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.

Undoing the Self in Love

When we say “undoing the self,” what is meant is not a physical or material undoing, nor a mystical revelation of heretofore unglimpsed or uncharted realities, but rather that we are simply less wrong about what it means to be a self than before. That’s all.

buried-stone-wall
the way crumbles
yet remains
clear

It is a bit like when a child who has believed in Santa Claus for a long time no longer does. Nothing is really different – the same images of Santa will show up in songs, television shows, cards and so forth. Gifts will still appear under the tree. She’ll just have more clarity about what’s actually happening which in turn will allow for a more coherent engagement with the holiday.

In other words, to “undo the self” is basically to see – slowly, gently – what the self is not, which in turn allows for a more coherent and functional overall “seeing” to occur.

This concept – seeing the false reveals the true – is important. The truth is true and what impedes our knowledge of it are false ideas and beliefs, which include our insistence on a special personal prerogative with respect to reality.

We don’t create the truth or reality; we are part and parcel of it. It is what it is and we are, as the old song went, only passing through. We are “one with it” the way an eddy is one with the river – it has its own thing going on, but it’s really just the river.

It is possible, through meditation exercises or chemicals or other means, to experience this oneness. However, this is not an especially big deal – it’s just a sensual experience, like eating cheesecake or running uphill. It’s lovely and sweet when it shows up, but it doesn’t “mean” anything.

In truth, all experience points at oneness, not just the seemingly holy or mystical or supernatural experiences. In life, nothing is excluded. Inclusivity and equality are the law – a kind of radical neutrality – and they don’t bend.

“My life” is not more valuable than a blue jay’s. It is not more important than an earthworm’s. It is not more complex or mysterious than a rose bush or a black hole or the western wind.

And let’s not even get started on the notion that some people are more or less valuable/important/interesting than others. It can seem that way – and we certainly can perceive it that way and act according to our perception – but it is emphatically not that way.

Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all God’s Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over another. God’s Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father (T-8.IV.6:7-8).

Substitute “Creation” or “Life” for “God’s Sons” and “Father” and the sentences may resonate more clearly.

The point isn’t about bipeds, or masculine bipeds, or some discrete Divine Entity overseeing human affairs who also happens to be masculine.

It is simply about the natural experience that attends all life. Life recognizes itself as life.

Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? (T-8.IV.4:1-2)

Don’t over analyze those questions! Just give the answer that is there to be given, and then let the resultant clarity – even if it’s not overwhelming – guide you through the day. How far a  sincere yes will take us!

A more formal ACIM teacher would say that your “inner teacher” – Jesus, the Holy Spirit, et cetera – will be your guide.

But perhaps it is simpler and clearer than that. Your common sense and propensity for love will guide you. It is simultaneously no big thing and the biggest thing ever. And you are it.

So really, the work we are doing is not anything fancy. There is nothing mysterious or spiritual or supernatural about it. We don’t really need a teacher. It doesn’t cost anything. Nobody else “has” it or has “more” of it.

We are simply making contact with our inherent capacity for reason and love, and allowing that – rather than our fear and the insanity it inspires – to be the compass by which we steer ourselves.

There are a lot of ways to talk and write about this stuff. I tend to indulge – in my admittedly half-assed way – metaphysics and philosophy from a Christian perspective. There is nothing right about that, save that it happens to resonate for me and for some other folks. And there is nothing wrong with that, save that it has a tendency to obscure the inherent simplicity of being, and sometimes to privilege people whose skill sets lean towards that kind of writing and thinking.

So part of the work as well is to recognize that obscuration and – without demeaning the one behind it – to stay focused on the real work of being kind and clear and helpful. It is not easy! We are talking about a very radical kind of communication here, and we are talking about becoming the sort of people for whom such radical communication is natural.

Every step of the way we will want to privilege and indulge our inner feelings, our personal narrative drama, our apparent preferences. That’s okay! That, too, inheres in experience.

The suggestion is simply to notice it, and in noticing it, notice its origins in fear, guilt, exclusivity and specialness. When we see those origins clearly, we will begin to glimpse – to greater and greater degree – a transcendent love as well. It will be increasingly easy to avail ourselves of that love because – in truth – it inheres in the human observer.

Indeed, we learn that it is not hard to be loving because, in nontrivial ways, we are love. The joy and peace love brings to us is known primarily in and through extension to others. There is no other way because we are already what we seek: are already the very home in which we long to rest.

Letting Go of Winning in Favor of Bread

Josef Mitterer makes an interesting point here. Discussing the longstanding tension between constructivists and realists, and how the two groups view science, he notes the following.

Whether scientists see themselves as Realists or rather as Constructivists depends above all on which philosophy (of science) is in fashion. There is no indication that realist-oriented scientists are more successful than constructivist scientists and it makes little difference for the results of our knowledge-efforts whether they are interpreted as inventions or as discoveries.

We tend to take stands, often without noticing, and our “stands” tend to align us with tribal thinking. “I’m a constructivist!” “I’m a Christian!” “I’m a Republican!” It isn’t always rational. Mitterer suggests it may not even be strictly necessary.

wren_in_the_barn
the loveliness of a little barn visitor is not contingent on proving it’s either “real” or an “illusion” . . .

