Tracts of Revolution

Liberated to Serve

I promised myself that I would pick up where I left off in my last post, which was at the point of having broken through the consensus trance that holds individuals under the spell of groupthink. As I explained, consensus trances are seductive forces in your life because they provide the (feeling of) security that you’ve needed from the moment you were born. (See Life Outside the Consensus Trance for background.)

To the degree that your family system wasn’t safe and nurturing, you compensated by attaching yourself to whomever or whatever could keep you from falling headlong into the abyss – referring to the dark and fathomless urgency of your anxious state. You could survive and stay clear of this eventuality so long as the object of your attachment didn’t abandon you, become displeased with you, or change from what you desperately needed her (or him or it) to be for your sake.

To keep her close, you unconsciously adopted her general mood in life, her outlook on reality, the particular beliefs she held, and the manner in which she engaged with (or disengaged from) the world around you. So there you were: secure in the familiarity of each other, co-dependently attached, and firmly locked inside the convictions of what you both knew for certain. This mutual bond operated as a collective consciousness (even though there may have only been the two of you at first), wrapping the construct of your shared world around you like an illusion, which it was. And your inability to distinguish between the way things appeared to you and how they were in reality meant that you were under a delusion as well.

From this quiet nursery scene, the same mystifying trance spread outward as you got older – not out into reality, but farther across the social landscape with the enlarging horizon of your carefully managed world. Strangely your adolescent and adult relationships seemed to repeat many of those early behaviors, especially whenever you felt unsure of yourself or threatened by something unfamiliar, or when your defenses got worn down by the daily stress of life. If you were attached to abusers as a young child, you found yourself irresistibly attracted to abusers in your adulthood. Whatever neurotic style had helped you adapt to those dysfunctional family dynamics back then, so that you could get at least some of what you needed, tends to turn on and take over when you find yourself under pressure today.

So my definition of the consensus trance adds to Tart’s characterization of the shared delusion of groupthink across the various memberships in which our personal identity (ego) is managed, to include also the persistence and reactivation of earlier trances when our views of self and reality were just starting to emerge. If the consensus trance of a particular partnership or tribe only held its pattern by virtue of present conditions alone, it would be much easier to break (if we cared to). But in fact, these patterns, and the curtain they drape over awareness, are energized by much older and deeper (i.e., more primitive) impulses – reaching back behind our rational higher self to our emotional inner child, and even into the visceral urgencies of our animal nature.

Our full liberation from the consensus trance will involve an awakening of spiritual intelligence, to the ‘power within’ and the ‘truth beyond’ the self-world construct of personal identity. The critical question, of course, is how. If we are so far under the spell, how do we stand any chance of being set free? Well, we might ‘graduate’ or take our exit from a web of relationships in the normal process of growing up and moving on. Or something can happen that shocks us momentarily from our trance state: a crisis or setback can disrupt the pattern, or a primary attachment might call it quits, walk out on us, or pass away. We need to remember, though, that even in such instances the insecurity and cravings that held us in that particular co-dependency will likely drive us to find another just like it.

The good news is that we don’t have to wait for a shock event to wake us up. Meditation practices of various kinds have been used for centuries with the intention of assisting consciousness past the construct of personal identity. As this construct has two principal aspects, self and world, a practice of ‘getting over yourself’ can proceed along an inward descent (the mystical turn) whereby self is released to its grounding mystery (‘the power within’), or along an outward ascent (the ethical turn) that lifts awareness beyond “my world” to the higher wholeness of a universal order (‘the truth beyond’). This higher inclusion prompts us to reconsider how we ought to live, given that we are part of a much larger web of life.

It is wise not to wait for the jolt of disillusionment, but instead to cultivate a more or less disciplined daily practice that will gradually strengthen the ego to the point where it is no longer the neurotic center of everything. When you go back to the partnerships and tribes that hold your identity contracts – those masks and performance scripts that define your place in the role-play of social interactions – you will be a more stable and creative influence than before. You won’t take everything personally. You’ll be able to catch the retributive reflex before it springs back against the insult or criticism that someone else just slapped on you, opening a space in the exchange where you can do something outrageous, creative, and kind instead.

The challenge for anyone waking up from the consensus trance is focused in finding creative ways to stay awake. Prepare yourself for the scolding glances and more direct resistance from those who are still under the spell. No one that is comfortably asleep enjoys the flood of light when bedroom curtains are flung open to the morning sun. You are not superior to them. You are not better than they are.

Who knows, but maybe your liberation has now placed you in position to be a servant of their freedom. Yes of course, you could take your light and get as far as possible from the frustrations of this or that relationship. Or you might work out your salvation in a way that shares your light with the rest of us, helping us as well get just a little farther along the path.

Life Outside the Consensus Trance

The psychologist Charles Tart coined the term consensus trance in reference to the shared assumptions and agreements that hold social organizations inside the rules of groupthink (Irving Janus, 1972). As an aspect of what he named a consensus reality orientation (CRO), it reflects the tendency we all have in adjusting our perspective and aspirations to what ‘the rest of us’ believe is valid or plausible.

Why do we so quickly dismiss insights and ideals that others in our relational webs don’t understand or approve? Granted, there is an obvious benefit to all involved (including us) when some of our harebrained ideas and odd inclinations are not adopted by the group. What a very strange world it would be if everything we conjured up in our daydreams and private thoughts automatically became coin of the realm.

But in this case I’m thinking more about those times when a truly winning notion dawns in our minds or a genuine discovery with transformative potential turns up in meditation – and we get punished, scolded, or shushed. It might even be something so noble as a desire to engage our relationships with greater mindfulness and honest love, but our different energy disturbs the routine and upsets expectations.

Individuals who are caught inside a consensus trance prefer the predictability of those routines. The definition of reality that everyone accepts, albeit unthinkingly, provides an enclosure where they feel secure. Even if (mind you) those routines actually perpetuate conflict and suffering, this familiarity makes them preferable to the insecurity of not knowing what to expect.

A quick review of what I presented in my most recent post will help us better understand how consensus trances get to be such compelling forces in our lives. We come into existence as infants kept alive by virtue of a visceral intelligence (VQ) operating autonomically below conscious awareness or control. This particular strand of our quadratic intelligence has but one overriding mandate: to keep our body alive. It manages the metabolic process of converting external resources (e.g., oxygen, food and water) into its own animal energy, and then converting this energy by an aerobic process into adaptive behavior. Key words in identifying our VQ’s driving preoccupation are security and control.

Our early years are really at the mercy of the family system into which we are born. Since no family or single caretaker is perfect – and can’t be expected to be, nor faulted for not being so – we all carry a bit of anxiety in our nervous system (the special province of VQ). This is simply because our survival and safety needs could not be promptly satisfied the instant their urgency declared itself. Such anxiety is another name for insecurity, registered as the default setting of our resting mood and positioned somewhere between mild apprehension and frazzled hypervigilance. In the emergence of religion, our insecurity is likely what motivated those earliest ritual petitions to a provident reality.

As emotional intelligence takes its cue and starts opening up to our surrounding conditions, this deep insecurity seeks compensation through relationship with what D.W. Winnicott called “transitional objects.” Not only cuddle blankets and pacifiers, but even our primary caregivers were pressed into service. By attaching ourselves to these things we had the inarticulate expectation that they would calm us down by making us feel safe, loved, and perfectly content. Key words in identifying our EQ’s driving preoccupation, then, are attachment and belonging. Mommy and Binky were attachments, and we belonged together.

