Intentionally Human

In Next Steps I presented the “map” to a more authentic and fulfilling human experience, according to the perennial tradition of wisdom spirituality (Sophia Perennis) which has been active now for several thousand years across numerous cultures and religions.

The spirituality and its map are the shared product and collective property of homo sapiens, and while the religions are true or false depending on how clearly aligned they are with its underground stream of wisdom, the stream itself is essentially without religious identity.

It’s not necessary to join a religion to have access to Sophia Perennis, for it is already there in the collective higher consciousness of our species.

Indeed, religious membership can often make its access more complicated and virtually impossible. The religions frequently argue and fight over “water rights” and whose containers (i.e., myths, images, and doctrines) are superior. Stuck in their convictions and locked in conflict, the liberating vision of Sophia Perennis may be entirely forgotten.

That earlier post dropped a pin at the map’s center as a point for orientation: our ego. In mythology, this is represented by the Hero whose adventure and identity range across the archetypes of seeker, wanderer, captive, fugitive, exile and warrior. Once we can see ourselves in the Hero, the idea of a map as less a set of instructions than the layout and topography of our own human quest for life in its fullness makes intuitive sense.

From that middle position – existentially alone in the middle of Everything – our adventure can proceed in four distinct directions:

  1. Inside to our unique personality, character, and temperament (“oneself”);
  2. Outward to the social stage and engagement with “another” (actually many others);
  3. Within to the grounding mystery (“ground”) of our existence in the here and now;
  4. And finally, beyond by a transpersonal leap into the higher wholeness of “community.”

If you were to ask why, given such a clearly demarcated map for the human journey, it is so much more complicated in real life than this scheme might lead us to believe, the answer is that each of us gets “lost” in our own way. You might be a hopeful seeker one day, a confused wanderer the next, and a depressed captive by week’s end.

That earlier depiction of the map included an image of a tightening spiral on the path leading into oneself. This represents all the ways that ego insecurity can spin the personality into neurotic attachment, chronic anxiety, churning frustration, nervous exhaustion, and finally debilitating depression. Its centripetal contraction can effectively close the ego off from Reality, pulling it so deep into its own delusion and suffering that nothing else is real.

While it is characteristic of our Western approach to such challenges to isolate the problem and then try to medically relieve or surgically remove it, the approach of Sophia Perennis is instead more holistic, addressing the systems in which the problem is found.

Returning to the map a second time, we find additional terms which together serve to clarify a web of virtues that generate the wellbeing and fulfillment (i.e., life in its fullness) we long for as humans. By restoring alignment and balance among the interdependent elements of the system, overall health and wellbeing can be established. This favorable balance gives ego the freedom it needs to conduct its adventure with creative intention.

Let’s move around the map along its distinct paths to get a better understanding of these virtues and their dynamic balance.

It is by a slow process of differentiation that a small portion of the body’s deeper animate consciousness gets siphoned into an encapsulated center of self-conscious experience – the ego itself. The varying difficulty or success of this formational process registers in the nervous system of the body as an internal state of in/SECURITY.

Because ego formation is largely managed by our tribe, the devotion and competency of our taller powers generate the conditions that prompt an adaptive response and chronic mood in our body. Our sense of Reality as provident is the feeling of security, and to whatever degree our early perceptions are otherwise, anxiety will be our corresponding mood instead.

Later in development with an ego securely centered, we will be able to drop out of our conditioned identity into deep state of inner PEACE. What was in the beginning a calm and trusting composure of the body’s internal state (security) supporting our self-conscious experience from below, so to speak, opens at this later stage to welcome our intentional release into its quiet and boundless presence within.

With a foundational mood of security in place, ego can proceed in the work of regulating, coordinating, and unifying the distinct lines of affect and motivation in the personality – “subpersonalities” as they are sometimes called (Roberto Assagioli). As executive center, ego manages these otherwise divergent subpersonalities and anchors our personal POWER, referring to our capacity for self-control, free will, agency and purpose.

Gradually we learn how to stand in our own center and “be somebody.”

This adventure of consolidating a personality and “putting on” an identity is not carried out in a social vacuum, however. In fact, personal identity is also the product and symptom of a another system in need of balance, between the power in oneself and our LOVE for another. Our personal power is developed and calibrated inside the contextual dynamics of interpersonal relationship.

We need others to recognize and reflect back to us who we are becoming.

The path outward to another invites us into CONNECTION, then, that both tempers and defines our identity. More than that, each connection further awakens and develops our empathy along with other ethical sensibilities. We learn that love is more than mere affection and agreement; it also includes patience, generosity, compassion, service and sacrifice on behalf of another.

The altruistic nature of love seeks to devote our power to commitments which are conducive to the health, happiness, and wellbeing of others.

From the perspective of Sophia Perennis, this longer human journey from the gradual formation of an ego, through its construction of identity in the balance of power and love, has the ultimate aim of creating community. More than a mere aggregate of individual egos, community here refers to a higher wholeness brought about by the transpersonal leap beyond “me and mine” or even “us and ours,” into an experience of “all of us together as One” (com-unitas)

The wisdom teachings inspire an understanding of this higher wholeness as a nested hierarchy (Arthur Koestler’s “holarchy”) with egocentric (self-centered), ethnocentric (group-centered), Homocentric (human-centered), biocentric (life-centered), geocentric (Earth-centered) and cosmocentric (universe-centered) horizons, ultimately including all beings.

In such a vision, our sense of BELONGING is a spontaneous intuition expressed as joie de vivre or a delight in being alive. This is the JOY of the Spirit that some religions anticipate in the future consummation and “superconscious harmony” (Teilhard’s “Omega Point”) of all things.

This comprehensive vision of existence and of the human journey is based on the insight of there being an intention in our nature – as well as in Nature herself – pressing purposefully toward fulfillment. Our experience at any point in the adventure will be, to some significant extent, a function of how awake and attuned we are to its current and calling.

At the very least we should affirm that the Universe itself, here in its human manifestation, is an intentional system.

Author of Meaning

I’ve been interested in human nature, psychology, and development for a long time. My preference is to consider each of these through the lens of evolution, asking all along what a fully evolved and self-actualized human looks like. Most posts in this blog on creative change come at this question from one angle or another.

In this post I offer a simple, but hopefully not oversimplified, conceptual model for understanding our human adventure into maturity and fulfillment.

To make it interesting, I’ll use you as our human subject. Let’s get started.

You have a lower, primal, or first nature in an animal body that is fully immersed in what I will call the zone of urgency. This zone includes your immediate circumstances, what’s constantly going on around you, and also the pressing concerns that impinge on your experience one moment to the next.

To qualify this zone as one of “urgency” merely acknowledges the fact that consciousness at this level is fully dedicated to keeping you alive.

Given everything that must be regulated, coordinated, and negotiated in just keeping you alive, there’s a lot going on in this zone of urgency. So much, in fact, that it can demand almost your entire bandwidth of attention and energy.

If you happen to be prone to anxiety, the immediate circumstances and pressing concerns of living can at times be overwhelming. Not only is so much going on, but so much can go wrong that you have an impossible time getting a grip on it all.

