On Descriptions of Spiritual Awakening

Heinz von Foerster once said – here paraphrased – that complexity is a consequence of language; it does not inhere in the world. I want to extend his insight and say that complexity is not a property of experience but rather is a property of descriptions of experience.

Basically, I am suggesting that experience happens – clear and simple to the point of purity – and then we describe experience and our descriptions are partial and relative to the individual observer and are thus complex. Often, what we say is literally incomprehensible to others, if not to ourselves, and vice-versa. It is like smashing a crystal, distributing the pieces, and then trying to describe how the shard fits a (now gone) whole.

Take our experience of a tree. Go sit by one or take a long look at one. Is there any ambiguity in the experience? Is there anything that is unclear? Even if you evoke gaps in understanding – “I don’t know what kind of tree this is” – the gap itself is clear. You know something is missing and how to describe its absence.

This clarity – which is inherent in experience – is often overlooked. Or perhaps I speak to my own confusion. But it is helpful to see that whatever is going on is always clear and direct: it is this experience, “this this” as I like to say. It is deeply present: utterly whole unto itself.

And then we go and talk about it! Then we describe our experience of the tree. We take the clear simple direct experience and atomize it in order to make a copy. That is what a description does: a bunch of details reassembled as a copy of the whole for purposes of dissemination.

If you are a professional forester, your description of the tree will be one thing. If you are a botanist, another. If you are a poet who has been writing under that tree for decades, another. If you are a photographer, another. If you are a squirrel, another. A nuthatch, another. And so forth.

Some of those descriptions will overlap but not always.
Some of them will be contradictory – the forester and the poet might vehemently disagree about the tree. Bipedal descriptions will necessarily be differentiated from those of quadrupeds or birds.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to nondual experience is the fact that a word and the object to which it refers are not the same thing. The word “tree” does not in any way look or act like a tree. Language always dropkicks us into this basic dualism. Indeed, we are only able to speak about nondualism by taking as our premise this basic division between word and object.

But maybe experience and description are in fact a nondual unity albeit without coinciding. Perhaps it looks like this:

Experience => Description / Experience => Description / Experience => Description / Experience => and so on . . .

That is, all description is an experience but is not a description of the experience it seems to describe. In other words, we experience a tree and then we experience describing the tree. Our descriptions are experience which are descriptions.

Once we no longer insist that description and experience align perfectly or truthfully in a static way, then the incoherency subsides. The description is not the thing. Yet it is a thing which may itself be described. In this way, description and experience flow with and into one another as a seamless whole. Maybe.

Often, when we give attention in a sustained way, we end up giving attention to attention which, in a certain sense, closes the loop, somewhat the way a serpent swallows its own tail. One catches a glimpse then of what perhaps cannot be spoken of in language and yet – oddly – longs to be spoken of in language. Else why would this very paragraph exist? Why would you be reading it?

(And what loop have we closed – me writing and you reading – here?)

So we hold description loosely, as we hold experience loosely, and give attention in gentle and sustainable ways. We see what we see: we extend it: extension becomes us seeing what we see.

Dialogue as Love

Recently I wrote this sentence:

There is no other way because we are already what we seek: are already the very home in which we long to rest.

It was in the same paragraph as this little gem:

We are love.

Sigh.

deadfall
Deadfall past the horse pasture . . .

I try to be careful when writing that way. It’s not that the given statements are wrong per se, but that they are poetic in a way that allows for – perhaps even instigates – confusion. And the goal now is to be less confused. Better things happen when confusion abates.

If you read those sentences – now or back when they were first posted – did you like them? Was there a little shiver of yes? A little mental click like finding just the right puzzle piece? Certainly there was for me. Else why would I have written them?

“We are love” and “we are already the home in which we long to rest” are resonant because they link the self (“we”) to a couple of powerful words: “love” and “home.” And it’s a favorable association.

Language has power. Certain words and phrases resonate for us, often intimately. There is no way around this – it inheres in the human experience – and so all we can do is give attention to the experience of resonance and see what, if anything, reveals itself.