As time went on, this EQ dynamic of attachment and belonging got translated farther out into the world of peer groups, romantic partners, social classes, political parties, and organized religions.

A bit delayed but coming to play as we acquired a code system of words (e.g., dog), schemas (dog-bone), and stories (the dog buried the bone), rational intelligence (RQ) began constructing a worldview that could orient and connect us to a more complex reality. While we learned many words and heard many stories (even made up some of our own), certain words and stories were weighted with special significance by our taller powers – who, after all, were in control and had authority to decide whether or not to deliver on our emotional need to belong.

Very naturally, our personal worldview became a constructed copy of theirs. Together we looked from inside our tribal system and out upon a reality that we could name, impose with our values, and claim to know. Key words in identifying RQ’s driving preoccupation are meaning and knowledge, making sense of it all by fitting reality into our logical boxes and mental frames. Step into any social system, from nuclear families to global cultures, and pretty soon you’ll start to get a picture of how its members construct meaning and certify knowledge – and, if you pay especially close attention, how they steer the mind away from discrepant views.

From that fairly brief description of the process whereby individuals develop their sense of self and reality, only a slight sideways step will land us deep in the tangle of a consensus trance.

Close-minded worldviews (RQ) envelop and safeguard passionate attachments (EQ), which in turn compensate for a profound and chronic insecurity in the individual nervous systems (VQ) involved. Indeed, a deeper and more severe anxiety (insecurity) corresponds to – we can confidently say it will inevitably produce – absolute convictions which members are willing to defend at all cost. (I say ‘willing’, but the psychological fact is that they lack the freedom and authority to choose otherwise.)

The upward sweeping arc of an orange arrow in my diagram traces our developing sense of self and reality as it comes to pivot around a separate center of personal identity named ego. Ego occupies a central position within the web of relationships that defines its tribe. Instead of regretting its arrival on the scene – which is actually a slow-and-steady construction process – and making ego the source of all our problems in the world today, we need to draw a critical distinction between a healthy ego (possessing the virtues of ego strength) and a neurotic ego. The latter is what conspires in the consensus trance.

A neurotic ego is profoundly insecure, codependently attached, and a fiercely defensive convict of those beliefs (aka convictions) shared in common with its equally neurotic alter (other) egos. In this condition and fully entranced, egos play out the scripts they inherited (codependency scripts are commonly transgenerational) or picked up in the urgency of staying in the game. Thankfully the trance condition that we regard as ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary consciousness’ is not so neurotic and even possesses sufficient strength so as to allow for the possibility of breaking-through, or what is referred to across the wisdom traditions as ‘waking up’ or simply ‘awakening’.

In my diagram this breakthrough is represented at two points, one below (or deeper within) the self, and the other above (or farther beyond) the self. I have elsewhere distinguished these two points and the paths they open up as the ‘mystical turn’ (releasing self to the grounding mystery) and the ‘ethical turn’ (including self in the universal order), respectively. Because the mystical turn (at least as I’m characterizing it) engages in meditation practices that assist awareness in sinking into its visceral center of power, the grounding mystery can be identified as ‘the power within’. At the other end, an ethical turn elevates awareness into its rational center of truth and inspires a radical reconsideration of morality (how we should live) in view of ‘the truth beyond’ our self-serving values.

The benefits of such practice and reconsideration should be obvious. By breaking through to life outside the consensus trance we can free ourselves from the spiritual stupor of ordinary consciousness, going on to enjoy the flow of a fully functioning quadratic intelligence. In short, we can finally become fully human.

But then … we need to go back in there! My next post will be about the challenge of staying awake and living creatively inside the webs of relationship we call our individual worlds.

Get Over Yourself

While all the other creatures on this planet, so far as we know, develop their full potential and achieve ‘self-actualization’ in a single lifetime (given the opportunity and provident conditions), only we human beings have managed to undermine our own evolutionary progress. Why and how we do this has been a fascination of mine for some time, and over the years a theory has come together that offers an explanation. While many of the elements aren’t necessarily original with me, the unifying system is something that brings together and breaks through the limitations of other approaches.

Not surprisingly I have come with another diagram, and my returning reader will recognize all the component features from previous posts. What’s new here is not so much in the details as in the gestalt, in the whole picture of things apprehended all at once. You’ll find the familiar color codes associated with our four strands of quadratic intelligence – black for our visceral intelligence (VQ), red for emotional intelligence (EQ), blue for our rational intelligence (RQ), and purple for spiritual intelligence (SQ) – along with orange which signifies the dynamics of personal identity, or ego.

The four types of intelligence are arranged in a manner that reflects the developmental sequence in which they come online and start making significant contributions to our sense of self and reality. We begin at the bottom with the autonomic functions of visceral intelligence; open up very early to emotional engagement with our taller powers (caregivers, guardians, and teachers), siblings and playmates; and around age ten come into our rational faculty with its skills in logic, critical thinking, and conceptualization.

Even though it’s frequently in adulthood that individuals awaken to their spiritual intelligence, you’ll notice that I’ve positioned it in a way that transects the other three (instead of stacking on top). This is meant to suggest that while it certainly has (or can have) a profound influence on our sense of self and reality from very early on, the most important work of spiritual intelligence must await that crucial stage when our separate center of personal identity (ego) is strong enough to be transcended – not renounced, dismissed, or canceled out, but surpassed. Without sufficient ego strength, consciousness is unable to break past the neurotic self-preoccupation that compels us to grip down on ‘me and mine’.

Now that we’re on the ego, let’s take a moment to work out some of those details. I take the view which regards personal identity – this ego who is the center of self-esteem, world perspective, and moral agency – as a social construct and not an entity in the proper sense. Through discipline and instruction the tribe shapes our identity to be compatible (and compliant) with its shared beliefs and way of life. The nature of this shaping process anticipates and responds to the activation sequence of our quadratic intelligence.

Referring back to my diagram, you’ll see that I’ve placed key themes and concerns at each level corresponding to the developmental phases when they are dominant. Thus, in the earliest phase our visceral intelligence is dominant, making security, power, and control primary concerns that shape our deepest (preverbal) impressions of self and reality. Because even the most perfect family system cannot deliver instantaneously on our every need, we all carry some insecurity within ourselves, which we mitigate by attaching to whomever or whatever can calm us down. Attachment, love, and belonging come to overlay (and compensate for) those deeper concerns, continuing the process of our personification (or becoming a person).

By the time rational intelligence is ready to come online a lot has happened down below, in the calibration of our nervous system (VQ) and the adaptation of a relational style (EQ). We become better able to articulate the world that’s been forming around us and the perspective opening up from where we stand. Meaning, truth, and knowledge matter now to us as never before. It’s important to remember that the self-world construct – ‘who I am and what’s around me’ – is part of a social role-play, a cultural pretense of the highest magnitude that has been (not wrongfully) labeled by some, like the Buddha, as a delusion that holds our true nature under a spell, the so-called consensus trance.

Trances are all the more seductive according to the depth of our insecurity and the magnetism of attachment that we hope will compensate for it. In fact, the rational requirement for a coherent and reality-oriented philosophy of existence is all too quickly relinquished for the sake of maintaining membership in a club, class, or cult that promises to keep us safe inside the fold. This is when beliefs once held by the mind come to hold the mind captive (as a convict) to convictions that are placed beyond doubt, beyond question – beyond the probe of reasonable inquiry.

