The Reality in Your Hand

They are delicious – or can be. I’m sure you’ve had one before. Snow cones are perhaps the most popular and biggest rip-off treats at amusement parks and county fairs. Pack some shaved ice into a paper cone and drizzle your favorite sugary syrup on top.

Three bucks, please.

But have you ever looked more closely at a snow cone? What you’ll see is a model of Reality – right there in your hand.

The sphere of shaved ice arching above the rim of your paper cone represents the expansive System of existence, where everything is connected, included, and incorporated into a universal order.

Rather than a mere collection of countless elements, however, the System of Reality is a consilience – literally a “jumping together” of simpler forms into a higher pattern.

A synergistic dynamic of 1+1=3 catches the individual forms and incorporates them into this higher wholeness, not canceling their unique contributions but instead building on their diversity.

At this systemic level, Reality is not something else or a mere aggregate of things, but All of it together as One.

In its systemic nature, Reality is a “nested” affair where the cosmos includes systems of galaxies, galaxies include solar systems, solar systems include planetary systems, planetary systems include ecosystems, metabolic systems, social systems, and nervous systems. All of it together turns as One: a uni-verse.

That’s pretty cool, right?

Now, turn your attention to the paper cone in which the spherical System of Reality is supported. What’s inside is hidden from view, and yet without it the System would lack stability and substance (referring to what “stands under”). In our model of Reality, this internal dimension of depth is the Ground, the underlying essence (Greek esse = being) that generates everything into existence (Latin existere = to stand out).

Don’t think of what’s inside the cone as just “more shaved ice and syrup” – more individual forms like what you see in the visible overarching System. Deep down and inside Reality is a grounding mystery that has no tangible form, no distinct features, not even a definite location.

Ground is the “withinness” of things: the ineffable and undifferentiated power of being-itself.

Using the snow cone as our model of Reality can easily mislead us to believe that the Ground is underneath and separate from the individual forms themselves, when it is really the essence of all things – the deep down withinness of everything.

Yet another dimension of Reality is represented by the line, or transverse plane, slicing across the top of the paper cone, separating the System from the Ground – but again, only in the illustration. In Reality, System and Ground are not separate sections but complementary dimensions of existence: the higher wholeness (consilience) and deeper oneness (essence) of all things.

This third dimension is the Field where individual forms stand in proximity to each other and interact in various ways.

Interaction is the critical dynamic of the Field, where the cómponent nature of Reality is such that every individual form is a consilient System of smaller elements, but also constitutes the Ground or essence of higher and larger scales of organization.

Cómponence is a newly coined word for naming this structural principle where wholes are “made of” parts which are themselves wholes to still smaller parts. Although the term itself is not widely used, it best describes the paradigm of modern science: particles in various patterns of interaction.

Interactions in the Field occur between and among individual forms (e.g., particles) that emerge by a process of differentiation out of the Ground. Matter differentiates from energy, life differentiates from matter, consciousness differentiates from life, and self-consciousness (ego) differentiates from consciousness: At each stage in this evolutionary process, the Ground manifests in distinct forms that also separate from and engage with one another. Separation is the “space” where interactions in the Field occur.

At a certain point in the interaction of individual forms, a synergy begins to lift their engagement into a higher frequency called participation.

They are no longer just connecting or colliding with each other; an “attractor” above them starts to guide and coordinate their interactions into a pattern of higher wholeness. With this move of transcendence (literally “going beyond”), Reality pulls the interactions between and among separate forms into its System.

Eventually, as in the case of self-conscious forms known as human egos, these creative affiliations give rise to intentional communities of trust, compassion, generosity, and goodwill. The worldwide wisdom tradition of Sophia Perennis regards this up-shift from mere personal (i.e., egocentric) interests and concerns to the transpersonal dimension of shared interests and communal concerns as the critical threshold in human transformation.

So far, only rarely has our species successfully gained liberation from the bonds of egoism to enjoy the larger vision and expansive freedom of transpersonal awareness. And whenever it has happened, it’s just a matter of time before ego ambitions drag the Enlightenment Project back down the dark spiral of “What’s in it for me?”

Alas, the Enlightenment Project itself is a long journey fraught with setbacks and drop-offs that threaten to end human history in an apocalypse of mutual self-destruction.

As the shared record of spiritual wisdom – the DNA of the Enlightenment Project – Sophia Perennis has been discovering, developing, and preserving both the aspiration and the understanding of what human nature has in its potential to become.

Every generation has the opportunity to cultivate this wisdom from seeds inherited from previous generations, along with the responsibility of imparting its fruits to the generations still to come.

So you see, that snow cone in your hand is a lot more than just shaved ice and syrup in a paper cup.

Other posts on the “snow cone” theme:

A Renaissance in Our Time

As a proponent of the type of religion known as post-theism, I have devoted a large number of posts in this blog to its proper definition. We shouldn’t think of post-theism as either Atheism or Theism 2.0, since its principal concern is not with the objective existence of god but rather the liberated life “after” (post-), or on the other side of, god.

Post-theism affirms god’s central position through the middle stages in the sequence of faith development (from the research of James Fowler, these are the stages of mythic-literal, synthetic-conventional, and individuative-reflective faith). But it regards this god as a mythopoetic metaphor of the Present Mystery of Reality, of the Ground of Being or being-itself, and not a being separate and apart from us.

This seeming denial of god’s objective existence has gotten post-theism labeled and dismissed as just another updated (2.0) version of atheism, when it is really unconcerned with the question of god’s existence but seeks rather to interpret the meaning of god in relation to the evolution of spirituality and faith development.

In fact, an insistence on the priority of god’s metaphorical meaning over god’s objective existence is not a denial but a necessary realignment of god as symbol.

Ever since the first mythmakers, humans have known that God (uppercase G: the Present Mystery) is within us – as well as between, among, all around, and beyond us. The gods (lowercase g: mythopoetic metaphors of God) were intended and understood as imaginated, personified, and fictional representations of this essential-universal Mystery.

No human ever encountered these beings in the real world (i.e., Reality) – nor did they expect to. That is, until theism lost its focus and styled itself the defender of god’s existence against the rising wave of empirical science and secular humanism.

Regardless, a direct encounter with god has remained only an expectation, conveniently postponed until after death when the believer anticipates seeing god on his throne in heaven.

