Spirituality

As you sit reading this – look around you.  Your world is full of things.  Material things.  Objects.  The computer – the chair – your house.  This is the physical world.  It is obvious – you can see it – measure it objectively – and we can all agree that it exists.  But folks like Einstein showed us that the physical world is ultimately an illusion – albeit a very persistent one, as he put it.   Its true.  The material world that you can see and bump in to is just one possible frame of reference being generated by the resources available to a human consciousness.  It is not absolute.  I am not making this stuff up.  This is what the predominant revelation of quantum mechanics is.   That the lens of consciousness comes in and literally creates the reality it experiences simply by being there to observe the universe around it.  Just by being here – we bring our universe into reality.   This is quite an astonishing fact of life and you should just think about this for a second.  Your five senses are feeding your consciousness with data and YOU are turning this stuff simultaneously into an objective outside world and a subjective inside world.  If your consciousness doesn’t show up to pull it all together – none of it exists.   This is the stuff that drove Einstein crazy.

Some things have form and some things are formless.  We have to get used to it.

And should we need lots of convincing that there is a deeper level to everything?  Science tells us that there are four fundamental forces at work in the universe and it turns out they are all invisible – beneath the surface – allowing you to exist – but you don’t notice them.  I know you decided a long time ago that you don’t believe in invisible force fields – but now you have to.  The Weak and Strong Nuclear forces operate only in the tiny space inside every atom in your body (can’t you feel them?) – whereas Electromagnetism and Gravity fill the room you are sitting in and stretch out to the far reaches of the universe.  You know these already – but never take notice.  Electromagnetism carries waves – radio waves, ultraviolet waves, microwaves – they exist in a frantic web around your head right where you sit.  If you could see them you would realize that you are drowning in them.  And gravity is always there – just push that pen off the table and watch it fall.  All invisible – all essential to the world you take for granted.

These forces are part of the subtle realms of your life and don’t readily show up in the obvious world.  But they are part of you nonetheless.  An invisible, mysterious set of dynamic forces are shaping your world – both outside and in.

So it is obvious to me that since we can’t argue the fact that we are “here” in the universe – caught up in all this universe stuff – functioning beautifully with this unique, subjective point of view – that we must explore here, in the deeper realms of the subjective if we want a proper picture of what we are.

But this subjective realm is invisible – obviously.  Harder to measure – harder to convince people of.   And science loves to convince you. “Subjective” is a bad word in science –  it means that we will never all agree on things.  But as a human, “subjective” is all you do, so it makes sense to use it beyond what science would accept if you want to understand what is going on with you.  So to understand the deeper realm of yourself you have to ride the wave of objective science as far as it can go, then leave it behind where it belongs.  We need to get subjective and look straight into the mystery of experience.

And deep inside ourselves, of course, we all know this is real.  I defy any human – I defy you – to tell me that you have never had a moment of some kind in your entire life where this profound truth didn’t wash across you like a heat wave.  Life.  Is more.  Than it seems.   It only lasts a moment or two, then it leaves you – a little changed.  Yes.  That time.   We can all recall it.  At the deepest level – if you let yourself go there – we all know that this mysterious subjective reality IS our life – not the outside part we all pretend is all that we are.

Once you allow yourself to define your own experience this way you will soon begin to see that there is without question a part of the universe, and of you, that doesn’t come in the shape of anything – that doesn’t take up space the way other things do – that is more about energy than matter.  This is the actual ‘you’ – the thing that is present, here, at this page – not the collection of body parts taking up the space around it.   The real you has no form.  What you are is prior to any formations arising.   You are an ancient presence – here at this page.  Can you make this subtle distinction within your self as you sit here?  This mystery – this knowingness inside you – that you are energy, too –  is at the heart of any spiritual sense.  All energy is a part of the total amount of energy available in the universe  – all energy is related – connected – ergo, so are you.  Having a sense of your spirit is as simple as having this realization.  And from here we get the experience of connectedness, kinship, compassion and oneness that drives the dialogues around spirituality.  Its an energetic thing.

So to understand anything about metaphysics or spirituality you must experience it – subjectively.  It can’t be mapped objectively with the scientific method.  Enlightened individuals pretty much agree.  The Tao sounds weird until you have had some kind of experience –  then it sounds right.  All spirituality is like this.  There is one truth and many different expressions of this one truth.  This is why fundamentally there is so much agreement among religions about the fundamentals of what we are.

So science is great but it can’t tell you shit about what the net effect of all this is supposed to be – that is what YOU are for.  Your localized, subjective point of view on the world is critical.  Any sense of spirituality is simply this journey of discovery into your Self – into your entirely subjective experience of being alive – leading, ultimately, to realizations about what you are that are far richer, far more profoundly truthful and wonderful than anything that could come from the outside world – especially science.   And then to find that your experiences agree with and reflect shades of the spiritual journeys of others is just a bonus.  Confirms the whole premise.

And the real beauty of all this is where it goes once the awakening has taken place. It grows – it deepens – to places you can’t even imagine – until a time comes when the invisible realms cease to be invisible to you anymore and you are able to live more and more as the energy.   And once you are there, you see yourself in everything.  A radical shift in identity has occurred.

This is the heart of spiritual awakening.

And everyone has this capacity – this reality to them.  There is only one human being.  And realizing this is not for saints and sages and medicine men of the East – its for you.  A birthright of sorts.  No initiation required.  Its just likely that the convincing moments in your life have been fleeting and you didn’t walk through that door when it opened.  But the truth is nevertheless still inside you.  And it will keep coming up.  Without it, life is pointless – a collection of surfaces and false identities.  Realize that no single human is better suited than another, or better equipped, to begin this journey.  Each one of us has a mark on the starting line.