Often, we conflate interior congruence – that little shiver of yes, the joyful mental click – with the actual truth of the proposition. That is, we read “We are love” and it feels good and so therefore it must be true. But we don’t actually inquire into it: we don’t test it, we don’t tease its many strands into the open, we don’t look for alternatives, we don’t examine our biases.

And there are plenty of true facts that don’t instantiate any interior frisson in the first place. “Groundhogs have four legs.” Yawn. I mean true, but . . . yawn.

So there is something special about some words and it’s worth digging into this to figure out what exactly appeals to us and whether in our happiness we are accepting a level of confusion we should really be opposing.

Take a word like “love.”

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as love. When someone says “love,” they intend for the word to cover their personal felt understanding of ideal human behaviors, social obligations, historical patterns, et cetera.

“Love” is just a symbol that points to a welter that no single syllable in the universe could possibly reliably contain. It’s like saying that reading the word “wet” feels the same as swimming at night in the sea.

You have two choices when I use the word “love.” First, you could enter into dialogue with me. You could start by asking: “what do you mean when you use this word?” And then work with me for however long it takes to understand what I mean with what I say.

To be in dialogue this way requires time and patience and care. It is demanding. It is form of service, perhaps. To give attention to another human being in the deep way of truly aiming to understand what they mean when they say “love” . . . is itself – as I understand and use the word – an act of love.

The other option – the default option and so the easier option – is to correlate my use of the word to your own interior welter. That is, you implicitly  assume that I must mean what you would mean if you had used the same word. A lot of our human communication is predicated on just that kind of assumption.

The problem arises when my use of the word and your use of the word are so apart they could almost be different languages. Then, every subsequent move in our communication only widens the initial divide. We fall further and further apart even as we think we are moving in sync. A lot of our human problems arise from  just this kind of ongoing error.

Why do we accept accept this division? Why do we refuse to see it is an error? Why do we deny its ruinous effects?

These are important questions.

What matters is not the word that we use but rather the person who uses it. When we are in dialogue, what works is to see the whole person before us, and to be aware of what it is in us that prohibits us from seeing who is before us. Words are helpful in that meeting – that mutuality – that bringing forth of love – but they are just words. They are not that to which they purport to point.

Our practice is to live lightly with language, ever aware of that to which it points, and unafraid to do the hard work of bringing clarity to confusion.

The work is to go slowly and be careful – to be filled with care – with respect both to our wordiness and the wordiness of others. What do we mean when we say “home” or “love?” What do others mean? How shall we know?

How shall we be in dialogue, you and I?

Accepting Life As Is

In a sense, the work is simply to not wish that life be other than it is, at this moment. That sounds easy but it is actually very hard. If we look closely, we will see that we are in a state of apparently perpetual resistance to life. We compare it to past iterations and find it wanting, we dream of better manifestations going forward . . .

This is essentially a mechanical process to which we acquiesce. Thought hums along doing what it does and we don’t question it. We just assume that it must be true and inevitable. But even a few minutes of attention clarifies that thought is nowhere near as reliable or structured as it seems. In fact, it’s kind of a mess.

We don’t have to do anything about this other than see it. If we can see it, then it will naturally be undone. It’s odd but true: part of the reason that thought (or the ego, if you like) gets away with so much is because we just don’t see it. In the light of attention, it ceases to function because it is a kind of darkness and in light of any kind, it ceases to exist.

The temptation is always to look for more than what is. We become attentive, and life clarifies a little, and we start to look for something additional: a little rainbow, a little angel, a little nudge from Jesus. When we are looking for more, we are no longer looking at what is, and then the default mode kicks back in. Wanting more is what caused Lucifer’s fall from Heaven: we can appreciate the symbolism.

But we are not bad and Heaven’s doors – I am speaking metaphorically – never close. Picture a sign above them: “Open twenty four seven, even on Christmas.” When we see that we are distracted, we are seeing again, and thus we are no longer distracted. Heaven is a state of awareness devoid of a wish it be anything else. When you fall, you return by virtue of attention: and you see that you are still there. It is as if something goes on, even when we are not giving attention to it.

