Yin Yang: An image that perfectly encapsulates the paradoxical “half-truth” nature of reality
I’ve been mulling over the most recent article I wrote – “The Illusion of Free Will” for a couple of weeks now, and the thing is – I don’t really agree with it. At least, not fully.
This is going to be
an article where you don’t get any set, defined answers, so if you
don’t like articles of that kind, skip over this one now.
The question of
whether humans – or any sentient being – has free will was one of
the first big philosophical questions I ran into in my undergraduate
science degree.
At the time, I had
an assumed belief that humans had free will, that we were ultimately
responsible for the decisions we made, and should be held accountable
for our actions. The more I looked into this belief, however, the
less it seemed to make sense.
In order to really
explain my “position” on this, I’m going to have to get quite
deep. Think ultimate nature of reality deep.
I think the best way
to do that is with a diagram. This will obviously be limited too, but
it’s the best way I know how to convey my perspective.
The Three Levels of Reality
At the ultimate
level, there’s the Source of all existence. The ultimate One. The
Infinite reality.
This is beyond the
dualistic mind of humans. Beyond good and evil. Beyond right and
wrong. Beyond this versus that.
As the Heart Sutra
of Mahayana Buddhism states: “Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi
svaha” which translates to “Gone, gone, gone beyond, totally gone
beyond.”
Welcome to reality.
This is the annihilation of the separate self. The ultimate
perspective on reality. The eradication of distinction.
Not everyone wants
this. Even those on the spiritual path, not many of those truly want
ultimate truth – they want to just make their lives a little
better.
That’s fine.
Everyone has their path to walk, walk it freely as long as you
choose!
I think this is the
path I have chosen, however. Do I know that for a fact? No. It’s
quite possible to me that I could stop short of this so long as my
life was enjoyable.
There’s a part of
me that feels I won’t be satisfied until I know the ultimate
perspective however. Time will tell as far as that’s concerned.
Which brings me to
the point of this post, which is kind of a rebuttal against my last
post.
Even though
ultimately everything is one, and ultimately everything comes from
the same source, there is still simultaneously distinction. The
Infinite reality can split itself up as much as it likes and still
remain infinite.
And that’s what
humans are. A splitting off of infinity.
Life is
simultaneously all one and yet has distinctions within it.
Which is where the
question of free will, along with the existence of the self, becomes
a bit blurry.
Ultimately if there
is only one and no separation, then obviously there can’t be any
true free will or true separate self.
But within that reality, there exist the *appearance* of distinction. And those appearances are still relevant. They still have their own unique makeup. Their distinct preferences.
This is where, from
my perspective, life becomes not a simple yes or no answer, but more
like a three-layered answer.
There’s the ultimate perspective. Then there’s the unique individuation. Then there’s the mental construct or ego level of identification.
The third layer, the
ego layer, is the one that I think is entirely illusory and that
humankind would be much better off getting rid of entirely.
But that still
leaves the unique individuation level. The level where life is seen
from the ultimate perspective but acknowledges the distinct
manifestations of that ultimate one.
And that’s where
it could be said that “free will” is not an entirely erroneous
concept.
If a unique
individuation has a desire, and the freedom to act upon that desire,
then for all intents and purposes that could be said to be a free
choice.
The issue is not so
much about answering a question definitively as it is about removing
set belief systems.
The belief in true
free will is problematic, just as the belief in no free will is
problematic. The question instead becomes “from what perspective
are you asking that question?”
Because the answer
differs depending on what perspective you’re asking the question
from.
So, do we have free
will? Yes and no. Does the self exist? Yes and no. Is this answer
going to satisfy you? Yes and no.
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
Free will may be an illusion, but only because “you” are an illusion too
Update: I don’t fully agree with everything I’ve written here, and I gave a different perspective in my next post: “Enlightenment, The Ultimate Perspective”
During my undergraduate science degree, I became more and more interested in the big questions of life. What is the universe, how does it function, where does it all come from? I thought studying a science degree would be the best way to answer these questions. As I went along, however, I started to see that philosophy had just as crucial things to say in this matter as science did, so I became more interested in these matters as philosophical questions rather than just brute scientific “facts”.