All of those stressors (external factors, many beyond your control) trigger your nervous system into distress, where a bunch more things can go wrong.

The thing about anxiety and worry is that there is no end to it. There’s always something else, or something more adding to what you are already fretting over. Because your nervous system and energy reservoir are limited in their capacity, eventually all this tension drains your supply and dumps you into a state of nervous exhaustion.

When this nervous exhaustion pulls your mind down into it as well, you can be diagnosed as suffering from depression (literally the feeling-state of being “pressed down”). Maybe you don’t get diagnosed with clinical depression but are among the many millions of humans who have discovered that even a broken night of sleep can be just enough (though barely) to replenish your energy reservoir for another day of unproductive worry.

As I said, there are many, many people today who give just about everything they have to the work of barely managing their unhappiness from day to day. Sure, there are occasional thrills, passing pleasures, and maybe weekend bouts of intoxication, but the general tone of experience in this zone of urgency is fairly dark and gloomy.

Prescription meds might lift the shade a little, but these also invite other complications – and more things to get anxious over.

Let’s be clear. The vast majority of other animal species on Earth also live in the zone of urgency, navigating and reacting to their immediate circumstances, motivated by their pressing concerns of living. Staying alive, seeking safety, finding mates, rearing young, acquiring what they need to … stay alive – such are the preoccupations of this zone.

A major difference between them and you lies in your tendency to get locked up in anxiety and depression.

Actually, this tendency of yours is a sign of your capacity for something more. That debilitating cycle of anxiety and depression is what predictably happens when you either forget or fail to discover the power in yourself which we call the human spirit.

As a human being, you are (we might say) destined by your higher nature to seek after more than merely surviving the day. And because you have this power in you, this irrepressible longing and aspiration, any coping strategy you might use to manage living in the zone of urgency will only add frustration and duration to your suffering.

Ultimately, your higher nature desires a big picture and long view of life that makes it worth living. I call this the zone of authority because a life worth living is really a product of your creative storytelling. And in this important sense your authority is about authorship, engaging your authorial power as a human being to clarify your purpose and compose the meaning of your life.

Life in the zone of authority is very much, then, both a symptom and expression of the human spirit in you.

A big picture and long view provides the narrative context and motivational lens for a liberated, more enjoyable life. That term, “liberated,” is especially significant here, in the way it sets the contrast between the lower zone of urgency and this upper zone of authority.

Down there you have very little freedom, but are instead compelled by urgency to react, which then forces you into another pinch-point where you have to react again (and so on). You may try to avoid or procrastinate on something and feel a bit of momentary relief, but the urgency will be back very soon – with extra hammers and hooks.

Many people don’t have a reference point for understanding the kind of liberation they might enjoy in the zone of authority. For the longest time, humans imagined this kind of life through the gods of mythology – fictional projections, really, of their own aspirations for purpose and meaning, of the longing for a “god’s-eye” view on life and the liberty to live as they might choose.

Your own ascending path from the zone of urgency to the zone of authority follows (or has followed) a few predictable stages of developmental achievement. In the diagram above these stages are associated with the major eras of childhood (birth to age 10) and adulthood (beginning around age 25 after the brain’s higher centers are fully online), with the transitional phase of adolescence (“becoming adult”) in between (roughly age 11 to the early twenties).

In order to one day enjoy life in the zone of authority, you first needed your parents and other taller powers to satisfy your existential need for grounding and orientation. Such a foundational assurance and inner release to a provident Reality is the true meaning of faith.

Faith is what gradually enables your calm and centered presence amidst the immediate circumstances and pressing concerns of living (zone of urgency).

Only with this deep faith that you are okay, that Reality has your back and provides what you need most right now, can you find freedom from anxiety and break the chain of reaction that has held you back for so long.

During the developmental phase of adolescence you further centered this freedom within yourself and began to take control – not over everything going on around you, but of your own words and actions, your thoughts and feelings, even to some extent your wants and needs.

This centered sense of control, freedom, autonomy, initiative, and responsibility is known as agency. It is one of the telltale signs of successful “adulting.”

Now, with this freedom and agency you could further develop, refine, and extend your creative authority. Remember, the big picture and long view of life is largely yours to design.

For thousands of years, especially before it got taken up and absorbed into the various disciplines of modern science, philosophy – literally the “love of wisdom” – provided emerging adults with questions, proverbs, parables, principles and practical advice for keeping their stories aligned with Reality (i.e., truthful) and conducive to human (both personal and communal) wellbeing.

As you can see, none of this is really new. And yet, as you take this opportunity to clarify your purpose and create a meaningful life, in a real sense your whole world begins again.

What If

Can you imagine our situation on this planet if humans lived with compassionate stewardship of our place in the great Web of living beings? If we today could draw on a spontaneous intuition of our common heritage with other species and our shared dependency on the Spirit of Life?

As fellow earthlings and offspring of Life, we would feel, think, plan and live with the whole Web in mind. Animated by the same life principle, this Spirit of Life, we would seek the collective wellbeing and promote the flourishing of our human and non-human neighbors. We would honor and preserve the delicate balance among Earth’s material, microbial, fungal, botanical, and animal species – not that they are “here for us” but rather “here with us,” sharing this planetary home.

Just as we wouldn’t pump and dump pollutants into our own water wells, food gardens and living spaces without expecting them to show up in our bodies, we would not mindlessly discard our industrial byproducts and consumer waste into the terrestrial commons.

Indeed, had we been living with reverence for the Spirit of Life all along, there’s a good chance we would have developed truly sustainable Earth-friendly economies and technologies by now.

If we lived with compassionate stewardship of our place in the great Web of living beings, the flourishing diversity of life rather than its deterioration, endangerment, and extinction would be evident all around us.

Can you imagine the situation if we lived with kindhearted goodwill towards other human beings – at home, on the street, in our workplaces, and on social networks? If we could treat others with the same respect, kindness, charity and forgiveness as we might expect from them? If the Power of Love inspired and directed our engagements with neighbors, with strangers, and even with our enemies?

The Power of Love is often regaled in poetry as, in Dante’s example, “the force that moves the sun and the other stars” – that is to say, as a cosmic principle swinging and fusing together the whole shebang.

In this context, however, Love’s power is focused more in the connection between and among human persons. While it certainly has roots in the electrochemistry of nervous systems and emotional dynamics of interest, attraction, empathy, and affiliation, the Power of Love comes (or can come) to its greatest clarity and brilliance in the interpersonal space between and among individual egos.

As individuals develop and mature, they differentiate unique centers of identity from which to look out and act on the world. Those deeper and more primitive registers of neural and emotional activation mentioned earlier eventually get channeled through this self-conscious center of identity (i.e., the ego) to another self-conscious center of identity, generating a transpersonal effect between and among us – the Power of Love – beyond and including the persons involved.

We can connect with others in this way only when we are securely centered in ourselves. If we happen to lack a secure center of personal identity, our interactions with others tend to get complicated. Unhealthy attachment, co-dependency, manipulation, power plays, intimidation and violence are various ways we work our insecurity out on others.