Most spiritual paths and traditions eventually lead one to this juncture, however articulated: attention reveals that there is no separation between the observer and the observed. Again, to get hung up on the articulation is to miss the point. The point is that you are not separate from truth, life, love, God. This is a plain, simple truth. We can apprehend it with our natural intelligence. Common sense can be very helpful. It turns out we know what to do, which is why we are so good at not doing it.

So the point more and more is just to get into that space of attentiveness because there, everything pretty much takes care of itself. We know what to do and how to act.

On Avoiding Conceptual Dead Ends

Say that we are climbing a mountain and the trail becomes hard to follow. We come to a post with twenty signs nailed to it. Nineteen are marked with lines and squiggles that mean nothing to us. One reads “trail to summit marked with orange circles.” We follow its directive and, lo and behold, arrive at the summit.

trail_signs
. . . of the many ways it is said:
do not enshrine
your preference
for one over the other

Thus we say of the sign that pointed the way: “that is the one true sign.”

We all do this, often without noticing. Don’t kid yourself that you’re the one who wouldn’t do it. The best we can hope for is to notice when we do it – as it happens or soon after – and then update our belief system accordingly (more on this anon).

What should we actually say of the sign? We might say something like: “for me, that was the most helpful sign. I can’t speak to the others because I didn’t understand them.”

Not understanding things inheres in the human experience. There are gaps in all our knowledge – collectively and individually. Since we can’t know everything, we have to delegate – let neuroscientists know about the brain, auto mechanics about car engines, et cetera.

But if our ignorance hurts others – that is, if we weaponize it, then we have an obligation to inform ourselves. People have died painful deaths for not agreeing that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. It’s important to realize that we could have been the ones who did the killing and felt their actions were mete and just, and then not do that.

We need to interact more effectively with ignorance. It is not an error to defer to a brain surgeon when it comes to a tumor in our skull. It is an error to assert that “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life” when there are obviously so many other ways.

In the analogy of the mountain trail and its signs, how might we update our ignorance?

Well, we might gaze about the summit. We might notice that we share it with folks who do not read or speak English. Thus, we can infer that some of the signs we did not personally understand were nevertheless accurate for some people.

We could also study language. Even a cursory review would clarify that some of the signs we didn’t personally comprehend said more or less the same exact thing as our sign. If we can say this of ten of the twenty signs, perhaps we can infer it is true of the balance as well.

We might also infer from the fact that somebody put up twenty signs – including one that was helpful in our specific cognitive, perceptual and cultural context – that it is more likely than not they were trying to help as many people as possible. The sign-maker was trying to optimize her helpfulness.

All of these actions would help undo our allegiance to “our” sign. All of them would nudge us in the direction of understanding concepts in terms of “helpful” and “unhelpful,” rather than merely “right” or “wrong.”

The foregoing paragraphs emphasize two ideas.

First, it is wise not to become overly attached to our concepts. They are not “right” or “wrong” so much as “helpful” or “not helpful.” They are pointers, and pointers are never that to which they point. And that to which they point is always more complex and variable than what the pointer can possibly indicate.

This is true whether we are talking about A Course in Miracles or Christan Science or Zen Buddhism or Zoroastrianism or Jungian psychotherapy or crystal healing.

Second, our concepts are tools. Their job is to help us do things – like feed the poor, shelter the homeless, nurture bees, minimize waste, resolve conflict peacefully, bake bread, make art, et cetera. They are good to the extent they are helpful. To the extent they are not, then they should be discarded.

A tool can be very handy for a given job but completely irrelevant for subsequent jobs. For example, a hammer will help me build a horse barn, but it will not help me groom the horse. A saw will help me trim deadfall branches into fence posts, but it will not help me knead bread.

I might have a favorite saw or hammer – one my Dad gave me, say, as his Dad did before him – but it’s still just a saw or hammer. Lots of folks have them, and most of them will do the job as effectively as the one I’ve got.

In other words, the way I feel about my tool won’t make it work better or worse. Two plus two is not five just because I shout “five” with blazing passion, or because my father said it was “five” on his deathbed, or because that’s what the high priests say it is.

Is there another way to be in relationship with concepts? Our default mode is to equate them with truths and then defend them. But perhaps there is another way, one that accepts them conditionally, as subject to inquiry.