From that moment onwards, theistic religion became increasingly regressive, otherworldly, and irrelevant. The focus of piety shifted more to repetition compulsions like cross-referencing Bible studies, reciting creeds with the standing congregation, and participating in ritual commemorations of biblical scenes from long ago.

Post-theism comes about either by the normal course of faith development, or through crisis and confusion generated inside the insulated echo chamber of theism. It is fully accepting of the prospect of living in the theistic environment of symbols, stories, sacraments, and sanctuaries – as long as these are appreciated for their transparency to the Mystery within, between, among, around and beyond, and not allowed to become idols in its place.

As I see it, post-theism would ideally find a hospitable and symbol-rich habitat in theism, serving to keep its role-play game honest and properly grounded.

My own experience as a professional pastor in a conservative mainline Protestant tradition of Christian theism for 15 years confirmed a general openness to the Mystery, with a correlated interest in looking through god to the Present Mystery (or real Presence) of God, beyond names and forms.

Unfortunately, while I enjoyed some freedom to explore this Mystery with members of my congregation, our denomination was already closing down around its confessional standards of orthodoxy and against the larger environmental forces of pluralism, secularism, and globalism which had been challenging the tradition for decades to meet this new reality with a relevant spirituality and faith.

This helped me appreciate post-theism in a new light: as not just another stage in the development of religion, but as a renaissance-in-waiting inside theism for the time when conditions are right for it to awaken.

As long as theism maintains its protected membership of believers, the insights of a post-theistic spirituality may surface only intermittently in private devotion and small group discussions. Theistic ideology can sample and digest only small doses at a time, however, which allows it to recover its orthodox composure between such excursions into the Present Mystery.

When the number of waking post-theists reaches critical mass, a more formal censure and discipline may be in order. And when that conspiracy of pluralism, secularism, and globalism outside the doors confronts the tribal morality with its diversity of values, views, and ways of life, conditions are primed for a major transformation.

This very concurrent crisis of internal breakthroughs and external break-ins has erupted in episodes of post-theistic renaissance throughout the history of higher culture.

Jeremiah, Siddhartha, Mencius, Jesus, al-Ḥallāj, Johannes (“Meister”) Eckhart, Martin Luther, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Paul Tillich, and Martin Luther King, Jr. (among many others) charted new frontiers in post-theistic spirituality. Whether by the mystical-inward or ethical-outward path, each challenged his fellow believers and an entire generation to drop beneath or go beyond their tribal gods for an experience of the Present Mystery of Reality.

All of them refused to take the gods of their traditions literally, but instead they broke with tradition – or rather sought to break their traditions open – to a deeper (mystical) and larger (ethical) concept of God.

For the Second Temple Jewish tradition of early Roman times, it was Jesus who challenged his contemporary Jews to find God – what he called the power or kingdom of God – outside both the Temple precincts and their Hebrew lineage, as well as in the reality under their very feet, like a buried treasure (cf Matthew 13:44).

Because the entire Temple structure was designed on the idea that God (imaginated in the Hebrew god, Yahweh) stands apart from humans and must be satisfied with sacrifices before he can forgive sins, Jesus’ gospel (“good news”) of God’s unconditional forgiveness and radical inclusion of all people in holy community was rightfully regarded as a threat to Jewish identity and religion.

The early Christian movement was born out of this post-theistic vision of Jesus, picking up his insight to the point of identifying love as the very heart and essence of God (1 John 4:16). Although it was the ecclesiastical organization and political mission of the institutionalized Church that would soon enough spread Christianity so effectively around the globe, it was this post-theistic renaissance ignited by the life, message, and ministry of Jesus that got the whole thing going.

But just that quickly, Jesus’ vision faded from the Christian religion, behind the shutters and locks of a protected membership.

Many Christians today who are post-theistic in their spirituality, mystically grounded and ethically committed to the work of genuine community, have left the Church or were excommunicated because their faith (Fowler: conjunctive and universalizing) didn’t fit inside the boxes of Christian orthodoxy.

Others remain inside, finding their theology enriched by a fresh infusion of Mystery, nurturing the growth and progress of faith in their fellow believers as opportunities arise.

They are looking for, finding, or forming their own communities – I call them “Wisdom Circles” – where the Mystery of God and the meaning of god, the liberated life and a more perfect union, are explored in creative dialogue together.

Stuck in the Moral Frame

Do you remember when as a child you believed that god watched over you from the ceiling and monsters waited under your bed? When garden fairies enchanted the backyard and goblins lurked in the basement? These invisible beings “imaginated” your generalized intuition of Reality as imbued with conscious personality, agency, and intention.

It didn’t matter that you never encountered such phantasmagoria in the so-called real world, since that wasn’t where they were centered anyway.

They were magical forms conjured in your imagination as a more or less spontaneous reflex of your sense of living in a web of communion with all things. The vibrational sympathy in your body with everything going on around you welled up to the surface of your conscious awareness in these imaginary beings – watching over you, waiting for you, activating wonder and warning you away from dangerous places.

The god who looked down from your bedroom ceiling was not the construct of theological orthodoxy. Later on, if you happened to grow up in a household of religiously affiliated taller powers, this animistic notion of god would be incorporated into the orthodox-theistic doctrine of the deity worshipped in a tradition of true believers.

In the course of your faith development, that orthodox costume of god would gradually be slipped over the imaginated power from early childhood and come to life.

This forward shift in faith development corresponds to the progress of religious sensibility from animism to theism, from a body-centered and nature-based spirituality to one that is ego-centered and based in the society of your tribe – referring to the protected membership of a shared social identity. An important part of this shared identity is the deity, as a common focus of authority, inspiration, and worship.

Concerns of this stage in faith development are largely understood inside a moral frame that defines a “good person” and “right action.” The deity of theism plays the roles of law-giver, arbitrator of right and wrong, and final judge who metes out rewards and punishments not just at the end of life but all along the way.

The stories by this time have scaled-out from backyard garden fairytales to folk legends and epic myths centering the tribe in a creation history of god’s design.

To say that tribal life and its theistic orientation are ego-centered simply means that your lived experience is now firmly stationed in the moral frame and its focus on personal identity – your own, that of others, those who have departed (departure itself is a newer concept central in many theistic salvation stories), and of the deity upon whom Freud fashioned his notion of the superego.

To be ego-centered is simply to be conscious of yourself, recognized by others as belonging to a tribe of like-minded persons.

