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diff --git a/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md b/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md index 7dc5041..93d7c62 100644 --- a/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md +++ b/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md @@ -2,7 +2,6 @@ title: "Thoughts on Spirituality" date: 2022-05-04T00:00:00 draft: false -makerefs: false --- # All You Have is Now There's an essential fact of life which everyone should know but is often overlooked: now is all you have. I mean right now, as in the present. Not 2 seconds ago. Not 2 seconds from now. But right now. This is it. This moment is what you've got. @@ -40,7 +39,7 @@ After that doesn't work, you decide you're done with teachers. None of them know The narrative I offered above starting with the dialog, then spiritual advisors, and it ended with solo spiritual journeying. But that's only one narrative through which the process of "waking up" can happen. It's different for each person. What it takes for me to live in the present and surrender my ego is different from what it takes for you to do the same. ## Spiritual Advisors -It's possible for a person to have a spiritual awakening purely by accident. For some, it might only take the simple instructions found on headless.org[1]. Others might need to spend years of their lives going through one spiritual advisor after another. +It's possible for a person to have a spiritual awakening purely by accident. For some, it might only take the simple instructions found on [headless.org](https://headless.org). Others might need to spend years of their lives going through one spiritual advisor after another. ## Psychedelics Psychedelics can be used as a shortcut to spiritual awakening, although they don't force it in the sense I suggested earlier of making you do anything. Psychedelics "force" a spiritual awakening by changing the contents of consciousness so much that it becomes impossible to hold on to the sense of self, which is where your problems come from. @@ -78,9 +77,9 @@ So please don't think after reading this that I've spoiled the spiritual journey So just meditate. Don't worry about having an ulterior motive and don't worry about achieving "permanent" enlightenment. There's no need to be "permanently" enlightened to reap benefits from meditation. I think some people do reach that level. They couldn't be knocked off mental balance even by an asteroid impact. That level of mental composure may not be in the cards for everyone, but I think many of us can get close and it's worth it to try. # Spiritual Bypassing -Do watch out for other ways that the ego can creep back in though. Many novice meditators, after having insights about the nature of the mind, become convinced they're permanently enlightened and try to act as if they are all the time. This can be very psychologically destructive. It's called spiritual bypassing, a term coined in 1984 by American psychologist John Welwood[3]. I'll let Wikipedia explain it: +Do watch out for other ways that the ego can creep back in though. Many novice meditators, after having insights about the nature of the mind, become convinced they're permanently enlightened and try to act as if they are all the time. This can be very psychologically destructive. It's called [spiritual bypassing](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_bypass), a term coined in 1984 by American psychologist [John Welwood](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Welwood). I'll let Wikipedia explain it: -> "On the other hand, when spiritual bypass is used as a long-term strategy for ignoring or suppressing unaddressed mental health issues, negative consequences can include "the need to excessively control others and oneself, shame, anxiety, dichotomous thinking, emotional confusion, exaggerated tolerance of inappropriate behavior, codependency, compulsive kindness, obsession or addiction, spiritual narcissism, blind allegiance to charismatic teachers, and disregard for personal responsibility" - Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0[4] +> "On the other hand, when spiritual bypass is used as a long-term strategy for ignoring or suppressing unaddressed mental health issues, negative consequences can include "the need to excessively control others and oneself, shame, anxiety, dichotomous thinking, emotional confusion, exaggerated tolerance of inappropriate behavior, codependency, compulsive kindness, obsession or addiction, spiritual narcissism, blind allegiance to charismatic teachers, and disregard for personal responsibility" - Wikipedia, [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) It's not a hard trap to fall into. I think staying humble is a good way to avoid it. Admit that you don't have it all figured out, that you're probably not "permanently" enlightened, and you still get lost in thought and let your emotions get the better of you from time to time. @@ -96,20 +95,20 @@ Regardless of how the problem is described, the basic solution is the same: non- # Spirituality And Skepticism ## Deepak Chopra -In the past, myself and others have lamented the fact that the atheist/skeptic/rationalist community doesn't get more involved with spirituality. When sane, rational people don't write books about spiritual inquiry or speak about it, the floor is given people who promote incoherent pseudoscientific pseudospiritual technobabble. Their technobabble sounds just scientific enough so lay people have a hard time distinguishing between the quacks and real scientists. People like Deepak Chopra[5] who promote alternative medicine and make proven false claims such as "you can tell your body not to age" cannot continue to represent the spiritual movement. +In the past, myself and others have lamented the fact that the atheist/skeptic/rationalist community doesn't get more involved with spirituality. When sane, rational people don't write books about spiritual inquiry or speak about it, the floor is given people who promote incoherent pseudoscientific pseudospiritual technobabble. Their technobabble sounds just scientific enough so lay people have a hard time distinguishing between the quacks and real scientists. People like [Deepak Chopra](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra) who promote alternative medicine and make proven false claims such as "you can tell your body not to age" cannot continue to represent the spiritual movement. ## Myself And an Unnamed Youtuber That's part of why I'm writing this entry. If people like me don't want quacks like Chopra to continue being the authority on all things spiritual, we have to step up and start our own dialog rooted in the principles of science and skepticism. -A famous Youtuber whose name I won't say recently made a video trying to recount his secular spiritual experience, worrying aloud that he would sound crazy, and deleting the video soon after it was posted. It was reposted, but I won't share it here out of respect for him. Reading through my earliest journal entries on spirituality[6][7][8], I notice that I really struggled to explain myself too.