Post-theism and the River of Fire

In the nineteenth century a German philosopher and proto-psychologist named Ludwig Feuerbach argued that theology, or god-talk (theo+logos), is really a projection outward and upward of our higher human nature. We spontaneously imagine our own dormant virtues as existing separate from us in the deity, and then we aspire to be like god, which gradually “awakens” these virtues in ourselves.

Advocates of atheism believe they find a prophet in Feuerbach (whose name means “river of fire”) taking him to mean that god is nothing more than a construct of the human imagination projected above the world to compensate for our human insecurity, ignorance, weakness, and mortality.

In point of fact, the idea that we create god in our image had been around since the time of Xenophanes the Greek (6th century BCE), who asserted that if horses could draw they would draw god as a horse.

However, neither Xenophanes nor Feuerbach was rejecting the ultimate reality of God, a Supreme Principle or Present Mystery “in which,” as professed by the 6th-5th century BCE philosopher-poet Epimenides of Crete and later quoted by the Christian apostle Paul in the 1st century CE (Acts 17:28), “we live and move and have our being.”

If we could agree to consistently distinguish this Supreme Principle and Present Mystery of Reality from the rich variety of ways we humans represent it to ourselves in myth, art, and theology – of God beyond our gods – the long and tiresome debate between theists and atheists could finally be transcended and left behind for a more constructive dialogue.

Our gods are indeed figments of the imagination, but the Mystery they are conjured to figure-forth is not separate and apart from us.

This isn’t to say that we are gods, only that our gods belong to us. As we are willing to take ownership and responsibility for our creations, a god stands the chance of fulfilling its design aim in the imaginarium of human spirituality. This design aim is what intrigued Feuerbach, but he realized that in order to engage in such critical reflection, our gods would first need to be liberated from their presumably objective, and necessarily delimited, existence.

The importance of Feuerbach to our understanding of post-theism cannot be overstated. Again, his case wasn’t against theism (or Christianity, his home religion) but was rather one for moving beyond the misguided debate over god’s existence and toward a fuller understanding of the role that god plays in the longer spiritual evolution of our species.

If post-theism can be said to have a preoccupation, it is with this understanding and the liberated life it makes possible. Feuerbach believed this was, and is, the “essence of Christianity.”

My diagram provides a frame for critical reflection on god’s meaning and purpose, of the relation of our theological constructs to ultimate reality, as well as the role they play in human fulfillment – of our becoming fully human. In organic fashion, we will begin at the bottom, in the Ground that is ultimate reality, manifesting in, as, and throughout all things, particularly right here, in and as a human being: a human manifestation of Being.

The Ground is both generative source and foundational support, coming up from deep within and establishing itself on ascending stages of a material, vital, sentient, and self-conscious human existence. (Indeed a self-conscious, or egoic, existence is unique to humans as far as we can tell.)

The “human” aspect of our human being looks outward through the body and into the sensory-physical realm; the “being” aspect of our human being looks inward through the soul, into the intuitive-mystical realm.

In my diagram I have positioned body and soul just above or below the threshold of existence (a dashed horizontal line) to indicate their distinct outward and inward orientations of consciousness.

The center of our individual self-conscious identity is named ego (Latin for “I”), pictured as rising from the body and into its own separate position apart from both body and soul. This is the state of separation, hamartia (sin) or dukkha, that the higher religions diagnose as our “human condition.”

From the perspective of modern developmental psychology we understand this as the process by which the young child gradually gains mastery through self-restraint (e.g., toilet training and later holding their temper), increasingly sophisticated motor skills, moral obedience and social cooperation.

The “price” for this progress in personal identity is a growing sense of separation, exposure, and insecurity – the familiar fall from paradise and loss of communion that we find in world mythology.

According to Feuerbach and post-theism, this is where god, as a construct of the mythopoetic imagination, is “encountered” – and we should say it this way because the mythopoetic process and its product confront the mind, as it were, from below the boundary of directed attention.

In the myths again, we find all sorts of deities: a “god of” this or that, gods that first inhabit and then supervise the diverse domains of human concern: nature, city, government, morality, ancestry, home, and personal life.

These are only roles, however, which serve to mediate the dormant and developing virtues of human personality through the masks of god. Their higher purpose, as it relates to human spiritual evolution, is to attract, inspire, awaken, and empower these same virtues in the religious devotee.

In exalting and glorifying god in worship, which is the central obligation of theism, a devotee makes these virtues of god the focal aspirations of his or her life.

Personified in the god, the higher virtues of spiritual life are exemplified in ways (e.g., the words, deeds, and character of the deity as depicted in myth and liturgy) that call on the devotee’s obedience and imitation.

Not a god, but God beyond god. Not a god who loves, perhaps selectively and conditionally, but the power of Love embodied (however imperfectly) in the god and shining through, inspiring and empowering an awakened commitment in the devotee to an ever more loving way of life.

This power to attract and inspire the devotee’s commitment to the imitation of god is the “aspirational logic” that leads to a more awakened and liberated life.

My diagram identifies a cluster of virtues that are more or less universally personified by the god(s) of theism, and which interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, grow more clear and distinct as religion has advanced into its high, late, and post-theistic stages.

In addition to the virtue of love, the gods are generous (i.e., they personify the virtue of generosity), wise (they personify the virtue of wisdom), capable (they personify the virtue of power), and creative (they personify the capacity to create).

All together, these five virtues of god offer a complete portrait of the realized potential in a human being. As a devotee’s relationship to god progresses from obedience, through worship, and finally to aspiration, the virtues personified in the deity are gradually awakened and fulfilled in the aspirant, who is now free to live the virtuous life on the other side of god.

Ultimately we step into our creative authority to make meaning and change the world, or to make new worlds that are bigger and brighter for those coming up behind us.

The Mythology of You

There’s a part of you that really wants to be somebody special. Admit it. We all do – at least all of us did for a good part of our life. It’s the Hero Journey that figures so prominently in world mythology, which Joseph Campbell interpreted brilliantly in his seminal work The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

Realizing that the Hero is not just some heroic figure of myth or history but a personified metaphor of what in each of us is on the adventure of becoming somebody special, and then eventually getting over ourselves, helps “crack the code” of mythic meaning and human fulfillment.

But here’s the thing: We have to see ourselves in the Hero and understand that the Hero is really us, or more precisely, what in each of us is on the Journey to a fully awakened and liberated life.

It seems fitting, then, to title this post The Mythology of You.

To help orient us in the Hero Journey, I offer the illustration above. At its base is your essential nature as a human being; not who you are quite yet, but what you are: a human manifestation of being. You are a member of a highly evolved animal species informally named human – etymologically “upon, or from, the ground” (i.e., not indigenous to the sky or sea but to dry land).

Some early myths trace human origins to this ground (humus), which in the Beginning a god clutched and fashioned into our first ancestor, Adam (“from the earth”).

Relative to the separate center of self-conscious personal identity (ego) – which, since we are tracing the course of your journey through time beginning at birth, is not yet in our picture – your essential nature as a human being is the ground (or grounding mystery) that supports your Hero adventure from underneath.

This communion of body-and-soul is the essential mystery that ego breaks from, immediately forgets but remembers nostalgically while off on its adventure, and longs to return home to at Journey’s end.

We need to take another moment here and clarify that, as a human manifestation of being, your body is the extroverted counterpart of an introverted soul; the one outwardly engaged in the web of life, and the other inwardly reposed in being. Being here is not another word for an entity, object, or thing, but refers instead to the generative power-to-be (be-ing) that is presently manifesting as human, tree, bird, star (and so on), across the vast universe.