So, to imagine how the situation might be different today if the Power of Love were honored and practiced between and among human beings, we might have to picture something very different from our current state of affairs.

Finally, can you imagine our situation if each and every one of us was inwardly established in the Ground of Being? If we possessed the ego strength and inner freedom to drop out of our separate identities and rest in our essential nature as human manifestations of being?

To cultivate such a grounded presence, we would simply release all the roles, agreements, habits and beliefs that define us as separate and special. Because our self-conscious center of personal identity is itself a construction of such roles, agreements, habits and beliefs, dropping into Reality is a simple matter of letting go of who (we think) we are and being present again to the Now and Here – which from ego’s perspective is nowhere and utterly inaccessible.

The Ground of Being is also no thing, and therefore nothing to the separate ego.

The Ground of Being is not found by looking outside ourselves, by peeling away the layers of appearance or digging below the surface of what we see. It is within us, not something (some thing) “down there” and underneath it all, but as the generative Source and essential nature of our existence as (in descending order) self-conscious, sentient, living, and material manifestations of Reality – the energy of be-ing.

Dropping away from the inflated balloon of ego allows consciousness to descend deeper into this essence of what, rather than who, we really are. Social status and reputation are released. Personal identity and our conditioned self are released. Beliefs and the thoughts that weave our beliefs into judgment and worldview are released.

Finally, the self-conscious thinker unwinds and dissolves away. From the relaxed edge of Life’s pulsing rhythms, consciousness opens to the dark and silent mystery of Being itself. What’s left is boundless presence and a profound inner peace – a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Just imagine.

In this brief time, dear reader, we have been engaged in a post-theistic meditation. You’ll notice that we didn’t mention religion, although the meditation itself, along with the quality of intentional living it inspires and supports, is itself a kind of religion: linking our self-conscious center of identity back (Latin religare) to the Spirit of Life in our body and all around us, to the Power of Love between and among persons, and to the Ground of Being deep within and far below who we think we are or are trying so desperately to become.

We didn’t talk about god, either – at least not as a figure of mythology, a concept of theology, an article of orthodoxy, or an object of worship. And yet, in a way that is most true to the religious quest, God was the focus of our meditation all along.

Making Our Way

In this blog, I am intent on doing my part toward correcting and clarifying the conversation around religion. Instead of identifying it with one or another of its historical examples, I’ve urged the importance of defining religion itself as a system of symbols, stories, sacraments and practices that link us back (Latin religare) to the universe, to one another, and to our own grounded existence in the here and now.

The need for such reconnection is brought about by the formation of a separate center of personal identity, our ego, which generates the delusion of standing apart (me) from everything else (not-me). Because the construction of identity is a necessary stage in the full development of a human being, we need a way back to Reality where everything is connected and All is One.

Religion, of whatever brand, is our Ariadne’s Thread out of the winding labyrinth that lures us deeper into the illusion of who we think we are.

So, however we come back to Reality, that is our religion.

A much more serious problem arises, however, when we forget or lose sight of the fact that our pursuit of identity takes us away from what’s real. In today’s conventional religions of theism, where a devotee’s focus is on the projected image of a deity regarded as separate and supreme, our lost connection with Reality has taken a pathological turn into conviction, extremism, and violence.

True believers are excluding, persecuting, and killing “in god’s name” those who don’t agree or live differently.

If believers could understand that their concept of God (i.e., their god) is only that – a construct of the mythopoetic imagination engaged with the ultimate mysteries of Being, Life, and Love – they might look through it to what’s real and really see that All is One.

But they can’t. The conspiracy of mythological (or biblical) literalism and dogmatic orthodoxy has imprisoned them inside a collective delusion, persuaded that their final salvation depends on what they believe and getting it right.

Coming back for the larger vision shows very clearly that “salvation” will not be found in separating ourselves from others, gaining liberation from our bodies and escaping to another world when we die.

Ironically, we need to be liberated from the religion organized on our pursuit of becoming somebody. Having become somebody, we should be able to get over ourselves – but we’re stuck.

The diagram above distinguishes the major types of religion and critical stages of human psychospiritual development. Perhaps a view of the larger scheme can help us appreciate the significant contribution of theism, as it also provides context for the positive anticipation of what theism can break open into – not a breakdown to atheism but the breakthrough of post-theism.

With each major type or stage, the language of religion necessarily shifts, and with it our basic way of engaging with Reality. These shifts are indicated in the columns moving to the right and upwards with time.

Animism is the religion of Nature and our body-centered experience. There is no separate personal identity as yet, no “I” (ego) that stands apart in its own locus of control, agency, and will. Consciousness is fully embodied, immersed in the instincts and urgencies of animal life, attuned to the rhythms and cycles of natural time. Life is the animating force in our body, evident as well in the myriad living beings all around us.

Essential to the religion of animism, as well as to its associated stage of early childhood development, is this sympathetic intelligence of Life pulsing through it all.

The work of religion at this stage is to guide and facilitate our reverent participation in the great Communion of Life. Absent the self-conscious orientation of ego, our response is more spontaneous, playful, and imaginative.

By late childhood or early adolescence, consciousness has taken a position of reflexive self-awareness, from a center of personal identity that puts on and acts out a variety of roles (or suits) connecting us to age-relevant role plays of our tribe.

From the location of ego in my diagram, we curate a wardrobe of suits (identities) that secure the social acceptance we need and the approval we crave. This simultaneously produces a shadow in our personality consisting of natural talents and animal propensities that others – especially our taller powers – can neither accept (repression) nor expect from us (ignórance).

The obsession with becoming somebody and finding social validation of our identity, but also with pushing the deviant or unacceptable parts of our nature down and out of sight, helps explain many common features of theism.

  1. An authoritative higher power in the deity, whose mediators (priests, pastors, and other clerics) supervise the faith, service, and sacrifice of believers.
  2. A moral frame in which a “good person” and “right action” are defined in terms of what pleases god and fulfills god’s commands.
  3. The righteous exemplar of a saving advocate (Savior) who stands in opposition to a diabolical adversary (Satan) that threatens to pull devotees into the darkness of sin and damnation.
  4. A fixed and absolute boundary separating insiders from outsiders, the “chosen few” from atheists and other enemies of god.

Such is the framework basic to theistic religion. The names and characters are different from one religion and culture zone to the next, but the elements of this framework are universal across all its forms.

Now, if our development gets stuck here, held captive by dogmatic convictions and protected memberships, the consequence will be spiritual frustration. This will either turn inward to become depression, or outward as fanatical aggression against everyone and everything that is not on our side.

The sharp rise in religiously motivated violence and terrorism, while not intrinsic to theism per se but a sure sign of its corruption, is why many today are choosing for atheism.

We need to understand that identity is not essence. Who we are striving to become is a superficial pursuit when compared to what we already are and have been from the beginning: a human being, or a human manifestation of being.

