The Strength of Vulnerability; The Power of Gentleness

"Staying vulnerable is the risk we have to take if we want to experience connection."

"Courage starts by showing up and letting ourselves be seen."

"Vulnerability is not weakness... The uncertainty, risk, emotional exposure we face everyday are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement. Our willingness to own and engage with our own vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection."
(Brene Brown)

So often we don our favorite facade and
off we go being the person we wish we were;
while hiding the person we really are.

What is this fear of revealing our true selves?
Why does it feel more safe to show a false front?
To show up as a stranger to ourselves and to those around us?

What is This Drive to Convince? … to Be Right???

"He who thinks he knows,
doesn't know.
He who knows that he doesn't know,
 knows." (Joseph Campbell)

"You can argue with someone's opinion, but you can't argue with their story." (Nicky Cruz)

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.” (Leo Tolstoy)

All of my life I’ve been wondering where this drive to convince others that I’m right comes from? It was rather startling when it hit me that when I have this need to be right, then I also must make others wrong. Why would I do that? Inherent in my thinking is that I, the right one, am superior; and you, the wrong one, are inferior. All you have to do is see things my way and change your thinking to think like me. Then my rightness will be your savior. But if you refuse to change your mind to think like me, then you should be banished or destroyed. How did we become so violent?

Have you ever noticed certain times with certain people regarding certain issues, that it drives you crazy that you can’t get through to them. You lay awake at night thinking of all the things I should have or could have said that would have convinced them during that argument. WHAT IS THIS DRIVE TO CONVINCE? It is INHUMAN and INHUMANE.

A Shift of Authority

SHIFT OF AUTHORITY

"They must find it difficult. . . 

Those that have taken authority as the truth,

Rather than truth as the authority."

(Gerald Massey, Egyptologist, 1828-1907)

Past Authority

external (gods, holy books, prophets and priests, kings and queens, etc)

"For centuries, humans believed that the real source of authority in the world is not their imagination, is not their collective power, but most human beings thought that authority actually comes from outside, authority comes from above the clouds, from the heavens; authority comes from the gods. The most important source of authority in politics, in economics, in ethics were the great gods, their sacred books and their representatives on earth; the priests, the rabbis, the shamans, the kalis, the popes, and so forth." (Yuval Noah Harrari, Homo Sapiens: A Brief History of Tomorrow)

Present Authority

internal (politics, spiritual, economics, education, etc)

"Then in the last two or three centuries, we have seen a tremendous political, ethical, and religious evolution which brought down authority from the heavens down to the earth, down to humans, and said that the most important source of authority, the supreme source of authority in all fields of life is the human being and in particular it is the feelings and the free choices of individuals. What humanism told humans is that when you have some problem in your life, whether it is in your personal life or whether it is a problem in the collective life of the whole society or the nation, you don't need to look for the answer from gods or from the Bible or from big brother, you need to look for the answer within yourself, in your feelings, in your free choices. And we've all heard thousands of times these slogans which tell us, listen to yourself, connect to yourself, follow your heart, do what feels good to you.

"And these are really the most important ideas or advices about authority for the last two or three centuries. In almost all fields of life, if we start with politics, in a humanist world that believes that we start with human feelings, politics manifests itself in the idea that the voter is the supreme authority, the voter knows best. When we have some big political decision like who should rule the country, who should be president, you don't ask god, you don't ask the pope, and you don't ask the council of Nobel Laureates, you go to each and every homo sapien and you ask, what do you think, what do you feel about this question? And most of the time it is about what you feel about the issue. It is not rational thinking, it is human feelings and the common assumption in humanist politics is that there is no higher authority than human feelings. You cannot come to humans and say, yes you think like that, you feel like that, but there is some higher authority that tells you that you are wrong. This was, of course, the case in middle ages but not in modern humanistic politics and certainly not in a democracy." (Yuval Noah Harrari, Homo Sapiens: A Brief History of Tomorrow) Another example that he uses is that beauty is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder. The human being, the human eye is the ultimate authority when it comes to aesthetics. He goes on to list example after example.

Future Authority

algorithms (that know us better than we know ourselves)

The direction that authority is moving is away from human beings. We have all sensed that human feelings are not the ultimate test of "rightness" or truth. And yet we have been making decisions based on free choice and human feelings. As time moves forward and there is this merging of infotech with biotech, technology is gradually knowing human beings better we know ourselves. A perfect example is in the medical field. We don't vote on getting a surgery. We rely on test after test that measures so many things and then the decision is made by medical science through the doctor. I'm sure we could never get away with submitting a bill for a medical procedure to a health insurance provider for payment with the rationale that it is what I feel I need.