The first big philosophical question I ran into was the one of free will, which we examined in my class, “Evolution and Human Behaviour”. You see, the more you look into the notion of free will, the harder it becomes to defend it. At least the type of free will most people are referring to when they think about free will: that is, there was a choice or action to be made and they could have acted differently than they did. This idea I will term “true free will” – that we make independent decisions based solely on what we want to do free of any constraints. There is another type of free will – a “relative” level of free will which also needs to be discussed, but as you’ll see it doesn’t give you the type of free will most people believe they have.
The first sledgehammer to my belief in free will came when we studied the famous Benjamin Libet experiments from the 1980s. In these experiments, Libet got people to do simple tasks – e.g. press one of two buttons or flex their wrists – and note the time they made the conscious decision to do so. While they were doing this they were hooked up to an EEG machine to record their brain activity. What Libet found was that he could predict, based on prior brain activity, what the person would do before they consciously made the decision to do it. This experiment has been repeated many times with different types of equipment, and the results all point the same way: in some cases what the person is going to do can be predicted a number of seconds prior to their conscious recognition of what they decided to do.
This is a big one. If our brains essentially operate by the laws governing our universe, albeit with a little quantum uncertainty (though it’s very sketchy to try and sneak free will in here), then none of our thoughts, none of our actions, none of anything about us can actually be claimed to be a truly free choice.
There are many ways to debunk the notion of true free will. There’s the laws of the universe argument stated above, there’s the gene-environment interaction which makes up literally everything we are in this moment, then there’s the more philosophical arguments, for example: you can’t choose what you desire, and your greatest desire will always win out (even if you try and trick the universe by doing something that is not your greatest desire to prove your own free will, that has then just become your greatest desire). Think about it: Have you ever done anything that was not your greatest desire unless you were forced to by someone else or by society’s expectations? When did you ever have two options in any moment, no matter how small it is, and went with the less desirable action. (If you think you can come up with one, let me know in the comments and I’ll explain why it was still, as far as you could tell in the moment, your greatest desire).
Let me throw out a bone though. Even though I think the lack of true free will is true, there’s still a “relative” level of free will as I stated, which, while not giving people the true free will they want, at least doesn’t completely negate the relevance of choice and deliberation. Even though there’s no true free will, choices and actions should still be undertaken as though there is such a thing as choice. It’s sort of a yes and no answer to the question of free will. Yes, from an absolute view the notion of true free will is, I maintain, not just unlikely but an impossibility, but down here at the relative level choices and actions still matter and we shouldn’t just become lazy thinking, “there’s no free will so what’s the point of doing anything.” That’s becoming fatalistic and taking the idea that there’s no free will too absolutely. Even if there’s no true free will, it’s still important to deliberate over choices, weigh up the options, act in the best way you know how. But when it’s all said and done, don’t take any pride or any shame in the outcome. You did the best you could given the conditions you found yourself in. In fact, in every single moment you have always done the best you could for where you were at, even if the outcome was horrible.
Now I will get down to the main reason I think true free will is an illusion. As many mystics and sages throughout the centuries have claimed, the self, or ego – the little homunculus pictured above, the little man or woman we think we have inside our heads thinking and making decisions – that itself is an illusion. In short, the self doesn’t exist. In reality, thoughts occur but there is no *thinker* in addition to the thoughts. Actions take place, but there’s no *actor* making them take place. Can you predict what your next thought will be, or do they just arise of their own accord? In order to predict what it would be, that would mean we would have to think the thoughts before we think them. Actions may appear to occur simultaneously with thought, e.g. a desire for coffee arises, then the thought, “I’ll go make some coffee”, and then the action of making coffee. Did you choose for the desire for coffee to arise, or did it just happen? And if there’s no other thoughts which say, “no I’ve had too much today I won’t make another one”, then coffee-making usually follows. All of these things can take place without there being a true thinker in addition to the thoughts or a true “do-er” in addition to the actions taking place.