When our animal nature is honored and respected for what it brings to the construction project of identity, the shadow will be less repressed and volatile, making it much easier when the time comes to detach from our roles and from the ego as actor.

The time comes as the cocoon of theism begins to wear thin and Reality starts shining through.

A post-theistic spirituality returns to the body as our grounding mystery, dropping away from the attachments and social agreements of identity and into the mystical depths of Soul. The shadow we so feared is now befriended as Keeper of our Light (“light bearer” = Lucifer in Christian mythology). Actually it was fear that created our shadow in the first place, and can still bring it back from time to time.

And because we can hold on loosely to who we are, we are free also to join ourselves to the great Community of Spirit – the higher wholeness that, paradoxically, our ego prevented us to some extent from seeing but now provides an intentional way in.

God for Everyone

If you believe in a god who loves you, perhaps in a “heavenly Father” who is loving, gracious, compassionate, and merciful, a divine or supernatural personality who is happy with your obedience but gets angry or disappointed when you mess up or fall short, what you likely have there is not God but an idol, at the very least a human construct.

An idol is any human artifact – be it a fictional character, artistic image, theological concept, or just this free-floating idea of god in your mind – which is regarded as a literal or factual depiction of God.

Now, this gets a little tricky, so let’s be careful here.

What makes this human construct an idol is not merely the presumption behind it, that a character of myth, for instance, has this temperament or that disposition. The human imagination is a “factory of idols,” as the Reformer John Calvin insisted, not because it conjures up images and uses these to entertain itself and represent Reality, but because it so easily misappropriates its own constructs (god) for the mystery (God) it is contemplating or presuming to talk about.

Just that quickly, God as Ground of Being, Spirit of Life, and Power of Love is reduced to a separate being who lives somewhere out there and (hopefully, at least for now) loves you. A depiction or concept eclipses and takes the place of an ineffable Mystery and in the process becomes an idol.

Because no idol can encompass or adequately represent what is essentially beyond representation, your fervent devotion, dogmatic defense, and evangelistic witness on behalf of this idol of yours agitates something deep inside you – a growing insecurity and rising doubts over the likelihood that you just might be holding onto something that isn’t God and not real after all.

But now you can’t let go. You’ve invested too much and renounced so much more in service to your idol. Psychologically what happens next is that your inner insecurity and well-grounded doubts get amplified by the desperation you feel over attaching yourself to a counterfeit, to something that isn’t ultimately real.

Robertson Davies helped us unpack the inner workings of religious fundamentalism (or fundamentalism of any kind) with his observation that “fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.” The aggression and violence of a religious fundamentalist are his attempt to stifle the realization that he is mistaken by intimidating or, if need be, even eliminating those who challenge his convictions.

Simply not agreeing with the convictions of a fundamentalist will be taken by him as a challenge and threat, poking at his deeper insecurity and suppressed doubts.

The theory of religion advanced in this blog identifies three major stages or types in its longer evolution through human history. These stages or types translate to the level of individual development as distinct paradigms of faith: a body-centered faith (animism), an ego-centered faith (theism), and a soul-centered faith (post-theism).

In more traditional societies where the norms, customs, and rituals of shared life are faithfully conserved from one generation to the next, the initiation of children into a theistic worldview is facilitated by a coordinated mythology of stories that represent God (Love, Life, Being) in personified form (god) – as in the example of a “heavenly Father” in Judeo-Christian theism.

Such metaphorical representations are neither embraced nor scrutinized by children for their factual accuracy. The psychology of a child hasn’t yet developed to the point where a dividing line between fact and fantasy (or fiction) is established. They simply listen to the story in rapt attention and imaginatively engage with its settings, characters, actions, and events. The story “does its work” on them.

For a child, the god depicted in sacred stories is not an idol but the Mystery of Love, Life, and Being represented in personal form. Again, they are not yet capable of distinguishing between the presentation (god) and what it represents (Mystery/God). With their “mythic-literal” faith orientation (James Fowler), the stories are simply taken at face value (i.e., literally) and the characters come to life in their creative imagination.

The Power of Love is personified in the god, gradually clarified in the cycle of sacred stories*, and finally perfected in the child’s imagination to become a creative force in his or her own character and attitude toward the world.

There is no factual realm outside the story as yet, which will later on force a distinction between what’s inside the story and what’s real, what really was or is outside the story.

A healthy theism supports and facilitates the successful formation of self-conscious identity (ego) in children by orienting their imaginations and developing their personal character on the “Super Ego” of god. They are assured of god’s presence, protection, providence and love, which instills in them a profound trust (faith) in Reality as benign and responsive to their needs. A tribe’s patron deity is presented to children as someone who cares for them and wants them to be caring, good, and kind in turn.

In Egod and the Future of Faith I coined the term “Egod” to label this reciprocal dynamic of ego-as-god’s-reflection and god-as-ego’s-projection. While this dynamic easily can, and often does, spin off in pathological directions, it is basic to the formation of faith in children.

Damage occurs when the managers of theism – parents, priests, pastors and teachers – impose their own undeveloped, deformed, and diabolical concepts of god on the new generation.

In later development, when they have acquired the intellectual capacity for distinguishing between fantasy and fact, between the god in stories and the Mystery of God (or the present mystery of Reality), adolescents are ready to look through the stories like embroidered veils or cathedral stained-glass windows, to the light-source beyond.

Healthy theism will encourage this reappropriation of myth as metaphor by affirming the poetic and artistic (i.e., constructed) origins of its god: This is how we represent the Mystery among us (Love), all around us (Life), and deep within ourselves (Being). It’s just a picture, a way of thinking and talking about what is beyond thoughts and words.

When I earlier suspected you of idolatry, dear reader, I assumed you had either grown up inside an unhealthy form of theism that motivated you by guilt to lock down on one concept of god or another; or perhaps you came to theism later in life and took its metaphorical depictions literally – not in the naïve mythic-literal manner of a child, but as eye-witness accounts of supernatural realities and miraculous events, according to the dictates of dogmatic orthodoxy.

And now you’re stuck with them.

But maybe that’s not true. Perhaps you do have an appreciation for the mythopoetic imagination and the metaphorical nature of religious “god-talk.” Whether your faith was shaped inside a Christian, Moslem, Sikh, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Pagan or some other theistic tradition, today you can see through the veil to the light-source beyond.

You celebrate the Power of Love that draws human beings into communities of compassion and goodwill. You honor the Spirit of Life that animates and pulses across the great Web of living beings. And you contemplate the Ground of Being deep within yourself, where ego consciousness and the concerns of identity unravel, dissolving into a quiet and profound sense of inner peace.

Love, Life, and Being: God for everyone.

*A chronological reading of books in the Bible (according to the order in which they were produced) shows a gradual but steady progression in its god’s capacity to love – preferentially, conditionally, inclusively, universally, and finally unconditionally.

Trumplicanism and the Christian Wrong

Recently conservative Christians of the so-called Evangelical Right met with Republican politicians to rally for their cause. It strikes me that neither partner in this alliance is really what they say they are.