If you came up in a religiously affiliated household of taller powers, your background conditioning served to situate your identity in the moral frame of your tribe, instilled with the desire to be good and belong (notice the halo above your ego in my diagram).

A closely guarded secret among the tribal leadership acknowledges its god as a metaphor and not a being at large in the real world. Some have forgotten, it is true, or were never let in on the secret to begin with. (At a time of biblical literalism, many seminary graduates today are reinforced in the belief that god is out there, up there – somewhere.) The great disservice to theism and faith development lies in their dogmatic insistence on god’s objective existence.

Under their oppressive influence, tribal members come to adopt the same unfounded (and experientially disassociated) belief. Thanks to them, your own intuition of god as an imaginated form representing the deeper communion and intention of Reality likely died inside the orthodox costume of your tribe’s patron deity.

To understand (a lowercase) god as a mythopoetic metaphor of (the uppercase) God – as an imaginated form of the present Mystery – is the insight that carries faith development across the distinct frames of religion: from animism, through theism, and into a post-theistic spirituality.

Sadly, however, many (many) theistic true believers today are stuck in the moral frame, closed off to the Mystery and clutching their idols in an unsettled state of doubt and fear, overcompensating with an aggressive conviction and ambitious plans to convert the rest of the world to their “truth.”

Something inside them knows they are clutching a counterfeit, but what else can they do?

You may be one of the millions who have elected to save faith by leaving their religion. As our current era moves more fully into a socially diverse, morally pluralistic, and globally connected way of life, the squeezing pressure of a moral frame that will not accommodate such a diversity of views, values, and lifestyles soon becomes intolerable.

The choice becomes either one of a fundamentalist regression to a set of practically irrelevant convictions, as in contemporary Evangelical Christianity and radical Islamism, or a courageous (if somewhat desperate) exodus from moral and intellectual bondage to spiritual freedom.

The frame of religion that awaits the refugee from dogmatic theism is named ‘post-theism’ for its conscious and communal cultivation of faith “after god” – that is to say, after taking leave of the lowercase god and its protected membership of true believers.

Of course, this advancing shift from theism to post-theism can be fairly trouble-free – as it naturally would be if theism could honor and contemplate its god as a (and not the only) mythopoetic metaphor of the present Mystery of Reality (i.e., the uppercase God) and help its members through the moral frame to a more liberated life.

A post-theistic faith and spirituality is properly identified as mystical for its acknowledgement of the present Mystery as beyond name and form.

You are invited from an ego-centered to a soul-centered experience.

The present Mystery’s ineffability is such that no conceptual labels can stick to it and no doctrinal boxes can contain it. True to the term “mystery,” its experience has the effect of evoking wonder, astonishment, tranquility, and awed silence (muein = to close the mouth) – all at once.

Post-theistic faith and spirituality is not merely an “inner” experience, however. With an awareness – very likely a dim memory from your early childhood with the backyard garden fairies – of the deeper oneness in all things, the liberated mind is drawn farther out and upward into a higher wholeness where All is One and We’re All in This Together (two universal principles of spiritual wisdom).

Moral values of tribal life break open to the ethical ideals of genuine community. In some cases, a guilty conscience is intentionally transcended for “conscientious guilt,” when you know deepest down that welcoming the stranger and loving your enemy are truly the right thing to do, even though it violates the morality of your tribe and puts you at risk of getting kicked out of the club.

In the diagram above, the arc of a human lifespan is divided into unequal trimesters, with childhood ending at age 10, a subsequent fifty years (or so) of adulthood ending at age 60, consummated by a period of elderhood or the “age of wisdom.”

Life in the Egg

Do you know why you’re here? Granted, ‘why’ questions can be notoriously difficult to answer, so let’s start even more basic: Do you know how you got here?

Even that question assumes some understanding of what ‘you’ – or more properly “I” (Ego) – and ‘here’ refer to.

For goodness sake, is there any point in going further?

Actually, the perennial wisdom tradition of human spirituality known as Sophia Perennis insists that getting to the bottom of this apparent riddle is the very way to salvation.

Salvation here does not refer to an escape or deliverance from this life, but rather to the fulfillment of your human nature in a life that is wise, loving, fearless and free.

So, the question of why you are here is asking something very profound indeed.

Let’s begin with where you probably think you are, which is in the world. The diagram above depicts your world as egg-shaped and labels it your “quality world.” William Glasser coined the term to name not what we sometimes call the real world or Reality, but rather the personalized intangible environment of values, memories, ideas, beliefs, dreams, meanings and semantic associations that forms around your identity in the process of becoming somebody special.

Your quality world is egg-shaped to help you understand it as a kind of enclosure that contains and separates your self-conscious identity, or Ego, from Reality.

The consciousness generated from the vitality of your body is wide open to Reality. But to become aware of itself, or self-conscious, consciousness must be looped back upon itself, reflected in the hall of mirrors called your quality world.

There are other persons in your quality world, but they have their own quality worlds, so it’s more accurate to picture you by yourself inside your egg. Early on, these others, particularly the taller powers of your parents, teachers, coaches, and other adults, assisted in the construction of your personal identity by blocking, coaxing, training, and rewarding the gradual domestication of your body’s vital intelligence and animal instincts.

Your taller powers provided and assigned Roles for you to play on the social performance stage. The Roles (think of the costumes and masks worn by theater actors) that you most fully identified with became your identity – who you are on stage and in the company of other actors. A Role is designed to satisfy two essential needs of Ego identity, for recognition and belonging.

Others identify who you are and what part you play (recognition); you are included in the role-play and its quality world (belonging).

A Role is really nothing more than a convention, a put-on, a social construct of identity. Back in the early days of Greek and Roman theater it was called a persona, referring to the character mask through which (per) an actor spoke (sona) his or her part in the play.

This is likely what informed your quick answer at the beginning, to the question of why you’re here. You immediately reported to your quality world and the Roles that define who you are and where you belong. Of course, you didn’t realize how much of it is not even real – not Reality.

The self-conscious actor of your Ego and the personas it inhabits on the social performance stage inside your quality world – it’s all an illusion. And to the degree you believe the illusion is real, it quickly becomes a delusion.