This is not just a spiritual claim, however. As the neuroscientist Sam Harris points out, there’s no special place in your brain for the “self” to reside. There’s just a whole bunch of sense data being interpreted by your brain which then post-hoc decides on the idea that there is a self here, separate and distinct from everything around it. Here is a video of Sam discussing this illusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0 (7 minutes)
There’s also a great and entertaining video by CollegeBinary on the philosophy of David Hume, who also came to the conclusion that the self is an illusion. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3QZ2Ko-FOg&t=89s (3 minutes)
A lot of people find these ideas depressing – both the illusion of free will and the illusion of self – but it really shouldn’t be, there’s a much greater perspective to be gained when these illusions are seen through. As the nonduality or “enlightenment” teacher Gary Weber said at the beginning of his book “Happiness Beyond Thought”: “The bad news is you don’t exist; the good news is you’re everything.”
This is what happens when you begin to “wake up”. When you begin to become “enlightened”. You begin to see through all the illusions your thoughts have created about the world and about yourself, and you see reality as it really is, rather than how human minds say it is.
This is what spiritual awakening really boils down to: it is simply a case of mistaken identity. We have taken ourselves to be these bodies/minds when in actual fact what we are – what everything is – is consciousness. And there is no true separation. This is why Gary Weber said the good news is you’re everything.
The American spiritual teacher Adyashanti put it another way (paraphrased): A lot of people don’t like this idea, they want to be in the driver’s seat. They think just sitting in the passenger seat watching everything would be boring. But that’s still clinging to the illusion of the self, just as a watcher. When you begin to realise, you are the steering wheel, you are the car, you are the scenery you’re passing by, you indeed are everything, it starts to become a lot more interesting.
The illusion of free will isn’t just a fanciful philosophical idea to consider though, it has very real world implications. When you begin to see that people are not absolutely responsible for their actions, compassion arises. You see everyone as a product of their genes and environment, and realise – if *you* were born with their genes and grew up in their environment, you would be exactly the same as them and have lived their exact life.
It also has profound implications for the notion of blame and punishment. From my perspective blame and punishment are antiquated notions which only still exist today because people believe in true free will and that people are solely responsible for their actions. The illusion of free will says they’re not. They are a product of their genes and their environment and their particular neurochemistry at the time they made any decisions. Which again, if you happened to be born with their genes and grew up in their environment, you would have made exactly the same choices they did. This isn’t to say people should not be put in jail for crimes – we need that in order to protect the public and act as a deterrent for others. But, I argue, we should stop short of blame and punishment. That is a misperception about the nature of reality.
There’s a story I love about how an African tribe has songs for each member of their tribe, and when one of their members does something wrong, they don’t punish them, they gather around and sing their song to them to remind them of who they truly are. If people who commit heinous acts are treated with compassion and understanding and forgiveness, while obviously still needing to protect the public from them, I believe the rate of heinous acts would decrease dramatically. Often those who commit heinous acts are actually those who most need compassion and understanding.
So what am I going to do now? Well, I’m going to have a cigarette. Why? Because I’ve had a very stressful year and I don’t yet have the willpower to quit. My desire for a cigarette outweighs my desire to quit smoking for the time being, as stupid as it is. I’m going to do my best to quit, but I won’t be able to until I’m able to. Until my desire to quit outweighs my desire to have a cigarette. Even though I know whatever happens could not have happened differently, I’m still going to try and exercise my “relative free will” and do my best to quit.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
First, let me get something out of the way: I don’t necessarily believe I have schizophrenia. I had a psychotic episode with schizophrenic features, but as any psychiatrist will tell you, one psychotic episode does not a schizophrenic make. In fact, according to the US National Institute of Mental Health, three out of every 100 people will experience psychosis at some point in their lives.
Now, one of my doctors said they believed I showed psychotic symptoms at an earlier point in my life, but I disagree with that diagnosis. That was in relation to my belief in extraterrestrial life, which I supported with evidence (see my previous article, “Evidence for the Existence of Extraterrestrial Life” for more on that). Another doctor was less convinced I have schizophrenia — he was more open to the possibility of this being a one-off or a “brief psychotic episode”, the type three out of every 100 people will experience.