The circuit of your Hero Journey takes its departure from the body, undergoes its adventure of becoming somebody special (the ordeal of trials and temptations that Campbell expertly lays out), and eventually returns home, but now with the boons of an awakened and liberated life.

While myth provides the pattern of a full-circle successful Hero Journey, however, your (and my) destiny is not so certain.

In this post we will identify a few of the common complications that keep the Hero from completing the entire Journey.

The circuit of the Hero Journey (back to my diagram) is traced by a circular arrow divided into three segments, with each segment color-coded according to the primary energy driving it. A black arc drives outward from the body and into the early formation of a self-conscious personal identity (ego). At this stage, the principal work of socialization was in training you to develop self-conscious restraint over some very natural urges, impulses, and reflex responses to your environment.

Clamping an urge long enough to get to the toilet, waiting your turn by standing in line, curbing the impulse to retaliate against another’s offense, and (at a higher, more sophisticated level) adjusting your behavior into compliance with the social expectations around an assigned role – all are examples of the same principle of self-restraint. The objective is to pull back and redirect, or in some cases push down (suppress), the natural inclinations of the body in the interest of constructing a well-adjusted personal identity.

The primary motivation for submitting to all this social discipline is to fit in: to be accepted, to be loved (however conditional that love might be on your obedient behavior), and to belong.

Your apex concern on this Hero Journey is ultimately to stand out and be recognized as somebody special. You should be able to feel a tension between these two motivational needs of fitting in (belonging) and standing out (recognition): it is one of the profound complications that every Hero must negotiate.

Fit in too much and you dissolve into anonymity; stand out too far and you risk alienation. Becoming somebody special must somehow balance these two competing, yet creatively complementary, drives.

For some, the early home environment was not a safe or loving place, making them chronically anxious and insecure. Nevertheless, still being vulnerable and dependent as infants and young children, their persistent need for safety and love compelled a neurotic attachment to their taller powers, which in turn complicated (or completely undermined) the formation of a centered personal identity.

A desperate drive to fit in overpowered the complementary but opposite drive to stand out, trapping them in chronic anxiety, fear, and self-doubt.

Standing out is about getting recognized for who you are, what you can do, and for your value to the tribe or team, company or organization to which you belong. Developing and using your talents for the good of the group goes a long way in ensuring your place in the social order.

The developmental achievement of what’s known as “ego strength” carries your inner sense of security into a self-confident expression of personal power, creative authority, responsible risk-taking, and productive fulfillment.

On the other hand, chronic social anxiety and a nagging self-doubt might drive the Hero to so over-identify with a role that their entire supply of self-esteem is expected from there, generating further frustration and anxiety over not being good enough or better than someone else. The challenge now is to prove their worth by being perfect or the best at what they do. Until then, nothing counts. Instead of positive recognition, they feel in constant danger of exposure, of getting called out for not being good enough.

Farther on your Journey, and having played many roles along the way, you reach a point – a threshold in human transformation – where the drive to be somebody special loses urgency and you understand how much of your life so far has been about playing roles, managing a personal identity, and living up to the demands and expectations of others.

These ‘others’ may be living or dead, nearby or far away, real or imaginary, up in heaven or in the grave – it doesn’t really matter. The voices inside you (the inner parent, inner coach, inner critic, inner demon, or inner god) always had something to say, but now they’re not as loud or don’t seem to matter as much as before.

Crossing this threshold of transformation is a fairly rare event, actually, due to a combined effect of your tribe’s success in convincing you that you are the role, the suit, the mask – the somebody special on the performance stage you’ve worried over and worked so hard to become; that along with your own insecure attachment to their acceptance, validation, and approval.

But you have made it here and are now ready to take that decisive step across the threshold.

This is the invitation for the Hero to let go, just as we might imagine a butterfly responding to the call of Nature to leave its cocoon and take wing. For our Hero, the critical move is to drop all attachments to personal identity (contracts, roles, suits and masks) and allow consciousness to return home to the grounding mystery of body-and-soul.

The difference now, however – and the true inner aim of the Hero Journey itself – is that you are a fully awakened and liberated butterfly, no longer the sleepy caterpillar that curled up inside its cocoon of personal identity way back when.

You became somebody special so that you can now get over yourself. Welcome home!

Samsara and the Liberated Life

The “human condition” is diagnosed differently depending on where in time and place you happen to be. Some traditions regard humans as having fallen from some state of paradisal perfection, separated from what we once were or one day might be. Others invoke metaphors of brokenness, corruption, dislocation, or captivity – hostage to diabolical forces that tempt and afflict us with suffering.

As with most things religious and mythological, misunderstanding begins as we take such metaphors in their straightforward literal sense.

In their own way, each vantage-point provides an angle on the problem. And yet, should we add them all together, a true understanding would still elude us. The reason for this has to do with the nature of metaphor itself, which is not just another way of naming or describing something we already know objectively.

Metaphors “carry” (phorein) an essentially ineffable experience “across” (meta-) the threshold of language by means of images and archetypes (“first forms”).

Separation, dislocation, fall, brokenness, captivity and corruption are intended by the mythopoetic imagination to depict a more primary experience – that of being human. Once given form, these metaphorical images elicit further reflection, expansion, and embellishment, eventually establishing the horizons and context of our meaningful worlds.

In short, metaphors carry the deeper mystery of human experience into the contextual meaning of a world.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Siddhartha Gautama became one of the first to break through this threshold, but in the other direction. Not from mystery into meaning, but from meaning (myths, theories, tribal doctrines and cultural ideologies) back into the mystery of human experience.

The Buddha (“awakened one”), as he would later describe himself, discovered that by following the roots of metaphor into this deeper mystery of experience, the secret of salvation was instantly understood.

Since the Buddha’s time, subsequent psychological discoveries and further developments have enabled us to construct a theoretical paradigm that lays out an explanation of our human condition, as well as a definition of salvation that doesn’t invoke a prehistorical fall from paradise, demonic conspiracies, or a final escape to heaven when we die.

Indeed, this new paradigm imbues our existence in time with fresh significance, inviting us to wake up to life and what it has to offer before we die and lose our chance.

In honor of Siddhartha’s breakthrough discovery, this post will take his metaphor of Samsara, the Wheel of Existence, and expound upon it by adding elements of contemporary psychological theory.

We’ll start at the bottom of the Wheel as it begins its circuit up the left arc. Anxiety is not to be confused with the worrisome things we frequently get anxious about. In this context, anxiety has no definite object, nothing we are worrying about.

Instead it refers to a generalized insecurity associated with the encapsulation of consciousness – imagine catching the atmosphere in a balloon – into a separate center of self-conscious personal identity (ego = “I”).

This separate self is sequestered from its essential ground, the boundless field of consciousness and being, adrift in the realm of not-self – the chaotic nebula of opaque objects and others moving in the Void. Our sense of separation and exposure amplifies into profound insecurity and a generalized anxiety.

This is where the suffering of our human condition begins.

Compulsively, that is, below conscious intention and outside our voluntary control, anxiety drives us to grab on and grip down on whatever can tether our drifting balloon of self-conscious identity to Reality – or at least make us feel less insecure. Attachment begins in early infancy with the healthy bonding of mother (or caretaker) and baby, but as the anxiety of self-conscious exposure intensifies with ego formation, it grows increasingly neurotic.

Far into adulthood we may still be grabbing on and gripping down, clinging and trying desperately to control others and the world around us for the security we’re missing inside. The paradox, once again, is that being somebody special and having a self-conscious identity (ego) comes at the cost of separating from Reality and feeling alone in the middle of Everything.

