If you've ever taken a hike through the wildness of nature, or tried roughing it beyond human civilization, you'll know what I mean when I say life in the raw, natural world is very different from how we experience it from the comfort of our cars and homes. However, that's not the full story of being human. There's one thing you'll find sorely missing if you go out beyond the bounds society.
People.
Despite how animalistic humans can be, having come from the rawness of nature, it can seem a bit alien because we have become civilized. We have connected with other humans and through that have become invested in a civilization that has gradually moved away from nature. We have been enculturated, all our basic desires and instincts being filtered through a civilized personality so that we may get our needs met in ways acceptable to our peers.
This personality seems real enough, it seems like it could be who we are, but it's just a reflection of how we've gotten our needs met in the past. The problem is, as children we had to do all that we could just to adapt to the world. That stress is what teaches us to identify with the personality, and that identification is what leads to what we commonly know as the 'ego'.
I won't start preaching to you about how the ego is "bad" or something that you need to transcend, but I do think you'll find sticking with it rather empty. Not only does it muddy the means to ends with the ends themselves, but also it can only be who we were in the past. To limit ourselves by the past is to deny the power we have in the present. Our ego is only part of who we are; therefore, identifying with it cuts us off from the totality of who we really are.
Identifying with the totality of who we really are takes a very different mindset from identifying with the civilized personality. For one, it has to take into account consciousness. Consciousness is not a static thing, but a dynamic process, one that must be free to face every moment anew. We identify with it by being present to every new moment. We remain mindful of the present world and what we are doing in it. We identify with it by being conscious. In addition, who we really are has to take into account our core sentiments, those feelings that often go unexpressed because we could not break out of our past habits. So long as you're knee deep in the personality, any struggle or insult can knock you off-center back into the trappings of your ego. In order to escape that, you need a great deal of acceptance of your own shortcomings and the presence of mind to maintain that acceptance as your shortcomings manifest in the present. Being yourself also requires the stability to act as you really want to act despite the chaos of outer circumstances.
How you manage to do this doesn't matter, but many people have great success with meditation. I'd encourage you to try meditating 20 minutes a day to help center yourself. You may be surprised at the change, especially if you try varying it up for comparison, some days doing none, others for a solid hour. I know an avid meditator who finds meditating for an hour each morning really helps his mental clarity. As for you, try what you'd like, but if you get caught up and lose your presence of mind as soon as the phone rings, you might want to look more into meditation.
I like to say "let the past be the past, the present be the present, and the future the future." If you've got a problem from the past, that's in the past. It may have bearing on the present, but the past is already set in stone. All that baggage is done and over with; it's dead. Conversely, if you have a desire or will to do something in the future, realize that you are only experiencing that desire in the present. No wishing or dreaming will ensure it comes to pass; the only thing you can do is to plant the seed of the future through your actions in the present. All you can do is handle the present, as it's through the present you can ensure the future unfolds as you desire.
14 May 2013
10 May 2013
Creating Your Own Path
Creativity is a habit, and like any habit it can be encouraged and reinforced. One of the first steps that I think is involved in finding your own way is engaging in your own pattern of creative flow. When I write, I write about twice as many ideas as I actually end up posting. Half of the time I just come up with a better idea, or the direction I was going in was too tangential to the core idea. But that's only something I focus on when a better idea comes out and conflicts with the power of an old one. Until then, I just leave my half-baked ideas and hope they get the point across.
The paradox with creativity is that we must affirm these half-baked ideas, even if better ones are not on the way. This can be better understood when you understand that the source of your creativity is your unconscious. But the unconscious is lazy and only does what it knows what to do. If you've never made music and you ask it to come up with a great sonata, because you want to be a great musician, it will probably only give you back a few notes. As you sit down with an instrument and start using these random notes it gives you, however, you'll notice that some sets of random notes sound better than others. You piece together those random notes, and with a bit of time and dedication you've got a melody.
But your unconscious isn't going anywhere you don't; it's just tagging along with you. If you sit back and imagine yourself as a great pianist, your unconscious will gladly embellish that imagination for you. Of course, that won't actually get you any closer to being a pianist if you don't sit down and try to be one (with all the crappy ideas and effort that will require along the way). It's only by taking your melodies, listening to the great musicians that inspire you, and drawing upon everything you've got that you will give your unconscious the resources to turn basic melodies into passages and passages into concertos.