The Republican party has been pulled off-center and dismembered by the influence of a reactionary and extremist element, which Donald Trump exploited in his 2016 bid and win of the presidency.

Interestingly, his appeal was not really political – except insofar as he represented an alternative to the political corruption that his base believed was rampant in Washington. The attraction of Trump was in the fact that he was a capitalist and not a politician, a celebrity businessman and not a political insider.

Trump’s voter base largely consisted of working class folk, many of whom were struggling to make ends meet. Government-funded social welfare programs were assisting even poorer Americans in distant cities and of different skin colors than their own, but their taxes were paying for it. The vision of a democracy that protects the rights of its citizens and provides public goods for their health, safety and enjoyment seemed (and still seems) to be biased unfairly against those who can take care of themselves.

The message of capitalism – that by self-reliance, personal ambition, ingenuity and hard work every individual can improve their status and quality of life – resonated more with the values and resentments of Trump’s voter base.

After all, it’s what inspired the New World settlement and American Revolution at the beginning. The “American Dream” is only political as an afterthought, and the earliest versions of democratic government in the young nation were meant to serve and safeguard the economic ambitions of its citizenry.

If you can’t make it work for yourself, then you either have to work harder, lean on your friends, take out a bank loan, or go back to the place you came from.

Donald Trump’s ostensible riches made him an idol of what these “true Americans” dreamed for themselves. And his coarse, racist, misogynistic, pugilistic brand of white nationalism appealed and gave permission to their outraged sense of entitlement. He would open the way to prosperity and Make America Great Again.

So they gave him their vote, and Trump proceeded to hack away at the regulations, rights, liberties and other protections that earlier democratic administrations had put in place.

It makes sense that most Americans and many U.S. politicians would have stronger capitalist than democratic sympathies, given our history and how things got started. These two traditions – one individualistic and the other communitarian, one favoring liberty in pursuit of private wealth and the other favoring equality in the interest of a more perfect union – have never lived in easy agreement.

Before Trump, the political paradigm had managed, or at least had tried its best, to hold the two traditions in balance, letting the engine of capitalism move the nation forward into prosperity as the wheel of democracy guided the ship toward its vision of community.

Once in office, Trump effectively shredded the star chart and put the engine in full throttle. Unfortunately – but again, not surprisingly – a significant number of Republican politicians affirmed and aided his efforts, to the point where they were ready and willing to break democracy and steal his re-election.

That’s how the Republican party degenerated into a gang of “Trumplicans,” self-interested political leaders who use their influence to stay in power and please their base.

A vision and plan for “all of us” isn’t even on their minds.

Then there’s the so-called Christian Right, an evangelical special interest that sees government through the lens of a biblical theocracy, with the president as “god’s son” and America’s messiah. They profess to be Christian, but there is very little about them that aligns with the life, message, and moral vision of Jesus.

  • Jesus was a poor brown-skinned homeless person. They are typically middle to upper-class white landowners.
  • Jesus dedicated his life to healing and helping people in need. They seek to reduce or even eliminate social welfare programs.
  • Jesus taught a message of prodigal love and radical forgiveness. They condemn and reject others who don’t fit their profile of righteousness.
  • Jesus criticized the political and religious leaders of his day for conspiring to oppress the human spirit. They sidle up to politicians for the power and privilege they feel they deserve.
  • Jesus died in solidarity with those who had no power or position in society. They accrue status and wealth for themselves because they can.
  • Jesus held a vision of universal salvation by the power of love. They contrive manipulative schemes that promote their love of power.

It’s remarkable to me how far outside and against the gospel (good news) of Jesus the Christian Right really is. In front of the camera and on social media they spew bigotry, hostility, and conspiracies against their opponents – with occasional references to “God,” “Jesus,” the Bible and a “Christian nation.”

Back in his day Jesus himself called out such people as hypocrites, ‘whitewashed tombs’ with an out-facing righteousness but filled with the stench of spiritual decay.

In Against Democracy I explored the ideological opposition of Christian orthodoxy (the official Church tradition of “correct beliefs”) to the core principles of democracy, as yet another way to understand the vulnerability of Christian believers to autocratic movements, leaders, values and ideas.

The belief in a god-king (i.e., divine autocracy or theocracy), combined with beliefs in the inherent depravity of human nature and a future rescue when we will leave this fallen world and all our problems behind us: such convictions foster a deep resistance to democratic ideals, so deep in fact that most Christians can’t even articulate and certainly won’t acknowledge it.

Those in the so-called Christian Right can thus be regarded as the true devotees of Christian orthodoxy – not true to Jesus and his vision, ironically, but true to the religion that coopted and turned him into something almost exactly the opposite of who he really was and what he was all about.

It’s why so many of them believe that Donald Trump is their present-day messiah, so persecuted and misunderstood, god’s agent of a new theocratic order where Democrats, drag queens, homosexuals and other vile sinners will be finally vanquished.

It’s also why Trumplicans and the Christian Wrong are not just bedfellows, but in many cases one and the same.

Saved From What Isn’t Real

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.”

Albert Einstein

Imagine that the triangle illustrated above represents and contains all of existence. Inside are subtle distinctions, not absolute divisions, across the great hierarchy of beings that comprise this universe.

Instead of reading this hierarchy as a static scheme of human superiority and exceptionalism, however, as if living beings were added to and stacked on top of some material substrate, and human beings were added to and stacked on top of an animal substrate, we need to view it organically and through an evolutionary lens.

Living beings represent an evolutionary breakthrough among all beings, just as human beings emerged by a series of neuroanatomical breakthroughs in animal biology and advances in social intelligence over the course of many millions of years.

But human beings are still living beings, and living beings belong to the realm of all beings. Just as a growing tree projects its lifeforce through the extension of branches and leaves rather than adding pieces to what’s already there, so has the universe “grown” into a living and self-conscious community of beings.

Inside the triangle universe everything is connected and All is One – which is the mystical intuition behind our word universe, referring to the “one song” or “turning unity” of existence itself. The celebrated genius of Albert Einstein was inspired by his sense of belonging to the Universe, and it is doubtful that he would have formulated his theories of General and Special Relativity had he not contemplated this insight into the mystery of cosmic unity.

It’s the second part of his quote that I want to explore here, however, since it reveals why we tend to regard his remark on cosmic unity as so noteworthy. Einstein doesn’t offer to explain how this “optical delusion of consciousness” comes about, only that it is the condition of our feeling alone and disoriented in the Universe.

Human evolution unfolded within the broader evolutionary stream of life, advancing by adaptive mutations in neuroanatomy and further developed by social accommodation of these mutations, eventually bending a naturally extroverted attention back upon itself in self-conscious awareness.

The effect of this reflexive back-flip in consciousness was an experience of being turned into an object of awareness, and then, turning back out from there, confronted suddenly with a multitude of objects separate from itself.

We’ll go deeper into the phenomenology of egoism shortly – this experience of becoming somebody separate and special. But we need to remind ourselves again that the triangle above is meant to represent and contain everything that is real. If the process of ego formation is depicted in my diagram as taking place outside of Reality, the point is not that we are now in another dimension of Reality, but that we have entered something that seems real to us but really isn’t.