We may grab on, squeeze out “the juice,” and toss aside a thousand, a thousand thousand attachments as the Wheel turns. Possessions, partners, titles, riches, status, lands and holdings – even the gods of religion: none of it can satisfy our craving for inner peace. And the reason is simply that nothing outside ourselves can provide what is missing within us.

It is inevitable that every attachment will sooner or later slip away or fall short of our expectations, resulting in disappointment.

Each such disappointment opens a precious opportunity for insight, where we might “see into” the true nature of our condition. We might suffer some disillusionment, as the illusion of a happiness derived from elsewhere is yanked like a veil from its rings. We start to realize that This wasn’t “IT” after all.

But then what do we do? We toss the disappointing thing aside and take up a new attachment – or maybe take another turn with something or someone who let us down before. This is also where we might attach ourselves to the ideology of some religion, believing now that god will save us.

Following through on the dawning insight, however, can clarify the futility of our efforts and assist us in breaking through Samsara to a position outside the trance. Transcendence refers to this move of “going beyond” and standing outside the bubble of self-conscious identity, which is where we can touch Reality and finally be real ourselves.

Or maybe we miss our opportunity. More likely we ignore it, dismiss it, or look the other way and pretend it’s not there.

What we can’t ignore, though, is this insecure craving inside ourselves, along with the fact that one more attachment has let us down. At this point, with the exit of transcendence now behind us, our disappointment begins to degrade into a low-burning frustration – the feeling that life is unfair, other people suck, and (dammit) we will get our way!

So we push harder and care less about the damage we cause. Frustration arises when something is in our way. And while this could be a moment when we figure out what’s on the far side of this obstacle and what value it holds, if any, frustration tends to fixate our energy on the obstacle itself, firing up our determination to make it work or move it out of the way.

If you’ve ever pushed against, or pulled on, something that can’t be moved, you are familiar with how exhausting the effort becomes – and how fast.

On the Wheel, exhaustion refers to the experience of using up all of our energy in pursuit of a result that, in the very nature of the exercise, cannot be realized. What we crave is that inner security we left behind so long ago on our adventure to becoming somebody special.

No attachment, no matter how hard or how many times we may try to make it work, has the capacity to deliver on our demand. But we keep trying, and grow more exhausted in the futility of our efforts.

Opposite of anxiety on the Wheel is depression, the wind-down of psychic entropy to its up-twist of neurotic energy. The feeling of being “pressed down” in a hole, without the energy to climb out or even care anymore, is the predictable outcome of chasing after illusions.

Today, the pandemic of anxiety/depression is flooding our streets, our schools, our workplaces, our homes – and, of course, our psychiatric hospitals and outpatient clinics.

This shouldn’t lead us to believe that suffering of this sort is only a modern mental health malady; it’s been around – around and around – for thousands of years.

We have one more station on the Wheel to visit, and it comes near the fully depleted state of exhaustion, when all we can manage (and barely) is to shut the lights, pull the drapes, and fall into bed. Even a broken night’s rest will charge our battery just enough for another day of attachment, disappointment, frustration, exhaustion, and despair.

Recovery is about getting back to a former condition, to a level of energy that can fuel our attention, effort, and expectations for yet another round.

A closer look at this bed-flop of exhausted depression at the end of a day reveals a second possible exit from Samsara. What has happened? The mental gears and spark of ambition have lost their charge, releasing our once busy mind into the quiet cradle of the body. Gently it breathes and pulses in steady rhythms, repairing damage and replacing cells, growing new neural connections and remapping the brain … and relaxing into being.

This release of mental activity and gradual descent into the animate intelligence of the body is called grounding.

As the word suggests, this is where consciousness drops out of a self-conscious personal identity and rejoins the grounding mystery of its Source.

While we have the opportunity of this happening most nights we crawl into bed, humans have long known the benefits of cultivating contemplative practices that help us let go of illusions and touch the present mystery of Reality again – and yet again.

Back on the Way

Ever feel anxious? How about lonely? Depressed? Have you been there before?

Maybe you’re there now.

It may bring a bit of relief to learn that anxiety, loneliness, and depression have been the dark shadow of human consciousness for thousands of years.

You’re not the first, and you’re not alone.

As human consciousness evolved, the emerging challenges and opportunities of a complex social environment generated the pressure to adapt by forming a recurrent loop of self-conscious awareness (ego) in the individual.

Now, in addition to perceiving one’s environment and reacting to it, this new egocentric vantage-point awakened a capacity for standing apart from others and everything else, seeing oneself through the eyes of others, and accessing one’s own inner (subjective) experience.

Game changer.

From the position of what psychology calls ego strength, referring to a well-centered, emotionally balanced, and neurotically stable personality, consciousness is free to flow along three distinct channels.

  • A psychosocial (“self-other”) channel leading outward to the stage of interpersonal relationships and social life.
  • A psychosomatic (“mind-body”) channel leading inward to the grounding mystery of consciousness itself.
  • A psychospiritual (“soul-spirit”) channel leading upward into transcendent experiences of higher wholeness, belonging, and inclusion.

Storyline A

Immediately when you were born you were welcomed by a provident community of caretakers and other admirers who made sure that your needs for safety, nourishment, protection, and love were adequately met. Over time as these bonds of healthy attachment were strengthened, your trust, regard, and appreciation of others in your life developed a natural intelligence along with the skills for social connection and interpersonal intimacy.

Today, this psychosocial (self-other) channel of consciousness keeps you engaged in relationships and invested in those with whom you feel safe.

Connection and love are essential needs of every human being, and without them (or enough of them) you feel disconnected, isolated, unloved, and lonely. Thankfully, in your case these needs were adequately met, resulting in the cultivated abilities of social bonding, establishing trust, building rapport, negotiating differences, resolving conflict, reaching compromise, and contributing your gifts for mutual benefit.

As a provident early environment nurtured your psychosocial intelligence and equipped you with the skills for cultivating connection and love, something else was going on deeper inside you. A psychosomatic (mind-body) channel was reading and reacting to those positive conditions by calibrating your nervous system to an adaptive internal state.

Held and surrounded by what you needed, a default resting state of calm composure was set as the default link between your temperament and environment.

Psychosomatic science confirms just how deeply involved consciousness (mind, psyche) is with the vitality and functional health of the body (soma).

Feelings (body) and thoughts (mind), states (body) and stories (mind), moods (body) and myths (mind) form an inseparable braid of intelligence that can be cultivated for essential wellbeing.

With a clear psychosomatic channel established, consciousness is able to release and descend to a stillness within for grounding and peace. This inner surrender to the grounding mystery of being is the original meaning of faith – before some religions got tangled in the web of belief, turning faith into the acceptance of orthodox doctrines and belief in the existence of god.

Still in most traditions and practices of contemplative spirituality, the goal of meditation is to empty out into the grounding mystery of boundless presence and inner peace.

The (psychosomatic) upflow of consciousness from this inner wellspring and outward to the (psychosocial) field of relationships and the social stage, continues along a psychospiritual (soul-spirit) channel that empowers a leap beyond the merely personal to a higher wholeness of transpersonal fellowship and unity.

Transcendence is about “going beyond” the anchors, boundaries, and horizons of personal identity and its managed world. Breaking through its cocoon of personality and meaning, consciousness takes wing into higher dimensions of participation, belonging, and community. Now, elevated and standing outside but still containing your ego (the psychospiritual definition of ecstasy), consciousness joins the consilient harmony of individual voices in a communal Ode to Joy.

