We have struggled for millenia with the nagging existential doubt whether there is anything absolute or whether we are just butterflies dreaming they are men. We have built absolute systems of belief and absolute codes of behavior then violated and reinterpreted them against the backdrop of changing culture We have fought wars in the name of one who taught, "Blessed are the peacemakers." We use subjective systems of experiential spirituality with relative morality to simultaneously devalue human suffering and decry animal suffering. We argue about what we put into our mouths without thinking about what comes out. We are still arguing about the actuality of the big bang and evolution instead of seeking meaning within the universe which they have created. Our mythical god is nowhere to be found in the sky, our self god is pathologically narcissistic, and our nature god is choking on the fumes of SUVs and coal-fired power plants. If we can agree on anything, let it be that this mode of inquiry has failed. We need a radical new approach.
We need an approach that is not based on trying to assert a particular truth based on a particular interpolation of the subjective-objective strata of experience, because if we've learned anything from past attempts it's that we are going to get it wrong. I don't care how certain we are of our own experience, we are wrong. And we are wrong because our assertion is subjective and therefore cannot accurately describe either the objective or even another subjective. So we end up force-fitting a model around our favorite cocktail and calling it religion, spirituality or even science. Or if we're particularly caught up in the relativistic, pluralistic zeitgeist, we'll call it a model of reality that deep inside we are certain is really very true, or at least much more true than the other guy's.
We need to stop telling comforting stories to ourselves to ease the existential angst that arises from not knowing what we are or why we are here. Let me repeat this: We have no clue what we are or why we are here, and every belief that tries to describe this simply not accurate. We need to stop believing the stories we tell ourselves so we can comfortably sleep our lives away in blissful ignorance. The spiritual journey is discomfort. It is the law of unintended consequences. It is the stark truth that no matter what explanation you cling to -- scientific or religious -- it's based on assumptions that you fear to examine. Because if you did, belief would collapse in on itself and what in its place?
Consider this: The classical Newtonian mechanistic-materialistic view of the world holds that an object in motion moves consistently across space from one point to another. The quantum view shows that the object jumps around to many points in space, some along the path some off that path, sometimes appearing at multiple points at once, sometimes disappearing altogether. The appearance of moving smoothly from point A to point B is simply the law of averages as applied by our coarse-grained nervous system. Both are empirically proven, yet each is contradicted by each other.
What, indeed.
The light of revelation is not a new description of the mystery that shrouds our understanding; it is finding the essential truth of our experience and living the life dictated by that truth. We've taken the lightning bolts out of the hands of the mythical god and left him impotently holding a bunch of question marks. We don't even know what the mystery is anymore, or whether it is even there.
We need to get over our compulsive need for mystery and actually start looking at the mechanics of our experience -- the wheels that move and turn unchangingly no matter how we try to explain things. Spiritual masters like Jesus were great precisely for having exposed some part of the mystery as not really a mystery at all, but as a higher principle to be lived -- as something to become a part of non-mysterious life. The ten commandments (Exodus 20) were a set of rules written by the finger of god on a mountain-top, but the beatitudes (Matthew 5) were more refined principles for harmonious relationships between people living on earth. There is no mystery to be uncovered about the kingdom of God, it is the principles taught by a master two thousand years ago; it is here among us and in our hearts if we live it.
But we repeatedly make the mistake of confusing the content of our experiences with the cause -- the choosing the mystery over mechanics. The content of our experience is the subjective; that is the the feelings, thoughts, metaphors, and states -- the mystery -- everything that we would define as the experiential aspect of an occasion. The cause is the absolute, the objective context in which the experience occurs. A new approach requires that we discriminate between the content and the cause of the experience.
Well, let me back up a bit. A new approach demands that you care about what it means to understand the cause. Understanding the cause means living the truth it embodies. Understanding the cause that Jesus taught means loving your fellow man, being meek because anger leads to violence and suffering, being merciful because someday you will have need of mercy. But if "spiritual" is simply the type of experience you've chosen to order off the menu, then you won't care about that, because understanding the cause means eliminating the relativistic margin of error, the situational flexibility. Either you are living it or you are not. It is a simple question of integrity, not of circumstance.
So if you care about manifesting change in the world, then you will care vitally to discover the difference between cause and content so that you can live the substance of truth in order to bring about that change. And that cause is the common thread that runs through every important change that has ever happened, through every person who's made a difference in the world, through every idea that has sparked a revolution, through every enlightenment experience. You have to want it more than you want anything else in the world. Simple as that. If you do, radical change will engulf both the individual and collective levels. But if you don't, you will never get past the self-centric cosmology of the ego and you will fail. That's just the price of opening your eyes in the morning and getting up out of bed.
