Awake in This Life

While I happened upon this discussion late, I liked it very much. Both men are intelligent, passionate and polite.

In their exchange Harris, author of The End of Faith, establishes a definition:

I think that faith is, in principle, in conflict with reason (and, therefore, that religion is necessarily in conflict with science), while you do not.

Sullivan, author of The Conservative Soul, goes with this:

Agreed. As the Pope said last year, I believe that God is truth and truth is, by definition, reasonable. Science cannot disprove true faith; because true faith rests on the truth; and science cannot be in ultimate conflict with the truth.

Of course, it continues on.

Despite their eloquence, however, I’d have to say that they miss the holiest (if I may) of all points. The problem is not that either one of them is necessarily right or wrong, it’s that they are both looking at the reality that both faith, and faith-in-God, point to as something outside of this very experience. It seems that Harris clings to the notion that God is a lie that exists out there in the minds of those people. Sullivan clings to the idea that God is the name and form of omnipotent truth. Either way, both cling to a version of their personal truth and are thus establishing the very boundary of separation that will keep the mind in control of the search. This is what Buddhist teaching suggests will build the inertia of attachment. And attachment causes fundamentalism to arise no matter whose “truth” it is that one seeks to defend.

There is much more as both Harris and Sullivan carry on. Enjoy.

One practice that can help us become more conscious is to look at our typical, circumstantial condition by comparing it to a theatrical experience. Imagine that the stage in a theater is our “mind.” On this stage of mind is a brilliant actor called the “ego.” On this stage, the ego acts out a drama called the “life experience,” or what we’ve referred to as our “circumstance,” and it always does its best never to take a break because the actor can only be in control of circumstances if it is on stage delivering its lines convincingly. What’s more, these lines come from a brilliant filing system that the ego has written and worked tirelessly over its lifetime to organize, so that no matter what circumstance arises, it can quickly access and cross-reference any script it might need in order for the production to stay relevant to whatever situation might arise. The ego is not only in charge of this theater of mind, but is also the protagonist of each tragedy and comedy. Moreover, it is the supporting cast as well as the director, the writer, the lighting and set designer, and the stage manager.

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Many teaching traditions speak of two kinds of truth: Absolute Truth, or what has been called the “Ultimate realm”; and the everyday truth, or what has been called the “circumstantial realm.” Our day-to-day lives are filled with lots of ordinary circumstances. We get up, brush our teeth, change some diapers, get the paper, shower, feed the dog, and kiss those we love good-bye before we set off to work. Yet at the same time, our day-to-day lives are also filled with unquantifiable aspects of what we might call “Being” or “Spirit.” This expansive aspect of our day-to-day living is totally beyond any human trapping of any kind, and yet Spirit is always already everywhere whether our minds recognize it or not.

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When the ego’s activity of identification begins to be exposed to a more expansive awareness within us, it begins to resist what it perceives as a loss of all it has worked so hard to achieve over the years. The more we pay attention to exactly what is going on, the more we begin to see that our identity, or personality, is simply a mask that we have learned to maintain in order to participate safely in the world. The word persona, in fact, is Greek for mask. Once we begin to gain some sense of how exactly we wear this persona, we begin to see that nearly all of our life we have been covering up and protecting ourselves against psychological threats by enhancing our mask’s appearance and fitting it over us ever more securely. But as the altitude of our spiritual climb increases, we will find that we can more carefully study ego’s actions and reactions. Once this shift in perspective occurs and the fire of our Awareness begins to increase in its intensity, the ego starts to sweat; not just because things get hot, but because the mask that it has been working on for so long starts to melt.

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Once you label me, you negate me.

—Søren Kirkegaard

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

—Albert Einstein

One of the most interesting and powerful ways that attachment shows up in our interior landscape is through the process of identification. As we’ve discussed, the ego stays secure when it latches onto things that it perceives will offer it protection. The ego continually works to incorporate these things into its sense of both what it is and what it is not, and then building an identity out of these perceptions.