Storyline B

Immediately when you were born, you awoke to a Reality that wasn’t responsive to your needs. For whatever reason, your taller powers and family of origin were not able or just didn’t give much attention to your cries for safety, nourishment, protection and love. As this went on, the normal and necessary bonding of attachment, trust, and affection was not adequately facilitated, and consequently you were deprived of the opportunity to develop your natural intelligence and skills for social connection and interpersonal intimacy.

To compensate for an improvident Reality, your attachment became more neurotic and desperate, unable to let go for fear of being abandoned. Under such compulsive demands, however, no amount of attention and assurances were enough to convince you to relax your grip and just trust the process.

Internally, you were in a chronic state of anxiety. Not having the safety and support of healthy bonds to satisfy your psychosocial need for connection and love, your nervous system didn’t make the body a calm and restful place.

You can understand how some religious and ascetical traditions might regard the body as a prison of the soul, characterizing salvation in terms of mortifying (suppressing and killing) its desires and gaining final escape for the soul from the body’s coiling tension.

Many forms of suffering and illness are the symptom and effect of an impeded psychosomatic channel, where the mind (psyche) has dissociated from the body (soma) and regards it as hostile territory. A lack of grounding and inner peace drives neurotic attachment in your relationships, as you expect and demand that others make you feel secure – or at least less insecure.

Your irrational and unrealistic expectations, however, are only a setup for further disappointment, renewed ultimatums, and a growing resentment. Just as you can’t let go (release) inwardly, you find it impossible to let go (forgive) the inevitable failures of others to deliver on your demands.

Feeling chronically anxious and episodically lonely, what is happening on the psychospiritual channel of consciousness? Actually there is little to no supply left for the higher wholeness beyond yourself, for the unity of life and community of persons that promise the joy of belonging to something greater.

Instead of joy, you feel depressed – “pressed down” into a hole of melancholy, hopelessness, and despair. Instead of ecstasy, you feel stuck in the muck.

If you find yourself in Storyline B, the good news is that you have finally found yourself!

The journey ahead invites you to get grounded and stay centered, then reach out to make connections that will inspire and support a leap beyond yourself into the harmony and higher wholeness that have held you all along.

Politics in a New Key

The wisdom teachers of history have been right all along: We can’t solve our most persistent problems or gain liberation from suffering as long as we stay in the same frame of mind that generated our trouble in the first place.

That frame of mind, the teachers tell us, perceives Reality through the lens of cómponence – my word, not theirs. It’s actually a neologism (a “new word”), as far as I can tell. The accent on the first syllable is intended to distinguish it in speech from the plural of “component,” referring to a part or piece in some larger array of parts.

As a noun, cómponence describes reality in terms of what it’s made of – the countless components that sit and swirl about, colliding or skirting each other on their various trajectories through space-time.

Western science has made cómponence the central dogma of its theoretical paradigm. Each thing, whether atom, organism, planet, or galaxy, is a part of some larger organization of similar things, all coexisting in a system. But also, each thing is itself a system or composition of smaller things. The cosmos can conceivably be analyzed into smaller and smaller units, right down to those quirky quarks deep inside the atom. Keep splitting things apart and you’ll find more things inside.

This culturally conditioned habit of perceiving Reality exclusively through the lens of cómponence is where our problems and suffering really lie, according to the wisdom teachers.

My diagram situates the cómponent realm within a larger frame that will help us gain liberation from many of its traps and troubles. Let’s keep our attention on this “middle realm” for a bit longer, using politics as our filter on the lens. American politics happens to be highly polarized at the moment, with Republicans and Democrats – but currently more on the Republican side – seeking to uproot and destroy their political opponents.

The very concept of an “opponent” only has meaning inside a theoretical paradigm of cómponence.

Here we have two (or more) things standing apart from each other, a Republican and a Democrat, each centered in an identity claiming “for” some things and “against” others. Yes, each of them can be analyzed in terms of class, gender, age, character, personality, temperament, race, biology, chemistry, and physics – the many components they contain and what science might invoke to explain what kinds of things they are.

Once upon a time, “Republican” and “Democrat” were understood as two opposing identities that represented two distinct political philosophies, two distinct sets of beliefs and values concerning how a free society should be governed. Their opposition was enjoined in the spirit of debate, negotiation, and compromise for the good of the commonwealth and “a more perfect union” – not a zero-sum combat for unilateral defeat and annihilation, as what it has devolved into lately.

When our minds are locked into cómponence, the competition between Republicans and Democrats can occlude our vision of their possible cooperation, even though cooperation among separate identities is perfectly aligned with the worldview of cómponence.

More realistically, that’s likely what the founders of American democracy had in mind to begin with: a productive competition of opposing views and values, on a political playing field governed by the rules of cooperation.

Just as with American politics, the oppositional dynamic in cómponence can quickly devolve into a campaign of mutual annihilation. This is partly because the separate identities involved are themselves somewhat unstable constellations of personality components. Each Republican or Democrat is in some degree motivated out of insecurity, craving, ambition, conviction and ignórance (willful ignorance) to defend and gain a win for their position.

Beating the other and driving them off-stage – preferably into extinction, since it would make things easier going forward – quickly becomes their raison d’être (reason for being).

The wisdom teachers would not necessarily argue that cómponence – or in terms more consistent with their message, the realm of separation and duality – is bad or wrong, or even that it’s an illusion, although a few traditions take that tack. At the very least they would assert that cómponence is not an exhaustive account of Reality.

For one thing, there is at the root of all things something that is no thing. Variously named No Thing or nothingness, the grounding mystery of Being or being-itself, this is the principle of essence – again, not a thing but the power of being (Greek esse) in all things. Out of its mystery, Being differentiates into beings to become the cómponent realm of “ten thousand things” (as the ancient Chinese wisdom tradition speaks of it).

Everything in existence is the manifestation of this essence, which is something Western science also confirms, although its commitment to the theoretical paradigm of cómponence has historically prevented it from crossing the threshold into what can’t be named or known.

Quantum physics has intrigued and confounded us with its paradoxes of particles and waves, forms and fields, complementarity and uncertainty, “something” which is no thing that is somehow the ground of all things. Nonetheless, science being science, it cannot restrain the compulsion to dig deeper into this ground in search of more things inside.

This addition of essence to the objective realm of cómponence is still not yet a comprehensive account of Reality, according to the wisdom teachings. Seeing our Republican and Democrat each as a manifestation of a grounding mystery that lies deep within, and far below, the identities they obsess over confirms that at some level they are not really separate – or even all that different.

Behind their party masks and political uniforms, they are both human manifestations of Being.

But we need to see them both as participating in something greater as well – not merely something larger (a scale of cómponence), but a higher wholeness that includes them in its More. We’re talking about the 1+1=3 dynamic of consilience, the exponential process of two or more things becoming One, where the case change indicates a leap to a higher order of communion and complexity.

Our concepts of “community” and “universe” carry this notion of consilience that inexplicably transforms the many into One. The many on their own spontaneously come together as One.

As human beings possessed of spiritual intelligence, it’s almost certain that the founders of American democracy had this consilient idea of higher wholeness in the back of their minds as they envisioned “a more perfect union.” A healthy democracy thrives on the diversity of its citizens, including their energetic debates over how best to co-create and manage a nation that can include everyone.

Figuring It Out

More than any other time in human history, we are obsessed with personal identity. This isn’t to suggest that people in earlier times were ignorant or indifferent to it. Research into human psychological development strongly suggests that identity formation is universal.

We all go through it. Quite a few of us, however, don’t get through it – that is to say, for whatever reason, we get stuck on the way.

Our current Age of Identity and its thematic obsessions has its epicenter in the generation of late Millennials (Gen Y) and Gen Z, born between 1990 and 2010. A larger percentage of this generational cohort seem to struggle more deeply and dramatically with questions of who they are. For any number of reasons, many of them seem caught in a squeezing spiral of neurotic energy, a kind of whirlpool threatening to pull them down into the Abyss.

