Sean Reagan

Spiritual Teachers, Spiritual Parents

The human observer has a specific neural architecture (brain) which is instantiated in a specific perceptual system (body). Allowing for neural a-typicality, which happens, all human observers are having an approximately similar experience – language-based, tribal, biased, et cetera.

garden_rock — we are rebuilding an old flower garden, long-abandoned . . . here is a step on a stone path we are slowly restoring for wandering feet.

Thus, the world that you see and think about is not vastly different than the world that I see and think about – nor is it different from the world that Jesus saw and thought about, or Nisargadatta, or Helen Schucman or Eckhart Tolle.

Please note that I did not say those worlds are precisely identical. Obviously there are differences. Rather, my point is that those differences are closer to trivial than not, at least in the sense that allowing for cultural differences, you could readily be in dialogue with Jesus, Nisargadatta, Tolle, Helen Schucman or me.

This because it goes to the essence of our longing for masters, gurus, teachers, et cetera. We are parented beings. We are followers, going where the tribe does, and doing what helps the tribe get along. We are built that way. So when we ask “what do I do with this interior emptiness/loneliness/confusion/pain” we naturally look for parent figures – priests, ministers, gurus, therapists, teachers – to help us figure it out.

And, just as naturally, because there is so much seeking for these types of figures, there are folks who step into those roles, with varying degrees of efficiency and effectiveness.

Who is your teacher? Who are you following?

Personally, I am moving away from overt spiritual language – satsang, miracle, enlightenment, soul. I am also moving away from folks who purport to have what others do not (I’ve personally had experience X and will now sell or otherwise convey it to you).

The language piece arises from a desire to maximize communication, to enlarge the dialogic circle. The steering clear of the professionally enlightened piece arises out of a recognition of our utter mutual dependence on one another. Our equality has clarified to a point where it is no longer feasible to elevate individuals to exalted status, even temporarily. We all belong; we all bring something important to the table. Without the other, we are not. Period.

So what is the alternative to specialized spiritual practice overseen by some master figure?

last year I cleared an area given mostly to deadfall, the abandoned corner of our little orchard . . . this year wild violets are growing, their lucid purple like touching the hem of God’s Mother’s gown. . .

One possibility – one being slowly brought forth in my own living – is dialogue premised on equality, where “dialogue” is understood in a Bohmian way – i.e., without agenda or other constraints, and with an intentional focus on honesty and open-mindedness. I also understand “dialogue” to be less formal than Bohm typically imagined it. That is, the dialogue is not only when we purposefully sit down in a circle to share, but also when we are just chatting en route to the grocery store, cooking dinner, scrubbing windows, waving hello in passing, et cetera.

In a slightly dramatic sense, I am suggesting that our lives be given wholly over to simple attentiveness and openness. What happens, happens, and we will notice it, and respond to it, and share about it honestly and directly, and then other stuff will happen, and the cycle of our living will go on like this until our bodies encounter some block or hurdle which cannot be overcome and so they lay down a final time.

This practice moves me in the direction of love, and moving in the direction of love begets a natural inclination to serve others, which happily enough speeds one’s passage to love.

What does this look like in practice?

For me, it means being careful with language. When I find myself leaning on complicated spiritual ideas or windy poetic abstractions, I ask if there is a way to explain this that a child would understand. Since there always is – else why else share at all – the question arises: what am I really doing by using language in ways that minimize or otherwise impair communication?

It is a good question for one inclined to hide behind wordiness.

Another thing is being sensitive to the fact that I don’t know everything. A lot of what I do know surprised me when I learned it. Why should tomorrow be any different? So I have to go slowly and humbly, trying always to keep in mind that more will be revealed. Who I condemn today I may need to turn to for guidance tomorrow. The shelter I destroy today I may discover a need for next week or the week after.

For me, there is also an increasing emphasis on finding what works and working it. Three simple examples: exercise (in addition to chores) is very helpful to me; certain dietary restrictions are too. Drinking way less coffee is also helpful. Those things are challenging in their way but their positive impact in terms of physical energy and mental clarity and optimism are undeniable. So work them.

garden_light — the flower garden from a distance, with driftwood culled from Bronson Brook set just so . . .

