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.

Consciousness: Evidence and Experts

One of things that’s hard about these questions of consciousness is that we are ostensibly very close to the evidence. We are conscious.  We are having the experience of consciousness. Why should we listen to anybody else? What could they tell us that we don’t already know by virtue of our very experience?

If I am eating a peanut butter sandwich, and somebody says “peanut butter sandwiches taste bad,” I am probably going to ignore them. Since I have all the evidence I need, why listen to anybody else?

Say that somebody comes along and says, “peanut butter sandwiches are bad for you because they have too many carbohydrates.” That’s different. Do I actually know how many carbs are in two slices of bread and some peanut butter? If I don’t, can I get with relative ease?

In this case, I am probably still going to ignore the other opinion. It will take a little time and effort, but I can get the evidence myself.

But that still leaves the question of whether those carbs are good for me. That’s trickier yet. I’m probably going to need to read up on that. What’s the latest research on carbs? What other issues are entailed? What is my confidence level in the material and my understanding of it?

If the person telling me peanut butter sandwiches aren’t healthy is a licensed nutritionist, I might skip the research and trust them. If they’re a professional clown, then maybe not.

But hopefully, if I don’t know the answer to the question, then I will admit that and take steps to either learn the answer or find an expert I trust to give me the answer.

Generally, evidence trumps experts. Say I hire a woodcutter to help me cut firewood. She says “those six maple trees will produce twelve cords of wood.” We cut them down, split and stack them and end up with . . . nine cords. In this case, the evidence has rendered the expert’s opinion null. I don’t need it – I’ve got the evidence right here.

All of this nudges us in the direction of trusting ourselves when it comes to consciousness. We can’t be in greater proximity to the evidence!

Trusting ourselves is fine so far as it goes. The question is how far it goes.

Say a doctor shows me an MRI  of my brain and says, “that looks like a tumor. We’ll need to do some more tests.” I tell her, “actually I feel fine. Haven’t had a headache in weeks. More tests aren’t necessary.”

In that case, I should trust the expert more and my experience less.

Between knowing that this peanut butter sandwich tastes awesome and what’s going on with our brain cells lies a vast spectrum. Somewhere along it we have to say: “I don’t have all the evidence” and then decide how to handle our ignorance. If we really need the evidence to function than we need to either a) get it ourselves or b) find a trustworthy expert or, perhaps ideally, c) some reasonable combination thereof.

The key is to recognize those instances when rather than rely on our own data we should update with new or revised data.

We are inclined to say – or believe others when they say – “consciousness is infinite and eternal” because that’s how it feels to us upon inquiry. But what if we’re wrong? What if “infinite and eternal” is just how it feels – or seems – when observed by a human being?

Most of us, when asked if we are below average, average, or above average, respond that we’re “above average.” But this is mathematically impossible! Some of us must be wrong.

We overestimate and misunderstand all the time. Why should our understanding of consciousness be any different?

On Apes, Bees, Consciousness and Prayer

Why work through a study of consciousness – reading James, Sperry, Edelman, Parfit, Chalmers et al. – when you can just say “it’s God.” Or “Theta.” Or “everything is just an appearance in infinite consciousness.”

Faced with a choice between a time and energy-consuming curriculum (it takes years to finish Consciousness 101, especially if you have to first brush up on biology, chemistry, physics, et cetera) and an easily articulated handful of sentences, most of us will take the sentences. Memorize them, spit them out when necessary, and call it a day. We are apes, not bees. We like the easier, softer way.

Faced with apparently big mysterious problems, human psychology tends to assign mysterious solutions. Why does it rain? God! Since it’s hard to prove a negative (God doesn’t exist), saying “God” is a handy way of stifling debate. “This is just how it is and has always been and if you can’t accept that, then I feel sorry for you / don’t accept you as a member of the tribe / will actively denigrate you / et cetera.”

If smart thoughtful people disagree with us, rather than double down on our position by attacking them – who needs those academic eggheads anyway – why not go slow, listen, reconsider our position, refine our argument etc. There is no law that says we have to change our minds. In fact, if we’re right, and we are patient and faithful to the dialogue, then the other mind will change.

In either case, we are standing for truth and coherence. Isn’t that where we want to be?

I was raised and educated Catholic by serious Catholics among lots of other serious Catholics. When somebody says “Jesus” or “Christ” my brain lights up in very familiar and comforting ways. When someone says to me, “all this is an appearance in Christ Mind which is what you are in truth,” I feel super loved and accepted. When I say it to someone else, I feel righteous and holy.

Those words make me feel good. And that which makes me feel good must actually be good. And what is good must be protected . . .

In the same way I don’t want anybody stealing my kale smoothie, I don’t want anybody spoiling my righteous self-affirming belief system. In both cases (and for largely the same reason, i.e., fear of suffering, pain and death), I will do what I have to do to take care of myself and my tribe. There’s a reason the Old Testament is so violent and it’s not because of “people back then.”