Yuval Noah Harari: the future of authority and reality versus the fictions we tell ourselves (religion, politics, nations, organizations, hierarchy, power, money, being right or wrong, etc) 

The most powerful things on earth are fictions, stories in our minds, myths. This is how we now rule the earth. It is our stories that organize us into the collective powers that control the earth. (corporations, governments, religions)

Our Source of Authority

So often, we are not aware of our source of authority or our source of truth. Often it is something we have been told, something that has been conditioned into us by culture, something we have unconsciously downloaded from the myriad of powers and influences around us. It is not very often that we do the inner work necessary to discern the competing voices within and come to know what we "know". See, How Do We Know That We Know What We Know?

Jiddu Krishnamurti says that we must deny all external authority in order to follow inner truth. He also talks extensively about how confusing the inner voice is and the need for discernment between a deep resonating truth and conditioning (the “truth” we have been told).

"If we can understand the compulsion behind our desire to dominate or to be dominated, then perhaps we can be free from the crippling effects of authority. We crave to be certain, to be right, to be successful, to know; and this desire for certainty, for permanence, builds up within ourselves the authority of personal experience, while outwardly it creates the authority of society, of the family, of religion, and so on. But merely to ignore authority, to shake off its outward symbols, is of very little significance. To break away from one tradition and conform to another, to leave this leader and follow that, is but a superficial gesture. If we are to be aware of the whole process of authority, if we are to see the inwardness of it, if we are to understand and transcend the desire for certainty, then we must have extensive awareness and insight, we must be free, not at the end, but at the beginning."

"Why do we accept, why do we follow? We follow another’s authority, another’s experience, and then doubt it; this search for authority and its sequel, disillusionment, is a painful process for most of us. We blame or criticize the once accepted authority, the leader, the teacher, but we do not examine our own craving for an authority who can direct our conduct. Once we understand this craving we shall comprehend the significance of doubt."
- Krishnamurti, J. The Book of Life

"The world accepts and follows the traditional approach. The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another; we mechanically follow somebody who will assure us a comfortable spiritual life. It is a most extraordinary thing that although most of us are opposed to political tyranny and dictatorship, we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny, of another to twist our minds and our way of life. So if we completely reject, not intellectually but actually, all so-called spiritual authority, all ceremonies, rituals and dogmas, it means that we stand alone and are already in conflict with society; we cease to be respectable human beings. A respectable human being cannot possibly come near to that infinite, immeasurable, reality."
- Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known

Reality: Mediated vs. Unmediated

I’ve come to see that religion falls within a spectrum of mediated versus unmediated. This is really a matter of their belief in where true authority lies; within or without. Catholic and Orthodoxy tends to be highly mediated where a person finds meaning through symbols and rituals. The rituals mediate meaning. The order of service, the sacraments, holy days, the priests, the saints (and on and on) mediate meaning for some people. On the other end of the spectrum are the mystics and the quakers where symbols are not used, holy days are internal and practiced everyday throughout the year, priests and pastors are not needed, and truth is spoken from within by anyone as they are inspired.

I’m seeing now that there is another way of seeing. Reality itself can be mediated or unmediated. Some people need stories and myths and books and preachers to mediate the truth from external sources. But some of us must experience reality directly through personal relationships and through direct experience. Truth is something that comes from within, resonating deeply, as if we are remembering what we already know.

The Importance of Discernment

Conflicting authority is a huge problem in our society. People believe what they believe and often do not know why they believe what they believe. I fairly recent mantra for my life has been this: "There is no authentic 'knowing' outside of the context of direct experience and relationships." There are so many influences and competing voices inside us and outside us. All of our lives we are told what to think, what to believe, how to think, what to do, and on and on. If we don't know better, we might end up just following the herd and eventually becoming the herd. Life is all about being me! But if I don't step away and rise above to observe what is going on, I'll never be anything but lost in the crowd, another sheep in the flock. Actually, that is what much of society would like to see, especially the powers that be. Power and control, conformity and submission.

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Discerning all authority; outer and inner:

"Having realized that we can depend on no outside authority in bringing about a total revolution within the structure of our own psyche, there is the immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority, the authority of our own particular little experiences and accumulated opinions, knowledge, ideas and ideals." (Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known)

The Quakers have a great example of how to discern truth communally, realizing that life is much too complex to navigate on our own:

Quakers use a process called the Clearness Committee to assist a person to discern a truth, or a leading since there is no "authority" or pastor or hierarchy in many Quaker gatherings. When a person seeks guidance, they turn to the community, a group of trusted Friends gather around a “focus” person and ask honest, open ended questions. No convincing, no leading statements are allowed. The purpose is to help a person access and assess their inner teacher, inner light, and draw out the person’s truth. “No fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting each other straight.”

How Do We Know That We Know What We Know???

In a world full of people saying with such gusto, "I'm right and therefore you are wrong,"
how do we know what we know?
Why do we know what we know?
What does it matter?