And there we have a picture of where most of us daily live: professing and defending a worldview (meaning) that protects the codependent relationships (attachment) which help us manage the profound (deep and ineffable) insecurity registered in our nervous system. With respect to that, spiritual intelligence stands little chance of awakening. If anything, its mystical intimations and transpersonal longings will be translated into doctrines of supernatural realities and afterlife destinies. Tragically many individuals today are trapped inside long-outdated (irrelevant) orthodoxies, for the sake of which they will sacrifice everything – rationality, property, fulfillment, and life itself – their own and that of ‘the enemy’.

But I can’t leave it there, with the majority caught in their convictions and the planet teetering on the brink of mass extinction. A few of us are fortunate enough, thanks to supportive families, open-minded and generous communities, our own dogged persistence toward an authentic life, and to the sheer grace of resources and opportunities made available in the moment, to arrive with sufficient ego strength that enables us to break through the self-world construct of personal identity. We don’t beat ourselves down as damned, helpless rejects, but simply let go of who we think we are, relaxing into the grounding mystery of being itself and rising into our creative authority among the countless beings that share (and manifest) this universe together with us.

When this happens – and I’m not one who believes it happens once and forever, but is rather a mode of experience that awaits our readiness to let go and our willingness to make the leap – an alignment of power, love, and truth opens us to the reality beyond ourselves. This is when ‘flow’ happens, when what we call the human spirit pulls deep on its faith in existence and reaches out to the wisdom of a universal order, where All is One.

Each of us is rooted in an unfathomable mystery and participates, whether aware or ignorant, in the turning unity of all things.

The Rhetoric of Democracy

In fifth-century BCE Athens, the birthplace of Western democracy, the political scene was an ongoing contest between the ‘rule of a few’ (oligarchy) and the ‘power of the people’ (democracy). By Plato’s time democracy had generated more problems than it could resolve, motivating the philosopher to reject it outright as a viable model for government. Its fatal flaw, in his opinion, was in the way it put ordinary people (demos) at the mercy of politicians whose deceptive rhetoric made them believe things that weren’t true, and vote on promises they had no intention of keeping.

Ordinary people – today we might refer to it as ‘popular psychology’ – don’t live their lives by the light of clear reason as much as they follow the inclination of their strongest passions. Without training and practice in logic, argument, and critical thinking, the average voter lacks the necessary skills for teasing apart sincerity and balderdash, straight truth and clever spin, the hard way through and the easy way out.

Why in the world would we risk the enterprise of government and the future of its citizens by surrendering our fate to the most persuasive stumper?

Plato himself was in favor of what he called the ‘philosopher king’, a monarchy ruled benevolently under the wise guidance of an enlightened leader. Apparently his low opinion of ordinary folk was offset by an equally idealistic fantasy of a fully self-actualized sovereign lord. Nevertheless a benevolent dictator would still be preferable to the rule of a few (oligarchy) from the wealthy class whose policies inevitably serve their own interests rather than those of the general citizenry.

Just because you are rich and enjoy high status doesn’t mean that you are also wise, altruistic, or even all that smart.

And yet, the American story is full of great rhetoric in the speeches and writings of individual men and women whose ideas (and promises) changed the course of history. Think of the politicians and rebels, the reformers and revolutionaries, the mavericks and visionaries, the anonymous tracts and famous authors who pictured alternative realities and challenged the orthodoxy of their day, in words that stirred ordinary people to accomplish great things.

Just because popular psychology is vulnerable to agitation, inspiration, and persuasion doesn’t necessarily mean that the rhetoric of democracy should be censored.

Politicians and other individuals seeking positions of influence in society will not stop using words and conjuring images with the purpose of moving their audiences into agreement with their visions and in support of their leadership. Every speech is a construction designed on the linguistic magic of manipulating feelings, beliefs, and motivations. The words themselves, of course, but also the tone, volume, and cadence of speech; repetitions, alliterations, and metaphorical associations; body posture, gestures, and facial expressions – all of it is fashioned and delivered to make an impact and provoke some kind of change in the audience.

Instead of censoring or (as Plato would have it) outlawing rhetorical flourishes from our political candidates, we might do better to understand what it is inside us, the audience and potential voters, that gets so quickly pulled in and taken along. In the best of all possible worlds our politicians would speak to our genuine needs and interests, to our deeper virtues and higher aspirations, rather than yanking our chains to support their agendas.

I propose that my theory of Quadratic Intelligence can shed light on this question about what ‘the people’ really want and need. Once we have some clarity on that score, we will be able to tell when a candidate is trying to take us for a ride or put us under a spell – preferably before the magic goes to work on us. My diagram above illustrates the four types of intelligence (hence quadratic) that have evolved as a system in each of us, connecting them to regions of the body where they seem to be centered. For a more in-depth discussion of each type, check out The Harmony of Intelligence, Quadratic Intelligence, and What’s Your QIP?

When politicians warn us that immigration is undermining our economy, how terrorists are conspiring inside our borders, and how our security as a nation is being compromised, they are speaking to our visceral intelligence (VQ). More accurately we should say that they are using words interpreted by our rational intelligence (RQ) for the purpose of provoking strong feelings in our emotional intelligence (EQ) so as to effect a change in our nervous system (VQ) that will move us to action.

Visceral intelligence is centered in our gut, which is why the politician’s warning is experienced as upset in our stomach and intestines. This is where the resources of our environment are converted into the energy our body needs to live. VQ monitors this balance and lets us know when we might be losing the safety and life support we require. Of the four intelligences, this one is the most primitive, and when it gets poked or yanked everything higher up gets put on standby until the crisis can be resolved. Because the body’s visceral intelligence has primacy in emergency situations, the politicians know that poking our need for security will get us to pay attention to their message.

For a majority of voters, perhaps, concerns over safety and survival are not as worrisome as the daily reminder that life just isn’t going their way. Our emotional intelligence (EQ) is more attuned to what’s happening around us, to the degree in which our circumstances are either open or closed to our pursuit of happiness. To define happiness as the feeling that things are going our way does not automatically make it a selfish pursuit. Things ‘go our way’ when our relationships are positive and supportive, when we are making progress toward our goals, and when our desires, on balance, are fulfilled more than they are frustrated.

One pernicious bit of rhetoric works to convince us that something is missing from our lives, that we can’t really be happy until the void is filled. Given that our happiness seems to rise and fall on the rhythms of pleasure and fortune, politicians can easily exploit our readiness to look outside ourselves for the key to lasting happiness. (Indeed, panhandlers and snake oil salesmen perfected this technique long ago.)

They bait us by ticking down a list of things that aren’t tipped in our favor and then ask, “How can you be happy, with all this going against you?”

By this time the charm is set and we have taken the hook. That’s right! we think to ourselves. How have I been managing without this person in office?

Plato was correct in his observation that ordinary people make most of their important decisions in life on the basis of how the options make them feel. In many cases our best interest would be better served if we could just detach ourselves from the passions and exercise a little more reason instead. This ability to detach, discriminate, critique, compare, analyze, extrapolate, and consider things from a more objective standpoint is made possible by our rational intelligence (RQ).

Frankly, rhetoric of any kind is less about convincing us through the logic of argument than it is about moving us emotionally in support of its conclusion.