If you have heard this notion before, that the world is an illusion, it’s important to understand that “the world” is your quality world and not Reality or the so-called real world. This semantic confusion between world and Reality has too often prevented the deeper insight from breaking the egg, as it were, for genuine enlightenment.

Reality is real, your world is not. This is why these terms are further distinguished in the diagram as ultimate reality (or Reality, the really real) and your quality world.

Following upon this moment of critical disillusionment, of seeing through the illusion of personal identity, Sophia Perennis goes on to address dimensions of Being that had been concealed behind the (illusory) walls of your quality world.

In the above illustration, the self-conscious actor of your Ego is transected by a vertical axis of arrows, with one arrow breaking upward to ultimate reality through the boundary of your quality world. Another arrow breaks downward through the body and into the grounding mystery (or Ground) of Being.

Ultimate reality (or Reality) is the really real beyond your labels, concepts, beliefs, stories, and theories. It’s not quite accurate to say that Reality is beyond your mind, since it includes your mind and all that you are. Truth is the degree of transparency in those various forms of meaning (labels, concepts, beliefs, etc.), focusing your mind through meaning on the Reality beyond.

A loan word from Sophia Perennis and used in the physical sciences is “universe”: the unified totality of existence. The universe is not, for it cannot be, an object of study since there is no objective distance between your mind and Reality that might lock it down and put it in perspective. It is an intuition of your spiritual intelligence, which, at the upper end of the vertical axis, is named Spirit.

In myth and poetry, Spirit is frequently depicted in metaphors of freedom, flight (e.g., birds and butterflies), fire, light, and wind (also breath). Its distinguishing feature is transcendence: always reaching out, moving through, and going beyond the limits of your world.

In every culture we can find the fascinating mythic motif of apocalypse, where the world (exactly in the sense of a quality world) breaks down and is burned away to reveal the Eternal Reality beyond – named God (with the uppercase ‘G’) and role-played in the myths by the various gods of religion.

Breaking below your separate center of self-conscious personal identity, a second arrow traces the descending path of consciousness deeper into your Body’s lifeforce and the grounding mystery of Being.

If the upward path of Spirit transcends and includes, this inner path of Soul releases and dissolves away the distinctions in the differences that separate things and thoughts, until all that remains is a quiet, boundless, present awareness. Soul is not “inside” or separate from the Body, but rather rests at the inner wellspring of consciousness itself.

In the etymological sense of the word, the ground of Being and the Soul are mysteries, which means “to close the mouth” in awed silence before something that cannot be named or known. They are ineffable, and yet, the universe itself and all that you see is a manifestation of this mystery.

The human spirit knows the way through. Maybe you can relax a little. Set aside your mistaken identity and just be what you are.

Our Longing for Perfect Love

One of the deep and universal principles of spiritual wisdom states that the wellbeing and fulfillment we seek in life cannot, and will never, be found in this world. Many religions misunderstand this principle to mean that our salvation lies elsewhere or awaits us in the afterlife, in another world beyond this one.

Any interpretation that advises us to renounce the world and fix our devotion on supernatural, heavenly, or otherworldly things is a contradiction of wisdom’s vision. Tragically, although most religions originated in this vision and its profound insights into the nature of Reality and our human promise, too many of them, and too soon, lost its compass and got distracted from the path into deathtraps of dogmatism, conviction, and power politics.

The grand vision of the spiritual wisdom tradition, better known as the Perennial Philosophy or Sophia Perennis, honors the human spirit in each of us as a force of creative freedom that seeks, desires, and drives our quest for wellbeing and fulfillment. This quest is frequently frustrated by the lesser ambitions of our ego, the unique and separate “I” who is busy being somebody special and chasing after happiness.

Spiritual wisdom invites and challenges us neither to renounce nor glorify the ego, but to reach out from its personal center for a more genuine connection with others.

Our Longing for Perfect Love

Love has been a human fascination probably for as long as we’ve been reflecting on things that matter most in life. The early Christian movement was so bold as to even identify it with God – not in terms of a god who is loving, but as the supreme Reality behind, within, and beyond everything (“God IS love,” 1 John 4:8).

In its subsequent history, the Christian Church would abandon this profound insight into the divine nature of love for a realpolitik that could justify its ambitions for world domination. Perhaps it is in the very design dynamics of organized religion, that the love of power in hierarchical authority should take the upper hand to the power of love in basic human fellow-feeling.

Jesus himself lived in devotion to the power of love. In the end, however, it was the love of power at work in the political ideology and religious orthodoxy of those who resisted his message that put him away, launching the early messianic movement in his name.

In other posts I refer to this ideal power of love in human relationships as “genuine” love, with its connotations of authentic and real, distinguishing bona fide love from cheap knockoffs and sugary substitutes. Here I am using the adjective “perfect,” but not in the sense of something absolute, transcendent, or meticulously airbrushed of every imperfection.

The word “perfect” has surprisingly little to nothing in its original meaning of the flawless ideal, but rather refers to what is finished or brought to completion. Perfect love, then, is love that has been cultivated into the full flower of relational harmony and communal wholeness. It is decidedly not the “perfect partner” contemplated in mythology, conjured in our dreams, and pursued on dating apps.

There is no perfect partner; and yet, perfect love can be nurtured between and among very imperfect persons.

Once again, the principal difference in these competing concepts of love has to do with whether our perspective is centered in the (personal) ego or the (human) spirit. Our longing for perfect love is an aspiration of the human spirit, anchored by an intuition of essential oneness in the depths of Being itself. This deeper oneness is axiomatic in the spiritual wisdom tradition of Sophia Perennis.

All things originated and are presently rooted in this grounding mystery of Being. Which also means that everything is connected, not just externally by the logistics of cause and effect, but internally through the more subtle vibrational field of communion.

In fact, communion has been our experience from the beginning, far below and prior to self-conscious awareness.

With the rise into ego consciousness, this intuition of communion was lost – symbolized in the myths as a fall or exile from an original paradisal state. Rather than interpreting the tethered detachment of self-consciousness from the deeper animate consciousness of the body as a move in the wrong direction, however, we can appreciate it as the necessary precondition of just about everything uniquely and profoundly human.

Ego provides the position from whence conscious awareness can drop into inner peace, rise to higher purpose, probe for deeper meaning, and connect in perfect love.

Ego formation opens up the frontier of interpersonal relationships – which, it should be obvious, are not possible without egoic personalities – and it is here that the human spirit’s longing for perfect love can find fulfillment.