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Many seasoned spiritual seekers mistakenly believe that in order to experience living as a Big Self, they need to destroy the ego, or small self. But this idea is one of the greatest misunderstandings that new practitioners make as they ascend the Mountain of Spirit. Getting rid of the ego is a massive impediment to any authentic awakening, since attempting to do so exemplifies the unconsciousness from which practitioners wish to awaken in the first place. When we first become interested in the spiritual quest, we usually think that enlightened sages have no egos and have evolved into Infinitely Big Selves without human impulses. But it’s a naïve mistake for us to think that the enlightened among us have no physical or emotional desires, no wants, no passion, no humor, or any other qualities we might attribute to the small self. This simply isn’t true. Yet our egos would conveniently have us believe this in order to idealize Enlightenment and thus effectively discourage us from trying to awaken from our habitual slumber.

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From the point of view of quantum mechanics, separation doesn’t really exist. At least that’s what scientists keep telling us. I don’t pretend to understand very much when it comes to quantum physics, but its implications point us in an interesting direction when it comes to discussions about the experience of being a “self.” For example, the only real difference between your “self” and the things around you is organization and energy. The last meal that you ate, for instance, is made up of the same, carbon-based physical matter that you will find in your own body. The molecules might be organized differently, and the flow and expression of energy are certainly different. But that’s about it.

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At this point, it might be helpful to go over a few words in order to stay clear. For instance, when I speak of wisdom, I’m referring to the knowing that flourishes beyond the separate sense of self—we could call it Knowing with a capital “K.” Wisdom is beyond the judgments and evaluations of the mind, or, we could say, the ego. Wisdom continually realizes the simultaneous, supportive coexistence of our Ultimate Life with our conventional circumstance. It’s the result of any person’s shift in perspective from the habit-driven contraction of unconsciousness to the vast opening of Spirit. From this new perspective, we begin to simply intuit a consciousness that “Knows” the totality of the All.

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It has not deserted its creation for a place apart; it is always present to those with strength to touch it.

—Plotinus

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.

—Shunryu Suzuki

Although living a life sourced from a sense of separation consistently leads to suffering, separation itself is not bad. In fact, feeling separate from everything is pretty natural. But our attachment to both our sense of separation and to the activities that perpetuate it results in what many traditions call “delusion.” While, here again, there is nothing inherently wrong with delusion, or what we could just as easily refer to as unconsciousness, it usually gets us into trouble. And in a spiritual sense, it is the major impediment to an opening to the enlightened perspective. Put another way, unconsciousness is what keeps us from ascending the Path up the Mountain. Our journey is thwarted since the ego sees itself as separate from everything else, and it survives by building a fortress around all that could potentially support its ability to manage everything about our lives. It does this by clinging to the things that it sees as useful for maintaining its sense of control and by avoiding the things that challenge its authority. A common example of this is our tendency to look for certitude in everything. People so often feel uncomfortable in the chaotic uncertainty of life that they grasp at certainties such as religion, political dogmas, clubs and communal organizations in order to make them feel safe, cared for, and understood. The delusion that our grasping will defend us from the Universe is exactly what inhibits an awakened expression of life.

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To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.

—Isaac Newton

The Four Noble Truths: Suffering; the origin of suffering; the cessation of suffering; and the Noble Eightfold Path, which leads to the cessation of suffering.

—Dhammapada

Most of us have a deep and resonant longing to live lives of balance, yet we tend to get blown around continually by the winds of circumstance. Some of these winds are positive and fulfilling, some are not. Either way, these circumstances tend to push us off center and keep us from living lives that are informed by peace. At least, this was my situation when I first entered a meditation hall. I was about to graduate from college and was living a life filled with anything but peace. My day-to-day experience was totally out of balance, and I had no idea how to fix it. More than anything else, I just wanted a break from all of the stress that I was feeling. What should I do about getting a real job? What should I do about the unhealthy patterns that keep showing up in each of my relationships? What should I do about all the pain I’m feeling as I watch my parents divorce? These and other questions puzzled me. What was going on within me was in torment, and this torment seemed to be brought on by situations outside of me that I couldn’t control. I felt like I was being torn apart, and I craved some kind of internal and external stability.

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