Meditations
In addition to sound ethics, exceptional behavior also composes a healthy spirituality. Altruism, objectivity, and humility compose the foundation of a good spiritual life. Their practice, through a process that is reasonable as well as poetic, yield a degree of egocentric transcendence. This in turn, leads to a state of spiritual revelation.
Altruism is the first component of availing spirituality. Altruism is the practice of putting another ahead of oneself. Its credentials rest in acts of compassion and friendship. As a behavior that people seem naturally predisposed to exhibit, it’s not a difficult behavior to master. The ways in which it is played out are limitless. Its practice can serve as the objective in action. This is to be benevolent for the sake of benevolence.
Collectively, good will can spread throughout a community. In a positive environment, one good deed, however small, can send civic-minded ripples throughout a community. It is like a seedling that is nourished and grows with each act of love by the community members. Eventually, the tiny sapling becomes a big tree! Altruism can be promoted by a series of activities that become actualized out of a love of one’s community.
One way to achieve an altruistic disposition is to practice virtue. To promote an unselfish society is to practice the precepts. An ethical standard tends to summarize virtue and precepts and all other capacities for altruistic affirmation. The standard is called “the golden rule.”
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.
Another way to promote altruism in a community is to relieve social barriers. Racism and sexism are an affront to compassion.
Altruism may also be aspired by the practice of offering. There are many ways to provide or to offer something to another. There is the physical offering which is to provide service by one’s labor. The highest form of this would be the self sacrifice of one’s life. A spiritual offering is to provide compassion and tenderness to others. The offering of eyes is to transport a warm glance bestowing comfort or tranquility. This is difficult in a typically large city. Often, eye contact can be interpreted as an invitation to a more intense charitable dialog. Be prepared to be asked for more. There is also the countenance offering. One can provide countenance with a smile. Oral offering is to provide kind warm words to others. Seat offering is to secure another a chair or place. Finally, there is the offering of shelter to another. This is especially important if a warm bath is included in the deal.
a. Physical offering - provide service by one’s labor, the highest form being the self sacrifice of one’s life
b. Spiritual offering - offer a compassionate heart to others (compassion, tenderness)
c. Offering of eyes - offer a warm glance
d. Countenance offering - provide a sense of approval and support with a smile
e. Oral offering - provide kind, warm words to others
f. Seat offering
g. Shelter offering
What one offers another is largely determined by one’s accurate interpretation of their needs. It’s much easier to realize the needs of others by appealing to their state in life. This can be done through fasting. Fasting reminds one of human frailty. It can put one in another’s shoes. To know homelessness, go without a home. To find the starving, go without food.
Another step in realizing a healthy spiritual being is to find objectivity. Objectivity is an open mindedness about everything. In it, one realizes absolution is impossible in interpreting anything. Ideas other than those true by definition are subject to reasonable doubt. Human perception and interpretation are imperfect. All beliefs must be held tentative.
The good and evil in life are also subject to this. One’s interpretation of evil is oftentimes essential to the perpetuation of a greater good. The polarity of yin and yang, good and evil, active and passive, positive and negative, light and dark, summer and winter, male and female are each dependent on the other. Each lead to the other and are defined by the other. Both and their interaction serve a higher calling.
The third ingredient to the recipe of a healthy spiritual life is humility. This involves seeing oneself as a part of a greater whole. It is supported by three practices.
The first is the practice of objectivity. This is to realize that truth can be interpreted in many ways. A poet sees a sunset differently than a meteorologist. It ultimately suggests that personal preconceptions of reality may be false. One must become open to the possibilities.
Another practice is visualization. This is the process of becoming familiar with the imaginings that come when one shuts off the external world. This process exercises subconscious emergence and improves visualization skills. It may also improve a person’s creative and problem solving ability.
Visualization can be enhanced through the third practice called mind expansion. Mind expansion is a way to develop the minds imaginative vocabulary. It is said to intensify the depth of everyday experience in that it creates a dialog between the sensual and the soul without the intermediary of the ego self. The process goes as follows.