Perfect (complete, finished, and fully actualized) love is where the communion of deeper oneness is refracted though individual persons and across the divide of what makes one unique and different from another, transforming it into the distinct frequencies of compassion, kindness, generosity, goodwill, trust, fidelity and forgiveness.

Such a flourishing of perfect love remains only a spiritual longing if it happens that the egos on stage are neurotically insecure, codependently attached, and consequently incapable of transcending their individual fixations for the higher wholeness of genuine community. It’s here that we find all those counterfeit forms of love, so many lures on the hook of self-indulgence.

The spiritual mystery is this process whereby the deeper oneness of communion transforms into the higher wholeness of community, facilitated by the “conductor” of a stable, centered, balanced and self-transcending ego.

The perfect love of community is only possible to the degree we can get over ourselves.

Other Posts in This Series:

Our Longing for Deeper Meaning

One of the deep and universal principles of spiritual wisdom states that the wellbeing and fulfillment we seek in life cannot, and will never, be found in this world. Many religions misunderstand this principle to mean that our salvation lies elsewhere or awaits us in the afterlife, in another world beyond this one.

Any interpretation that advises us to renounce the world and fix our devotion on supernatural, heavenly, or otherworldly things is a contradiction of wisdom’s vision. Tragically, although most religions originated in this vision and its profound insights into the nature of Reality and our human promise, too many of them, and too soon, lost its compass and got distracted from the path into deathtraps of dogmatism, conviction, and power politics.

The grand vision of the spiritual wisdom tradition, better known as the Perennial Philosophy or Sophia Perennis, honors the human spirit in each of us as a force of creative freedom that seeks, desires, and drives our quest for wellbeing and fulfillment. This quest is frequently frustrated by the lesser ambitions of our ego, the unique and separate “I” who is busy being somebody special and chasing after happiness.

Spiritual wisdom invites and challenges us neither to renounce nor glorify the ego, but to part its veil of illusion and see things as they really are.

The Path to Deeper Meaning

Like being, “meaning” (as we will be using it here) is a gerund word-form that got its start in reference to an action or process “carried on” (the literally definition of gerund). The -ing gives it away, in this case, and calls into question our usual habit of regarding meaning (as well as being) as a noun, a peculiar kind of object that we might catch in a net and tack to our pinboard.

If meaning is not an object, then what sense is there in searching for it? As if we might dig it up and drop it into our travel bag for a more meaningful life. “Man’s Search for Meaning” (V. Frankl) is a popular trope; everyone wants it and can’t seem to get enough.

The idea that meaning is something out there just waiting to be found likely has its roots in religion.

As god’s creation (so goes the myth), the whole cosmos appeared out of a divine intention and now stands before us as a work of art, imbued with meaning, as it were. For many religious believers, the universe is meaningful because god meant for it to exist. The created order is a product of god’s design and everything in it has a place, a purpose, and a meaning.

Meaning is out there and all around us; we just need to find it.

With the rise of science, this religious sensibility came under suspicion. Setting aside the tendency in theistic religion toward fanatical forms of devotion, its dogmatic insistence on the literal existence of god – arising historically as a self-defensive reaction to the methodological skepticism of science and the spread of a secular worldview – has had the effect of pushing underground the more essential concerns of faith, spirituality, and the nurturing of human aspirations.

Scientific skepticism (skeptos refers to what can be seen, touched, or at least measured) does not find meaning in the universe, certainly not as an inherent value added by a god whose existence is unsupported by the evidence or required in theory.

Inside and underneath consciousness are organic processes of the lifeforce; inside and underneath the lifeforce are electrochemical, elementary, and quantum forces – but no meaning.

It just doesn’t show up. For this reason, meaning is neither a substantial property nor a natural feature – certainly not a supernatural feature – of the universe.

In the last 150 years or so, Western philosophy and psychology have developed on the discovery that meaning, in the form of ideas, values, beliefs, ideologies, and worldviews, is a human construction. Known as constructivism, this theoretical approach now informs everything from advertising and marketing, to religion and politics, to intercultural learning and community organizing, to mental health therapy and social influencing.

The constructed nature of meaning shines new light on our human susceptibility to superstition, so-called “alternative facts,” brainwashing, conspiracy thinking, and truth distortions in the social media echo chamber.

If meaning is something we just “make up” (literally construct), and if god is no longer in the picture as supreme arbitrator of what’s true or false, then those with the largest networks and strongest amplifiers will decide what the masses believe.

For millenniums now, the spiritual wisdom tradition of Sophia Perennis has propounded on the insight that meaning is in our minds and not in Reality. The vast and enveloping system of worldviews, mythologies, knowledge and beliefs – including those mythological gods and even scientific knowledge – is a massive projection out of the human mind.

As compared to the present mystery of Reality, it is all an illusion; and to the degree we take it for Reality, a delusion.

The instant we put a name on something and give it a definition; tell a story or conceive a theory to explain it; grasp it with our mental concepts and file it away in the archives of knowledge – in that very first instant, our mind drapes the Mystery with a veil of meaning. Indeed, with each step we are adding more veils and more layers of meaning between our mind and Reality.

This can go on until the drapery of meaning becomes so dense and opaque, that the Light of The Real no longer gets through.

It is our ego’s need for security, identity, recognition and belonging that drives us farther behind these veils of meaning. The insecurity of standing apart from the body (psychologically speaking) and alone in the middle of Everything makes of meaning a comforting illusion. Having lost sight of The Real, we grow increasingly vulnerable to broken logic and gullible to baseless claims. Before long, we are so far into delusion that we’re ready to believe anything.

The human spirit cannot live in delusion, however, and it regards the illusion of meaning as something to be penetrated and swept aside in the interest of touching Reality.

Deeper meaning is not more meaning; indeed, more meaning only has the effect of further separating our mind from the present mystery of Reality. According to Sophia Perennis, we have a choice between more Reality or more meaning.

The seduction of meaning is obvious. On the other hand, a relentless pursuit of Reality leads to self-authenticity, personal honesty, social credibility, vocational clarity, and creative freedom.

Our longing for deeper meaning in life compels us to always look through meaning to the present mystery of Reality; and if our veils are blocking the Light, to take them down or push them aside for the sake of seeing and touching the really real for the first time once again.

Reality is ineffably perfect and perfectly meaningless – just as It is.