Rational intelligence works out our need for meaning – that things and life make sense in the bigger picture and longer view. We shouldn’t be surprised if most of democracy’s rhetoric rarely attains this level of clear-thinking consideration. If the big picture is invoked at all, it will usually be in the interest of constructing a rational frame around an emotional or visceral issue. Cut back on emissions and develop clean energy technology because our coastal cities will be underwater within a decade if we don’t – that kind of thing.

But remember, your average voter doesn’t push levers or pencil in bubbles according to sound theory or even the evidence we have in hand. (Who conducted those studies anyway?)

If the rhetoric of democracy prefers to play closer to our animal urgencies and powerful moods than to the shining logic of higher reason, it hardly ever manages to touch the dimensions of our spiritual intelligence (SQ). This is probably due to the fact that most politicians and ordinary people fail even to acknowledge its presence, much less give it priority in their lives. Of course I’m not referring here to our religious affiliations, since religion can be as dissociated from spiritual intelligence as anything else we do – oddly enough, even actively repressing it in many cases.

Our spiritual intelligence makes it possible for us to break free of our personal perspective – that is to say, of the perspective on reality that is tied to our separate center of identity as egos – and re-enter the oneness of being. If this sounds like a bunch of metaphysical gobbledygook, we must know that our separate identity is merely a delusion of consciousness, a construct that exists only in the performance space of a role-play (society) where we hope one day to be somebody and make something of ourselves.

This is in fact the (insubstantial) part of us that politicians work to recruit for votes: the part that declares, “I AM a Republican” or “I AM a Democrat,” “I AM for this” and “I AM against that.”

When we break past the delusion of a separate identity, our spiritual intelligence opens consciousness to the grounding mystery within and to the sacred universe beyond. Ego drops away as awareness descends to its Source (what I call the mystical turn), whereas in going outward it is transcended in communion with the Whole (the ethical turn). We come to understand that we are manifestations of one reality, along with everything else, and together we belong to the same.

Taking full responsibility for our place in the greater community of life is what I mean by creative authority.

Rhetoric is simply the ability to use language effectively. It doesn’t have to be deceptive or biased or tied to a party platform. Indeed the “rhetoric of democracy” might be about using language to focus our longings and lift the human spirit, to inspire a greater love for each other and for our planetary home. And ultimately, perhaps, to awaken us to the fullness of what we are here to become.

The Human Path

Human beings are on an evolutionary arc, progressing individually and as a species toward a ‘self-actualized’ fulfillment of our unique nature. With all the criticisms I have already directed against the personal ego – that conceited blowhard who craves validation, praise, glory, and immortality – it might come as a surprise for me to acknowledge it as the legitimate center around and in relation to which the whole project turns.

Cloud beings, tree beings, dog beings, monkey beings: all of these are distinct manifestations (cloud, tree, dog, monkey) of a single mystery (being). But none of them have created religions designed to awaken and elevate their own deeper natures, to leverage their evolutionary leaps into higher modes of life and contemplate their communion with the universe. The haven’t because they can’t, and they can’t because they lack a separate center of personal identity from which such a grand perspective might be taken and such a magnificent program of self-transformation conceived. They lack egos.

As far as we know, only human beings have egos.

My main issue with the ego has to do with its habit of hijacking our individual development and evolution as a species, pulling it off course into a tangled thicket of odd fixations. Even religion has gotten recruited into its service, idealizing our tendencies toward pettiness, vanity, judgmentalism, and out-group aggression in a deified image of ourselves. As religion degenerates into a hierarchical system of social control, it ceases to function as a program for the transformation of human beings into self-responsible creative agents.

Especially in its absolutist theistic forms, religion is rightfully rejected as a sick and dangerous fever of neurotic self-obsession.

These arrests and setbacks in the development of ego and its religion do not warrant our blanket condemnation of them, however. Indeed if my general theory is correct, then the dismissal or termination of ego (and its religion) runs the risk of subverting the larger project of human fulfillment. To the degree that we are successful in eliminating them (convinced we are finally progressing beyond them), the absence of ego and its religion could bring our career as a species to an unhappy end.

Directing your attention to my diagram above, let’s keep our eyes on that feature in the middle labeled ‘personal identity’. Rather than being the perfection and end-all of our development as individuals, the achievement of a separate center of identity (ego with its personal world) is really a middle stage between an animal prehistory submerged in instinct and a spiritual higher state awakened in wisdom. As Freud helped us see, ego management is a rather tense affair, as the individual tries to balance the ambition of ‘me and mine’ against the conscience of a tribal ‘us and ours’.

Somewhere in that tension the individual ego needs to maintain membership (as ‘one of us’) while also honoring the inner promptings of the higher self. If a tribe supports the emergence of creative authority in the individual, then a transformative breakthrough of this order will be encouraged and celebrated, rather than condemned as it often is in repressive social systems.

This is typically where that deified superego of the tribal deity is used by the group to denounce, quash, and uproot the ‘sin’ of vainglorious self-regard – a character trait which, oddly enough, is protected as belonging by exclusive rights to the deity.

But the ego brings its own resistance to the project of human transformation. A good number of those ambitions are formed around the drive for security, a frequency of nervous state that correlates to an environment perceived as safe and supportive. Because none of us gets through infancy and early childhood without some insecurity, our focus gets set on attaching ourselves to those anchors and sources of security that will keep things from falling apart.

As we go, we construct our web of personal meaning (i.e., our world) around these anchors and sources, incorporating them into our identity and way of life.

It’s no wonder, then, that what I earlier called the inner promptings of our higher self, to break through the attachments that comprise for us the emotional structure of reality, might be strenuously resisted by the ego. To the degree that animal security finds significant compensation in personal identity, further progress of development into spiritual maturity will be felt as heading in exactly the wrong direction. Such a ‘breakthrough’ would be tantamount to a ‘breakdown’ of security, control, order, and meaning – the very death of ego!

One strategy often used in justifying ego’s resistance involves lampooning spiritual maturity as not only heretical, but as also a blatant refusal of personal responsibility. For ego to maintain membership in the social system of attachments, an individual needs to uphold certain moral obligations and subordinate his or her own needs to the will of the group. Any sign of the individual’s loosening allegiance to tribal rules and orthodoxy – asking too many of the wrong questions, expressing doubts and misgivings, pushing on boundaries or challenging assumptions, feeling empathy for outsiders and voicing an interest in the broader concerns of life on earth – such potential disruptions of the consensus trance are quickly discouraged as forsaking what is true, right, and good.

When an individual possesses sufficient ego strength (where the personality is stable, balanced, and unified) and the time is developmentally right, an access point will open from the realm of personal identity, to a mode of conscious life momentarily free from the constraints of ‘me and mine’/’us and ours’.

Once the breakthrough is gained, an upward turn along the arc will involve a self-transcending leap beyond identity, while a downward turn from this same point proceeds by a self-releasing drop beneath identity. This inward-and-downward turn is also the mystical turn where consciousness sinks back contemplatively into the grounding mystery and ineffable source of our being. The upward-and-outward turn is the ethical turn where consciousness rises into our creative authority as agents of a higher wholeness, consilient leaders on the advancing wave of evolutionary change.

My stair-step diagram could be interpreted as anticipating a future state of spiritual maturity where ego (that troublemaker) has been finally outgrown, discredited, and permanently left behind – along with its religion. But by now it should be clear that according to this theory ego plays a much more integral role in the longer project of human self-actualization.