“Each of us creates a picture of our world by connecting a dozen or so of the trillions of dots that would need to be connected to make a ‘true’ portrait of the universe.” — Sam Keen

Just because we think we know, does that mean we really know?
Just because someone told us so, does that mean we know?
Just because a person with power or authority tells us it is so, does that make it so?

"He who thinks he knows,
doesn't know.
He who knows that he doesn't know,
knows." (Joseph Campbell)
How do we know that we know what we know?

There is no authentic “knowing” outside the context of relationship or direct experience.

Those who know
don't talk.
Those who talk
don't know.

(Tao Te Ching)

“The path between the head and the heart is the longest journey.” Ojibwe saying.

Head knowledge is a form of passive learning that we are told. Its source is external. It is downloaded from culture and higher authorities. It is second-hand knowledge.

Heart knowledge is a form of active learning, learning by doing, learning through direct experience and through relationships. Its source is internal. It is knowledge that is ‘realized’ from within.

"The problem is that the knowledge we need originates underground. It comes from a place within us deeper than our intellects, a place the poet William Stafford calls "a remote, important region in all who speak," a place sometimes called the inner teacher or the soul. But rarely do we allow ourselves to go to that place. Instead, we fill our lives with noisy distractions, blocking our access to insights that might scare us but could also save us." (Parker Palmer)

"What is your life about, anyway?

Nothing but a struggle to be someone. 

Nothing but a running from your own silence."

(Rumi) 

TWO KINDS OF KNOWING 

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets. 

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning. 

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
-Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi 

FOUR dimensions of knowing

Known Knowns: things we know that we know.
Known Unknowns: things that we know we don't know.
Unknown Knowns: things that we already know, down deep, but have forgotten.
Unknown Unknowns: things we don't know we don't know.

1. Known Knowns: Knowing what I know. Certainty is a sort of “god” for many of us. We seek to learn only so that we no longer “don’t know”; which is "anathema" or cursed in our culture. We are uncomfortable with not knowing, and so we cling to any sort of idea that makes us comfortable. We fear what we do not know, and so we grasp hold of anything that will squelch our fears; an illusion of “knowing”. These are often opinions that are nurtured and developed within our bubble of sameness within which we exist. Out of our desire for comfortableness, we tend to gravitate toward ourselves, and those that are like ourselves. We get our ideas from what we are told, by those that think like us. Another way of referring to this tendency is “group-think” or “gang-think” or “confirmation bias” or “conditioning” or “conformity to the world”. It is not thinking at all. It is simply downloading the opinions of others, of culture, of the “educated”, of those in authority, of the powerful, of the influential. This then becomes a sort of Head Knowledge, sort of like a bank deposit. Knowledge becomes something that is bestowed upon us by those that know, those that are greater than us. We then can wash our hands of our responsibility to inner truth or our inner teacher; for we make it the responsibility of our external teachers to find and preach true truth, not fake truth. Part of “Known Knowns” are those things that we do know for sure. But these “knowns” are not bestowed upon us from any external source. They are more like an ancient knowing, recognition, or resonance. For me, discerning truth is not so much about being right as it is about resonating deep within. And hence, “Most of life is about remembering what we already know.” These are the things that we truly “know”. Often these ideas come to us through external sources, but until each downloaded idea is discerned and confirmed within through direct experience and/ or relationship, then it is simply opinion. It is not yet a Known Known.
2. Known Unknowns: Knowing what I do not know. The older I get, the more I realize how much I do not know. All learning begins with the realization and the admission that “I do not know”. But this realization and admission requires that we face our own limitations, the unknown, the mystery that engulfs us all. Our ego does not allow us to not know. As we let go of ego and pride, we begin to see things at a much deeper level. As we open up our hearts and minds, we can allow for a knowing that has no place in a closed mind that already knows. This emptying admission of the unknown gives birth to wisdom. And hence, we must remember that “If I already know, I can no longer learn.”
3. Unknown Knowns: Not knowing what I know. Far too often, we know, deep within, the path that we should take. We know how we should treat another person. But we forget that we know. Life usurps our knowing by its busyness and noise and confusion and complexity… and we are left confused and in fear of what we think we do not know. But there is an “ancient wisdom”, a “deeper understanding”, an “inherent knowing”, an “Implicit or tacit knowledge” that lies at the center of our being. We must learn to listen, to wait, and allow this “knowing” to emerge. And hence, “most of life consists in remembering what we already know”.
4. Unknown Unknowns: Not knowing what I do not know. (the bubble of indifference) We spend our lives in our self made cocoons where we know what we know; and where our limited opinions are nurtured. We feed on each others’ sameness, creating a life of comfort and security, safety from the “other” (an insidious form of symbolic cannibalism). That which we do not know is scary. Politics and religion build empires on fear mongering. Do we want to know what it is that we don’t know? Probably not, and so we anchor ourselves within our bubble of comfort and security, familiarity and indifference hoping that we never have to venture out into the scary world of mystery and difference, paradox and otherness. So we tend to slam our box shut, sufficiently ending any possibility of venturing into this world of the unknown.

