do as the self desires, giving attention to the spiritual path.
5) Affirm the self, transmutate the meaning of concepts, keep plans, right and wrong.

Each of these approaches have problems. (For the record, I am committed to #5. Also, if at any point you think I’m making oversimplifications, it’s because I follow #5 that I seem that way. Also-also, you might want to read this article twice, because my thinking is rather orbital.) The problems of (1) are obvious. That’s the reason for the spiritual path existing. The problems of (2) are sutbler: the appearance of humility can be egotistical by nature. Spirituality is demanded Now. Skipping to (4), this is what we would consider “the good bad person.” Their problem is that they continue to do harm while learning. Yet (4) is a really good attitude in many ways: it’s ergonomic to our learning mechanisms, unlike (2), which causes damage by being idealistic and materialistic. Going back to (3), the problems here are very subtle. I think they are only addressed adequately by (5).

The problems of (3) are that concepts are rejected, the self and the physical world are disliked. There is pessimism and skepticism toward what is real. Everything is an illusion, including right and wrong. I don’t like that, and it’s certainly not what got us to the Moon. (Before saying more, I ought to say that I really admire (3) and resonate with its adherents, but I won’t take their view for my own, for reasons which shall be shortly evident.) It is a wise characterization of a discipline in itself, but it is an incoherent metaphysic—incoherent in that scientific advancement is not irrationally driven and in that it requires we don’t take our self-interest seriously. (I want to take my interest seriously because I am an I. I am not a not-I. This doesn’t give me license to be ultimate and pompous. All I am is an I, nothing more nor less.) It seems earthly by promoting objective reflection according to aesthetic nonduality, but it implicitly perpetuates competition between concepts and percepts, between the mind and the body. This is how (and why) some good people withdraw. In their love for the world, they become sad and lonely. The best they can do to live well is to accept it as being a unified nothing. And it is perhaps the highest discipline anyone can do, really. After all, it does alleviate more suffering than most paths, by its commitment to rigor and wholeness.

There is a path to spirituality that is more affirmative of conceptualization from within concepts, i.e., we take them seriously and yet not ultimately egotistically as in (2). (In many cases, religion tends toward (2)—and it becomes very hostile when it does. Burnout from (2) can lead one to (3) or (4), or back to (1).) This is what is (5). It neighbors (4) in subtly applying concepts positively, but differs in that it applies that subtlety concurrently rather than sequentially; i.e., (4) calls for applying concepts later, whereas (5), like (2), calls for applying concepts now, yet without the ultimacy of the ego in (2). Also, I don’t think (5) functions very differently from (3)—they are the most common—but it has a key area where the shortcomings of (3) are addressed better; it is also much harder to convince people of (5)—or maybe it’s just much harder to identify when people hold to (5). Perhaps it’s just the journey of consciousness that (5) is not yet institutionalized, and that (3) and (4) are our best roads so far. How will I explain (5)? It’s tricky but not hard. I will veer off from where (3) begins.

(3) is founded on the idea that the self is the source of suffering. Self-interest distorts our concepts of right and wrong and of truth and error according to our desires, causing suffering. As such, to move beyond manufactured distinctions, such as good and evil, we should step back down into the world of sense, where these concepts fall by the wayside. Since concepts are illusions, we should pursue spontaneity and not talk about things so much. We should have fewer things. We should be more intuitively focused, less distinction-oriented. When we understand this deeper ground of knowing, we can go back to having distinctions and things.

However, if human distinctions are manufactured, it doesn’t matter if you do or don’t use them. Oftentimes, spiritual novices will select negation as the resolution to idealism. Dualism is not resolved by selecting the negative of the opposing pair. Removing the illusion of the pair resolves the dualism. Yet, spiritual adepts, too, are prone to err. If the duality is an illusion, then not negating the duality is also appropriate. In other words, forsaking or keeping the illusion of duality are together sides of the same coin.

It’s like this. Your friend is holding a ball in their hand that you can’t see. They ask you what color it is. You try all the colors you can think of, and to each color they say, no. So then you say, is it without color? And then they say, yes. And you say, so it’s black? And they respond, no. Then they open their hand and it’s a white ball.

Ordinarily speaking, both black and white are without color. We would consider them neutral of color. But either option is correct to your friend’s question. Scientifically speaking, black is the absence of color and white is the unity of all color.

To be free of illusions, one must come to terms with the nature of the problem of being human, fundamentally. One must come to understand, viscerally, that we make up things and distinctions for ourselves. But once somebody knows this, they are empowered with new insight that allows them to cleave with things and distinctions. Notice, I said cleave with—that’s because you can cleave from and cleave to. What matters in the spiritual path is the cleavage, not the preposition describing it. The rest is oscillation between from and to, black and white, nothingness and infinitude, rational irrationality and irrational rationality, (3) and (5). Perhaps the sixth path is the harmony of from and to. Maybe spirituality will fractal off this algorithm endlessly, endlessly addressing the cracks in the prior forms. Maybe the cosmos will be filled with this music of ours, even as we are little fragmented reflections of it. Maybe our need for an answer is in this way a breathing that fills our hearth with living warmth. We cleave between extremes and scales and live thereby.


May 21, 2020
San Luis Obispo