Even though it is purely a social construct (and substantially unreal, as the Buddha noted), the delusion of our separateness (which is a function of ego consciousness) is the very thing all higher religions provide insights and techniques for breaking through.

What’s Your QIP?

One of my innovations in the field of human psychology is the notion of Quadratic Intelligence. Expanding on recent theory and research has helped us beyond the early 20th-century notion of intelligence as only our (IQ) competency in reading, writing, and arithmetic – the so-called academic set. Opening the definition of intelligence so as to include emotional (Goleman, 1995), spiritual (Zohar & Marshall, 2000), and less conscious body processes has liberated discourse on the subject from a crippling Western bias where intelligence equals computation, logical operations, and problem-solving acumen. My insight has to do with seeing these four types of intelligence – Rational, Emotional, Spiritual, and Visceral – evolving together as a system, unfolding in sequence (V-E-R-S) and interacting dynamically throughout human development.

Before we move into the diagram and take a look around, one other general comment is in order. Not only has the West tended to favor rational processes over others, but it also has a long tradition of ‘impersonating the soul’, by which I mean that the center of spiritual intelligence, or soul, has been taken as another name for the separate center of personal identity, commonly called ego (Latin for the first-person singular “I”). This is likely a complication of our deep history in theism, where the formation of personal identity as represented in the deity and managed in the devotee is a prevailing focus of concern.

An unfortunate consequence of this confusion is a tendency to associate spiritual intelligence (SQ) with ‘psychic’ abilities, out-of-body experiences, metaphysical visions, and special access to the supernatural. It has also perpetuated an unhealthy dualism that conceives the human being as a body with a soul or a soul inside a body – in either case a deeply divided being.

A sick religion that capitalizes on this dualism is obsessed with getting the captive soul safely to its heavenly home, free and far away from the mortal body. Just about everything connected to our physical life as animals – our drives, appetites, proclivities, and secretions – has been put under one taboo or another, as despicable vices that threaten to drag us into hell.

So when I speak of spiritual intelligence I am referring to that strand of quadratic intelligence that gives human beings our distinctive creative ability – to imagine, compose, invent, and in various ways transcend the boundaries of our present situation. Soul, then, is not an immortal entity riding temporarily inside a mortal frame, but the very center of this creative intelligence. By extension, spirituality is not only about breaking out and escaping our limitations, but transforming them by virtue of a new perspective, attitude, and mode of life.

What I call ‘creative authority’ is this very mode of life whereby individuals take responsibility as creators of the identities, worlds, and relationships that either facilitate or frustrate the realization of their own higher selves and those around them.

Just as our thinking mind is no more important to what we are than our feeling heart, neither is our spiritual soul any more special and sacred than our animal body. While our consciousness may be characterized by an inherent duality – introverted to the intuitive-mystical realm within and extroverted to the sensory-physical realm without – we are fundamentally indivisible in our essential nature as spiritual animals.

After insisting on the integral unity of our quadratic intelligence I can move on to make the point that each of us develops and demonstrates the four types in individual ways that are unique to our genetic temperament, early upbringing, surrounding culture, pressing concerns, and evolving character. This is where my diagram comes in.

Let’s start with a question. From the following four options, which term best describes your preference for orienting and navigating your way through life: strategy, inspiration, sympathy, or common sense? Here are the definitions.

Strategy

You prefer to make plans, set goals, and work through a sequence of tasks that lead where you want to go. This preference suggests that you tend to favor reasonable and creative approaches to the challenges and opportunities of life. If you self-identify as preferring strategy, then you might further refine this preference as leaning more to the rational (RQ) or spiritual (SQ) side. In other words, strategy could be more about detaching from your subjective feelings and staying on course with a prescribed plan, or the value might lie more in how it enables you to transcend the way things are and bring about a ‘new reality’. The unifying idea is the way strategy clarifies and prescribes an overarching purpose in what you do.

Inspiration

You seek out experiences that ‘breathe in’ (inspire) greater joy, beauty, and wonder that will enrich your life. This preference suggests that you tend to favor creative and passionate endeavors which connect you to something much bigger than yourself. Depending on how you lean into inspiration it might be more about this feeling of engagement (EQ), or perhaps you would describe it in terms of an inner release and going beyond (transcending) the bounds of ordinary awareness (SQ). It isn’t necessary to postulate a supernatural or metaphysical source behind the experience of inspiration. It simply represents the cooperation of your emotional and spiritual intelligence in taking in ‘something more’ – the whole that is more than the sum of its parts (think of the artistic image that ‘comes through’ the patterns of color in a painting, or the gestalt that rises through the harmonies of individual instruments of an orchestra).

Sympathy

I’m using this word in its classical sense, as a resonant response between and among things of similar nature. It certainly takes on an emotional character in the realm of human relationships, in the way individuals are ‘moved’ by the mysterious forces of attraction, empathy, and aggression to match each other’s mood. If sympathy is what orients and motivates you through life, then you tend to go with ‘how things feel’ or ‘what feels right’ in the moment. Leaning more on the side of EQ, this is typically experienced as a refined feeling that may prompt secondary reflection, whereas a stronger anchor in the unconscious reactions of the body (VQ) will evoke a more spontaneous behavioral response. Sympathy is the emotional and visceral basis of our more ‘elevated’ intuitions of compassion and empathy. As distinct from them, sympathy is something we feel in our heart and sense in our gut, often as an ineffable reaction occurring prior to any conscious reflection or ethical resolve.

Common Sense

Our ‘common senses’ refer to the five sensory-physical modes of perception – sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. If this is your preference for orienting yourself in reality, then these sense-data serve as the foundation of reliable knowledge. Just as your visceral intelligence (VQ) anchors consciousness in the organic urgencies of life (e.g., the compulsive urge to breathe), your physical organs of perception tether attention to what we might call the realm of the obvious. The modern school of philosophy known as ‘common sense realism’ (Thomas Reid) shows how this preference can lean strongly to the rational (RQ) side, where even the detachment of our logical mind only infers and constructs from the information apprehended first through the senses. If you are a common sense realist, then you likely insist that truth must derive from, and ultimately come back to, the reality of perceivable facts.

My Quadratic Intelligence model allows us to appreciate the multifaceted nature of human intelligence, and helps as well in the need to expand our definition of it beyond one type of intelligence or another. The concept of preference (strategy, inspiration, sympathy, or common sense) can also rein in a tendency to arrange these types of intelligence in a (personally biased) hierarchy of importance. For example, although spiritual intelligence comes online later (i.e., farther into maturity) than visceral intelligence (which is active in the very beginning of fetal life), this doesn’t make it ‘better’ or more essential to what we are as human beings.

Indeed there are plenty of examples where our spiritual ability to go beyond (transcend) what is given has inspired individuals to abandon their connection to everyday reality for apocalyptic and otherworldly speculations, which are then professed as divine revelations by these ‘visionaries’ who use them to draw notoriety, influence, and profit.

You might struggle at first in closing down on just one preference over others. As well you should, since all of these are at least potentially active in your quest to make sense of reality, connect meaningfully to those around you, and become fully human. Consider arranging all four preferences in an order that reflects your personal Quadratic Intelligence Profile (QIP). Such an exercise might suggest areas that could use more attention and training, to develop yourself in a more well-rounded fashion – although a ‘perfect balance’ among the four preferences should probably not be a goal.