Other Posts in This Series:

Our Longing for Higher Purpose

One of the deep and universal principles of spiritual wisdom states that the wellbeing and fulfillment we seek in life cannot, and will never, be found in this world. Many religions misunderstand this principle to mean that our salvation lies elsewhere or awaits us in the afterlife, in another world beyond this one.

Any interpretation that advises us to renounce the world and fix our devotion on supernatural, heavenly, or otherworldly things is a contradiction of wisdom’s vision. Tragically, although most religions originated in this vision and its profound insights into the nature of Reality and our human promise, too many of them, and too soon, lost its compass and got distracted from the path into deathtraps of dogmatism, conviction, and power politics.

The grand vision of the spiritual wisdom tradition, better known as the Perennial Philosophy or Sophia Perennis, honors the human spirit in each of us as a force of creative freedom that seeks, desires, and drives our quest for wellbeing and fulfillment. This quest is frequently frustrated by the lesser ambitions of our ego, the unique and separate “I” who is busy being somebody special and chasing after happiness.

Spiritual wisdom invites and challenges us neither to renounce nor glorify the ego, but to use its ‘lens of intention’ to live with a higher purpose in mind.

The Path of Higher Purpose

With the breakthrough to ego consciousness, our human species entered the illusion of having a separate existence from the rest of Reality. Paradoxically, the transformation that pitched our self-conscious identity into exile also, and in the same moment, opened new frontiers of spiritual awareness and experience.

Whereas the historical religions have tended to dwell on the “fall” and “loss” associated with our exile, the spiritual wisdom tradition has been focused on exploring these frontiers for a fuller understanding of human potential, wellbeing, and fulfillment.

From the perspective of Sophia Perennis, the achievement of ego consciousness and an ego-based identity is not yet the high point in human evolution, but neither was it an existential tragedy as many religions claim.

A self-conscious personal identity (ego) is only the penultimate step or stage on the way to what we are intended to become.

If regarded as the ultimate step, the one completing our long story of human evolution, then it certainly is a type of tragedy. The consequent experiences of alienation, estrangement, loneliness, anxiety and depression cannot be the “higher purpose” of our existence.

But again, in contrast to much popular religious doctrine, our salvation – literally our healing and wholeness – will not come by either extinguishing or “saving” the ego, but rather by stepping through its illusion of a separate existence into harmony and communion with What Is.

In the language of Western psychology, we are here talking about the faculty of Will. Both human evolution and child development take a decisive turn – the “breakthrough” mentioned above – as an individual learns to restrain the animal impulses and primal instincts of the body, in the interest (or “for the purpose”) of adjusting behavior to the social landscape of tribal expectations and its moral frame.

By sublimating these “wild” (i.e., natural) impulses into a “domesticated” and well-mannered way of behaving, the Will facilitates a critical crossover of the threshold leading to a uniquely human experience.

The tribe directs this crossover/breakthrough by providing various roles that serve to define and shape how a social insider ought to behave. Over time, with consistent practice and discipline, consciousness becomes self-conscious as this or that social role: “I am” the role, the one who others expect to see, who has a place on the stage and a part to play.

The actor (ego) identifies with its persona (or personifies the role) and therewith becomes somebody special.

To make an important distinction, while the emergence of ego (self-) consciousness marks a shift from compulsive urgency in the body to moral intention on the performance stage of society, this is not yet the “higher purpose” contemplated in the spiritual wisdom tradition. With Nietzsche, we might say that moral intention (and morality generally) is still a captive of tribal values and its command structure of obedience.

Higher purpose involves a second-order liberation, a “transvaluation of values” by an intention toward creative authority, genuine community, and human fulfillment.

Through this lens, the vision and teachings of mystics and prophets the world over and throughout history can be seen as a single, transcendent ideal of the human spirit. It also helps us better understand the inevitable resistance and condemnation from the side of those tribal moralities and their imperative of obedience.

To wake up from the consensus trance, stepping through the veil of personal identity and into the higher wholeness of unitive consciousness – well, that can’t be tolerated on the performance stage where everyone is expected to stick to the script. This is why many of our spiritually brighter lights in history have so often suffered persecution and death at the hands of “righteous” true believers. The sentence is characteristically carried out “in god’s name.”

Having some sense of this human aspiration for higher purpose, the religions will typically personify it as “god’s plan for my life,” requiring a believer’s complete obedient submission. When it is “god’s will” that devotees behave and believe according to some orthodox prescription, it should be clear that we are still stuck in the role-play – however holy and righteous it happens to be.

Because the religions in modern times devolved into protected memberships of moral obedience, the human longing for higher purpose has gotten hamstrung and pinned down by something that ought to have been preparing it to fly.

Other Posts in This Series:

Our Longing for Inner Peace

One of the deep and universal principles of spiritual wisdom states that the wellbeing and fulfillment we seek in life cannot, and will never, be found in this world. Many religions misunderstand this principle to mean that our salvation lies elsewhere or awaits us in the afterlife, in another world beyond this one.

Any interpretation that advises us to renounce the world and fix our devotion on supernatural, heavenly, or otherworldly things is a contradiction of wisdom’s vision. Tragically, although most religions originated in this vision and its profound insights into the nature of Reality and our human promise, too many of them, and too soon, lost its compass and got distracted from the path into deathtraps of dogmatism, conviction, and power politics.

The grand vision of the spiritual wisdom tradition, better known as the Perennial Philosophy or Sophia Perennis, honors the human spirit in each of us as a force of creative freedom that seeks, desires, and drives our quest for wellbeing and fulfillment. This quest is frequently frustrated by the lesser ambitions of our ego, the unique and separate “I” who is busy being somebody special and chasing after happiness.

Spiritual wisdom invites and challenges us neither to renounce nor glorify the ego, but to go beneath the ground and beyond the horizon of its merely personal concerns.

The Path to Inner Peace

Wisdom tells us that “world peace” will only come about as each of us cultivates inner peace, a peace deep within ourselves, in the very ground of our being. To the degree we are not at peace within ourselves, we will be at odds and in conflict with others and the world around us. Like all other animals with nervous systems, humans perceive and react to what’s going on “out there” through the filter of how we are “in here.”