[9] I think this entry does a much better job at it though. +A famous Youtuber whose name I won't say recently made a video trying to recount his secular spiritual experience, worrying aloud that he would sound crazy, and deleting the video soon after it was posted. It was reposted, but I won't share it here out of respect for him. Reading through my earliest [journal](/2020/05/02/the-self/) [entries](/2020/06/14/doublethink/) [on spirituality](/2020/08/02/ego-traps/), I notice that [I really struggled to explain myself](/2021/01/17/on-spirituality/) too. I think this entry does a much better job at it though. ## Eckhart Tolle The presence of so much spiritual mumbo jumbo out there is a testament to the difficulty of putting spiritual concepts into words. It's very hard to explain it in such a way that people won't horribly misunderstand you. -Eckhart Tolle[10], a spiritual teacher and self-help author, has written many sane sentences correctly diagnosing the problem of suffering and offering the solution. But Eckhart also says some things that are unclear how to interpret and other things that are just plain false, even when reading his work with the most charitable interpretation. It shows that even well-meaning people struggle with this. +[Eckhart Tolle](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckhart_Tolle), a spiritual teacher and self-help author, has written many sane sentences correctly diagnosing the problem of suffering and offering the solution. But Eckhart also says some things that are unclear how to interpret and other things that are just plain false, even when reading his work with the most charitable interpretation. It shows that even well-meaning people struggle with this. ## Sam Harris -With so much mumbo jumbo out there, I think it's very important to be clear on this subject and the only spiritual book I've read so far that satisfies the level of clarity I'm looking for is Waking Up[11]. There's absolutely no mumbo jumbo in Waking Up. I feel comfortable recommending it without any caveats. It you haven't read it yet, it would probably be a good thing to read after this journal entry. +With so much mumbo jumbo out there, I think it's very important to be clear on this subject and the only spiritual book I've read so far that satisfies the level of clarity I'm looking for is [Waking Up](/2021/01/29/book-waking-up/). There's absolutely no mumbo jumbo in Waking Up. I feel comfortable recommending it without any caveats. It you haven't read it yet, it would probably be a good thing to read after this journal entry. # Criticism of Spirituality ## "It's Only For Affluent White People" @@ -121,7 +120,7 @@ One can meditate just as well in a quiet room as one can right outside a constru Good criticism has been leveled against spiritual authors like Eckhart though. The criticism goes something like this: "You claim that giving up one's ego, ceasing to identify with life problems, stops suffering. But what about systemic social issues? Aren't they worth solving?". It's here where people like Eckhart Tolle fail to give satisfying answers. So I'll take my crack at answering that. ### The Non-Contradiction of Spirituality And Activism -The reality of today is that almost everyone is identified with their thoughts all the time. I live in a society where the thoughts people get lost in can be very negative. Thoughts like "I got fired today. There goes my healthcare. How am I gonna pay rent? I'm fucked". The way society is organized directly influences people's life situations, which influences the character of their thoughts. A poorly organized society leaves millions of houseless people sleeping on street just waiting to be harassed by thugs[12] while centibillionaires amass great fortunes. Of course that causes negative thoughts and suffering. +The reality of today is that almost everyone is identified with their thoughts all the time. I live in a society where the thoughts people get lost in can be very negative. Thoughts like "I got fired today. There goes my healthcare. How am I gonna pay rent? I'm fucked". The way society is organized directly influences people's life situations, which influences the character of their thoughts. A poorly organized society leaves millions of houseless people sleeping on street just waiting to be harassed by [thugs](/glossary/) while centibillionaires amass great fortunes. Of course that causes negative thoughts and suffering. Mindfulness and non-identification with thought may help to reduce the suffering of a few individual houseless people, but to suggest mindfulness as an alternative to a real solution for houselessness would be moronic. Houselessness is a social problem. It's easier to eliminate the suffering that comes along with houselessness by dealing with its social causes than by telling mentally unwell houseless drug addicts they just need to meditate. As I said earlier, there is always another problem and identification with problems causes suffering, but at least the problem wouldn't be not having a safe place to sleep. Failing to find an entertaining television station is a better problem to have. @@ -135,18 +134,3 @@ That's completely different from fighting against social injustices. There's no I don't mean for my criticism of others to sound harsh, because it really is a difficult subject to talk about whilst not sounding like a kooky new age fraud. Reasonable people may disagree on some of what I've written here, but I don't think I'm in any danger of being seen as "crazy" over this entry. It has taken me several attempts to make this much sense on this subject. So I'd appreciate it if you share this with friends. Stay tuned for my next journal entry! - - -Link(s): -[1: headless.org](https://headless.org) -[2: Spiritual Bypassing](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_bypass) -[3: John Welwood](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Welwood) -[4: CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) -[5: Deepak Chopra](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra) -[6: The Self](/2020/05/02/the-self/) -[7: Doublethink](/2020/06/14/doublethink/) -[8: Ego Traps](/2020/08/02/ego-traps/) -[9: On Spirituality](/2021/01/17/on-spirituality/) -[10: Eckhart Tolle](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckhart_Tolle) -[11: Waking Up](/2021/01/29/book-waking-up/) -[12: Thugs](/glossary/) |