According to the spiritual wisdom tradition of Sophia Perennis, this illusion is not generated by conditions in Reality, as when radiating heat waves on desert sand or an asphalt highway produce the appearance of a lake in the distance. Instead, its effect is more like when two mirrors are positioned facing each other at just the right angle to produce a “tunnel” that’s not really there.

In other words, it’s not something out there (e.g., heat waves) tricking us into a mistaken belief, but consciousness itself that is spinning the illusion of a separate identity (ego = “I”) and then mistaking it as real.

In the window above, this “illusionarium” where ego takes form and finds itself – only to feel lost among the countless separate beings – self-conscious identity is depicted as a cluster of bubbles floating outside of Reality. If my reader should protest that, according to the premise already stated, my triangle contains everything in existence and allows for nothing outside it, then I shall wholeheartedly agree.

That is the point: The bubble is not an objective illusion but a subjective hallucination – a delusion. It is entirely in the mind, not in Reality.

Around the bubble representing ego consciousness and the subjective hallucination (or “optical delusion”) of a separate identity, a spinning wheel of arrows let’s us in on the consequences and repercussions for the individual. Retracting into our own center of personal identity and separating from Reality to that exact extent makes us increasingly insecure and anxious. On our own (or so it seems), we feel isolated and exposed.

The anxiety that comes with our separation and exposure is managed somewhat by the social validation we receive by personating roles that ensure our conformity to the group. To the degree we feel at risk of losing their approval, we will put on any identity and hide behind any mask that makes us more acceptable to others.

Pleasing, placating, flattering and impressing those taller powers and key-holders to acceptance and belonging gradually becomes our singular ambition.

Inevitably this mentality of “what’s in it for me?” tightens into a spiral of conceit where our feelings and needs (mostly our subjective feeling-needs) are all that matter. One last quarter-turn of this Wheel of Suffering closes our mind inside convictions and completes the separation of self-conscious identity from the way things really are (i.e., from Reality).

If we should think of god inside our illusionarium, it is as another being, separate like ourselves but much greater, who is capable and caring enough to save us from our misery. This god is depicted in my illustration as another bubble (a literal and objective Super Ego), with an aura of glory to set him (or her) apart as superior to all the others.

Perhaps the most important function of this projection of ours, this “Egod,” is in justifying our convictions and giving supernatural warrant to violence against others, the planet, and even ourselves.

The spiral shape superimposed on the ego inside its bubble of delusion anticipates the predestined fate of one who is locked so deep inside the convictions and costumes of identity that all contact with Reality is lost. Depression is where our energy, interest, desire and hope are crushed in resignation and despair: A life of pretense and “brand management” just isn’t worth living.

Is there a way out? Yes, but not by leaving the body and flying off to a god who is equally a product of our delusion.

Instead, by dropping the charade of becoming somebody special and returning to the body that is “part of the whole, called by us ‘universe’,” we come back to the true Mystery of God as the Power of Love among human beings, the Spirit of Life in living beings, and as the Ground of Being in all beings.

Salvation is about coming back in present awareness to what we are.

A (More) Meaningful Life

A mentor and friend of mine passed away recently. He was 79 years old and a one-time member of a church I served back in my ministry days. He and his wife were good friends with another couple who were founding members of that same congregation.

The supernatural orientation of religion, its tendency for getting tangled up with in-fighting, and the curious hypocrisy of many believers had kept him from getting too deeply involved over the years.

When his friends invited him and his wife to a small group study I was facilitating, he found the topics of conversation not just interesting but surprisingly relevant to his life. It was hard to believe at first how far the Christian Church had fallen out of alignment with Jesus the wisdom teacher, ethical revolutionary and social activist.

Jesus felt to him like a kindred spirit, more like a man with a vision for a New Humanity than a god-in-disguise with plane tickets for a chosen few.

My new acquaintance struck me as one who was intentionally engaged in the business of living a meaningful life. As I reflect now on his example, on the legacy he left for me and others, five principles surface in my memory.

These Five Principles articulate a more general philosophy of life that regards meaning as an act of intention (which the ‘-ing’ might imply) whereby we purposefully project around ourselves a mental and moral habitation of value, order, and significance known as our quality world.

Rather than going out to find meaning, this approach surmises that meaning in life – even the meaning of life – is a creative product of active intention and intentional action.

This reference to intention already suggests that meaning is not “out there” just waiting to be found, but both depends on and is a symptom of a certain proficiency in the skills for making life meaningful.

The Five Principles for living a (more) meaningful life that come to mind as I remember my friend and mentor should be understood as a methodology, a consistent approach, set of priorities, and practical rules for living. I’m sure he wasn’t perfect at it, and neither should we expect perfection from ourselves or each other.

As we get stronger with these Five Principles, however, life is sure to grow more meaningful.

1. Question Everything

Instead of allowing himself to settle into certainty and lock his mind behind the bars of conviction, my friend was always asking questions. Whether he posed his questions out loud to others or just worked them over in quiet meditation, this principle of interrogating claims, motives, sources, facts and assumptions put him in good company with the Skeptics of classical Greek philosophy who insisted that Reality is not what we think or believe.

Because our knowledge claims are not plucked directly from Reality but constructed in our minds, we can always get a little (or a lot) closer to the way things really are.

This deconstruction process may come across to others as quarrelsome, disrespectful, or even sacrilegious, but only in the degree they have abandoned the quest for Truth to become devotees of idols. My own irritation over having a belief questioned by this visitor’s skeptical curiosity exposed a tendency in me that would take years to overcome.

I’m still working on it.

2. Consider Different Perspectives

Once we can break free of conviction by the realization that Reality is not what we think or believe, we begin to develop an appreciation for the variety of angles, opinions, and perspectives out there. Because my friend and mentor was a generation older than me, and because his background experiences and lens on life were so different from mine, his participation in our small group confronted me with the challenge of accommodating a different way of looking at things.

It was an illuminating – and at times bracing – reminder that my claims on Truth were also a matter of perspective, one among many.

Even if we aren’t granted the opportunity to articulate and clarify our perspective in juxtaposition to someone else’s vantage-point of understanding, we can still practice this principle by asking ourselves whether there are other ways of approaching a topic or question of life. Just giving time to imagining what those different approaches might be serves to loosen our grip on the perspective we currently hold.

When practiced in the company of others who see things differently than we do, our perspective has a chance to stretch open for a larger frame on Reality and a longer view on Life.

3. Think It Through

If I call my friend a rationalist, it would not be to suggest that he could only think in binary terms of black and white, this or that, like the zeros and ones of computer code and the digital logic he built his business on as a software developer and entrepreneur. In the spirit of my earlier comments, I might prefer to call him a rational skeptic: someone who used his thinking intelligence to question and test and refine his perspective on things – and help others (like me) do the same.

The practice of thinking things through is about much more than merely reciting our beliefs to ourselves and defending them to others.