However, you must keep encouraging your unconscious. Your activity of generating solutions is a habit. The moment you criticize or judge your ideas is the moment your unconscious shuts down and stops making them for you. Critique is an important part of producing a great work of art, but it must wait until after your creative binges. Think of your unconscious as a child that only responds to positive reinforcement. Your unconscious produces a great idea? Yay! Take it as far as it'll go. Your unconscious produces a dud? Guess it's time to work with what you've got.
In my opinion, you can take this same practice and apply it to paving your own path of spiritual growth. Think of it like a painting. If you want to make a painting, presumably you have an idea in mind of what you want it to look like when you're done. So you ask yourself "what are my criteria for a good work of art"? Same thing for spirituality. What's your criteria for a good spiritual path? If you have an idea in mind already, build upon it. Whether it's a thought or a feeling or a vague sense of something, write it down. You can worry about whether it's worthwhile once it's developed enough that you plan on acting upon it.
That said, your idea of spirituality may be primarily concerned with the actions you take. If that's the case, take action that is in line with your sense of what is spiritual. Eventually, once you've observed yourself taking this action for a while, you may come to a deeper understanding of what you're really trying to do and why it's spiritually moving. Or it may even be that you find that knowing what you're doing is not important, as you already can feel that you're in alignment with your own inner guidance.
If you find yourself without any inner guidance, it may be that you're suppressing it. Even if you think you don't have a good sense of how to direct yourself, shutting down your own ideas will only stop the flow of your own sense of direction. There's a lot to be learned from turning to others, but if you want to walk your own way, at some point you must choose to listen to yourself. The more you encourage that process within you, the more you'll have to work with in the future.
The paradox with creativity is that we must affirm these half-baked ideas, even if better ones are not on the way. This can be better understood when you understand that the source of your creativity is your unconscious. But the unconscious is lazy and only does what it knows what to do. If you've never made music and you ask it to come up with a great sonata, because you want to be a great musician, it will probably only give you back a few notes. As you sit down with an instrument and start using these random notes it gives you, however, you'll notice that some sets of random notes sound better than others. You piece together those random notes, and with a bit of time and dedication you've got a melody.
But your unconscious isn't going anywhere you don't; it's just tagging along with you. If you sit back and imagine yourself as a great pianist, your unconscious will gladly embellish that imagination for you. Of course, that won't actually get you any closer to being a pianist if you don't sit down and try to be one (with all the crappy ideas and effort that will require along the way). It's only by taking your melodies, listening to the great musicians that inspire you, and drawing upon everything you've got that you will give your unconscious the resources to turn basic melodies into passages and passages into concertos.
However, you must keep encouraging your unconscious. Your activity of generating solutions is a habit. The moment you criticize or judge your ideas is the moment your unconscious shuts down and stops making them for you. Critique is an important part of producing a great work of art, but it must wait until after your creative binges. Think of your unconscious as a child that only responds to positive reinforcement. Your unconscious produces a great idea? Yay! Take it as far as it'll go. Your unconscious produces a dud? Guess it's time to work with what you've got.
In my opinion, you can take this same practice and apply it to paving your own path of spiritual growth. Think of it like a painting. If you want to make a painting, presumably you have an idea in mind of what you want it to look like when you're done. So you ask yourself "what are my criteria for a good work of art"? Same thing for spirituality. What's your criteria for a good spiritual path? If you have an idea in mind already, build upon it. Whether it's a thought or a feeling or a vague sense of something, write it down. You can worry about whether it's worthwhile once it's developed enough that you plan on acting upon it.
That said, your idea of spirituality may be primarily concerned with the actions you take. If that's the case, take action that is in line with your sense of what is spiritual. Eventually, once you've observed yourself taking this action for a while, you may come to a deeper understanding of what you're really trying to do and why it's spiritually moving. Or it may even be that you find that knowing what you're doing is not important, as you already can feel that you're in alignment with your own inner guidance.
If you find yourself without any inner guidance, it may be that you're suppressing it. Even if you think you don't have a good sense of how to direct yourself, shutting down your own ideas will only stop the flow of your own sense of direction. There's a lot to be learned from turning to others, but if you want to walk your own way, at some point you must choose to listen to yourself. The more you encourage that process within you, the more you'll have to work with in the future.
05 May 2013
Seeing Your Inner Guidance
One thing that I've seen many people struggle with is getting a sense for the overall meaning of their life. I've seen many people turn away from spirituality when, despite all their efforts, they find they have no sense of a purpose for their life, much less a connection with a higher power. I've heard a couple of people tell tragic tales of believing what they've been taught, that they could have a personal connection with God, only to become disillusioned as they discovered that no one ever called back to them, and their prayers consistently went unanswered. I've never been one to try to push spirituality on people who didn't want it, but I have an exorbitant amount of empathy for people who really hungered for spirituality but could sense no trace of it.