Circling back to that which “we know that we know,” often we don’t even test what we know to discern truth. Is what we know simply a second-hand knowledge that has been handed down, downloaded from external sources like people or larger cultural influences (conformity to the world)?
Or do we really know?

How do we know that we know what we know?

There is no authentic “knowing” outside the context of relationship or direct experience.

For me, truth is that which resonates deep within my bones.

But this "knowing" comes only through the inner work of the discernment of relationships and the confirmation of life experiences.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias,^{[Note 1]} is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.^[1]

It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

We can see only what we seek for,


We seek for only what we want to see.
We can see only what we are looking for.
We cannot see what we do not want to see.
We can see only what we want to see.
Our ability to see (to understand) is limited by our comfort zone
… by our self-defined bubble.

We can hear only what we are listening for.
We cannot hear what we do not want to hear.
We can hear only what we want to hear.
Our ability to hear (to understand) is limited by our comfort zone

… by our self-defined bubble.

Why do I consistently choose to listen to certain news stations?
Why do I read the books that I read?
Why do I gather with a specific group of friends?

“We find comfort among those who agree with us…
growth among those who don’t.” (Frank Clark)

See also,
The Backfire Affect: https://m.curiosity.com/topics/the-backfire-effect-says-when-you-hear-contradictory-evidence-your-beliefs-get-stronger-curiosity/
Why facts don't change our minds: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
Second Hand Person: https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2019/04/second-hand-person.html 
The Bubble of Indifference: https://ronirvine.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/the-bubble-of-indifference/

A Circular Paradox?

Life is way too rough (and interesting) to travel it alone...

Yet it is too difficult (and challenging and personal) to travel it with someone pulling in other directions...

Yet we are each too unique (at least I am) to find many others going in the same direction... people that "get me" and allow me to be true to my own heart...

Is there such a thing as a circular paradox?
Or is there another word for it???
Or do you supposed this is what community is all about???

If opening ourselves up and connecting with people is at the heart of things, 

then what good is it to just connect with those that already agree with us?

Second Hand Person

I've often asked myself if I am living out my own life, or the life I was told to live by society, by country, by politics, by media, by religion, by teachers, by preachers, by mentors.

When I boil it down, the question is, where is the source of my authority; out there somewhere, or within me?

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We say, 'Tell me all about it - what lies beyond the hills and the mountains and the earth?' and we are satisfied with their descriptions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are secondhand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.

“If I were foolish enough to give you a system and if you were foolish enough to follow it, you would merely be copying, imitating, conforming, accepting, and when you do that you have set up in yourself the authority of another and hence there is conflict between you and that authority. You feel you must do such and such a thing because you have been told to do it and yet you are incapable of doing it. You have your own particular inclinations, tendencies and pressures which conflict with the system you think you ought to follow and therefore there is a contradiction. So you will lead a double life between the ideology of the system and the actuality of your daily existence. In trying to conform to the ideology, you suppress yourself - whereas what is actually true is not the ideology but what you are. If you try to study yourself according to another you will always remain a secondhand human being.” (Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known)

Concepts Versus Reality

Knowing these things for so many years, I was still

determined to hang on to my worldview, my precious beliefs, and my concept of God, especially when I was in trouble and needed a savior to cry out to. It finally started to crumble when I turned 50, or should I say I started to crumble and that I finally began to see that there was nothing left to hang on to. It was all dust in the wind, ashes in my hand, sand in my mouth and under my feet. But even then, I clung to mysticism as a way of holding on to my faith without compromising my integrity and my intellectual understandings of the human problem of language and words, stories and myths. I was creating new stories, new fictions, that would allow me to be the religious person that I still longed to be. Even though I was learning to let go of certainty, and other ways of thinking, it was my deeply ingrained longings and desires that I could not deny or let go of. I felt like that was my identity because it had been for so long. But what is identity besides language and words, stories and myths? I began to see that I was not losing myself, I was losing my concepts of myself, my concepts of the world, my concepts of god, my concepts period. Shifting or switching my story is very different than losing myself. I can redefine my myths and stories without losing my identity and purpose, my values and beliefs. The more I can anchor these things in concrete realities, and less in abstractions, the more I can be true to me. For example, see My Mythic Guideposts.