While this generation exemplifies the suffering of identity confusion, it also serves as a case study for helping us better understand the dynamics in play for all of us on the way to becoming somebody special.

My diagram situates identity within a system of dimensions and developmental achievements that provide context for our exploration. In the middle of everything sits the separate center of self-conscious personal identity – the ego, although it’s not labeled.

The “I” (Latin ego) is the actor who, looking outward to our social situation, inhabits and performs the various Roles that identify us to others and give us a place on the interpersonal performance Stage. When it goes well, we enjoy a sense of belonging to something that matters.

The actor-ego can also look inward, where our Soul rests in quiet solitude with the body. Unlike the immortal prisoner-soul of some religions, here it simply refers to the animate consciousness which imbues the body’s physical structure with present awareness. This deep communion of body and soul invites ego to release from its effortful management of identity and relax into being, surrendering to the Ground or grounding mystery of existence.

When development goes reasonably well, identity can thus look both outward and inward: outward through Role to the Stage in its quest for belonging; inward through Soul to the Ground in its quest for communion.

For quite a few of us, however, development doesn’t go so well. Again, for whatever reason, these individuals are stuck in a closing spiral and unable to either connect outwardly for a sense of social belonging, or release inwardly for a sense of spiritual communion. Identity for them is a trap they can’t seem to escape, rather than a means or vehicle for the higher (belonging) and deeper (communion) experiences that all centered persons seek.

As captives of identity, dissociated from others on the social Stage and estranged from their own inner Ground, existence becomes an exercise in defining themselves, perhaps medically or surgically redefining themselves, until they can feel centered in who they are. Identity is deconstructed and reengineered in pursuit of the self-recognition they need.

Their obsession over identity spins them around a center that is not a true center but a drain pulling them deeper into anxiety, frustration, exhaustion, and finally depression.

Along the vertical axis of my diagram are arranged the critical achievements in healthy identity formation. At the midpoint of this vertical axis is identity itself, where the personality eventually achieves ego strength – the position of stability from whence the individual can engage outwardly and release inwardly.

The full set of developmental achievements should be read “organically,” as charting the growth of a healthy human personality from deep in the Ground to its place out on the Stage.

When we are infants and young children, the pressing need of our animal nature is to feel safe. As our taller powers provide us with protection, warmth, and nourishment, our nervous system is calibrated to a state of calm and open assurance. By their mediation, we come to know Reality as provident and responsive to our needs.

This internal state of composure and existential faith is called security, and it serves as the foundation for everything to come.

A calm and composed nervous system will provide a clear path later on, when ego is ready to make its descent into communion. The inner self of the Soul is one with the body, whose calm composure offers a kind of latticework of rhythms that cradle awareness through its release from self-conscious reverie in identity and deeper into the grounding mystery of being.

Security is this deep anchor and clear channel of present awareness.

Because our inner security is fostered in close bonds with our caregivers, it very naturally evolves into spontaneous responses of empathy, trust, affection and sympathy, together known as intimacy. The “feeling-with” of sympathy, the Greek equivalent of our Latin compassion, is a social sensitivity with roots in empathy, referring to our capacity for understanding the needs, feelings, and expressions of others from the reference of our own human experience (literally feeling-in).

We spontaneously reach out to help or comfort another because we know what it feels like to be in pain or lost, to lose something or someone we loved, or to feel alone and confused.

Security and intimacy are together the experiential foundation of identity. A centered sense of self can only find its center to begin with as we feel securely grounded within ourselves and intimately connected to another.

With ego strength and a centered identity, we can confidently move onto the Stage for the orientation we need to play our part. Whereas the Ground within is intrinsic to our essential nature as human beings, the Stage beyond is a key feature of a larger performance theater known as our world – the social construct of values, stories, traditions, institutions, and beliefs that serves as our context of meaning.

Those of us who are stuck and struggling to find ourselves are not helped through legislation that identifies and protects the rights of individuals caught in the sticky web of “intersectionality.” At the end of that path is only more confusion, isolation, and loneliness.

We need to work together in creating community where all of us can feel safe, loved, capable and worthy. Where everyone has a place and a valuable contribution to make.

Fate and Destiny

Some people argue that the human condition is determined by factors deep in our DNA, in mechanisms of survival, adaptation, and extinction embedded in the genetic code of our species. These biological determinists call us back from getting caught up in fantasies of human transformation and thinking we can break free from the bonds of Fate.

Those who say that temperament is Fate – temperament referring to the genetic inheritance of human biology – have neighbors across the halls of academia who add the co-determining factor of environment to the picture. They point out that genes are switched “on” or “off” in response to external conditions and events.

The temperament of individuals caught in chronically unsafe, inhospitable, or hostile circumstances will adapt by becoming more anxious, reactive, and vigilant. Genes and their host organisms don’t survive in a vacuum, but are constantly reading and reacting to their environments.

These neighboring theories are actually siblings in natural science, of the empirical approach to knowledge that resolves only to work with the reality outside our minds. Concepts, hypotheses, explanations, and prophecies – all constructions of mind – must either be drawn inductively from experimental observations or get down to the facts as quickly as possible to prevent drifting away into creative (i.e., idle) speculation.

Together, temperament and environment can be seen as the internal and external dimensions, respectively, of human Fate.

Using that term doesn’t mean that the factors on either side cannot be altered somewhat through various interventions. We’ve known we can alter the external environment for thousands of years now; culture itself is both the product and fallout. And very recently we have discovered how, if not yet to what extent, we can change the genetic instructions in our DNA and possibly reengineer human biology itself.

What most scientific accounts leave out of the picture are the very things that make the human adventure so interesting: our subjective experience as persons, our individually unique perspectives on reality, our universal need for security, belonging, orientation and significance, and the sense each of us has of a Mystery at the center of Everything – however dim and nearly forgotten.

Such interests and concerns were historically the province of spirituality, nurtured under the supportive guidance of religion for thousands of years.

The diagram above shows the axis of scientific dimensions, internal temperament and external environment, intersected by a second axis with its poles in things that don’t lend themselves to objective examination. An image of a bow-and-arrow suggests that the real dynamic of human transformation is to be found here.

Having identified the first axis with Fate, with factors that seem largely outside our control, I will associate this second axis of the bow-and-arrow dynamic with what in earlier ages was known as Destiny. This is more than just where things are “destined” to end up, which once again is what we typically mean by Fate.

Destiny has always had a more optimistic and hopeful ring to it than Fate.

If Fate is the way things are, Destiny is how things might go if they were to somehow transcend, break away, or be released – like an arrow from its bowstring – from the constraints of Fate.

Humans are the species of Destiny, one among many with the unique capacity of intelligence to look beyond the limitations of temperament and environment and imagine what isn’t here now, maybe never was, but one day might be.

This visionary talent has enabled us to create maps of optional futures, inventing the various genres of earthly utopias and apocalyptic dystopias, heavenly paradises and torture-chamber hells, solar explosions and cosmic winters, or just the winding-down of our own retirement, old age, and inevitable death – which can sound again more like the knell of Fate than the ring of Destiny.

The spiritual wisdom traditions used to be our imaginarium for contemplating these optional futures and a higher purpose of human existence. Their mythologies and guiding metaphors offered lenses into hidden dimensions, not in Reality so much as of our own mind, that placed us in contexts where our life, choices, and actions matter on some larger scale.