Similarly, in the classroom where I spend a great deal of my professional life, it helps me help others if I am more forgiving and flexible and less stern. There is in me a tendency to run a tight ship on a tight schedule to a non-negotiated end chosen by me. But my students learn better and write better when I am less dictatorial and more in the nature of a cheerful coach.

So those are some personal examples. That is what it looks like for me; of course it will look different for other folks. What makes sense to me as a practice – attentiveness, emptying out of attachment and investment, dialogic relationship – may not make sense to others, not even a little. We are where we are.

I speak from a sense of quiet joy. Having discovered something that works there is a desire to share it, hopefully with minimal drama and egoism. The little light I have is yours; all I want is to share it with you.

Observation and Description of Phenomena

In a way, the so-called spiritual process is akin to noticing – and then sustaining in awareness – the distinction between what is happening and an observer’s description of what is happening. The description is not the thing.

observing_rocks_glass_river — observing rocks and glass culled from an earl morning walk on the river

Say that I am sad. You say, “Sean is sad. I can tell by the tears flowing down his face and the way his body sags as if burdened by a great weight.”

Your description of my sorrow is not my experience of sorrow. It is not even close to the feel of wet tears on my cheeks, the salt as they reach my lips, the sagging of my skeletal frame, the mental struggle to put words to emotion, the desperate longing for relief . . .

Moreover, your description of sorrow is relatively simplistic relative to the sorrow that is actually occurring. The occurrence is complex to the point of ineffability. To truly accurately describe sorrow you’d need to evoke biology, chemistry, physics, human history, linguistics – literally the whole cosmos.

This is a simple point but we overlook it constantly: descriptions are not the processes they describe. And since the world is made of processes – everything is changing, shifting, moving, even if at scales that are imperceptible to human observers (plants growing, say, or the sun burning out) – our descriptions are at best pale imitations with limited utility. At worst, they actively confound and misdirection our living, making us unhappy, unhelpful and unproductive.

In a sense, there is no way out of this. Human observers describe what they observe. Everything is given a name and categorized accordingly. Everything is ascribed motivation, rationale, history, goals. Everything is placed in relationship with everything that it is not it. Human observers build a world this way. Their living constructs their living.

Description is also a process, albeit one that implies a stable central describer – a self who faithfully report what she perceives, whose perceptions can be trusted. But as we all know, upon investigation and inquiry, that “self” cannot be found in an objective sense. The concrete narrative center it implies is an illusion.

And yet life goes on. The world goes on.

But “goes on” is a description according to an observer.

But the observer is a process that is being observed “going on.”

It is as if no matter what path you take, you end up at the same place, which is neither a beginning nor an end but merely a realization of circularity and recursivity.

This is maddening at first – as if we are trapped in a maze. One temptation is to spiritualize it – call the recursivity “infinity” and “eternity” (which are descriptions 🙂 ). Another is drain it of joy through reduction by saying it’s just atoms and quarks and what not (but see how “just” is a description 🙂 ).

The important thing is to see that we are not excluded or separate from the process. It inheres in us, the way blue inheres in blueberries. We are one with it. And seeing this – the simple natural fact of it – then it becomes a source of peace and joy and service.

So the point is not to cease describing, which is not possible anyway, nor to undo or end or amend observation which is also not possible.

places_to_sit_together — keeping a place to sit with one another . . . under the apple trees, watching the horses

Rather, the point – or practice, if you will – is simply to give attention to the descriptive process while not conflating it with what is being described. It is a bit of tightrope walking; a delicate balancing act.

But it is helpful because it loosens our sense that there is something at stake here – a life, a self, other selves with whom we are in relationship. Relieved of this ontological burden of defense, we are free to be happy and serve others, which extends our happiness.

Or that is one way to say it. There are others.

Spiritual Poverty and the Mystery of Subjectivity

The wind blows where it will,
and thou hearest its sound
but dost not know where it comes from
or where it goes.
~ John 3:8

Yet the utterly subjective nature of our experience as human observers must be entered as into a mystery, its apparent infinities and eternities robustly explored. The interior is all there is, and yet it cannot be all there is, for one can never reach its end and thus say, “there is nothing beyond this.”

Barred from conclusion – from perfect knowledge, from the end of inquiry – we are given instead to wandering, forever hungry and thirsty, without even the comfort of divine guidance or instruction. There is only this: this this, and it is not enough.

window_sill_detail — window sill above the kitchen sink . . .