It involves tracing out the implications of what we are considering, what its broader associations are, how similar or different it is relative to other beliefs we currently hold, and what relevant impact or practical consequence might likely follow upon our agreement with it.

Such rational skills are vanishingly rare these days, resulting in more people getting swept up in social media echo chambers, lured into conspiracy thinking, and making snap judgments based on how they feel in the moment.

4. Cultivate Close Relationships

If we are fortunate to be on a bed when we die, what will matter most to us is not our dogmatic beliefs or material possessions, but the loved ones who gather in witness. My mentor was a dear friend to me and my family because we shared an appreciation for life as a journey between our first breath and last. We walk with others for a time in sacred company and then take them with us in our hearts.

My circumstances in his last days did not afford the opportunity for a final farewell, leaving me to fondly reflect now on the meaningful times we had together.

I’m not saying that relationships are the only things that matter in life, but as our journey began in a union followed by a separation, we may hope to rest in the end among a communion of loved ones before we separate a final time.

Even if this isn’t how it goes for us, the company of kin and close friends along the way is the magic that both deepens and lengthens the meaning of our life.

But here’s the thing: there’s a formula to this magic. It doesn’t just happen on its own. When my friend was with me, I felt his presence. He genuinely wanted to know how I was doing and what I was up to. A consummate storyteller, he could deftly recall an experience of his own that resonated with something I said, throwing light on a challenge I was facing, helping me realize that I wasn’t alone.

5. Honor the Mystery

One way I might describe my departed mentor and friend is that he was a rational skeptic with mystical sensibilities.

The term ‘mystical’ shares a root with another term, mystery, referring to a reality or dimension of Reality that transcends our words, our thoughts, and even our minds. In the presence of this Mystery we can only be silent – literally close our mouth (Greek muein) in humble recognition of the fact that words and thoughts naïvely presume to define what is indefinite, boundless, elusive and ineffable.

This is another reason I might describe my friend as a rational skeptic, and not a hardcore rationalist for whom everything must be logically graspable and boxed inside the categories of knowledge. He appreciated terms like grounding Mystery, the present mystery of Reality, and Ground of Being as naming something that can’t be named, a Presence that isn’t a problem to be solved but a depth and grandeur to be honored.

If contemplative silence is our most appropriate response to this Mystery, then perhaps the best way to honor it in life is to question everything.

And so we have come full circle.

I miss my friend. He leaves behind a loving family and companions who will continue his legacy, bringing his searching spirit, inspiring example, and love of life with them into their own quality worlds.

Because of him, we can all live more meaningful lives.

A Case for Human Progress

A “meditational hologram” – that’s what I’m calling what you see above. More than a mere infographic, it arranges things in a way meant to guide a deeper meditation. A large Diamond in the background, a diamond-shaped formation of smaller diamonds in the foreground, and the zig-zag pattern of arrows at midfield, all provide distinct lines of sight into the same mystery – the mystery of human consciousness.

Those smaller diamonds in the foreground represent four threads of intelligence that comprise the braid of consciousness in humans, what I name our Quadratic Intelligence.

Mind (rational intelligence: RQ), Will (visceral/volitional intelligence: VQ), and Heart (emotional intelligence: EQ) are arranged along the horizontal axis, suggesting facets or faculties of consciousness. Soul and Spirit are not different threads of intelligence but rather distinct nodes on the same thread of spiritual intelligence: Soul (SQ1) the mystical-contemplative node (or pole of the SQ continuum), and Spirit (SQ2) the communal-transpersonal node.

The entire meditational hologram is framed by four terms that name the frontiers of our human journey, starting out from the “I” (ego = the orange-colored disk or sphere in the middle of everything) that looks out from its separate center of personal identity.

“I” can look in to Oneself or out to Another, release and descend to the deeper oneness of the Ground, or connect and transcend to the higher wholeness of Community.

It can also happen that ego gets stuck in its own neurotic spiral of insecurity, feeling alienated and exposed in its separation, which in turn compels the production of compensatory strategies that end up obscuring the natural clarity of the three faculties. Convictions close the Mind, Ambitions entrap the Will, and Obsessions captivate the Heart – all preventing the light of awareness from penetrating to the Diamond’s interior (Soul) and suppressing its outward shine or brilliance (Spirit).

From ego’s perspective, however, these compensatory strategies are more or less desperate attempts to resolve the insecurity that attaches to its very existence. The unpleasant side-effect, however, is an unstable bipolar dynamic between anxiety and exhaustion, with the latter pole frequently pulling everything into a melancholic state of depression, despair, and suicidal ideation.

In the space remaining, I want to explore an element in my meditational hologram that was only a recent discovery for me. As I explained in Clarity and Brilliance, the faculty of Will, having been squeezed to the side by Western psychology and absorbed into its preferred cognitive paradigm, played a secondary role in my own scheme of Quadratic Intelligence (VQ, EQ, RQ and SQ).

When I realized that the Will is our faculty of action, and that it drives action not only at the level of our coordinated behavior in the world but also in the cells, glands, organs and organ systems of the body, its equivalence with our volitional intelligence (VQ) became clear to me.

Not only did this move take the Will from the sidelines of psychology, but it placed it at the very center of my model. The only remaining step in my theory was to draw a distinction between the autonomic and unconscious actions transpiring in the body, and the conscious, intentional, and purposeful behavior of the embodied ego.

So, using the convention I had employed to differentiate between Soul (SQ1) and Spirit (SQ2) in our spiritual intelligence, it was helpful now to distinguish between unconscious-autonomic (VQ1) and conscious-intentional (VQ2) zones of our visceral intelligence, further clarifying this distinction by naming the deeper zone “visceral” proper, and the upper zone “volitional.”

The threshold demarcating this difference is indicated in my hologram by a dashed horizontal line through the faculty of Will. Its position in the hologram overall suggests that these threshold dynamics might play a pivotal role in the whole system, and even have a determinative influence on the integrity of consciousness itself.

Thanks for your patience. We have finally arrived at the special focus of this post.

Associating the threshold between VQ1 and VQ2 with ego formation makes a case for regarding it as serving a critical role, not only in individual development but in our evolution as a species.

In Helping Each Other Fly I reflected on the strategic value of skills as hyper-intentional behavior which is not instinctual but must be learned. The initial invention, ongoing acquisition, and gradual perfection of skills became the foundation of human culture – the complex system of technologies, routines, institutions, ideologies and traditions that effectively liberated our young species from the instinctual field of survival concerns, perhaps as early as 2.5 million years ago.

Without an ego – without a separate center of self-conscious personal identity, subjectivity, agency and perspective – this entire project of developing skills and creating culture would not have been possible. Personal identity is itself a social construct engineered for the task of domesticating an animal nature into a well-behaved, responsible, and productive member of the tribe.

Through the process of training, shaping, instruction and assignment of each new generation, society conserves and advances the project overall. These skills range from controlling our sphincters and using the toilet, to tying our shoes and operating machinery, but also how to think well, manage our emotions, get along with others, resolve conflicts, and foster community.

If someone doesn’t teach us these skills, inventing them on our own would be equivalent to starting the history of human culture all over again.