The End of Religion

In my efforts to define what I mean by ‘post-theism’ (as distinct from other uses of the term you might find out there), it’s been critically important not to confuse it with straight-up atheism on one side, or on the other with clever spins on the ‘post-‘ idea that contemporary Christian theism is attaching to the ’emerging church’ movement (for example). My construction is intended to name a stage of religion that comes decisively after theism, as a transformation beyond it that holds the promise of facilitating human spiritual evolution to the next level, without getting hung up in debates over the existence of god.

This type of post-theism acknowledges god as a construct of the mythopoetic imagination, not as a literal being but rather the principal figure in sacred stories – more properly, then, as a literary being. Our representations of god serve the purpose of orienting us in an intelligible universe (regarded as the creation of god), inspiring us to worthy aims (identified with the will of god), and guiding our ethical development as persons into virtues of community life (glorified in the character of god). The ultimate aim, ethically speaking, is for the devotee to so consciously internalize and intentionally express the virtues of god’s character that the need for an objective ideal is permanently transcended. Human evolution continues from that point, on the other side (after: post) of god.

It helps considerably if we don’t treat theism as one thing, as a singular religious phenomenon which must either be accepted or rejected en bloc. Its development out of primitive animism arches over many millenniums, and its career has been one of steady progress (with frequent setbacks) into a spirituality and way of life more mystically grounded, ethically responsible, and globally connected than before. These very developments now threaten the more tribal forms of theism which are losing relevance faster than ever despite their appeal to insecure and extremist types. In this post I offer a lens for understanding theism in its development, tracking its ‘leading indicator’ in ego’s rise to maturity – and beyond.

The major phases of theism correlate to the career of personal identity (ego) in the human beings responsible for it as a worldview and way of life. (We still need to be reminded of the fact that religions are human inventions created for the purpose of linking concerns of daily life back to the present mystery of reality, represented and personified in the construct of deity.) We can conveniently analyze ego’s career into an early, middle, and late phase, where personal maturity in a stable, balanced, and unified self (the markers of ego strength) is the aim. My theory simply regards these distinct phases as stages, in the sense of platforms that provide the developing ego identity with shifting orientations in and perspectives on reality.

As a constructivist it should be clear by now that I see personal self-conscious identity (ego) as something that is not essential to our nature as human beings, which is to say that it is not in our given nature as products of evolution. Instead, it is socially constructed in the cultural workspace of our tribes. The taller powers (our parents, other adults and older peers) shape us into who we are, as a central node in the complex role-play of tribal life. We then perform our various roles according to the rules, values, and expectations (i.e., the morality) of the social groups in which we have an identity.

In the diagram above, this construction of ego identity (color-coded orange) is tracked in its slow progress through the essential aspects of our nature, body (coded black) and soul (purple). Depending on where we take our perspective in ego’s development, the relationship of these two aspects to each other is differently construed – in terms of ‘opposition’, ‘reconciliation’, or ‘communion’. These terms are thus offered as key concepts in our understanding of ego’s development, as well as that of theistic religion.

In the opposition phase, our separate center of personal identity (ego) is not very well defined. The very imposition of ego, however, causes a split in consciousness where an inner subjective realm is gradually divided from an outer objective realm, or ‘soul’ from ‘body’. Whereas soul and body in our essential nature are simply the introverted (intuitive-spiritual) and extroverted (sensory-physical) aspects of an evolved consciousness, our executive center of personal identity throws them into opposition. Now ‘I’ (ego) have a soul and a body, and the challenge becomes one of constructing a meaningful relationship between them.

This is where we find all those wonderfully complicated and emotionally charged stories (myths) about the separation of matter from spirit, of body and soul, giving account of how we happened into this conflicted state in which we presently find ourselves. It might get worked out into a fabulous mythology that puts god in opposition to the world as a bodiless and transcendent entity existing apart from our fallen carnal nature. Elaborate rituals must be invented, and then spun back to the people as revelations, that can provide a necessary atonement for resolving the negative conditions of our ignorance, guilt, and selfishness.

As personal identity continues to develop, these opposing forces of body and soul are gradually reconciled – brought together in a healthier marriage rather than striving in conflict. While traditionally interpreted in light of the older orthodoxy of opposition, Paul’s reflections on the person of Christ as one in whom ‘god was reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Corinthians 5:19) – that is to say, as one in whom body and soul were fully united in his essential nature – might be seen as evidence of this shift in perspective where ego (the Christ ideal) has progressed beyond a body-soul opposition and more into its own stable center of identity. At any rate, there is no doubt that Paul helped to move theism past the opposition of Two (god and humanity) and toward a synthesis into One (a deified humanity or incarnate deity).

As an aside I should note that Christian orthodoxy for the most part has ignored, and perhaps even willfully rejected, a theism of reconciliation for a reinstatement of the older theism based in opposition. Jesus came to be regarded not as the ‘New Man’, in line with Paul’s meditations, but as the key player in a transaction of salvation whereby our guilt was paid off and god’s wrath against sin was appeased. Even though humanity’s criminal record was expunged, god and the world remain essentially separate from each other.

This derailment of Christian orthodoxy from the intended path of theism’s evolution has, I am arguing, prevented the religion from progressing into its post-theistic phase. Despite the efforts of Jesus, and Paul after him, to move theism past the oppositions of god-versus-world, soul-versus-body, self-versus-other, us-versus-them, into a new paradigm where such divisions are transcended and made whole, Christian churches today remain locked in a pathological dualism. But we still need to consider what a full embrace of its post-theistic destiny would look like.

In my diagram, the distinct and separate ego has reached the point in its development where ‘me and mine’ no longer limit a fuller vision of reality. While a sense of oneself as a person continues to be in the picture, the sharp division of body (black) and soul (purple) gives way to a blended continuum of animal and spiritual life. We are ‘spiritual animals’ after all, and now our awareness and agency as persons can move us into a new but still self-conscious mode of being. My name for this mode of being is communion, literally ‘together as one’. There is no god on one side and the world on another. No souls separate from bodies awaiting deliverance to a postmortem paradise. No ‘us’ on one side and ‘them’ on the other.

We are all one together. Nothing, really, is separate from the rest. The realization of this oneness, however, depends on our ability to appreciate ourselves (and all things) as manifestations of the same mystery. Such a profound appreciation – Jesus and other luminaries called it love – will fundamentally change how we live.

Journey Back to Reality

Just as soon as I make a case for the necessity of religion, it’s time to insist on our need to transcend it. If my atheist friends squirm at my insistence that we all have a religion – a system of beliefs, attitudes, values and practices that links the separate ego back to reality – my friends who are believers will shake their heads at my suggestion that we need to leave it behind. Why take the time to defend religion (not one or another religion, but religion itself) when the point is to go beyond it?

A popular notion of religion conceives it as a means to an end, as a way through this world to another one. We trust that our religion will answer those really big questions and ultimately save our soul when the body gives out and our life on earth is over. Even a slight acquaintance with the history of religion should disabuse us of that fantasy, as the ‘soul rescue’ model came on the scene only very recently and is based on a dualism of body and soul which is probably less than 3,000 years old.

For the greater part of its history religion has focused human concern on the challenges and opportunities of life on earth. Essentially it is about assisting human beings in the evolutionary work of “cultivating faith, nurturing love, and constructing meaning,” of reconnecting to reality and becoming real. Why we might need to become real is more obvious when we understand the extent in which ego formation (the development of a separate center of self-conscious identity) removes us from the spontaneous stream of life experience and from the present mystery of reality.