By spreading before us possible futures of apotheosis or apocalypse, fulfillment or collapse, salvation or catastrophe, an escape from time by a series of escalating cycles through progressive lifetimes or by a sudden “blink of an eye,” spirituality, through its mediator and mouthpiece of religion, enabled us to take in a bigger picture and longer view of life.

Historically the disciplines of morality, art, and philosophy (the “love of wisdom”) were first conceived in the fertile womb of religion.

Today, despite the fact that many religions have lost their roots to the mythopoetic imagination and are defending their myths as so much supernatural journalism (e.g., the biblical literalism in Christianity), humans are still possessed of this longing to see through the narrow channel of Fate, between their environmental conditions and temperamental dispositions, into a vision of how their beliefs, values, choices, and commitments – in short, their creative authority – are together the determining factor in human Destiny.

Let’s take a closer look at this dynamic axis of human Destiny, represented by the drawn string and poised arrow in the diagram above. A principal role and responsibility of religion, as already mentioned, was historically to cast a vision before its people, optional futures that depended to some extent on human beliefs, values, choices, and commitments.

In the sport of archery, the very notion of getting focused and taking aim assumes at least a fair chance of “missing the mark” entirely – a favored metaphor in religion (Greek hamartia) for falling short or flying wide of our Destiny, represented by the will and character of its mythological god, the imagined exemplar of what humans are meant to be and become.

Remove the target entirely and there is nothing to take aim at: no objective goal, directional path, consistent intention or longer purpose to guide and attract our human aspirations. Without a guiding myth, that is to say, humans are trapped in the narrow channel of Fate with a dead-end future.

This presence or absence of a guiding myth which unfurls a bigger picture and longer view of life where human freedom matters has major consequences for the shaping of character, referring to the enduring habits of belief, attitude, and behavior that develop through repetition over time.

According to this definition, a newborn has no character to start with, but gradually constructs one by repeating and thereby reinforcing a characteristic, self-consistent, and increasingly predictable way of engaging with Reality – what is also called a “way of life.”

Character is a “third force” that many determinists leave out of their diagnoses of the human condition. Are we determined by genetics and nature, or by environment and nurture? The consensus has been both to some degree. But there is this other determinant: the force of character that draws back the string of desire, longing, and aspiration, with an intention of launching us into the future – actualizing its picture into reality.

Obviously, if there is nothing very attractive or compelling up ahead, so far as we can see, our habits of character will get oriented to a rather pointless existence, forming beliefs that nothing ultimately matters, attitudes that are dark and despairing, issuing in behaviors more reactive, desultory, and careless as time goes on.

What’s the remedy to this depressing account of our human condition? A new guiding myth, a bigger picture, and a longer view that draws desire deeper into our human potential, aiming our aspirations in the direction of what we still have in us to become and achieve.

The interesting thing about this co-determinant of human character is its instantaneous and adaptive responsiveness to whatever optional future we entertain in our mind and energize by our choices, in each apparently minor moment of every day.

We tend to become the persons and get the worlds we imagine. Our time is ripe for a New Philosophy of Life.

A New Look at Religion

I’ve said it many times in this blog: Religion is not the problem; bad religion is the problem. Religion that has gotten locked up in itself is the problem. Religion that has lost its roots and lifeline to the Source and Mystery whose discovery had sparked a vision and launched a movement perhaps centuries ago – that’s the problem.

In this post we will trace this lifeline of religion as if it never lost its way.

For obvious reasons, we won’t be taking any of the existing religions for our subject, but religion itself: the response and manifestation of that primordial experience of Mystery.

Every actual religion falls off-center from time to time, and some have faltered far afield from the wellspring of their original discovery, becoming dry, brittle, and lifeless – and then may come a renaissance as the almost hollow and rotten thing finds new roots. Because every existing religion has such a complicated history and some have just died away, we will follow the trajectory of religion according to its design intention.

If the design intention of an apple tree is to flourish and produce apples, then what is the developmental aim of religion as such?

You might protest that I am engaging in fantasy, for a religion that is healthy, flourishing, and productive just doesn’t exist – and never has existed. At some point they all get mired in dogmatic convictions and perfunctory traditions, killing the faith and spiritual intelligence of their people. A few hostages find the courage to get out – by increasing numbers these days.

That’s the inevitable fate of every religion (in your opinion), so it’s a waste of time imagining how things could go differently.

I guess all I can do is ask you to suspend judgment for now and hear me out. Just as you wouldn’t toss aside the methodology of science because of some “bad apples” who play at science but not in a sincere or serious manner, I think we should refrain from dismissing religion itself on the basis of a few (or numerous) pathological examples we can find.

And I agree with you: they are all around us.

What I want to explore is a kind of methodology of religion, a more general theory and practice for proceeding on the road to fulfilling its intrinsic purpose. The aim and purpose of religion – let me just put it out here right up front – is fourfold:

  1. To focus and ground us individually in the Present Mystery of Reality;
  2. To center and connect us to one another in moral community;
  3. To situate and orient our community in the larger context of time and space; and
  4. To inspire and guide our progress toward human fulfillment, awakening each of us to the possibilities of our true nature.

You’ll notice that this methodological framework of religion does not specify what members should believe, how they become members, or the process by which an individual advances through the various stages of faith and membership.

True to the etymology of the Latin term religare, religion serves to link our self-conscious center of identity (the ego) back to its Ground, to our Community, to the Cosmos, and to the human Ideal.

My diagram depicts three distinct religions, each its own color and with its own unique history, customs, and beliefs. The boundary of each religion defines it, separates it from the surrounding field, but is also where that religion engages with the world in attitudes ranging from outreach and welcome, superiority and suspicion, renunciation and exclusion, even – when the religion has completely lost its soul and spiritual compass – to persecution and violence against nonbelievers.

The differences among these religions were not intended in the beginning to separate them from each other, but are rather products and symptoms of special conditions that developed in response to, and in the creative effort to make meaning of, an originary experience at the spiritual wellspring. Each religion’s doctrinal (belief) system and devotional (worship) practices are also relatively unique for this reason.

Even today, the inherited myths, shared rituals, core beliefs, and guiding vision of each religion provide the conditions for a present breakthrough in awareness to that same timeless realization.

Let’s name the field represented by each bounded community and tradition of faith its zone of genetic integrity. Truth in this zone has to do with the authentic witness a religion offers to its originary experience. Not whether its myths are factual accounts or its god is objectively real, but the degree in which the religion provides a clear channel to that experience and links an individual ego to those four dimensions of ultimate concern: Ground, Community, Cosmos, and Ideal.

So far, perhaps, I have begun to reconstitute a respectable definition of religion that even skeptics and atheists might accept.

But now we need to shift our attention from the local zone of genetic integrity, to a vertical axis that leads to the Ground of Being in one direction (within, downward, and deep), and in the other direction (around, upward, and beyond) to the Global Commons where all religions must learn to coexist and cooperate in the one world they inhabit together.

We’ll name the descending line of each religion, illustrated in my diagram as a spiral staircase, its mystical path. The spiral design corresponds to a proven truth, that the deeper insights and experiences in religion are cultivated through such disciplined (repeated, even ritualized) practices as meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative prayer.

In contemplative prayer, a practitioner or devotee might begin (top of the spiral staircase) in what is conceptualized as a “conversation with god.” As they descend deeper into the practice, however, this “I-Thou” polarity dissolves into a Present Mystery below the range of concepts, thoughts, and thinker alike.

This deeper realization is often conceptualized in terms of “communion with God,” where the case change indicates a breakthrough from thinking about god (the literal definition of theology) to an experience of God, beyond name and form.