In my experience, getting in touch with my inner guidance has been a gradual process, one based in seeing consistent patterns in my experience. It's a mindfulness through self-observation, a focus on being aware of how I react to the world. I've seen people write articles about how to hear your inner guidance, and they usually tell you to meditate or visualize until you get the results you want. Where I ran into problems with this advice is that I soon found meditation just stabilized me where I was. As if I threw out an anchor to ground myself where I was in that moment. That was great for giving me a sense of where I was already, but not so much for seeing which way to go next.
Listening for your inner guidance is a great start, but if you aren't hearing anything, the next step is to try to see it, through observing yourself. The more you observe yourself, the more you'll see patterns in your behavior, your thoughts, and the feelings that result from your behaviors and thoughts. If you've told yourself that you'll start getting up early and exercising, but you've told yourself you'd do this three times before and only lasted for at most a week before sliding off the routine, chances are you'll continue doing that in the future. It's a very disheartening realization to have, but what it means is that you need to invest an overwhelming amount of attention and energy in order to break that pattern. Once you realize this, you're in a better decision to decide whether the amount of work it takes to meet your goals is really worth it. Similarly, if you see that you're consistently worrying about something bad happening to you, but it never does, chances are this pattern will continue. Conversely, you can watch for the patterns that make you feel good and that you enjoy.
The key to seeing your inner guidance is to cultivate an active mindfulness of your day to day experience. If you've already been meditating, and it's not helping you get anywhere, the next step is to bring that presence of mind with you into the rest of your life. The more you're able to step back and watch yourself react, the more you'll be able to see where you want to go next. It's a gradual process, and requires a great deal of presence of mind, but by really watching yourself and the patterns you create, eventually you'll get a feel for what you're really about and what life really means to you.
In my experience, getting in touch with my inner guidance has been a gradual process, one based in seeing consistent patterns in my experience. It's a mindfulness through self-observation, a focus on being aware of how I react to the world. I've seen people write articles about how to hear your inner guidance, and they usually tell you to meditate or visualize until you get the results you want. Where I ran into problems with this advice is that I soon found meditation just stabilized me where I was. As if I threw out an anchor to ground myself where I was in that moment. That was great for giving me a sense of where I was already, but not so much for seeing which way to go next.
Listening for your inner guidance is a great start, but if you aren't hearing anything, the next step is to try to see it, through observing yourself. The more you observe yourself, the more you'll see patterns in your behavior, your thoughts, and the feelings that result from your behaviors and thoughts. If you've told yourself that you'll start getting up early and exercising, but you've told yourself you'd do this three times before and only lasted for at most a week before sliding off the routine, chances are you'll continue doing that in the future. It's a very disheartening realization to have, but what it means is that you need to invest an overwhelming amount of attention and energy in order to break that pattern. Once you realize this, you're in a better decision to decide whether the amount of work it takes to meet your goals is really worth it. Similarly, if you see that you're consistently worrying about something bad happening to you, but it never does, chances are this pattern will continue. Conversely, you can watch for the patterns that make you feel good and that you enjoy.
The key to seeing your inner guidance is to cultivate an active mindfulness of your day to day experience. If you've already been meditating, and it's not helping you get anywhere, the next step is to bring that presence of mind with you into the rest of your life. The more you're able to step back and watch yourself react, the more you'll be able to see where you want to go next. It's a gradual process, and requires a great deal of presence of mind, but by really watching yourself and the patterns you create, eventually you'll get a feel for what you're really about and what life really means to you.
04 May 2013
Finding Your Own Way
I'm always trying to find new ways to draw what people have always recognized within themselves out of them, and it's amazing when what I write draws out something that people always had within themselves. What's bothersome is that many of those same people seem to be waiting for a tide to come in before they set sail with their own deeply held sentiments. The issue is a lot more complex than simply telling yourself to "have faith," so I'd like to tell you a story about my own experiences with this issue.
For a long time after I renounced religion, I toyed around with the idea of rebirth, but I didn't really take it seriously. One morning, however, I caught myself and realized I truly did believe in it, that I was kidding myself when I said I didn't really believe it. I knew I had no real ground to stand on for it at first though, so I searched Google for all ideas about rebirth. A few Google searches later, and I had a list of books to check into at a local university library, covering a wide array of things I'd already come up with to look into, but especially books on the topic of rebirth. Unfortunately as I dug through my reading list, I found even the most promising books to be fruitless, if not downright ridiculous. I wasn't entirely swayed from the idea, but I decided it'd be a better use of my time to go on to other books on my reading list.