The rise of personhood and individuality is a slow arc across human cultural history, and religion functions to keep it from detaching pathologically from the mystical (contemplative), ethical (communal), and universal (cosmological) dimensions of our existence. Few critics of religion today recognize just how important it was during the formative stages of human evolution, not to mention how important it continues to be as our destiny unfolds. Just because certain aspects of religion, and even entire religions, may change or disappear as we progress doesn’t mean that religion itself is expendable.

The question is not whether but how ego consciousness today is linked back to the grounding mystery within, to the living community of persons, and to the larger context of life on earth. Does our religion ‘work’ to this extent, or not?

My diagram summarizes the ‘journey back to reality’ that healthy religion is intended to facilitate. The place to begin is at the bottom-right, where looped purple and black chain-links remind us of the essential nature of human beings as spiritual animals. We are not souls in bodies or bodies with souls, but sentient animals with a rich inner life. Our body is oriented by the senses in an extroverted fashion to the physical environment, while our soul opens consciousness to its own inner depths. In the dialogue of inner and outer, mediated by metaphor and story (myth), we perceive the oneness of all things and our place in the order of existence.

Shifting over to the bottom-left and slowly swinging upward in the diagram introduces another piece of the puzzle, in that developing center of self-conscious identity (ego) mentioned earlier. If ‘spiritual animal’ is what we are as human beings, ego identity is a quest for who we are – where we belong, to whom, as a member of which tribe, in what occupation, and so on. Early on, the tribe is most active in shaping our animal nature into a well-behaved dependent – a ‘good’ boy or girl who observes the rules of the game. Certain base impulses have to be restrained, or else channeled in ways that conform to the morality of tribal life.

Our fundamental relationship to the body is established at this stage, as either something we can honor and enjoy, or instead feel unsure and ashamed about.

The first separation in ego formation, then, is a separation of self-consciousness from the sensations, drives, and urgencies of the body. Ideally there is a general sense of security, where the emerging ego feels supported and valued as a member. But even in the well-adjusted individual some anxiety persists around the question (inarticulate at this point) of whether it’s really safe to trust, making security a chronic concern for the ego. We see this, for instance, in the infant that clings to its mother for safety and nourishment, unwilling to let go for fear of not having what it needs to survive. Attachment, then, is how ego compensates for insecurity, by latching onto whatever promises the unconditional support it has lost in the process of separation.

Every ego thus carries an inherent self-contradiction: the separation necessary for establishing its own center of identity amplifies a deep insecurity, which ego then seeks to overcome by attaching to an external anchor – be it mother, family, nation, wealth, status, deity, heavenly reward, or whatever. The deeper the insecurity, the stronger and more desperate the attachment: a condition that interferes with and can completely undermine the process of healthy ego formation. This self-contradiction is usually resolved (perhaps only justified or explained away) by the construction of meaning that our tribe erects around us. As an obedient and honor-seeking member of the group, we should be willing – better yet, eager – to sacrifice everything in service to its idols and ideals.

Insofar as religion can become a closed orthodoxy and a hierarchy of top-down control, it was inevitable that this natural course of human evolution (i.e., the rise of ego consciousness) would generate a crisis – and a worldwide one. Wherever the rising force of personal identity and individual freedom confronts a regime of moral repression and thought control, something needs to give.

It’s important to understand, however, that because ego is inherently insecure to some extent, the framework of meaning it comes to inhabit and defend as its personal world is not wide open to reality, but just as small and simplified as it needs to be. In my diagram, a ladder of ego development leads up into a more or less coherent worldview (symbolized by a sphere) held inside a set of beliefs concerning ‘the way it is’ (symbolized by a box around the sphere). Even a healthy personality, exhibiting the telltale signs of ego strength (stable, balanced, and unified), is separated from reality by its world construct.

We don’t need to demonize the ego and make it the cause of all our trouble, as some world religions have done. The goal of ‘salvation’ (referring to the process of being set free and made whole) is not to cancel or reverse what ego formation has accomplished, but rather to transcend personal identity and reconcile consciousness to reality once again. I say ‘once again’, but in fact the connection this time is conscious and intentional, whereas its pre-egoic state was unconscious and spontaneous.

By definition, nothing is separate from reality, which means that ego’s separate identity is actually (in the words of Albert Einstein) “an optical delusion of consciousness.” This is what needs to be transcended.

Having made our way to the top of my diagram, we can now follow the path of our journey back to reality. To really see things as they are, the veil of meaning that separates us from reality (or to use a related analogy, the mental labels we affix to things and other people) must be pulled aside. What is revealed, then, is perfectly meaningless: reality in all its glory, the pure radiance of being. Truth is always beyond meaning, and our meanings are true only insofar as they accurately represent the way things really are. And yet, even the most accurate representation is still just a representation; the present mystery of reality transcends all media of thought, language, art, and theory. It is ineffable.

When we are liberated from the constraints of belief, prejudice, and unrealistic expectations, other persons can be respected as free individuals rather than as emotional attachments that protect or ‘complete’ us. Such open and sacred regard for others, expressed as empathic care for their health and well-being, is what we call love. Genuine love and community is a dynamic of freedom, trust, kindness, and honesty between individuals. It isn’t ‘blind’ at all, but profoundly clear-sighted. Attachment is what makes us blind to others, regarding them only as we need them to be – how reassured, desirable, important, or threatened they make us feel.

If truth is the way things really are behind the meanings we impose on them, and if love refers to a genuine human connection that is free from neurotic attachment, then power, as the opposite of insecurity, has to do with our conscious connection to the grounding mystery within. Paul Tillich expanded the notion of being (taken as a verb rather than a noun) as ‘the power to be’, interpreting existence (from existere) as the place where reality manifests (or ‘stands out’) in this or that thing.

Much of mystical spirituality might be characterized as an inward descent of consciousness, dropping past the identifications of ego, into the deeper registers of inner life until the wellspring of being-itself is reached.

Our quest for identity sets the stage, as it were, for our journey back to reality. As the quest is our preoccupation during the first half of life, the journey will (or perhaps I can dare say, should) serve as the orienting metaphor for a spirituality of the second half. Yes indeed, we will occasionally get hooked into the drama of ‘me and mine’ – much more frequently than we would care to admit – losing our way time and again. But soul seeks truth, not meaning. It celebrates love, not possession. And it rests quietly in being, in the secret source of power.

A Father’s Heart

My present relationship with my father began a little more than two years ago, when we lost my mother. Since then we have talked on the phone morning and evening, just about every day. I suppose the combination of my being more temperamentally similar to my mother, and my father’s steady fulfillment of his family role as provider and disciplinarian, had made him seem more distant – not absent or uncaring, but more other, the counterpart to her enveloping nearness. Throughout my early life, he was like that promontory on the seacoast which provides a fixed point for the orientation of ships rising and falling on the waves.

I think there’s something archetypal about a father, as there is about a mother. Whereas she is the encompassing reality out of which we need to be delivered in our quest for identity, he represents in his otherness the ideal and future goal of what we are becoming. Our fathers might not exhibit the ethical character that inspires our own positive moral formation – although my father truly did – but simply in their otherness they stir our longing to stand out and be somebody. This might help explain why some young men who grow up without a positive role model in their fathers are at higher risk of becoming sociopaths and extremists.