Every religion must carefully protect and “religiously” perfect its tools and practices of mystical descent to the Ground of Being within, in order to preserve a clear path to the spiritual wellspring of Mystery. As a consequence of getting fixated on secondary and tertiary concerns like ranks, roles, and rules, leaders and devotees can lose sight of the center altogether, and thereby forget their point of entry to the Ground of Being within.

Returning to the zone of genetic integrity and now moving outward from the center to its threshold boundary, also brings us up the central axis and into the Global Commons where religion engages with the larger world. This ascending line is religion’s ethical path, leading through the disciplines of constructive dialogue and creative visioneering, where it participates with other religions and global stakeholders in the Great Work of a “global ethic” (cf. the important initiatives of Hans Küng).

This global ethic is based on the shared values of covenant fidelity, universal compassion, unconditional forgiveness, and absolute devotion in service to human liberation and planetary wellbeing. (See my posts The Progress of Wisdom and Curriculum Spiritus for a deeper exploration of these four principles.)

These days especially, the truth of religion is a measure of how involved and committed it is to this Great Work of an ethically enlightened global community. If the relative isolation of religions, once upon a time, allowed them to focus on concerns internal to the zone of genetic integrity, today such ignórance (willful ignorance) is no longer sustainable.

Despite all its bad examples, a strong argument can be made – I’ve endeavored to put in place the framework of such an argument here – for seeing religion as a key (even the key) to a brighter future for all of us.

We need to be linked back to the ultimate concerns of being human, here and now, if we are to have a future at all.

Human Wellbeing

Some of us are obsessed with our health, others with success, and most are actively chasing happiness. But who among us is intentionally cultivating wellbeing? Or is that term just a synonym for one of the others – maybe the fusion of all three?

Maybe we’re stuck in confusion.

If not confused, then we might actually be fragmented – not mixed up but pulled to pieces, dismembered, in all the different directions that postmodern life demands. Looking around ourselves at the current state of society, it sure seems that division is a driving factor. West against East, Red against Blue, White against Black, rich against poor, “natives” against immigrants.

When these divisions become rigid and walled-off from each other, conflict and calamity are sure to follow. It’s only a matter of time.

Before we get to work building gates in our walls or breaking them down, however, Wisdom would have us first heal the divisions within ourselves as persons.

Healing divisions is not a matter of opening borders or building bridges that might facilitate the blending or smoothing-away of differences. A lasting solution will not involve snipping the tension generated between the opposite poles, or eliminating the poles themselves. Instead, we have to learn how to cultivate harmony by balancing the tension and seeking wholeness.

The set of insights, practices, and disciplines that enable us to find and manage this balance are the secret to human wellbeing. Beyond health, success, and even happiness, wellbeing refers to the condition of being well, or, deeper into the etymology of that word, being whole.

But what does it mean to be whole?

Why don’t we start walking into this question and see where it takes us? The illustration above will serve as a mandala of sorts. At the center of the entire system is the taijitu of Taoism with its swirling balance of Yin and Yang, the archetypal polar principles that push and pull, dance and spin into existence the realm of Ten Thousand Things – the ancient Chinese name for our Universe.

Our interest here will be to understand the internal tensions that must be balanced and brought into harmony for personal and human wellbeing, which in turn is foundational to the health, success, and happiness we seek.

My diagram will function as a map of the distinct centers and strands of consciousness that comprise the essential nature of a human being. The wildcard factor of ego is not explicitly pictured, but sits at the center of Will. The willful ego is what makes each of us unique and has the effect of either amplifying our (self-conscious) sense of wellbeing, or else throwing the whole system into confusion, conflict, and neurotic suffering.

Chasing after, latching on, and gripping down on what we expect to make us happy is, in Buddhism, the tanha (craving) that leads to dukkha (suffering).

Let’s begin, then, with the centers and strands of consciousness that lie closest to the taijitu symbol in the middle. On the vertical axis we see the centers named Body and Will, which co-anchor the strands of urgency and purpose.

The Body is itself a complex system of networks, tissues, organs, glands, cells and molecules which facilitate the countless urgencies that generate and sustain its lifeforce. In this context, urgency does not equate to emergency, but refers rather to the “urges” – needs, appetites, drives, desires, impulses, rhythms and reflexes that ensure healthy function, growth, and repair.

Breathing, for example, is an urgency that brings oxygen into the lungs and bloodstream, as it expels carbon dioxide which would otherwise reach toxic levels and cause cell death.

Opposite to the Body and its urgencies is the center of Will. Both centers are about action, but while the urgencies in the Body are mostly autonomic and unconscious, the Will is devoted to conscious control, personal agency, and intentional behavior. Purpose is our summary term for these types of voluntary action. Elsewhere I have distinguished these two centers and strands as visceral intelligence (Body: VQ1) and volitional intelligence (Will: VQ2).

Doing anything “on purpose,” “with purpose,” or “for a purpose” assumes a certain degree of freedom from the compulsory urgencies of simply staying alive. Whereas the deliberation that precedes a chosen action involves Mind and Heart in conversation (as we’ll see shortly), making choices and taking action is the unique contribution of Will.

It is helpful to think of Will as a horse and ego as the rider. In healthy development they work together, with the rider steering the horse into experiences that are wholesome, productive, and useful.

When the rider is distracted, confused, lost, or asleep in the saddle, however, the horse has no constructive guidance and things can quickly fall out of balance, veering farther off course.

Shifting to the horizontal axis now brings our focus to the centers of consciousness named Mind and Heart, which correspond respectively to the strands of knowledge and communion.

In this context, knowledge is “about” something and based in an objectivity that draws a strong distinction between Mind and its object. This objective distance between the Mind and what it knows – or more accurately, what it thinks it knows – is the salient feature and “secret power” in Western science. The knowledge catalog about Reality it has recorded through the centuries is truly astonishing.

Offering a counterbalancing effect across the larger system of consciousness is the Heart center and its intelligence for communion. If knowledge builds on the distance afforded by objectivity, communion is the experience of connection where objectivity dissolves, feeling overrules logic, and a deeper bond is formed.

Not objectivity but intimacy: knowledge about is counterbalanced by communion with the other. The union (being one) in “communion” draws the com- (with) into stronger ties of partnership and mutual identity.

All together, these four centers and strands of consciousness – Body/urgency, Will/purpose, Mind/knowledge, and Heart/communion – enable us to construct the world in which we live and navigate a life of meaning.

To complete the picture, however, we need to add two more centers on the strand associated with spiritual intelligence (SQ), which are named Soul (SQ1) and Spirit (SQ2). Only recently has spiritual intelligence been the subject of serious research, resulting in its finally being added to the “braid” of human quadratic intelligence: VQ1/VQ2, EQ (emotional), RQ (rational), and SQ1/SQ2.

Spiritual intelligence has nothing to do with being religious, going to church, or subscribing to some denominational orthodoxy.

While we should hope that every religion is a product of spiritual intelligence, many of them actively work to limit or even disable it in their members.

Soul is the center that keeps you rooted in the present, grounded in Reality, far below all of that world construction and role-play business going on at the surface of society. Your Soul provides grounding for deep solitude and inner peace, drawing the Heart’s communion more inward to an ineffable oneness in Being. In return, Soul supplies to the Heart an integrity and freedom that prevent it from slipping off-center and collapsing into unhealthy attachment.

At the center of Soul, according to Eastern philosophy, Reality as Ground is “nondual”: neither one thing or another, but Nothing (sunya, no thing), within and prior to the differentiation of things. Neither here nor there, but NowHere.

Meditation techniques enable the practitioner to descend through the Body’s urgencies to this quiet place of inner peace: Here and Now.