I needed to lose myself in order to be true to myself

I would have been fine, just believing what I had been told if I did not have this growing cognitive dissonance that I could no longer ignore. The fact that I had been coming apart at the seams did not help! The more I cried out, the more I wrote my questions, the more dissonance. Then when life broadsided me with full force, everything unraveled, uprooted, overturned, total devastation. And I found that no matter how hard I tried, I could no longer put the pieces back together. Life had completely shattered every "concept" of everything I ever believed in and stood for. I was at ground zero. And if I were to survive, I had to wake up, get up, and stand up on my own two feet rather than on the shoulders of others. And yet, what freedom like nothing I had ever imagined. 

“But in the same measure the myth gives us security and identity, it also creates selective blindness, narrowness, and rigidity because it is intrinsically conservative. It encourages us to follow the Faith of our Fathers, to hold to the time-honored truth, to imitate the way of the heros, to repeat the formulas and rituals in exactly the same way that they were done in the good old days. As long as no radical change is necessary for survival, the status quo remains sacred, the myth and ritual are unquestioned, and the patterns of life, like the seasons of the year, repeat themselves. But when crisis comes -- a natural catastrophe, the military defeat, the introduction of a new technology -- the (conservative) mythic mind is at a loss to deal with novelty (and change). As Marshall McLuhan said, it tries to ‘walk into the future looking through a rear view mirror.’” (Sam Keen, Your Mythic Journey, p. xiii)

I realized that I no longer wanted to be a second hand person. I wanted to be my own person, an original person, a radical person rather than a cut-out or knock-off, a generic or homogenized person.

"I have created mirrors in which I consider all the wonders of my originality which will never cease." 
(Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179)

Original comes from the root word meaning origin or source.

Original: directly from Latin originalis, from originem (nominative origo) "beginning, source, birth," from oriri "to rise" 

Radical: The Latin word radix means "root." This meaning was kept when the word radicalis came into English as radical. I.E. Returning to its Roots.

A deeply resonating view from a friend in India:

Obsessed with Borrowed Identity
"Hindus are becoming more Hindu, Muslims are becoming more Muslim, Indians are becoming more Indian, Americans are becoming more American. Everywhere it's like humanity is becoming more obsessed with self definition, clinging to any and every kind of borrowed identity, terrified of standing alone in their own personal beliefs or thoughts.
"This is a full blown fear psychosis created by power hungry politicians who unite a people not through shared culture or shared ideology, but through shared fear.
We have to resist this with all our heart and stubbornly refuse to give in to these constant lies that divide rather than unite us." (Rajiv Pande)

Mass Conformity and Dogma Rob Us of Identity and Authentic Conversations
Far too often the asset of longing for community becomes our greatest liability. One of my favorite verses from the Bible is Romans 12:2. “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind;” for we are a “peculiar people”. And yet most religion goes about the business of mass conformity without any transformation or freedom. One of our greatest blindspots is that the “principalities and powers” that lie just out of sight are powerful influences using every channel of communication in society to force mass conformity; quietly, unknowingly, undetectably stealing from us our individuality, our uniqueness, our peculiarity, our wisdom, our insight, our authenticity; leaving us stripped of creativity, power, and voice… our birthright gifts.

I especially resonate with this statement from below: “My loneliness arises not from a lack of social opportunity, but because wherever I look, whoever I meet, has already been ‘taken’ or has become ‘occupied’ territory as it were, in that he or she is no longer an individual up for grabs, but has sworn loyalty to some other community, faith, ideology or other form of mass-conformity.” I long for true community where we can be perfectly ourselves; bands of misfits and outliers, gypsies and nomads, free to live out extremely different and unique lives of meaning and purpose… a people that have not been overloaded and bogged down with downloads; conditioned conformity driven by the principalities and powers of our age.

Unfortunately, we prefer to climb into our little boxes of conformity where it is warm and sleepy, slogging and slumbering through life as we worship our gods of comfort, security, and certainty.

“I believe there can be no moral growth without the exercise of our own free will. It is indeed paradoxical that to grow morally, we need to move away from the comfort of conformity and actually become the devil for a while, even if inwardly tormented by our own self-doubt and loneliness.

“I think the denial of free will has a lot to do with the demonization of free will – the misplaced fear that disobedience is necessarily evil.

“And yet the greatest evil has always emerged from zombie like obedience and especially when this obedience acquires massive proportions and entire communities or nations are consumed by it.

“My loneliness arises not from a lack of social opportunity, but because wherever I look, whoever I meet, has already been ‘taken’ or has become ‘occupied’ territory as it were, in that he or she is no longer an individual up for grabs, but has sworn loyalty to some other community, faith, ideology or other form of mass-conformity. Even the neo-spirituals, light-worshipers, oneness zombies etc. have some form of internal discipline and group norms – so these so-called ‘non-conformists’ are actually behaving exactly as they thought they were rebelling against.

“Something weird happens when groups of people come together under a common banner. The anguish of being a moral lone wolf (and therefore a free will believer) is overcome through mutual forgiveness. However, in the process of this mutual forgiveness, moral conscience becomes dulled. The wolf is tamed. The soul is no longer restlessly seeking its own redemption.