Process:
1. Relax and empty your mind
2. Pick up an every day object and look at it. (key, coin, ect.)
3. Notice surface texture, ridges, bumps, things that normally aren’t noticed in everyday use.
4. Don’t analyze the object. Just take in the experience.
5. Discontinue after thirty seconds. Go back to routine.
6. Repeat exercise with another object later.
This activity is repeated throughout the day at various time intervals.
The practice of altruism, objectivity, and humility lead to a dynamic yielding spiritual enlightenment. This “cooking” of the recipe is both poetic and reasonable and produce a degree of egocentric transcendence.
The first aspect of this dynamic is poetic anthropomorphism. This is seeing a part of oneself in another. To see a part of oneself in another person can lead to friendship and compassion. It is easy to see some of oneself in another person. But to see it in an animal, plant, rock, or even planet is agreeable. This poetic capacity allows one to feel benevolence toward these things as one would for a friend.
Reasonable doubt also has its role to play in the dynamic. This is the process of asking the big questions about living. It assures the importance of science and history suggesting the relevance of the natural world. The questions it often raises include those like:
How should I act to maximize human potential? This inquiry leads to a social philosophy and the establishment of a system of ethics.
What is my place in nature? This leads to natural philosophy. The causality principle usually prevails.
Why is there an ego? What purpose does it serve? This is a big issue in today’s New Age groups. Ego is the reptilian self awareness. It is exercised in selfishness. One might argue selfishness the essential upon which everything progresses in the fairest way possible. Competition yields growth. Apportionment of production’s benefits is assured through the selfish interests of each member of the group. To guarantee their own allotment, individuals will keep others from taking more than their warranted share. In truth, self-preserving checks and balances are only needed when foresight is lacking. Discipline can be asserted in a system guided by environmental consciousness and purposeful intent. Selfishness would not be needed for entities to regulate one another.
What is the most likely scenario of death? Trepidation and fear permeate one’s character when one imagines falling away from life. First, there is pain in sickness. Then, there is nothing for the rest of eternity. There is little to suspect more of dying than this. Yet, there are those who reject this conclusion. It is agreed that, when left to objective meditation, there is a portion of oneself that is aware of all the rest of the parts. Self awareness knows the body, emotions, and thoughts. Surely, this part composes the human soul. Furthermore, the substantiality for which it is felt suggests it immortal. It is likely that the soul is causation without substance itself. Reincarnationists suggest that it is like the flame of a candle. They believe that when the body runs down from old age and dies, the flame is transferred to a new candle. It is also possible that it dies with the physical self without another body to light itself to. The soul surviving death is likely an illusion. There is little that supports the notion of life after death, of a heaven, or of gods. The soul dies with the body. There is little proof otherwise.
Mystics refer to an extinction as Nirvana. This state is the dissolution of the finite self and is considered the highest destiny of the human spirit. Like the wind, Nirvana can not be shown. Perhaps it is the bliss and peace of Raja Yoga. While everyone good and bad, spiritual or not may eventually concede to it, how one approaches it may be relevant.
One may become more comfortable with self extinction when the ego becomes disarmed in everyday affairs. Mortality becomes less an issue when one approaches it in a state of egocentric transcendence. This is the third person meditation. It is the denial of self interest as a primary source of motivation to feelings of love for the greater whole. It uses visualization developed through mind expansion. It involves visualizing the material self within its environment. This gives a person a more holistic perspective to the workings of reality. The person becomes environmentally conscious and less egocentric. Self-centered values become trivial and give way to awareness of community and love. The underlying goodness and justice towards the greater good takes hold and finds power.
The third person meditation has been called “self remembering.” Its attainment is achieved through a methodology.
The way through knowledge involves the study of conventional religious thought. One learns through sages and scripture of essential being. An intensive reflection occurs where the hypothesis of a third self (soul) is confirmed.
This is done by:
a. language usage If I say, “I’m walking through the woods,” who’s talking?!
b. physics Pretty chancy because scientific thought is never absolute.
c. metaphor In this confirmation, one imagines being an actor on the stage of life. The eastern metaphor of the chariot driver applies verily here.