I'd been interested in the Enneagram of Personality for some time, and I had been exploring how the Enneagram fit into the broader picture of our culture. As part of my exploration of its history, a book on esoteric Christianity made it onto my list. Being a long-standing agnostic, I didn't really consider the ideas as more than a dubious history lesson at first, but as I read about the strait gate and the narrow way to salvation (Luke 13:23-24; Matthew 7:13-14), and how Annie Besant reinterpreted this as a salvation from rebirth, I found it made a great deal more sense than Jesus coming to tell everyone that very few would ever attain salvation, and that their only hope is just to "make every effort to enter."
In that moment, however, I didn't find "proof" that my belief in rebirth is true. I just found where my beliefs fit in to the broader picture, so I can talk about how they contrast with other beliefs more intelligently. The catch is that there are a lot of issues that I don't have an opinion on yet, simply because there's nothing in my experiences or understanding of the world to give me that opinion. In light of that, I can easily be swayed to consider larger beliefs, because the other stuff is just stuff I don't know about yet.
"The Fourth Way" and Gurdjieff's style of teaching I think is often misunderstood, for reasons I alluded to above. One thing Gurdjieff did in teaching his pupils was to demand total obedience to his conditions, and that only through following a teacher who already knows (a guru) can a person find their own way. Many people seem to take this as blind obedience to his teachings, the irony being that not only did Gurdjieff insist that his pupils only do what they understand, but also that after a few years of study even his best pupils (including the writer of In Search of the Miraculous) broke away and struck it out on their own.
The key is that Gurdjieff unlocks a path who cannot find their way. It's a transitory path for lost souls, individually tailored because it begins with becoming aware of yourself. It's a way for finding your own way. All Gurdjieff does is serve as a role model. Just as you'd follow the direction of a great artist who offers to teach you how to paint, or a personal development guru who offers to give you the results they already have, so too can adhering to the Fourth Way lead you to your own spiritual path.
More generally, following your own deeply held sentiments is the first step to the blossoming of your own spirituality. If you have something you already see in your own experience that you haven't followed, I'd encourage you to follow it. And if you're totally lost, I'd encourage you to read about the Fourth Way in In Search of the Miraculous, which by the way you can download for free.
For a long time after I renounced religion, I toyed around with the idea of rebirth, but I didn't really take it seriously. One morning, however, I caught myself and realized I truly did believe in it, that I was kidding myself when I said I didn't really believe it. I knew I had no real ground to stand on for it at first though, so I searched Google for all ideas about rebirth. A few Google searches later, and I had a list of books to check into at a local university library, covering a wide array of things I'd already come up with to look into, but especially books on the topic of rebirth. Unfortunately as I dug through my reading list, I found even the most promising books to be fruitless, if not downright ridiculous. I wasn't entirely swayed from the idea, but I decided it'd be a better use of my time to go on to other books on my reading list.
I'd been interested in the Enneagram of Personality for some time, and I had been exploring how the Enneagram fit into the broader picture of our culture. As part of my exploration of its history, a book on esoteric Christianity made it onto my list. Being a long-standing agnostic, I didn't really consider the ideas as more than a dubious history lesson at first, but as I read about the strait gate and the narrow way to salvation (Luke 13:23-24; Matthew 7:13-14), and how Annie Besant reinterpreted this as a salvation from rebirth, I found it made a great deal more sense than Jesus coming to tell everyone that very few would ever attain salvation, and that their only hope is just to "make every effort to enter."
In that moment, however, I didn't find "proof" that my belief in rebirth is true. I just found where my beliefs fit in to the broader picture, so I can talk about how they contrast with other beliefs more intelligently. The catch is that there are a lot of issues that I don't have an opinion on yet, simply because there's nothing in my experiences or understanding of the world to give me that opinion. In light of that, I can easily be swayed to consider larger beliefs, because the other stuff is just stuff I don't know about yet.
"The Fourth Way" and Gurdjieff's style of teaching I think is often misunderstood, for reasons I alluded to above. One thing Gurdjieff did in teaching his pupils was to demand total obedience to his conditions, and that only through following a teacher who already knows (a guru) can a person find their own way. Many people seem to take this as blind obedience to his teachings, the irony being that not only did Gurdjieff insist that his pupils only do what they understand, but also that after a few years of study even his best pupils (including the writer of In Search of the Miraculous) broke away and struck it out on their own.