Our experience as human observers is forever bounded by – and bonded to – this mystery. It is as if we are forever entering the temple where the Beloved waits on her dais, and when we reach out to her she disappears, leaving only a note and a map leading us to the next temple. On and on we go, never quite vanishing into our desire, and never quite satiating it either.

Shall we worship then our going? The apparent cycle of discovering-only-to-lose-in-order-to-begin-yet-again?

We can, if we want. But it does not satisfy, not in the final sense. Worship never does; idols never do. That, too, is the mystery – this innate sense that we are called to fall to our knees and yet once on them perceive only the One who would never ask us to kneel.

The old Christians called this conundrum, this mystery, our “poverty of spirit,” being in the mode of Jesus who called on his followers to be “poor in spirit” and to “take up their cross.” If we interpret this in terms of our bodily existence, it devolves quickly into negotiating cultural mores. “I’ll recycle more and grow my own tomatoes,” “I’ll watch less television and read more books,” et cetera.

There is nothing wrong with executing our living according to terms and conditions which resonate for us according to circumstance, preference, et cetera. But this is a giving of meaning to our living that is secondary to the interior journey we undertake, the radical (as in rooted, not extreme) exploration of the subjectivity that underlies our living. How deeply can you go into yourself and what do you find there?

We are talking here about a movement – a journey, a dance, a descent-and-ascension – from which our teachers and lovers and allies are naturally excluded. The texts that point out the next step cannot actually take the next step. We go empty-handed, without provision. We go without a plan for going back. It is like Jesus said, the one who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the reign of God. Harsh words but true and thus – in the end – kind.

We have to let go of platitudes about the interior, the easily memorized sentences and lines handed down by our idols and fellow worshipers. Bumper stickers are for tourists. We are not visitors who will go home to boast about our vacation. We are migrants, mendicants, apostles, beggars. The grace that inheres in our traveling cannot be possessed, recounted, valorized, or sold. It does not extend itself in the form of personal accomplishment.

To “bring forth Love,” which is what it means to be fully human, is to go into this mystery – this whole-that-is-not-whole, this God-forever-just-out-of-reach – without any image of what will happen next, without any plan for response, without any investment in investment in outcome. Those “withouts” are our poverty and only thus desiccated do we become a prism unto the One so that Her pure love might radiate through us in vivid scintillation. Truly we go into the darkness without lantern or fire in order to discover that we are the light and the darkness was but a dream.

Johannes Baptist Metz once wrote that “A human being is the ecstatic appearance of Being, and becoming fully human is an ever growing appropriation of this ecstasis of Being.”

Ever-growing means not ending. You see? There is no home. There is no one. No lover, no God, no shelter. No high table, no secret altar. There is only this, which can only be encountered in spiritual poverty – that is, in the utter open-hearted and empty-handed nature of Being meeting being meeting Being.

Being Homo Amans: Happiness as a Spiritual Practice

I say sometimes to my students: “take what you learn and act in the world with it. Do something.” And when they ask what they should do, I tell them to help somebody in a way that makes both parties happier than they were before the encounter started.

Related to this – especially when it comes to spiritual paths and practices and the inevitable contentions when one relates with them – is to have as one’s standard in this domain be that what’s right is what works.

Let me briefly address those two ideas.

First, it is important to allow our ideas and insights to have full run of the bodies in, through and to which they occur. If you are having ideas about peace, then behave peaceably. Don’t screw around by being casual or self-deprecating. Jesus and the Buddha were just people, like you. Beget peaceful practices that themselves beget peace. If that is not happening in your living – if everything is remaining at the level of the intellect – then something is wrong. The circle is not connecting, or closing. The wheel can’t go.

I am not disparaging the intellect. Praise and glory to the inner librarian, the inner scholar, and the inner cartographer. Truly! But a librarian without a writer of books is lost. A scholar without a classroom is lost. A cartographer without an explorer is lost.

You see where I am going with this.

I propose that we think in terms of identities – or essences – that make one another possible, that define and empower one another, so that what emerges is not one or the other but rather a relationship. Absent the explorer, no cartographer, and absent the cartographer, no explorer. You might think of the yin yang symbolism as an apt image. Somewhat less elegantly, you might imagine a bear eating blueberries, then shitting the blueberry seeds in sunlight so new bushes will grow, which in turn feed more bears who in turn shit more seeds . . .