“Religions offer this sweet surrender, this abundant forgiveness from an infinitely benevolent moral authority, but always at the cost of individual freedom. But strangely enough, it is not God that is to be found at the heart of any religion, but community. The forgiveness emerges not necessarily from some esoteric and metaphysical origin, but for the greater part from the very earthly and very palpable sense of belonging offered by the ordinary folk populating that religious community.

“Somehow belongingness, while in all respects appears to be a legitimate human need, also carries with it the innate risk of moral complacence. The ‘Greater Good’ has an identical twin co-existing with it as the ‘Greater Evil’. As long as you are within the community all is well. Otherwise ‘hell hath no fury like a community scorned’ (within itself and by its own).”

What determined, diligent discernment is required 

to stand radically alone without being consumed by society!

What profound paradoxes underlie being fully human, fully alive!

The Fictions that Thought Creates

Don't believe everything you think.

"Thought creates the world and then says, 'I didn't do it!'" (David Bohm)

Thought creates stories and myths to make sense of things that don't make sense to us.

We are storytelling, sense-making creatures. It is thought that we use to create an organizing drama.

Stories are foundational to culture and society.

Stories are foundational to countries and government.

Stories are foundational to business and the free market.

Stories are foundational to religion and spirituality.

Thoughts on Thought

Don't believe everything you think!!!

"Thought creates the world and then says, 'I didn't do it!'" (David Bohm, physicist)

Thought is limited.

Attention is unlimited.

David Bohm, a physicist, in his books On Dialogue, and Thought as a System, examines the role of thought in our lives. Often thought takes on a life of its own, especially in the middle of the night. Thought is full of worry, regret, and fear. It creates inequality, racism, classism, ableism, sexism, and every other imaginable difference. It is the cause of hatred, domination, oppression, power, control, violence, and war. 

Thought creates boundaries and nations but then acts like it didn't do anything, like nations have always been there. 

Thought creates all these things. Thought also is the source of our actions. But then once we take the actions that we take, we wonder why these things have the kind of result that they have. We can't see that the source of the problems (thought) is the same thing that created the problem; thought.

Sit quietly and pay attention to your thoughts. Notice them. Count them. When you have a thought about the past, hold up a finger on your left hand. When you have a thought about the future, hold up a finger on your right hand. After a few minutes, notice that none of your thoughts are in the present moment. They are all caught in the past and future, regrets and worries, broken promises and failures, and also successes and joys. But never are they helping us be fully present, now. And that's all we have, NOW. So what good is thought if all it seems to be is a distraction from here and now?

Thought's primary purpose in our lives is to solve problems. We will always need that. But if it does not have problems to fix, then thought creates problems. It then keeps you awake at night trying to solve the problems that it created. Where do you think your worst nightmares come from? Or on a more subtle note, from whence do these things come: fear, worry, regret, failure, hatred, self-degradation, and on and on???

That's why Bohm's friend, neighbor, and coworker, Albert Einstein, said this:

"We cannot solve the problems that we created with the same thinking with which we created them."

Dialogue as a Way of Life

I see Dialogue as a process that can be used collectively (in conversation) or  individually (as a way of life).

“What is essential here is the presence of the ‘spirit’ of dialogue, which is, in short, the ability to hold many points of view in suspension, along with a primary interest in the creation of a common meaning.” David Bohm and David Peat, ‘Science, Order and Creativity’

1. Dialogue is a very powerful process of interacting with each other in a conversation.

https://ronirvine.wordpress.com/2017/06/03/chapter-19-dialogue/

2. Dialogue is also a very powerful process of interacting with life.

“’Dialogue’ comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means ‘the word’, or in our case we would think of the ‘meaning of the word’. And dia means through… Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. The picture or image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us.” (David Bohm, On Dialogue)

Contrast this with a sense of discussion or debate.

This is like a game of ping pong where we bat the ball back and forth trying to win; and make “the other” lose.

In dialogue, no one is trying to “win”. That is not the point. 

In dialogue, if even one person wins, everyone wins.

And if one person loses, everyone loses.

Die Before You Die

“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

It is one thing to know this is truth.
It is another thing completely to actually live it.

A few years ago, I chose to live it in a very different sort of way; by stepping out of the rat race, slowing down so I can focus on what is most important in my life.

And that has made all the difference.

Enough talking about stress and the rat race.
Enough talking about wants and desires, longings and hopes; inaccessible stuff that is out there somewhere.

Inner peace and joy are already within; accessible by choosing and doing.

Time to reconnect to life and people in a whole new way.

 Die Before You Die

Life is less about the living
and more about the day by day
quality and depth of our dying.

For it is only when a seed
lets go and is let go of,
falls to the ground and dies,
is buried and cracks open,
It is then and only then,
that transformation and birth
of new life can come forth.