The key is that Gurdjieff unlocks a path who cannot find their way. It's a transitory path for lost souls, individually tailored because it begins with becoming aware of yourself. It's a way for finding your own way. All Gurdjieff does is serve as a role model. Just as you'd follow the direction of a great artist who offers to teach you how to paint, or a personal development guru who offers to give you the results they already have, so too can adhering to the Fourth Way lead you to your own spiritual path.
More generally, following your own deeply held sentiments is the first step to the blossoming of your own spirituality. If you have something you already see in your own experience that you haven't followed, I'd encourage you to follow it. And if you're totally lost, I'd encourage you to read about the Fourth Way in In Search of the Miraculous, which by the way you can download for free.
03 May 2013
First Post
Just started this blog today.
I'm still in the middle of deciding what this blog will be about, but my main motivation behind writing this is to promote spirituality starting from within, from accepting what's already within you. My agenda is to help people ground themselves in consciousness, in the calm of awareness, as a way to develop their spirituality.
The spirituality I promote is a grounded one, as much as Walt Whitman with his words "the scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer." I seek to promote hope in this life, not escapism to await salvation in the next. Yet I will not deny that I have a strong spiritual sense, and as much as I will try to present hard facts, I follow my gut sense that there is life beyond the empirical reality we've become so familiar with. I simply believe the things we do here should emphasize what we know and can work with in the present.
The title of my blog, "The Fourth Way," comes from a spiritual teaching by the same name. The Fourth Way is a teaching given by G. I. Gurdjieff, who saw that people could embark on a very rigorous spiritual path through using the challenges of everyday life as a tool for spiritual growth. It's part of a larger wisdom that's begun to seep into the New Age culture, that everything can become a meditation. How? Through consciousness. Through self-observation, and through remembering yourself in every moment.
Something else which I've come across, and which will probably make its way onto my blog, is esoteric Christianity. I'm personally concerned that the Christianity that many people follow today is not really in line with the ancient Christianity that they aim to follow. It's an issue that goes far beyond simply the misuse of Christianity to support bigotry and the denial of empirical facts discerned by science. It's the problem that the teachings of Jesus Christ have been distorted, both to the detriment of people who now aim to be a Christian as well as those who see through modern lies and have rejected their spirituality.
I have a lot more to say about this, and many other topics, but for now I'll leave you with further reading to explore further what I've touched on briefly here. Cheers!
Esoteric Christianity, or the Lesser Mysteries by Annie Besant (reinterpretation of Christianity)
In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky (The Fourth Way; story from the eyes of a pupil)
Character and Neurosis by Claudio Naranjo (The Enneagram; connection to DSM)
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (video) by Betty Edwards
I'm still in the middle of deciding what this blog will be about, but my main motivation behind writing this is to promote spirituality starting from within, from accepting what's already within you. My agenda is to help people ground themselves in consciousness, in the calm of awareness, as a way to develop their spirituality.
The spirituality I promote is a grounded one, as much as Walt Whitman with his words "the scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer." I seek to promote hope in this life, not escapism to await salvation in the next. Yet I will not deny that I have a strong spiritual sense, and as much as I will try to present hard facts, I follow my gut sense that there is life beyond the empirical reality we've become so familiar with. I simply believe the things we do here should emphasize what we know and can work with in the present.
The title of my blog, "The Fourth Way," comes from a spiritual teaching by the same name. The Fourth Way is a teaching given by G. I. Gurdjieff, who saw that people could embark on a very rigorous spiritual path through using the challenges of everyday life as a tool for spiritual growth. It's part of a larger wisdom that's begun to seep into the New Age culture, that everything can become a meditation. How? Through consciousness. Through self-observation, and through remembering yourself in every moment.
Something else which I've come across, and which will probably make its way onto my blog, is esoteric Christianity. I'm personally concerned that the Christianity that many people follow today is not really in line with the ancient Christianity that they aim to follow. It's an issue that goes far beyond simply the misuse of Christianity to support bigotry and the denial of empirical facts discerned by science. It's the problem that the teachings of Jesus Christ have been distorted, both to the detriment of people who now aim to be a Christian as well as those who see through modern lies and have rejected their spirituality.
I have a lot more to say about this, and many other topics, but for now I'll leave you with further reading to explore further what I've touched on briefly here. Cheers!
Esoteric Christianity, or the Lesser Mysteries by Annie Besant (reinterpretation of Christianity)
In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky (The Fourth Way; story from the eyes of a pupil)
Character and Neurosis by Claudio Naranjo (The Enneagram; connection to DSM)
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (video) by Betty Edwards
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