When a group of scientists through research, prediction and testing improve a pharmaceutical such that it is more efficacious with respect to disease X, its efficacy is not contingent on whether we equate “research, prediction and testing” with either “discovered” or “interpreted.”

Indeed, the distinction is especially moot with respect to those whose lives are saved by the new drug.

If outcomes do not correlate with identifying as a constructivist or a realist, what does that say about the importance of identification in the first place? Might we scuttle it altogether? Debates about epistemology et cetera are fun and interesting but Mitterer is suggesting that the sides we take in them are effectively interchangeable.

If you go for a walk and an aggressive bear appears on the trail before you, your response is the same whether you are a constructivist or a realist.

Thus, winning the debate – constructivism is right vs. realism is right – isn’t germane to our function. It’s more in the nature of how language resonates (or fails to resonate) in conjunction with our present preferences. We’re all going to flee the bear, but we’re going to describe our fleeing differently.

Which is in part Mitterer’s point.

The conflict between a constructivist proliferation of worlds and a realist reduction towards the one (and “true”) reality needs to be decided according to preferences drawn from presuppositions, which are only imperative as long as we make them . . .

Something similar abounds in our discussions about consciousness – its nature, origin, responsiveness, et cetera. If you come at the question from a spiritual aspect, you’re apt to argue that consciousness is infinite and eternal, contains and is not contained by the material body, and so forth. You’re apt to cite Ramana and Nisargadatta and A Course in Miracles.

If you are disposed to the scientific method, then you’re apt to lean on reductionism: consciousness is just what it feels like when atoms are arranged in a way that makes human observers. Just look at Chris Fields, Douglas Hofstadter, Gerald Edelman.

It’s a fun and interesting discussion. But keep in mind that when the bear comes down the trail towards you, you will flee, and your flight will be the same whether you believe the bear is objectively real or merely an appearance in consciousness. And in that simple fact lies a lovely and liberating truth.

You can say that you’re not a body and that the world isn’t real all you like but notice that you still get hungry and you still eat bread. Notice that the bread you eat came from wheat that was grown in soil nurtured by sunlight and rain, was mixed with salt harvested by human hands, and baked in an oven designed by human ingenuity.

This is not a crisis! Feeling that it is means we are still taking sides in a conflict that is not necessary. Imagine some kind grandmotherly God saying “stop thinking so hard and enjoy this delicious bread.”

It is okay to be happy in an ordinary and embodied way. It is more than okay.

What if – faced with hunger and a loaf of bread – our focus was on finding others with whom to share the meal? As opposed to winning an argument about whether bread or those who eat it are real? What if it’s the argument that’s made up and illusory – not your body and not the bread? Would that be okay?

Service, Sustainability and . . . Bags

I talk often about service. What happens when we realize there is no God and that others aren’t here for us to compete with but to share with? Not to take from but to give to? What happens we no longer perceive our selves as separate from the collective?

The community sewing room where bag-making workshops are held. That’s me folding the bags on a wooden frame – the next step is to grommet them.

Well, love, broadly speaking. And service – in the many forms it assumes – is another way of saying (a perhaps more helpful way at times because it’s less dramatic) “I love you.”

Service – like love – is responsive to present circumstances. Somebody who is well-fed but lacks transportation is not helped by a free meal, just as somebody who is hungry and has no money to buy food is not helped by a road trip.

(Yes, there are more complex systemic problems underlying hunger and poverty, but that doesn’t mean we should avoid responding to the particular instances we encounter. Indeed, it is often in relationship to those particular circumstances that more long-term and sustainable solutions are revealed)

We are consumers, inevitably. This is a feature of being human, not a bug. We are what we consume. Consumption becomes us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be more thoughtful or creative or cautious or restrained in terms of what and how and when we consume.

One way to rethink our habits of consumption is to give attention to the possibilities of reuse and repurpose. What is left over? Is anything ever truly “useless?” Is there another end to which X can be put? Manufacturers tend to envision a narrowly tailored use for products and market them accordingly. When we’re done with that use, can we find another?

We use a lot of feed bags on our homestead – mostly for chickens but sometimes for horses. Folks around us do as well. Pigs, cows, sheep, goats, rabbits . . . animals gotta eat. The bags the feed comes are generally sturdy fifty pound bags. When they’re empty, they’ve accomplished the purpose the manufacturer foresaw.

But we are just getting started.

Some folks use these empty bags as leaf-filled foundation seams in winter. Others use them as a way of not buying plastic trash bags. Just load them with trash and take them to the dump / transfer station/ or whatever it’s called in your town. These are viable and effective applications of the reuse principal.

But there is another way, one that keeps those bags bagging for a long time to come. We turn the fee bags into shopping bags with handles for humans to use when go food shopping at the coop. Or are lugging books to and from the library. Or supplies to school. Or to a friend’s house for a party. Et cetera.

Bag-making workshops have been a staple of our community for a long time. I was actually a reporter for the local daily and covered some of the early meetings. Folks get together in the basement of the community center where there’s a communal sewing space, set up a de facto production line, and over the course of a few hours reconfigure feed bags to a more general and long-term use.