The inward path and spiritual aspiration for inner peace have been significantly distorted and misunderstood in religion’s slide down the slippery slope into metaphysics – or we should more accurately say, into metaphysical realism. Metaphysics generally refers to the study of essence (being) and the inner nature of Nature, Life, and Mind. Being, or be-ing (the power-to-be), manifests itself in each existing thing and throughout the manifold order of beings.

Metaphysical realism assumes, and often dogmatically claims, that this “ground of being” is something else, something other and apart from the realm of individual beings. Erase every being in existence and the ground of being would continue to exist. It’s an easy equation to make at this point, where this separately existing Ground is the god of religion who created all things in the Beginning, called together his elect and established the one true religion, and will rescue his devout believers to heaven in the End.

A danger in all mythologies of this sort lies in our susceptibility to become blind to their metaphorical depth and transparency and take them literally as referring to actual things, to real metaphysical entities: metaphysical realism.

When it speaks of the ground of being, or the grounding mystery within, Sophia Perennis stays true to experience and counsels the meditator to let consciousness descend past the zone of ego commentary, fantasy, and conviction. For it is only from ego’s position of separate identity that anything is regarded as something else and essentially other, which predisposes ego to regard the grounding mystery also as other, as some thing to think about, talk about, and keep at a distance.

The path to inner peace is an interior descent of the sentient life and animate consciousness of our body. It requires that we allow awareness to drop away from ego, from its managed identity and personal world at the surface.

Because the process is not about ego’s descent of the grounding mystery of being, but rather a release and surrender of all the attachments, personas, ambitions, beliefs, and thoughts that compress to form its self-conscious center of identity, the inward path to peace is “egolytic,” making progress by gradually dissolving the ego (the suffix -lysis means to loosen and disintegrate).

The human spirit is not an antagonist of the body. Metaphysical realism has promoted the familiar dualism of an immortal (pure) soul temporarily trapped inside a mortal (corrupt) body, but the spiritual wisdom traditions don’t agree. Beneath the separate center of who we are (ego and identity) is the grounding mystery of what we are: a human manifestation of being.

With each deeper stage in our descent of the Ground, the “container” of awareness doesn’t get smaller but instead expands to larger and larger (ad infinitum) horizons.

A supreme paradox of inner peace is that, as our human spirit descends by the inner path to the grounding mystery deep within, rather than retreating into an isolated solitude, consciousness opens out to a boundless presence where All is One.

Now the creative work toward world peace has a chance.

Other Posts in This Series:

Thresholds

In Higher Nature I explored the major stages of human development as they correlate to our experience of wellbeing and fulfillment over a lifetime.

Wellbeing is a more stage-specific value of how aligned our development is to where we ought to be at that point, while fulfillment measures our degree of self-actualization with respect to the Human Ideal, referring to the higher aim of our nature.

By way of a quick review, the major stages and developmental standards are as follows:

  • Infancy, early childhood, and the standard of animal faith
  • Late childhood, adolescence, and the standard of ego strength
  • Maturity, adulthood, and the standard of creative authority

Human fulfillment is a cumulative effect of these three stage-specific developmental standards building on each other over the course of a lifetime.

In tracking this upward growth in wellbeing toward fulfillment, I identified a deeper dimension called the ground, where animal faith is first established. At the upper end is a higher dimension called a world, the “house of meaning” suspended in a mythology of stories that we compose in exercising our creative authority.

Ground (or the grounding mystery) and world (or the quality world) are thus the deeper and higher dimensions that set the range for our developing personality. At its center is the ego, an executive faculty that serves the critical functions of managing self-control, personal freedom, and social responsibility. With the achievement of ego strength we are able to cooperate in and contribute to the conventional life of our tribe.

It’s important to understand that our ego is in large part a cultural construct, along with our personality and the various identities we are assigned to play on the performance stages of society. (Person and personality derive from the Latin persona, referring to the character mask of a theater actor – the identity that he or she inhabits and personifies on stage.)

Human wellbeing and fulfillment develop and evolve inside this uniquely human realm of experience: supported from within by the body’s animal faith, and sheltered inside a house of meaning made of stories – a world spun by our own creative authority.

Whereas we have appreciated the significance of faith for thousands of years, as evidenced by its central value in all religions, the discovery that humans make meaning by telling stories and creating worlds came much later, with the dawn of science.

Obviously we had been exercising our creative authority long before that, but only as a few skeptics (so called for their stubborn commitment to sense-based knowledge) started to realize that there is something outside and beyond our worlds, naming it the “real world” or Reality, did things really begin to shift.

Around the same time in history another class of explorers, called mystics for their introspective fascination with the inner mystery of consciousness and its ground, discovered a still deeper mystery below its threshold.

As these contemplative psychonauts descended the interior depths of consciousness – starting by detaching from the self-conscious center of identity (i.e., the ego) up on the stage and unwinding through the visceral rhythms of the body – they came to a dark edge beyond which awareness cannot “see.”

Some named it emptiness, nothingness, the Abyss: that which takes back what is given from the ground.

What we might call the curriculum of mystical spirituality cultivated the contemplative skills of letting go, dropping out, falling away, and coming to Nothing. The benefits of this regular practice for life back on the stage include a profound humility (from humus, ground), a more lighthearted engagement with life, greater resilience through hardship and loss, and a spirit of unconditional forgiveness for oneself and others.

The revolutionary discoveries of skeptics and mystics, subsequently developed into the complementary enterprises of science and spirituality, would come to present major challenges to conventional life in the “house” on its “ground.” And because religion, at least for most of its history, was the cultural institution that had stewardship of the house on its ground, these challenges came against it the hardest.

Many of the dysfunctions and deformations of contemporary religion have their origin in its resistance and aggressive refusal to validate the breakthroughs of science and spirituality.

Today’s religions still have little room or patience for skeptics and mystics.

Once Reality is exposed beyond our world – or in another way of saying it, as our world is parted like a veil on a “real world” devoid of meaning – the personal and social responsibility in our creative authority as storytellers is magnified a hundredfold.

At the very least it reminds us that the “truth” of our world, in the stories we tell and believe, can no longer be merely a matter of how much they mean to us and how they make us feel. With this newly discovered relativity of meaning – different worlds carry different meanings – truth now becomes a matter of how transparent or reality-oriented our words, stories, and worlds happen to be.

Beyond this postmodern and newfound commitment to truth-telling, our responsibility as world creators also challenges us to create worlds that are more hospitable, humane, and inclusive.