That is, rather than say the sign that got us to the summit is THE SIGN we might do something like the following:

1. Acknowledge the tendency to enshrine the concept (our sign is THE SIGN);

2. Acknowledge how this enshrinement promotes a need to defend the sign against other signs, and against those for whom another sign was THE SIGN;

3. Gather evidence;

4. Evaluate the evidence;

5. Talk to folks in order to broaden the inquiry and ensure we are fairly evaluating the evidence; and then

6. Either accept the concept, update the concept, or discard the concept precisely as the previous 5 steps direct us.

Concepts – like all tools – need to be effective. Effectiveness can be measured. It is tangible. Do the concepts make us smarter? Gentler? More inclined to help others rather than hurt or stymie them?

Do our concepts help bring forth love or something other than love?

And, perhaps most importantly, are we willing to go slowly and collectively in order to find out?

The Going-On Going On

A lot of the writing I do these days – some of which shows up here, some of which does not, but all of which has as its essence a desire to see more clearly what I think and feel in order to see more clearly thought and feeling arising – has to do with A Course in Miracles. I am moving on from it, I am grateful to it, I am wondering if I will ever go back to it, does all this thinking mean I am still with it, in it, et cetera.

I have been writing a response to a comment in this post on Gary Renard, and in doing so, it is clear that there is a way in which I am still very much in and with A Course in Miracles. What do I mean by this? I mean that I care about it, which means – for me – that it puzzles and excites and illuminates me, especially certain aspects of it, and certain aspects of me.

Yet it is also clear that what I mean by A Course in Miracles is not what you mean – nor what anybody else means – and that this diversity of understanding is important, even as it may restrain or even preclude an ongoing dialogue. The course points to something complex that merits attention, going deeper, comprehending, sharing, et cetera. But what exactly? And how shall we know?

Human observers are processes, not stable entities. We are in motion: our movement becomes us. It doesn’t feel this way. It feels like we’re solid, predictable, reliable, tangible. But that’s just how the process feels. That’s just how the process seems, when the process is looking at itself.

What happens when we slip a Text, Workbook and Manual for Teachers into a process like that?

It is like dropping a twig into an eddy on a brook. At first, the twig behaves in predictable ways. It swirls, rotates, spins, bobs. If we study its movement closely, and compare it to the same twig in another eddy, then we will observe subtle but non-trivial differences. But from a distance, in broad strokes, there is a predictable similarity. At the outside, from a distance, course students share clear similarities in practice. But when we go closer – track the narrow road to the interior, say – differences in ACIM practice appear which, the closer we get, become more and more pronounced.

This is because eventually, the eddy moves on. It settles back into the brook. It dies in the sand of either bank. It spits the twig out. The twig drifts, encounters other twigs, other eddies, other currents. On and on it goes, even after we’ve lost sight of it.

In time, our ability to predict what will happen to the twig necessarily dissolves. In fact, the only real prediction we can make with respect to the twig is that eventually our prediction will fall apart. Our knowing is always temporary and situational.

In part, this is why I cannot insist that A Course in Miracles necessarily means this or that or something else altogether. Or that this teacher is right, while this one is wrong. Helpful or unhelpful, sure. But right or wrong? What do I know?

There is a saying that the map does not equal the territory. This is sound but it does not mean that the map cannot ever be helpful. A map is a way of relating to the territory. A Course in Miracles is a kind of map. It is a way of being in relationship with experience.

If we look at our map and the map says that there should be a river where we are, and instead there is a mountain, then we have to discard that part of the map. Or update it, if you prefer. The mountain is what’s there. What the map says no longer obtains.

Our ACIM map has a lot to do with Jesus, but we might find that out in the territory, there is no Jesus, or only a little Jesus.

In that case, we have to find another map. It’s okay to do this. It doesn’t mean the ACIM map is wrong in any ultimate or final sense; just that it no longer applies to the given territory.

The territory is not objective. It is always shifting, always personal. How does the brook appear to an eddy? The only possible answer is: it depends on the eddy – where it is, what stage of eddying it’s at, and so forth. It is impossible for an eddy to give anything other than a relative answer.