“The Mystery of ‘Die before you Die’ is this:
That the gifts come after your dying and not before.
Except for dying, you artful schemer,
No other skill impresses God. One Divine gift
Is better than a hundred kinds of exertion.
Your efforts are assailed from a hundred sides,
And the favor depends on your dying.
The trustworthy have already put this to the test.”
(Jalaluddin Rumi)

For from the very moment we are born
we begin to die.
All of life is a day by day process
of letting go… and letting come…

“Do you know what it means to come into contact with death, to die without argument? Because death, when it comes, does not argue with you. To meet it, you have to die every day to everything: to your agony, to your loneliness, to the relationship you cling to; you have to die to your thought, to die to your habit, to die to your wife so that you can look at your wife anew; you have to die to your society so that you, as a human being, are new, fresh, young, and you can look at it. But you cannot meet death if you don’t die every day. It is only when you die that there is love. A mind that is frightened has no love, it has habits, it has sympathy, it can force itself to be kind and superficially considerate. But fear breeds sorrow, and sorrow is time as thought. So to end sorrow is to come into contact with death while living, by dying to your name, to your house, to your property, to your cause, so that you are fresh, young, clear, and you can see things as they are without any distortion. That is what is going to take place when you die... So one has to live every day dying, dying because you are then in contact with life.”

– Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

A Downward Journey

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”
(Joseph Campbell) 

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how

long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky's Red River Gorge

“Meister Eckhart radically revises the whole notion of spiritual programs. He says that there is no such thing as a spiritual journey. If a little shocking, this is refreshing. If there were a spiritual journey, it would be only a quarter inch long, though many miles deep. It would be a swerve into rhythm with your deeper nature and presence. The wisdom here is so consoling. You do not have to go away outside yourself to come into real conversation with your soul and with the mysteries of the spiritual world. The eternal is at home — within you.” (John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: a Book of Celtic Wisdom)

When I started this journey of silence and reflection,

I needed to start peeling back the layers to see what is under the surface,

I needed to pop the hood and take a look underneath to see what’s driving things,

I needed to keep drilling down until the truth began to bubble up from the center of my world.

The Macro-Narratives and the Micro-Narratives that Shape Us

The Principalities and Power that control our world and each person.

The Macro-Narrative is the Grand Story or stories of our culture. In the

West, much of our culture has come from Christianity. Without that influence what would our fine art, our art work, theater, movies (and on and on) all look like? It would be a very different society. The other primary macro-narratives that have greatly formed America and many other countries are democracy and capitalism. Most of our values and beliefs are derived from these macro-narratives, whether we are aware of them or not. Another way to see this is that we have all been conditioned to think, feel, see, and act in certain ways all of our lives. We are conditioned to see beauty as certain types of physical features. We are conditioned to buy certain things. Our identities are formed often by the things that we buy and our priorities are shaped by messages in the media telling us what we want and need and how to be cool or popular. These messages in religion and politics, fashion and shopping are spread in powerful, yet subtle ways through memes; viruses of the mind; cultural and social DNA. These little ideas, phrases, jingles, basic cultural building blocks, stick with us and can have the power of brainwashing if we are not careful, consciously and intentionally living our lives.

Invisibility and Familiarity

And just like viruses are invisible, so is the conditioning (memes) that has been happening all of our lives. Often people have no idea how they came to believe in certain things or why. Isn't it interesting how predictive our zip codes are in determining people's beliefs and values all around the world?


Why do we think the way we do? (good or bad)
Why do we treat people the way we do?
Why do we believe the way we do?
Where do our opinions come from?
Where do our assumptions come from?
Why do we buy what we buy?
Why do we think we need what we think we need?
Why do the things we buy become our identity?
What is our identity and purpose?
Why do we see ourselves as we do?
Why do we act, interact, and react in the ways that we do?
Why do we surprise ourselves by reacting or acting in ways we think are not characteristic of ourselves?
What lies under the surface?
What monsters are teaming within our subconscious?
What drives us and makes us who we are???

Probably the two most powerful ways of sustaining the things that drive our values and beliefs is invisibility and familiarity because these suppress and submerge those influences below the surface. Another form of conditioning, socialized behavior, domesticates those monsters that keep rearing their heads. 

If we are not conscious of it, then we allow those disruptive and destructive influences to run rampant. If they become too familiar, then they become invisible, like water to a fish. Do we know? Are we aware? Do we care?

The Power of Stories

I was asked to lead a discussion on My Philosophical Evolution, since my evolution has been quite tremendous over the last couple of years. Having been raised in a very fundamentalist religion, my first experience going to an interfaith gathering was quite extreme. But get this, I was asked to lead this discussion at Freethought Cafe, a gathering of atheists, agnostics, and humanists.