Sometimes I wonder if my father’s role in our family system as the lawmaker and disciplinarian kept me from seeing the sentimental and softer side of him. Maybe his life story as a firstborn son and obligated farm hand, eventually serving as a church pastor in a denomination that was strongly patriarchal, shaped his own development away from the more tender and expressive virtues. No doubt, who we are and how we are in the world is to some extent determined by our situation in life and the responsibilities we are asked to shoulder. Even given that, I realized later on that how I saw my father was also limited by my own needs, ignorance, and insecurities.

Just last month my father’s only sibling and last remaining family member passed away, leaving him with the solitary task of sifting and sorting through legal documents, family memorabilia, and other of my uncle’s personal effects. He’s remarked more frequently of late how tired and ‘shaky’ he feels, driving back and forth from Michigan to Iowa and having to make decisions over the disposition of property and the family farm. He is struck at times by how little is holding him here anymore, after losing his parents, a son, his wife, friends along the way, and now his only brother. As the anchors of love and commitment are pulled up from his world, he feels increasingly adrift and alone in life.

In the midst of it, however, his faith remains strong, which I’m sure is the deep core of his character stability that has always impressed me. While his theology – the vocabulary and discourse he uses to make sense of his faith – is not identical with my own, I resonate with my father’s sense of a provident mystery that is present with him even in his loss and grief. We are not separate from reality after all, and ultimate reality (what we name God) is not ‘something else’ but rather the essential ground in which, as the Apostle Paul says quoting the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, ‘we live and move and have our being’. In his quiet moments, my father finds reassurance that he is not really alone.

At first, our frequent phone conversations were my way of keeping in touch and sharing the grief of losing my mother. It was distressing to picture him there, sitting by himself on the edge of the bed or staring through tears at his morning oatmeal. I wanted to be with him, to give what comfort I could offer. Over time, however, it was his faith that ministered to me. He seemed softer, more vulnerable; and in his vulnerability, more genuine and present in the moment. Our connection grew stronger, and I found myself looking forward to the next chance we’d have to talk.

Someday I want to be like my father.

Why is it so easy for us to take what is precious for granted? When our loved ones are alive and with us, how do we dare let a day pass without telling them how much they mean to us? Why does it take losing them to remind us? I will not wait, not another day. After all, the day might not come.

Dad, I love you. Thank you for being a rock for me, and for helping me find my way. Promontory

Does Your Religion Work?

The question is not whether religion will one day be only a memory of our brutal and superstitious past as a species, or else singularly responsible for our future catastrophic self-destruction. A lot of people feel that we would be better off without it. In their perspective religion is unnecessary baggage crowding the mental space we could be using for more relevant and practical concerns. We can’t deal rationally with these things until we abandon superstition, come to our senses, and work together for real solutions.

A returning reader is familiar with my less categorical appraisal of religion. I can be critical of every tradition and denomination with respect to how easily it gets tangled in our neurotic obsessions with glory, guilt, sex, violence and death. But at the same time I am constantly in search of what we might call ‘religion in essence’, as distinct from its countless historical manifestations. From the etymology of the term we can define religion as the system of attitudes, beliefs, values and practices that works to link us back (Latin religare) to reality, resolving the separation inherent to the rise of ego consciousness.

Personal identity is a process of social construction that gradually establishes an executive center in the ego – actually a deputy center, subordinate to the authorities of family and tribe. Ego stands above the body and apart from others, and if development has been particularly difficult or traumatic, it becomes estranged from its own inner life (soul) as well. When this condition of separation is severe enough, a profound insecurity can overtake the personality. The essential function of religion is to provide the means for ego to reconnect with reality – internally with its own grounding mystery, relationally with others, and transcendentally through a meaningful world-picture (or cosmology).

Distinguishing essential religion in this sense from its various manifestations – inspired or deluded, genuine or dysfunctional as the case may be – gives us a useful model for assessing the relative health of our own. Whether or not you believe in god, say your prayers, go to church, or hold out hope of an afterlife, the real litmus test of any religion has to do with how effectively it connects you to the grounding mystery within, to others who share the world with you, and to the universe that surrounds you.

My shorthand for these dimensions and associated practices of life is illustrated to the right. I’ll unpack each term more thoroughly in a bit, but for now I’ll restate my general thesis in the following way.

Religion is the system by which human beings cultivate faith, nurture love, and construct meaning. However you do that, is your religion.

Faith

We begin with faith because its presence or absence sets the tone for everything else. From the time we were still in our mother’s womb, our nervous system was picking up clues as to whether reality was provident and supportive, or instead hostile and dangerous. This was long before we had an ego and prior to our acquisition of language. Consequently the deep impression registered in our nervous system was both unconscious and ineffable.

In the context of essential religion, faith has nothing to do with beliefs – orthodox or otherwise. The roots of the word reach far below the articulate mind and its propositional truths, into the matter of trust, surrender, and release. I prefer release because it keeps the dynamics of faith centered internally, where to trust (in) anything we must first let go and open up to what is beyond us.

Its opposite is not heresy or intellectual doubt, but anxiety – more accurately existential anxiety, a profound dis-ease concerning the nature of reality. Our nervous system is gripped with tension, skittish and hyper-reactive, which sets us up for nervous exhaustion. This anxiety is the cause of so much that goes wrong in religion.

Because faith is our trusting release to the grounding mystery of being itself, it’s not something that can be measured or manipulated. It is our spontaneous ability to surrender control, relax into being, and rest in the moment. The good news is that it’s an ability we can develop by intentional practice.

Love

We might expect that a deeply grounded faith will translate in positive ways to our relationships with others, and this is indeed the case. The ego is established in its own separate center, which suggests that reaching out for affection, intimacy, cooperation, and reconciliation is where our religion is really tested – and where many fail. A deficiency in faith (i.e., excessive anxiety) makes us suspicious of others and unable to trust them, so when they let us down as they inevitably must, our core impression of reality is confirmed. Around it goes, in a self-reinforcing loop.

Because ego-formation moves our center of personal identity into its own separate position, the real work of religion lies in caring for others, respecting their interests, understanding their needs, forgiving their faults, and helping them thrive. In short, the real work of religion is about love. We should be able to say with confidence that any religion which fails to cultivate the power of love in human relationships, even more when it arouses and justifies hostility towards others, is neither healthy nor true. This insight is what motivated Siddhartha to eschew metaphysics and Jesus to renounce orthodoxy, revealing the way of liberation as consisting in loving-kindness.

Meaning

The age of postmodernity coincides with the dawning realization that meaning is not something we find in reality, but construct for ourselves. Words are human creations, and the sentences, stories, and worldviews they make up really are made up. If there’s a crisis of meaning these days, it’s not that life has let us down but that we are doing a bad job making life meaningful.

At the highest level, our religion inspires a view of the full horizon of existence, a unified theory of how the Whole Thing moves as one. In prehistoric and ancient times such theories were dramatic narratives, which we know as myths. As we approach modern times, these stories become more mathematical than narrative in structure, and personal elements are strictly excluded. A downside of this shift from sacred stories to scientific theories is our difficulty in seeing ourselves in the bigger picture. If we reduce mind to brain, brain to body, and body to nothing but dead matter, where is the self? Where is the human spirit? How is it possible to say that we belong to the universe?

One more quick drop down to the level of faith will help us appreciate how the meaning of life is really a creative project of our shared life together, and how the quality of our relationships is directly a function of how deep and strong is our individual faith. Faith, that is to say, encourages love, and love engages us in the collaborative pursuit of meaning.

That’s when you know your religion works.