Once one recognizes the third person, one has only to shift one’s self identification to that abiding part. One is no longer only arms, torso, head, and legs but, in essence, is soul. Thinking from the soul’s perspective is achieved.
The way through love: One moves on to acknowledge love of the greater whole through love itself. First, one poetically anthropomorphically sees the greater whole. Human qualities are attributed to the whole. Environmental idealists refer to the biosphere as “Gaia.” Native Americans regard the entire earth as “Mother Earth.” Like a friend one loves it for the sake of love alone. Mystics suggest, in meditation, one chant and repeat the name one calls the whole.
Egocentric Transcendence
Once one acknowledges love of the greater whole, the next step to the third person methodology occurs. This is the denial of ego. This denial can be accomplished by two means.
The first way is through work. This method is intended to starve the finite ego by denying it the consequences of work’s action. By denying reward through one’s industriousness, the ego goes hungry and becomes weaker. If one does this then other incentives for hard work can be realized. Individuals can work out of love and no longer need to employ it for its personal rewards. The work is done for the sake of the greater whole.
Another way the ego can be denied is through psychophysical exercises. Raja yoga, which suggests a hierarchy of systems (body consciousness, individual consciousness, and infinite eternal being) can reduce the ego. This form of meditation goes as follows:
Raja yoga:
By acknowledging love for the greater world coupled with a shift to the abiding part, the ego finds its accurate and appropriate place. The ego’s world is not abrogated entirely. It still retains its role in the scheme of the primary and secondary selves. But it finds itself often taking a back seat when transcendence finds precedence. While the ego continues to serve its important role, its relevance is understood within the context of the greater good.
Product - the enlightened person
This liberation from the egocentric produces some wonderful traits in the enlightened person.
By egocentric transcendence, spiritual needs are served in an enlightened combination of altruism, objectivity, and humility, Through these ingredients, a dynamic acknowledges soul and the greater world to which it belongs. It shifts self identity to the soul and finds love for the greater whole. In turn, the owner of that soul finds peace, happiness, and understanding that puts a leash on the insatiate the untamed ego’s world assures.
Summary
Objective
In living, there is an assortment of motives that keep people going. Some would suggest instinct is all that’s needed to keep them breathing and wanting. But the soul needs more of the ideal than the real. The human spirit can make no sense of mere existence. Why exist if one can not live? The human spirit insists upon living over existence. Texture and color, the feelings, and dreams of the world are truly what motivate. Without them, one might as well be lost to history.
To find the rules for living, it helps to understand it as an art composed of activities. The art of living can, in fact, be broken down into five behaviors. First, there is assimilation. This is the taking in of sensory stimuli. Second, there is the interpretation of that stimuli. Then, there is the physical response. This may take the form of reflex or it might come back as instinctual. Response might also be rational and the physical motorization becomes purposeful. Another element is affinity. It’s hard to say where this originates. Are affinities “messages from the other side” or are they instinctive tendencies genetically hardwired into people? It’s not important. But affinities exist. They set possibilities of experience. The last element is reason. Reason considers the human predicament and decides what is realistic. While affinities drive the system, reason sets the rules.
Affinities are the essence of human motivation. Exploration of experience’s frontiers keep people breathing. It is up to individuals to lead an aesthetic life. This is one that fulfills their full human potential. One does this by exploring all things natural and created as dictated by affinities. Upon exploration, they celebrate the seen and felt through the pleasure of its creative interpretation and expression. One must remember, however, that because perception and interpretation are imperfect, life’s parameters must be held tentative.
Society
The idea that human interpretation is imperfect is important when considering the human community. The goodness of a society can be measured by its adherence to a few qualities. The most important is that human imperfection must be acknowledged.
A good society should never require or assume perfection. A community should never insist that its population fulfill its idea of the optimum lifestyle. Neither should authority and judges assume that the law for which they struggle is absolute. Society must retain an adaptive capacity for ever-changing human needs.