It’s fun and practical. What else can we ask for in life?

We remove the thin plastic liners, shake out remnants of grain (a big plus for the long songbird population), turn the bags inside out, fold them into rough squares, grommet the bottoms, add handles (reconfigured garden hose or something similar) and voila! Sturdy and cool-looking bags.

During the last workshop, we made two hundred bags in a little over two hours. I worked the grommet machine (somewhat ineptly).

Two hundred bags repurposed from old feed bags. Even though I was helping – where “helping” means needing a lot of help from more experienced bagmakers – we made all these in just over two hours.

The bags are donated to local entities – shelters, coops, libraries, second-hand clothing stores, and so forth. Some are given to friends. Last week in the cashier line I gave one to the woman ahead of me who’d forgotten her own bags.

In time, small steps equal a journey. And walking together – be it gardening, protesting, making bags – is a happy and fructive way to walk.

***

If you are interested in learning how to make bags from feed bags, starting workshops in your own community, or otherwise learning about bag-making, Bagshare is a good starting place.

Letting Up The Stranglehold On “Our” Reality

It is helpful to see that the apparently unified world we perceive – and in which we do all our living and loving – conforms to the observer that we are. It does not include what we cannot perceive or cognize; what we perceive and cognize is constrained by the organism we are.

spider-webThese constraints are not with creative effect, however. In essence, the distinctions they make are the world that we perceive, engage with, respond to, et cetera. It’s a bit like (but not precisely like) tennis: the boundaries that make the court, and the net that divides and elevates it are what make the game possible. Absent those constraints, tennis would not exist.

Given this, any reference to the Whole or the All or the Truth or the Source or even simply to Reality reflects a fundamental confusion. There is such a thing as the whole unity an observer perceives, but it is only “whole” relative to the observer itself. And since the observer is always changing, then the relative whole is as well.

We cannot escape this fact! We cannot be other than the observer we are – we can’t see the world the way a butterfly does, or hear it the way a dog does, or live on it the way a sunflower does. But it is possible to believe that we can escape or even have escaped this fact. Indeed, most of us live in that belief all the time. In a way, it is the default mode for human observers

If we give careful attention to the experience we are having, we might notice that it includes – as an underlying, apparently built-in presumption – that it is real, reliable, trustworthy, et cetera. We can describe it, measure it, make predictions about what will happen if we do this or that, and so forth. It is reliable.

This reliability tends to support the notion that what we perceive is in fact the real world, faithfully rendered via perception and cognition in order that we might effectively and meaningfully engage with it. Evolution designed us accordingly. To suggest otherwise is counter-intuitive.

But what if that premise – that perception reveals the one true external world – is wrong?

That an observer’s perception and cognition should be functional – effectively functional, complexly functional – is no surprise. How else would an organism survive? Yet to conflate that functionality with veridicality – i.e., with truthfulness – may not be justified.

Chris Fields (in conjuction with Donald Hoffman, Chetan Prakash and Manish Singh) has argued extensively and persuasively that there is ample evidence undermining the traditional notion that an observer’s perception recreates a faithful model of an external observed world.

. . . the classical notion of an observer-independent “objective” reality comprising spatially-bounded, time-persistent “ordinary objects” and well-defined local causal processes must simply be abandoned.

This builds on Hoffman’s notion that absolute reality as such is naturally foreclosed to the human organism. What human observers perceive are simply descriptions designed to facilitate helpful local response to local phenomena. They are highly functional user-generated interfaces that allow us to survive and reproduce.

Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions. Evolution shapes acceptable solutions, not optimal ones. A snake is an acceptable solution to the problem of telling me how to act in a situation. My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.

Assume for a moment that Fields and Hoffman et al are correct: that we are observers whose capacity for observation is not about fidelity to Truth – not about reality – but rather about what works in order to maximize organismic survivability.

What does that do to our sense of spiritual searching? Of self-inquiry? Especially if that search/inquiry includes – subtly, subconsciously or otherwise – the notion that we are making contact with reality? Encountering Truth? Becoming one with God or the Cosmos or Life?

There are no “right” answers to these questions, in the sense that there is a “right” answer to “who won the 2013 world series?” Indeed, perhaps the most helpful aspect of these questions is simply the way they redirect our attention away from supposedly dispositive answers and back to experience itself.

That is, rather than assume that there is some supernatural entity or arcane lore or metaphysical law, the acquisition of which will ensure our entry into a state preferable to our current one, we can simply begin to give attention to the experience we are having right now.

It is nontrivial – it’s actually kind of incredible – to realize that when one is eating a pancake they are not climbing a mountain. I don’t mean the intellectual realization that we can’t do two things at once; I mean the literal experience of being present to experience, as it is happening. It is the realization that there is always only this: this this. This very this.

Really, we are simply nudging our interior sense of certainty askew a bit. We are just looking into experience and seeing what it is, what it’s like, what it includes, doesn’t include, et cetera. What happens when we do this? It is a kind of happiness to discover the answer.