But you see, those two things – food and belief systems – are not equal. I do need food to survive. This is true for all human beings. But I do not need “Jesus” and “Christ.” Clearly lots of human beings do just fine without those two specific words. They’re optional (whether belief systems themselves are optional is another question for another post).

Thus, defending them as if they are actual milk and honey is . . . incoherent. Which in turn leads to further incoherence.

What if the origins of consciousness are more complex than the stories in the Upanishads? What if Nāgārjuna’s insights have been largely eclipsed by a couple centuries of science? What if Sri Ramana and Nisargadatta were just confused but didn’t know they were confused and so their confidence and serenity was just a benign illusion?

Would that be okay?

When I began to practice “giving attention,” one of the things that was almost instantly clear was the number of issues about which I knew very little but pretended to know a lot.

For example, I had spent decades in a religious mode – praying to God, reading about God, writing about God. I was confident that my understanding of Christian theology was sound and righteous. One day I was walking with a friend who is a doctor and an atheist. Our conversation went something like this:

Sean: That falling leaf is merely an appearance in consciousness.

Doctor: Why isn’t it an object moving in space being struck by photons that enter your eye and are processed by neural circuits in your brain?

Sean: Umm . . . That falling leaf is merely an appearance in consciousness.

What was interesting was that I couldn’t say why the falling leaf wasn’t a material process because I didn’t know anything about it. It wasn’t a question of being right or wrong. I lacked the necessary information to participate in the dialogue. This was . . . troubling.

Imagine these two conversations:

ONE:

Q: Why does it rain?

A: God makes it rain because He loves us and we obey Him.

Q: Oh. Ok.

TWO:

Q: Why does it rain?

A: Well, there are these mechanisms called evaporation and condensation and gravity which, under certain environmental circumstances, together cause rain.

Q: Oh. Um, what is evaporation?

A: Evaporation is the process by which water is transformed into a gaseous state. When water molecules obtain a certain degree of heat energy and are close to the surface, they escape the water and rise.

Q: What’s a molecule again?

The first dialogue has the advantage of being simple and quick. The second is more demanding because it’s not intuitive. We have to work at it. If we don’t know what evaporation, condensation and gravity are, then we have to fill in those gaps. That “filling in” is likely to expose more gaps (what’s a molecule? what’s a gaseous state?). And since we’re apes, not bees, we only work for things when it’s really (and obviously) necessary.

It’s like that with consciousness. We assume that our experience of consciousness is accurate and true. We cannot find its edge, so it must be infinite. We cannot find where it began, so it must be eternal.

In the ancestral environment, that logic made a lot of sense. Knowledge was what you experienced and what people in your tribe told you. God makes it rain: that’s the end of the inquiry. So what if you have to sacrifice a few virgins during a dry spell?

But what if that logic no longer serves? What if consciousness is finite and limited and only feels infinite and eternal because of how human brains work?

Would that be okay? Why or why not?

When we are diagnosed with cancer, we go to the hospital. We submit to machines so complex, humans couldn’t have made them a century ago. Certainly you and I can’t make them. We receive treatments that involve understandings of biology and chemistry et cetera that are so nuanced and specialized we couldn’t possibly understand how they work without years of training and study. And yet we trust the doctors and get on with it. (As well we should).

Why is it that when consciousness is on the table, those of us with a spiritual bent are so quick to default to “Christ Mind” or “I am that I am?” To past lives and burning bushes? Ascended masters and psychics?

Giving attention is not spiritual. It’s practical. “Spiritual” is a label we might tack on later. But in the moment, it’s just practical. If you are hungry, you eat some food. You might later call the meal “divine,” but you didn’t eat because you needed something divine. You ate because you were hungry. If you are feeling confused, lost, guilty or scared, then you give attention.

Attention is about seeing what is happening as clearly as possible which also reveals what, if anything, should happen next: take an aspirin, go for a walk, make an amends, read some writer you’ve been avoiding, take up knitting. Attention is rational, inquisitive, honest and deliberative. It wants dialogue, no matter how tedious and frustrating, because dialogue is what delivers us to coherence. And coherence is what makes us happy and helpful, which is where we want to be, for our sake and everyone else’s.

When we think of our spiritual search / quest / process / practice / whatever, what do we take for granted? Who do we agree with without bothering to check their sources? Who do we not even let finish a sentence? What haven’t we discovered yet? How do we know? What does it mean to not know?

For me, giving attention begat a diverse, demanding and humbling curriculum which – in a particularly lovely afternoon – revealed itself as The Answer, while simultaneously making clear that it was going to go on Answering forever and that I didn’t personally matter to it in the least though I was more than welcome to tag along, lend my voice, et cetera. This was very liberating. My study has been mostly joyful and productive ever since. I truly wish the same for all beings.

So yeah. Maybe God makes it rain because She loves us and we’re good doobies. But maybe not. Maybe the best way to understand rain is through science, even if that means we have to let go of some cherished mythologies and semanticss and undertake some rigorous reading and study to understand it.

Is that okay? Why or why not?