Since I like bears and blueberries, I’ll use those images to build out the second idea. I proposed that a way to think about spirituality is to ask if it works. Is it helpful? If your spiritual practice has peace and justice as one of its goals, then are you helping instigate peace and justice? If yes, okay. Keep doing what you’re doing. If no, then reevaluate.

So there is this system we call a bear and it eats these berries, which are little systems themselves. The bear wants to make more bears, and the berries want to make more berries. This is a way of saying how life loves itself, how its aim is just to keep going, keep flowing. Life is what recreates itself, in and through all these observers, some of whom – like us – are aware of the the flow and some who aren’t. The flow doesn’t care; it just is. But it is sweet to see it – sweet like blueberries, rough and beautiful like bears.

The blueberries work for the bear because they energize her and satiate her, and they can do the same for her little cubs, if she has any. They help her be a living bear and to bring forth her bearness. But it works for the berries, too, because even as they lose their autonomy in the bear’s jaws, their seeds are set free in a most fertile way. As the bears brings forth her bearness, the blueberries bring forth their blueberryness. It works for both parties, you see?

You want to be happy. I want to be happy. I don’t mean the silly ersatz happiness of our team wins the Super Bowl, or we just ate a slice of fresh-baked bread with butter and cinnamon, or had some really great sex. Those things are fine – they are more than fine, really – but they are like fireflies compared to the great lantern of joy that is our inheritance and essence.

grazing_horses — horses grazing the far pasture, watching them from the woods

Happiness is what doesn’t come and go. It is not touched by external circumstances, which of course include your personal response to those circumstances. When we are happy we are helpful in a direct clear way because all that matters is extending our happiness. Joy wants to be shared, the same way life wants to be shared.

The blueberry is sweet and nutritious and so the bear wants it and takes it, and the way she consumes the berry maximizes the berry’s potential to become a new bush redolent with new berries. That is the nature of berries and bears. Our nature is to be happy and to extend our happiness through sharing, being nearby, co-creating, et cetera. We are loving creatures, what Humberto Maturana characterized as less Homo Sapiens than Homo Amans.

So I say: go do something today, something that works. And you will know it works by the measure of joy it brings you. Joy is infectious; it travels, radiates, disperses. It’s like a bear in a blueberry patch, a blueberry seed in bear scat. What makes you happy? Deeply naturally productively happy? Do that. That is your spiritual practice.

Against Conclusions, Spiritual and Otherwise

Experience is a continous whole that functions as a perspective. Experience provides an observer with a lot of phenomena – mental, emotional, physical – to observe. It owns the curious apparent paradox that it consists entirely of change and yet itself never changes.

wooden_buddha — one of the buddhas I put together on the trail out back

There are ways to experience this change-that-never-changes. You might consider experience as a kind of container: everything that occurs, from the passage of ants in the garden to the ideas in your head to the moon in the sky, are contained by experience.

In this mode, you might give attention to experience: can you find anything that is not contained in it? Doesn’t everything show up in experience?

Upon perceiving this awareness in which and to which all appears – we might begin to explore the container itself. What, if anything, do we find? What does it feel like to find it? Or to not find it? Or are those misguided questions?

I do not disparage those exercises and others like them. It is important to make sustained contact with the subjective nature of experience, and the way it feels so utterly infinitely whole.

I also want to be careful about the conclusions that I draw from that experience.

The experience we have is the experience of a human observer. There is some variety built into this but in a general way it is isomorphic across the species. Importantly, we want to be clear that other observers bring forth different worlds – different cosmos – in their observation. If you and a butterfly look at a flower, you see two different objects. If you and an ant look at the sky, you see two vastly different ceilings. Who is right? And since the obvious answer is that both are right according to the particular observer they are, then can we actually draw objective conclusions about the flower or the sky?

We really are constrained from drawing conclusions, including those that sound like “there is only this” or “I am that.” The very fact of our existence as human observers means that while we can make educated guesses and estimate probabilities and so forth, and can manage varying degrees of confidence in our scholarship, the whole – at least as we have long understood it in spiritual terms – is foreclosed to us.