At the far upper pole on this strand of spiritual intelligence is the center of Spirit, where we have a similar counterbalancing effect with Soul as that between Body and Will, Mind and Heart. Whereas the Soul dwells in the grounding mystery of Being, Spirit soars like a bird or butterfly (favorite metaphors from the spiritual wisdom traditions) through the open air above the field where our personal identities and quality worlds crowd into each other.

Transcendence refers to the act of “going beyond” me here and you there, to the higher wholeness of both (and all) of us together, where the diversity of our unique identities is celebrated and adds strength to the Whole.

At this center of consciousness, according to Western psychology, Reality is “transpersonal”: elevating awareness beyond the boundaries of personal identity and categories of knowledge by which the Mind constructs meaning, creating new synergies of inclusive community. Methods of dialogue enable partners to ascend through their separate frameworks of meaning and belief, in a mutual quest for the higher perspective of Truth and a shared understanding.

All of these distinct centers and strands of consciousness are in you, naturally coordinated by the evolutionary aim of human wellbeing.

Start noticing their power in you. Cultivate a sensitivity to their creative tension and balance. When you get knocked off the path or lose your way, let them bring you back into alignment and refresh your commitment to being whole, seeking harmony, and living the liberated life.

Relax, You Are Probably a Post-Theist

The transition from theism to post-theism is typically stressful and traumatic for someone who believes that god actually exists. Even though they have never observed or encountered a deity like the one represented in the sacred stories – and neither, by the way, has anyone else – the very idea that God is not what they believe can be profoundly disturbing.

Aseity refers to something that has no cause or origin outside itself; it is self-caused. A new use of this term applies it to the god found in the stories of mythology.

A believer doesn’t ask where god came from, and certainly not who made it up – the first mythmakers. Pressing such questions too hard is criticized as sacrilegious, until it is condemned as atheism and prosecuted as apostasy. One must simply believe, accepting that the deity in the stories and the stories themselves have always been and have no origin.

Young children do not scrutinize a Bible story as to whether or not it actually happened or if the characters are real. They simply take the story as told and it takes them inside an imaginarium of distant places and fantastic events. The character or literary persona of the mythological deity (i.e., the god of myth) becomes more clear and distinct as the narrative plot (Greek mythos) progresses. There is no thought or need to check objective reality for validation of an actual deity like the one inside the story.

The importance of theism to the work of establishing faith, nurturing connections, forming identity, and orienting the individual inside a world of shared meaning is widely underappreciated in the research.

If we simply define it as a social system of taller powers (parents and other adults) and/or higher powers (gods and other immortals) who supervise and provide for the needs of their children (believers commonly refer to themselves as children of god), theism can be acknowledged as a human universal – an inescapable paradigm of every individual’s experience, at least through adolescence.

In theistic mythology, iconography, and theology (conceptual god-talk), the analogy of god as father or mother serves to project the parent-child dynamic of dependency, obedience, providence, and authority beyond the sphere of the local human family and into the tribal-historical, local-geographical, or even cosmic-universal environment.

The higher power serves in roles directly aligned with those of parents in the family: protecting, providing, nurturing, training, instructing, and modeling the virtues of moral character for their children to emulate.

The difference in moral character between a child’s real parent and a devotee’s imagined god is a difference in degree rather than kind. A parent’s love is normally preferential, episodic, inconsistent, and conditional, whereas god’s love is praised for being perfect – unfailing, unconditional, and all-inclusive.

To the extent that the moral character and actual performance of a human parent are not perfect, the divine character and behavior of god as depicted in the sacred stories provides a bridge and inclined ramp for the devotee’s higher aspirations.

Just as every human child grows up to observe and to some extent suffer the imperfections of their parents, however, a time comes when the believer must account for the obvious fact that god does not always protect, provide, or come through on his promises for the victory and prosperity of those who worship and obey him.

Similar rationalizations may be employed in the interest of letting the taller/higher power off the hook. An inscrutable will, an unknowable plan, or a tricky reversal of normal logic where loss, misfortune, and calamity are administered or allowed by god for a deeper or deferred benefit to the one who remains steadfast: a stronger faith, fewer worldly cares or attachments, or the promise of everlasting glory in heaven after death.

That last hook particularly has been an effective “lock on the door” of theism for those insiders (devotees, believers, children of god) who are beginning to realize that the sacred stories of religion are not factual accounts, and that their central character actually does have a cause and origin.

Deep down and for some time already, they had to come to terms with the fact that nowhere in Reality have they observed or encountered the deity they were taught to worship and obey.

These closet doubters may be told that god is not found by those who lack faith, that god rewards those who persist in their belief despite a lack of evidence, or in the face of evidence that directly contradicts what they believe. What had been a lively and intriguing literary figure in their early childhood must now be newly confessed as a literal being who lives outside the stories and above the world, watching and keeping accounts for the Day of Reckoning.

*Click* goes the deadbolt.

You may be one of these who suspected at a formative stage in your intellectual and spiritual development (on average between the ages of 11 and 25) that the personal god in Bible stories and Sunday sermons was not without cause or origin – or at least that he didn’t exist in the real world of causes and origins. That god’s aseity was a naïve assumption which got planted in the fertile soil of your uncritical imagination in early childhood.

Hopefully it did its job in helping you feel safe, loved, capable and worthy, pulling you up by your aspirations not to be god but to be like god in the way you lived and managed your own little world.

But now, at the critical age when external reality, objective facts, and the responsibilities of ordinary life are redirecting your attention and preparing you for adulthood, it is becoming apparent that either god exists as he is depicted in the Bible and Church orthodoxy, or he doesn’t and must be left behind in the stories.

This has come to be the crisis of theism, which leads either to an atheistic rejection and escape from theism and its god, or to a fundamentalist regression that pulls the waking butterfly back into a cocoon of convictions and dogmatic mind control.

What is really needed at this critical threshold of intellectual and spiritual transformation, however, is neither a rejection of god’s literal existence nor the doubling-down of belief in it.

Instead, a post-theistic reflection on the meaning of god can simultaneously affirm its origin in the human mythopoetic imagination, and, by breaking the spell of aseity, open up something hitherto hidden in plain sight under the disguise of the personal deity.

The diagram above illustrates these other dimensions of insight and experience that become available once a believer has grown through the literary god and beyond the literal god, into the realization of what that god represents. On “the other side of” (post-) theism and its god is an expansive range of experiences that can quite abruptly break into consciousness.

A quick explanation is that god is now recognized as a symbol and metaphor of God, where the case change indicates a shift from the mythopoetic construct (god) to the Present Mystery of Reality (God) it was all along intended to represent.

What can we say now?

  • That the Present Mystery of Reality is the Ground of Being accessed by an interior path of contemplation and release. This is the deep provident support that the god of theism personifies to us, the existential basis for faith-as-trust, deep security, and inner peace. Because this Presence is Mystery, our experience of it is mystical – ineffable, below the reach of words, thoughts, and thinker alike.
  • That the Present Mystery of Reality confronts us as Other, an alterity (otherness) with a transcendent center utterly apart from our concepts, beliefs, expectations, and attachments. In this sense the Mystery is absolute – pure, free, and wholly Other – drawing us farther out of ourselves and into relational encounters with “the other.”
  • That the Present Mystery of Reality pervades, encompasses, and includes us, as well as All of existence. This virtue is represented in the god of theism who welcomes, forgives, accepts, and embraces everyone, inspiring new bonds of love and understanding that co-generate a communal spirit of unity.

If any of this resonates for you, then you can relax because you’re probably a post-theist. If it’s all somewhat disturbing, then you might be on the very threshold of the transformation described here.

Have faith and take courage. Join the movement. There’s a lot of life out here.