Instead of competing with each other over whose world is god’s word – or whose god is the true or only god – we can devote our creative authority to the communal work of making our world a place where those coming up and others coming in can know they are safe, loved, and belong.

Higher Nature

Where are you on the human journey? I’m not asking how far into the journey you happen to be or how close to the end you are in chronological terms. This isn’t a question of what you have experienced or how much of the world you have seen. The human journey refers to an evolutionary path whereon each of us is discovering or waking up to our higher nature as a human being.

So where are you?

Obviously, it is impossible to answer that question without some understanding of what our higher human nature is or might be. In this post I will offer just such a standard model which can be used to assess where we are individually, as well as where we are as a collective average across our species today.

My objective is not diagnostic but inspirational: As we get a better sense of where we are on this path to becoming fully human, we will have a clearer view of what is possible – of what still lies within us and ahead of us.

The basic ideas in my standard model are both borrowed and new.

  • From the philosophy of George Santayana I’ve taken the concept of animal faith, defined a bit differently but still essentially the same as in his thought.
  • From the mainstream of self psychology comes the notion of ego strength, a critical achievement in personality development and identity formation.
  • Finally, creative authority is largely my own term intended to summarize many of the virtues recognized worldwide and throughout history as the high marks of human awakening, liberation, and enlightenment – of coming into our “higher Self.”

My model arranges these three concepts into developmental and evolutionary stages progressing sequentially through time, with each stage also serving in the spatial sense as a relatively stable location (or ‘platform’) at which human consciousness engages with reality and gains a new perspective on life.

Two more terms capture this nuanced distinction in the concept of stage. Fulfillment refers to the overall progress in development and evolution relative to what we might call the ‘epigenetic aim’ of human nature (the Human ideal). A second term, wellbeing, refers to the degree of self-actualization achieved at each stage of development.

It should be obvious that neither term is being confused with happiness, which is a more subjective and circumstance-dependent quality of experience.

As we explore the model, try to be as honest as you can in assessing where you are on the human journey – not just what stage you happen to be on (or transition between stages), but how you “measure up” to the standard of human wellbeing and fulfillment. Again, even though one’s degree of wellbeing and fulfillment have a direct impact on personal happiness, try to keep their distinction in mind as we go along so as to minimize the risk of reducing your progress on the human journey to how you may feel today.

Infancy, Early Childhood, and Animal Faith

Ideally a human infant is brought into the world by caretakers and providers who do their best in cuddling, nurturing, protecting, and responding competently to its basic needs. Even in unfavorable circumstances and conditions, responsible ‘taller powers’ can be highly effective at instilling in the newborn and young child a deep visceral sense that Reality is provident and benign (i.e., essentially good).

This inner release in basic trust (c.f., Erik Erikson) to the present mystery of Reality is what George Santayana called “animal faith”: a precognitive and unconscious (spontaneous) assurance that Reality is as it is perceived. Santayana’s concept, however, is more of an extroverted confidence (outward oriented, to the environment) than the introverted intuition (inward oriented, to the ground of being) that Erikson identified as so foundational to human development.

Erikson’s “basic trust” is what I mean by animal faith – “trust” being the etymological root of the widely misused term faith, and “basic” going deep into the nervous system and visceral network of our human animal biology.

Your default internal nervous state today, set somewhere on a continuum between serenity and anxiety, holds the “echo” of your earliest experiences of Reality as managed and mediated by your taller powers.

Animal faith, standing opposite on the continuum from anxiety (Erikson’s “basic distrust”), is the standard of wellbeing in the early months and years of childhood. If today you have a relaxation and meditation practice that helps you cultivate a deep sense of inner peace (serenity), the benefit of your intention is in strengthening animal faith. Dropping from your center of self-conscious experience (ego) and into the sentient-animate consciousness of the body is a principal objective of meditation practice.

Late Childhood, Adolescence, and Ego Strength

As your personality developed on the foundation of animal faith, a portion of consciousness was gradually siphoned, sequestered, and shaped into its own center of self-conscious experience called ego. Animal studies give strong evidence that consciousness of oneself as a separate individual is a product of socialization, and hence depends on the coordinated influence on development by the herd, troop, family, clan or tribe.

We’ve already acknowledged the profound impact of taller powers (caretakers and providers) on the depth and degree of animal faith in your physiology. As we would expect, the inner fortitude or fragility of your animal faith continued to have its effect on the degree of success in your development of a stable, centered, and reality-oriented ego (Latin for “I”).

Ego strength is actually the opposite of egoism – or we should better say that egoism demonstrates a deficiency in ego strength.

When animal faith is compromised and the default state of the nervous system is set more to the “anxiety” than the “serenity” side of the continuum, the ego picks up and incorporates this insecurity in habits of neurotic attachment, selfish ambition, and dogmatic belief (close-minded conviction) that serve as refuge, but also quickly become a prison.

A secure, centered, balanced, and well-adjusted personality is the standard of wellbeing in this “middle trimester” of the human journey. With a self-confident and socially responsible identity in place, you can respond appropriately to the challenges and opportunities that come your way.

Maturity, Adulthood, and Creative Authority

Being securely centered in yourself (by virtue of ego strength) enables a positive and productive degree of freedom in living your life. An important aspect of this freedom is not having to cling to others for safety (attachment), chase after the promise of happiness (ambition), or close your mind inside fixed beliefs (conviction). On the positive side, your higher freedom opens the channel of creative authority whereby you can take responsibility for the world you live in.

“World” here is not a synonym for Reality or what is sometimes called the real world. In this context, your world is the construct of assumptions, beliefs, agreements, values, habits and expectations that conspire to shape your view on Reality.

Because a world construct is a collection of stories – in the technical sense, a mythology – that hangs like a grand tapestry between the mind and Reality, waking up to your creative authority is tantamount to coming to the realization that your world, as well as your identity in that world, is to a great extent, if not entirely, your creation.

You are its author, which means that you and you alone have the power to change the story and thereby change your world.

Where are you on your human journey?

If animal faith was compromised early on and subsequently complicated the successful achievement of ego strength, you likely find the prospect of creative authority a bit intimidating – maybe overwhelming.

The good news is that there are things you can do (and things you should stop doing!) to cultivate faith, strengthen your center, and exercise your authorial rights in creating a New Story.

Feel free to start any time.