Thus, your still pond may be my craggy mountain. Your vast lake may be my trail through the forest. Where the map – be it ACIM or something else – might be efficient for me, it may not be for you. This is neither a crisis nor a problem nor even an invitation to debate (though it may yield some interesting and helpful dialogue). It is simply experiencing our human observer experience.

Thus, one is never “finished” with A Course in Miracles. Nor does one actually ever begin A Course in Miracles. It feels like our study begins and ends: but that is just the movement of the river. That is just the spinning of the twig. Here we are: and here we go.

Oneness as Human Observer Balancing

Yet ask: if the stories we tell ourselves matter – and they do – then don’t the distinctions we draw (constructivist/realist, believer/atheist, Christian/Buddhist) somehow also matter? After all, they are part of – influential parts of – our stories.

outdoor_oven
Our brick outdoor bread and pizza oven . . . apple trees in the background . . .

Distinctions are inevitable. A human observer cannot help but make distinctions. When we become aware of a distinction, it has already been made at levels of which we are not aware.

Thus, the issue is not ridding ourselves of distinctions – which we cannot do – but rather noticing the way in which we relate to distinctions. How do we order them? How do we name them? Who helped us develop this way of thinking about distinctions? Are there other ways? Who might help us find them?

Perhaps most significantly is the importance of noticing how it feels to make the distinction that we made. That is, in conjunction with thinking about distinction – this distinction in particular and the process of distinguishing in general – we want to explore how it feels to live the distinction being distinguished.

To be a human observer is to be observing. Observing is a process. We do not recall its beginnings (because of the way human observers evolve in time) and we will not experience its conclusion (because of the way human observers end in time). We do not control it though the process does provide a sense of being this entity in charge of this process.

When we use a term like “self,” we are applying it to that part of a process that feels most intimate and clear to us. It is what is always there, no matter what is going on externally – when we are buying ice cream, when we are making love, when we are studying, when we are arguing, when we are lost in a strange city.

There is a always a sense of that-which-never-leaves.

That sense is the tip of the process of being a human observer. It is akin to a surfer riding vast waves. The surfer is in relationship to the ocean and to this wave, but has no control over what the ocean does or the wave does. The surfer’s control really only applies to the balancing act, which is to say, the experience of experiencing riding the waves.

That balancing act is important to the surfer! Thus, doing it skillfully and efficiently matters. But it matters to the surfer – not the ocean, not the waves, not the weather system that creates waves, nor to the moon that creates tides, nor to . . .

Part of our balancing act includes becoming knowledgeable about it. This, in turn, can mean studying any number of belief systems, self-improvement strategies, philosophies and so forth. There is nothing wrong with any of this – and a lot helpful – so long as we understand that the limited nature of its application.

frosted_compost
compost piles dusted with frost . . . the further one will be integrated into gardens this spring . . . the nearer one has a year or so to go . . .

Thus, we want to give attention to the distinctions that appear. Do they nudge us in the direction of happiness? Creativity? Service? Sustainability? If yes, how can we nurture them? How can we open yet more interior space for their flourishing?

If no, how can we discover alternatives? Who or what can help us do that? What impedes us from seeking or embracing these alternatives?

Thus, our focus is on the coherence of the process of human observing because that, more than what is observed, is what we are in truth. As Francisco Varela pointed out, “everything that works is true.”

Absolute reality, in my eyes, does not dictate the laws we have to obey. It is the patriarchal perspective to proclaim the truth and to decree absolutely valid rules that constrain, limit, and eradicate opportunities. What might be called absolute reality tends to appear to me as a feminine matrix, whose fundamental quality is the opening up of possibilities.

He added later in the same interview

. . . what is not prohibited is permitted. There are natural limits but there is no densely woven, blocking, and stifling system of rules. This is the soft and space-creating quality of a feminine matrix.

So we give attention to the narratives and to the distinctions that underlie them. Our giving attention is akin to surfing a vast ocean. Our awareness does not reach the whole, even as it participates – is in relation with – the system that is the whole. Our balancing is the closest we come to oneness, and it shows up as sustainable happiness and helpfulness.