Society should also retain an anti-pragmatic disposition. Its design should allow an individual’s action to serve as a means to an end as well as an end in itself. While few can do this all the time, how closely this is achieved can be an effective measure of a society’s success. Insisting that the value of the means determines the true value of the end also promises action that is correct. Correctness and the pride associated with its doing can be a strong source of motivation. Yet, because humans are imperfect, one’s “correct” actions don’t always produce the desired result. This is why the process itself must serve as an end on its own. Regardless of the outcome the process can yield happiness. If individuals are granted an anti-pragmatic environment they will tend to be happier people.
It’s also important for a community to recognize the importance of both collective unity as well as autonomy. The collectivization of human activity is very important. Through specialization, artists and engineers can achieve a higher degree of sophistication. But it’s also important to respect the rights and ambitions of the individual. Those who seek personal ambition should also be accommodated. The individual capacity for productivity and creativity holds as much value and importance as the responsibilities that person has toward the community as a whole. To compromise one for the other leads to disaster.
The goodness of a society can also be measured by its capacity to avoid conflict. External and internal conflict can be reduced through the use of a few practices.
First, never should a person have to ask for that which they can’t be denied. The good society can be measured by how well it provides essential needs to its people. If people never have to want for necessities then they will never have to seek recourse on the basis of a threat to life. People should also never have to feel that they can not deny the requests of others. If social infrastructure meets human needs, then never shall anyone be asked for things they don’t feel free to deny.
There are qualities that can be applied to a necessities mandate. Basic needs should be distributed equally among all the citizenry. Future generations must also be included in this distribution. Renewable as well as non-renewable resources must be secured for future as well as current generations.
Institutions are the best candidate for the job of resource distribution. They are conservative by nature and basic human needs rarely change. It’s important to realize that sometimes needs do change. Feedback mechanisms within the institutional design can allow for adaptation to these changes. A dynamic capacity should be built in.
This feedback construct could be economic. With the free market system, competition drives merchants to fulfill changes. But, an ideal could be attended should affinitarian driven institutionalists make these adaptations. They would be motivated toward modification altruistically and as an expression of one’s integrity.
Another practice that can reduce conflict is to hold a contingency for resolution. Often, dissolution over specific resources can be solved by a contingency of three deterrents. The first is compromise. A compromise can be made over a resource in question. Perhaps this takes the form of time share, where schedules are produced that allow one then the other to use the resource. The second deterrent is innovation. Perhaps a construction can be developed to fulfill the needs of all conflicting parties. If compromise and innovation fail in resolution, the third and final deterrent may be required. Denial is to withhold the resource in question from one or all parties. In disallowing all but one of the parties the resource, a first come first serve criteria rules. A more profound and absolute resolution can be found with mutually assured denial. (MAD) With this type, all parties are denied the resource until the conflict is resolved.
It is important to secure freedom of movement for everyone. Those who wish to leave a community should be able to. The success of a community can then be accurately assessed by the character of its constituency. This is also an effective way to resolve conflict. Resources for deviant emigration must be retained for all members of the community.
It is also important to provide a clear definition of what’s required of individuals as members of the community. Many come into conflict because guidelines have not been provided. What these requirements might be is up to the laws and rules set down by that specific group. It would benefit from a detailed contingency for handling conflict. This way, when judgment is served, there are few surprises.
Individual
It would be hard to anticipate what would be required of individuals who play parts in complex groups. Requisites would be particular to each community. But there are a few that would probably apply to all. One could, in turn, conclude that these are a few qualities that make a good person no matter where you go.
First, a good person uses reason to assess the human predicament and to act in a way that is most likely correct. Reason is a funny thing. It never tells one the truth of the matter. What’s false or untrue is all it reveals. Through a process of elimination of untruths, a concept that is most likely accurate can be achieved. This can allow one to define what constitutes virtuous acts. It helps one to define the means to act given one’s circumstance. What does one do to achieve a desired end? Reasonable doubt sets limits given priorities. It’s impossible to do everything in life. Life’s span can only be filled with the best of one’s opportunities.