We need the effective learning alliance of wise and caring parents (and teachers) together with devoted and hopeful children (and students) to ensure a continuity of skills from generation to generation, and the steady progress of our evolutionary journey as a species.

If no one teaches us how (skill) to respect and welcome others of different backgrounds, lifestyles, and moral values from our own, it’s likely that our insecure ego will be overrun by feelings of anxiety, suspicion, hostility and aggression. We may master the technique of how to load and shoot a gun, but our ability to negotiate social differences and live in community will be tragically underdeveloped.

Such are the conditions – weapons in hand, no love in our hearts – that put civilization at risk, threatening to pull down the whole project of human culture and a civil democracy.

Without the achievement of ego strength and self-control, history will throw us back millions of years to start again – if we can only manage to survive.

Next Steps

Wouldn’t you love to have a map for this journey of your life? Some chart, some tool – something that could help you get oriented in Reality and moving in the right direction? We’re not talking about a step-by-step itinerary prescribing every move, turn, and stop along the way. That would take the adventure out of it.

There’s something about having to find your way, and not just follow someone else’s, that makes the journey a true adventure.

We find just such a map in the wisdom traditions of the world, which originate from the wellspring of spiritual insight (seeing into the true nature of things) and comprise a network of tributaries flowing into a Great Sea of Enlightenment. As the religions have fought over water rights and whose buckets (conceptual categories) will hold and define this living stream, Sophia Perennis has carried on in its work of awaking, liberating, and renewing the Human Spirit for millenniums.

The diagram above is a simplified illustration of this map of the human journey, again not so much a prescription for where we should go but a layout of the terrain and the different directions we can go, depending on what kind of experience we are seeking. An important metaphor from the wisdom traditions visualizes this journey as more a way or method than a pilgrimage with a preset destination.

In that light, human salvation is less a distant arrival point (e.g., the heavenly paradise of religion), than it is the healing, wholeness, and wellbeing that arise from intentional living, when we are mindfully engaged in the Here and Now.

As with all helpful maps, this one orients us with a “You are Here” locator designated by the notorious term “ego,” which, innocently enough, refers to the place in each of us where consciousness flexes back upon itself in a self-conscious identity.

While it is true that the great historical wave of human suffering originated with the breakthrough to an individual self-conscious experience, the emergence of ego consciousness also opened up new frontiers of spirituality.

From this central point, seemingly alone in the middle of Everything, four such frontiers open up to us, each one leading into a distinct realm of discovery, challenge, and opportunity.

Oneself

The path on the left leads into the character, personality, and temperament of the individual – into “oneself.” This is an endlessly fascinating realm filled with funhouse mirrors that reflect back distorted images, along with countless passages, rabbit holes into dark tunnels, and tight mazes where it is easy to get lost.

On the path into Oneself we see the image of a spiral threatening to pull consciousness from its introspective adventure and into a neurotic pattern of self-preoccupation. Such obsession with our own need to feel safe, loved, capable and worthy (our so-called subjective or “feeling-needs”: the collection of funhouse mirrors just mentioned) is what generates the preponderance of psychiatric suffering across our species today.

Our anxiety drives us to attach to what or whom we need to save us, which of course they cannot do. This agitates our frustration, causing us to grip down even harder – or else drop to our knees in submission, hoping that our gestures of flattery, adulation, or appeasement will motivate their intervention on our behalf.

Over time, the resulting entanglement and codependency have us completely hemmed in and we might remain in this self-induced hostage condition for many years – even a lifetime.

The not-so-clear but very present danger of this neurotic spiral shouldn’t steer us away from the truly enchanting frontier of Oneself, however. Temperamental traits, patterns in the personality, and habits of character that formed as we responded to our circumstances and chose our way through life: all of it holds the potential of greater insight into who we are and why we tend to lean into or away from Reality as we do.

The modern science of psychology is itself evidence of how at once intriguing and baffling we humans are to ourselves.

Ground

A second frontier, accessible from this back country of Oneself but also approachable by a more “vertical” and inward drop away from the center position of ego, is a mystery of what the wisdom traditions name the Ground – the grounding Mystery, Ground of Being, Real Presence, or the Present Mystery of Reality.

The alternate route, through the threads and tangles of personality, has frequently led some to conclude that the frontiers of Oneself and Ground are really the same – when they are not. Their difference is a matter of whether the ego is conducting the quest, through a webwork of its own making, or instead needs to be released and left at the surface for a kind of existential “trust fall” into the very Ground of our being.

This is the essential, and etymological, meaning of “faith.”

Interior probes of our personality can bring us to the brink, perhaps, but at some point the center of self-conscious awareness must itself be surrendered, leaving no one (none, no thing, Nothing) but an ineffable and boundless Presence.

Mystical spirituality is a disciplined cultivation of communion with the Ground, playing at the threshold or drop-off where words dissolve, theology (“god talk”) becomes nonsense, where thoughts untie from the thinker, and only a pure awareness remains. Not surprisingly, mystics the world over have not been well-received by the custodians of religious orthodoxy. In many cases, they have been excommunicated, persecuted, condemned and put to death – only later honored or even worshiped as revealers and avatars of Truth.

Another

Returning to the “You are Here” station of ego, a third path takes us into the frontier of interpersonal life, the social arena, and where we encounter “an other” (Another). The otherness of Another shows itself only through the veils of personality, as the hidden subject behind the presented object of the person before us. An interior self, a center of feeling, thought, intention and will, is back there somewhere, arousing our fascination, curiosity, fantasy, suspicion or fear.

The development of our own personality and sense of self, of our ego and personal identity, was shaped in the field of early attachments and alliances.

Personal identity and its ego-in-charge would simply not be possible without this interplay with partners, allies, rivals and opponents who are on their own journeys of ego formation toward becoming somebody special.

Just take all of those complications and neurotic potential that we barely acknowledged in each of us (Oneself), and now throw it into the fray of interpersonal and social interactions, and what you have is an exponential dynamic of actions causing reactions causing counter-reactions, all together producing an amplifying effect across the web of human relations that seems always on the verge of blowing up or shaking apart.

And yet, somehow we need each other.

Community

For what? The answer to this question takes us into our fourth frontier, called Community. Not just another word for the addition of more Others to the scene, community names the synergistic and transformational process whereby much of that same chaotic energy just mentioned gets harnessed and channeled into a higher wholeness.

Individually we are empowered to rise above our own roles and identity contracts for the sake of joining with others in transpersonal fellowship and harmony.

Notwithstanding my earlier concession that the human journey is less about a destination (where we are going) than a way or method (how we are going), this whole scheme seems guided by an aim towards ever more inclusive, compassionate, virtuous and enlightened – in a word, provident – forms of community.

As individuals commit themselves to living more grounded and centered lives, reaching out to each other with acceptance and love, the strength of their bonds and the synergy in their differences will continue to create communities that nurture, inspire, guide and liberate the Human Spirit for still more to come.

It’s there we learn that waking up and becoming whole, together, is what the human journey is all about.