I led with this: "I'm a bit skeptical about telling my story to a bunch of skeptics!"

That got a good laugh, nicely breaking the tension (my tension and stress, that is).
And honestly, those skeptics were probably the most accepting and gracious group I've ever talked with.

Why does my story matter?

I ask myself over and over.

Of course it matters to me.

But why would it matter to YOU?

Our lives are but a blink,

a whiff of smoke in the nostrils,

a wisp of wind in the hair,

a gong in the ear;

and once gonged by death,

we are no more.

So why does my story matter?

None of us gets out of this thing alive.

But why would my story matter?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm nothing but a...

A WONDERING WANDERER, WANDERING WONDERER

Struck by Awe and Wonderment in the Face of such Pervasive Mystery.

A Surrender to Wonder. The full and complete Fruition of Letting Go.

What happens when I fully realize and live out what I understand to be true?

EVOLVEMENT OF LIVING WITH OPEN HANDS

From 1.0 to 2.0

I feel like I’m undergoing

An Evolutionary Revolution

A Revolutionary Evolution

Of Mind, Heart, and Will.  

Nothing left unturned, undisturbed, unshaken, untroubled.

Nothing left standing that I thought should stand.

Change often comes incrementally, little by little,

But for me it has been disruptive, decisive, and unforgiving.

Nothing that I have chosen,

Something that has chosen me.

A ONCE-TOLD TALE

“Only by exploring and sharing my autobiography can I witness my discoveries of the sacred. My story is not normative. I am under no illusions that I am a saint, a hero, or a model for anyone. I do not write in order to say: Here is the map for you to follow. I only share some of the twists and turns of my journey in order to encourage you to take your own story seriously. Examine the sacred text of your own experience, reconstruct the events and relationships that went into the creation of your being, re-collect memories, and form them into a narrative that makes your life a once-told tale.” (Sam Keen)

“Even the longest, most detailed, and most expressive obituaries always omit the essence of a life: the history of a person’s heart. How many of us wish we had asked more questions of someone we loved, not about what happened and when but about the inner experience of being that person? About hopes and fulfillments, failures and regrets? About moments of despair and moments of meaning?” (Parker Palmer, Healing the Heart of Democracy)

• Keep this in mind: We can argue with each others’ beliefs but we cannot argue with each others’ stories.

• Stories are for expressing ourselves and asking questions. They are not for finding answers. You have not lived my life anymore than I have lived your life. Answers come from within. My answers will always be different than yours just as my perspective will differ from yours and my path will always diverge from yours. But maybe, just maybe, my story will stimulate a new question, a new insight, a new perspective as you live out your story.

• Funny thing, although my belief system has been totally uprooted and overturned, my values are still rock solid. So maybe being human is more about how we live out our lives than it is about what we think we know, and what we say we believe. (https://dbaronirvine.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/guiding-principles/) & (https://dbaronirvine.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/core-values/)

THE POWER OF STORIES

“When we tell our stories to one another, we, at one and the same time, find the meaning of our lives and are healed from our isolation and loneliness. Strange as it may seem, self knowledge begins with self-revelation. We don't know who we are until we hear ourselves speaking the drama of our lives to someone we trust to listen with an open mind and an open heart.” (Sam Keen, Your Mythic Journey, p. xviii)

"I asked myself, 'What is the myth you are living?' and found that I did not know. So... I took it upon myself to get to know my myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks... I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me." (Carl Jung)

We are sense-making, meaning-making, storytelling creatures.

This is our power and yet our weakness.

How did this scrawny creature called the human being end up ruling the world?

Since the beginning of homo sapiens, stories have bound us together and driven us apart. Cave drawings were a convention for telling stories to bind together a tribe. And tribal beliefs and territories drove us to war. Now it is our fine arts and books that tell our story. It is stories that have banded and bonded us together, giving us the organizational and strategic power to eventually rule the earth. That is the one distinguishing feature of the human race; we can imagine, put our imaginations into words, tell stories to others about those imaginations, and then choose to believe or not, individually or collectively. This is the process that allows countries, companies, governments, and religions to be formed out of nothing but imagination and vision.

Stories are foundational to culture and society.

Stories are foundational to countries and government.

Stories are foundational to business and the free market.

Stories are foundational to religion and spirituality.

Stories are powerful ways of bringing people together
organizing and civilizing us so that we do not destroy each other.

Stories are very effective ways of explaining the unexplainable,
of understanding that which can't be understood with the human mind...

of making sense of things that don't make any sense.

And yet, our stories can bind us, blind us, hold us back, or trip us up. Just as life is constantly changing and evolving, so must our stories. This evolvement is the lifelong task of story-telling, meaning-making creatures.  We must continually progress forward along with our world views (the way each of us sees the world)

"Stories make us more alive, more courageous, more loving. Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically." (Madeleine L'Engle)