Another thing good people can do is realize altruism. This is instinctive love. It is the kind that is played out without any regard for self interest. It is realized when one races into a burning building to save a house cat. It is done for the sake of its doing.
A good person also employs virtue and practices the precepts. This is done for and by reason, altruism, and affinity.
Spiritual Life
There are three aspects to the human mind. The first is reflex. With this, one assimilates stimuli and reacts instinctively without reason. The second is the cognitive self. It assimilates stimuli, interprets it through reason, and reacts to it through motorization. The third is soul. This is the part of oneself that can be imagined to step out and away from the other two. It looks back and can observe activities of instinct and reason within the context of one’s life. Its existence can be assured through the depth and substantiality it is felt.
To lead an enlightened spiritual life, one should attain the third person perspective. Combining acts of objectivity and humility can accomplish this. Objectivity is realizing that preconceptions are not absolute. This includes assumptions regarding good and evil. Their polarity and interdependency prescribe transcendence that conceives evil as essentially leading to the good. This is contradictory to perceiving the evil as entirely indecorous. Being open-minded also helps one to consider the perspective humility asserts. Humility involves seeing oneself as part of the greater whole. Through reason and visualization one can accurately imagine stepping out of oneself and viewing themselves in their environment. This is the third person looking back at the first and second persons. It sees them in the context of a more substantial and relevant world.
Shifting to the abiding part is the first step in spiritual realization. This must be accompanied by the practice of altruism. Instinctive love is to be able to put another ahead of oneself. Pure altruism makes no appeal to compensation or self reward. Its credentials rest in acts of compassion and friendship. Unlike pure love, with these, a part of the self is seen in the other. One knows how they would like to be treated imagining themselves in the other’s circumstance. It is easy to see some of oneself in another person. But to see it in an animal, plant, rock, or even planet is poetic. Poetic anthropomorphism, the extension of feelings of love to the surrounding environment, can be an important tool to spiritual actualization. The practice of self based love can give way to the pure type over time. True love is found and it feeds the soul. Without it, even the most beautiful things become gilded and lost to meaninglessness.
Objectivity, humility, and love combine to yield egocentric transcendence. A shift to the abiding part coupled with feelings of love for the whole lead to a denial of self interest as a primary source of motivation. Self-centered values become trivial and yield to a sense of community. Fear of death becomes subject and is neutralized. Commitment to the greater good allows one to arrest guilt caused by prior personal flaws. One becomes environmentally conscious and less egocentric.
It is easy to understand the true purpose of selfishness especially from the soul’s perspective. In biological systems, independent parts often lack the capacity of self-regulation. Species will quickly over stress their environment when left unchecked. Overpopulation combined with a finite food supply may lead to the eventual destruction of the species. Nature relies on other entities or species to maintain a balance between the parts. This has lead some to surmise that genes are selfish. This is not true. But selfishness has served the objective of checks and balances in human communities. People who are inclined to take more than their fair share are quickly held in check by the selfish interests of others. Egocentric transcendence, with its acute regard for the condition of the environment, denies the need for external control. The enlightened become self regulating. They are inclined to take only their fair share so that the system maintains its integrity and is not impoverished. Only in dealings with the unenlightened, does self interest serve a purpose. The sage must execute a role of self interest, much like an actor on stage, if control is to be asserted over the deprived.
It is important not to let egocentric transcendence destroy the ego’s world entirely. There are those who believe that the complete denial of ego is the key to heaven on Earth. This presumption is incorrect. The first and second selves exist as part of the abiding part’s reality. The ego’s world is just as relevant as the soul’s. One must realize the importance of both if one is to live completely. Priorities must be set so that both aspects and the relationship between them are preserved. To sacrifice one for the other prescribes failure. In successful spiritual liberation, Plato’s idealistic reality comes into sharper focus without compromise to Aristotle’s epistemology. Reconciliation must take place between ego and the greater whole if happiness is to be attained.
The Rockaway Beach Papers
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