Seeing this clearly is often experienced as painful, especially if it arrives after we’ve had the shallow enlightenment experience of “there is only this” and “I am it” et cetera. Again, I don’t disparage those experiences or insights. They are part of the overall human experience, and they are helpful in their way. They are even delightful in their way. It is simply that we tend to be confused by them, to objectify and cling to them through the form of adoration, worship and so forth. They can subtly be cherished as accomplishments, evidence of spiritual growth, and so forth.

Really, “this is it” and “I am that” are simply ways of expressing what it feels like sometimes to be a human observer. If those phrases are helpful in terms of making us gentler, kinder, slower to judge, more helpful, less argumentative and so forth, then great. But they aren’t dispositive. They don’t end the inquiry. They are more in the nature of a sign than that which is being pointed at. That is, they’re like the sign that says “river,” rather than the river itself.

consciousness — containers in which all phenomena appear

If we want the river, then we have to allow for the limitations imposed on us by virtue of being human observers. We get AN experience, not THE experience. It’s not even THE experience relative to other humans. Lots of people are happy, insightful, peaceful, helpful, generous and kind without ever having to resort to nondualism or Christianity or pop psychology.

Right now, this is how it is happening for us – this this – which is okay because it is a way of being human. It is one filter among many, all of which can be misused, confused, abused and so forth. All of which can be helpful and productive, too.

The work really is to go slower in terms of concluding. That is, we want to just let life be what it is without rushing to decide what it is or what it should be. That is a real practice! It takes time, energy, attention, commitment. Becoming the loving being that we naturally are is the work of the one life we are living.

Oneness Functions as Perspective

Part of what I am saying is that a human observer is essentially a perspective, A way of seeing rather than THE way of seeing. If I am sitting by the river I am not mucking the horse pasture. I am weeding the strawberries I am not writing poetry under the apple tree. If I am gazing at a sky full of stars I am not gazing a mushrooms in the compost.

mushrooms-in-compost — tendril ghosts sprouting from and falling back into the compost after rain

At any moment, the observation of which you are comprised is both local and partial. At the sensorimotor level it includes whatever data is allowed by the intersection of the local environment with the particular organism. At the cognitive level, it includes your vast knowing predicated on all the years of your learning to be the particular human observer you are.

For example, my perspective on cows includes my father’s relationship with cows, which was complex and lifelong, and my own history with cows, which cannot be disentangled from my father. Nobody can experience cows the way I experience cows, and I will never experience a cow apart from the specific way that I experience cows.

Right now I am writing on the back porch while it rains. The sky is soft gray like the belly of a trout. The lilac is just beginning to bloom. The grass is rich and green, like the first time I flew over Ireland. The neighbor’s sheep are bawling. I am thinking about what one does when faced with disagreement, with a particular focus on some of Hugh Gash’s ideas about spirituality in a constructivist context.

That’s Sean – or was Sean, a couple of hours ago. Who are you?

If we can see the way our observing constitutes a perspective that is biological, mental, psychological, spiritual and so forth, then we can perhaps begin to also see how this is true for all observers. You are a perspective. Your neighbor is a perspective. Robins in the backyard are a perspective. A bee is a perspective. The lilac is a perspective.

The significance of this is that it loosens our stranglehold on truth or reality. It eases up our conviction that there is a 1:1 correspondence between our experience as observers and an external cosmos. There isn’t the Way, the Truth, and the Life. There are many ways and many truths constituting many expressions of Life. This is disconcerting at first, given our particular investment in being special separate selves, but as we come back to it over and over, its potential for peace becomes clear.

If there are only many perspectives – as opposed to a singular truth that can be known – then we don’t need to argue as much. Disagreements arise but they needn’t devolve into estrangement or worse. Of course someone has a different view than us. They also have a pair of feet that aren’t ours. Are we going to get bent out of shape over that, too?

So we relax a little and see a way in which to build a world in which it is easier for people to be good, forgiving, gentle, patient. A world in which it is easier to be loving. And we can build it together. That is the real work of being human – to build together a world in love.

strawberry-beds — purple blossoms along the strawberry beds

Too often, we perceive differences as signals to defend ourselves or prove others wrong. It becomes a way of deciding who is valuable and deserving and who is not as worthy. That is a world in which love is constrained and denied its full expression.

When we appreciate that differences arise naturally as a fundament of the human observer, then some space opens up in which we are quieter, gentler, kinder and more nurturing. After all, this other could be me. To see that clearly is love. To let it be is love.