Nevertheless, it’s my opinion that I had a one-off at this
point. The future of my life will be more revealing as to what
exactly may be going on with my mind, but I await further evidence
before labelling myself as schizophrenic.
Secondly, I have been on a spiritual path for the last 7 years
where the express goal of that path is to attain “enlightenment”
by transcending the limits of the human mind. This is not an easy
thing. It requires you to deeply examine all your belief systems, and
ultimately let go of all your belief systems so you view the world
directly as it is in awareness rather than through the filtered, and
often erroneous, prism of the human mind.
I believe this second thing is the main cause of what I went through, given my psychosis happened after an intense experience during a meditation weekend. I believe I am on the path of awakening, and the path of awakening is not always easy, and can sometimes lead you down a very rocky road.
This isn’t to downplay the severity of what I went through or
the consequences of it, which you can read in my first article, “My
disastrous spiritual awakening”. What I went through that evening
and the weeks leading up to it was the scariest thing I’ve ever
experienced, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I believed — more
out of uncertainty than anything else — that I may have become
a target of “negative beings” in the universe, and in my
ambulance trip to the hospital I thought I had finally been captured
by them and was being taken to be tortured and possibly killed. I
can’t really explain the terror of believing something like that
was happening. The fear was paralyzing.
But that is why I don’t necessarily believe I’m schizophrenic.
I believe that what happened was directly a result of my spiritual
path in which I was attempting to transcend the mind. The consequence
of this is that the mind begins to break down — it has to in
order to see beyond it. And I believe it just so happened that in my
case my mind breaking down — while becoming more and more open
minded (I am probably the most open-minded person I know! Some might
say too open-minded!) led, because of some deep-seated fears of mine,
to experiencing a very scary scenario.
This leads into my next point, and the subtitle of my article,
that: everyone is a little bit psychotic.
At some point in our evolutionary history, humans started to
develop language. We started to make sounds and point at things to
communicate to each other what we were seeing. This was an
immeasurable benefit to the development of our species. It allowed us
to let others know what was happening, even if they weren’t
experiencing it themselves.
This started to become more and more detailed, to the point that
we were making up *stories* about what was happening.
This is when the trouble began, however. Stories are useful so
long as they accurately reflect the details of a situation, but often
they don’t. Often they are inaccurate stories based on inaccurate
conclusions, and stories that can become so detached from reality
that they could themselves be labelled as psychotic. This is why I
think intrinsic to human language is the propensity to be somewhat
“psychotic” — that is, to break from reality and become
“just a story” in someone’s head.
We humans have a lot of these stories. Stories like “I’m a
good person because of A”, or “I’m a bad person because of B”.
Stories like “the world is a scary place”, or stories like “the
world is a good place”. These are all just stories, but they’re
stories that the majority of the human population has at least some
of, and usually a lot of.
Language is an invaluable tool so long as it sticks with our
actual experience, but often human stories are so detached from
actual experience that there’s no real basis for them at all. Yet
we believe them anyway.
Why? Because stories are what we use to try and keep us safe. We
think if we just *understand* things enough, then we can know how to
navigate this life we find ourselves in.
My contention is that no stories are ultimately true, they are
simply relating a perspective of one individual to another. Some
stories are at least somewhat accurate — they convey useful
information that is grounded in experience. But a lot are not. A lot
are so abstracted and detached from reality that there’s no basis
for them at all. This is what happens when someone becomes
“psychotic”. Their minds have become the sole ruler of their
internal world, and has created stories within stories to the point
of not being based on anything legitimately occurring in their
experience.
Most human beliefs are like this. In fact all are. In my opinion there should be no such thing as a belief. A belief is what happens when you say “I have all the relevant data and I have made this conclusion” and you stop looking at any evidence which might contradict that viewpoint. But why would you ever want to stop being open to evidence potentially countering your viewpoint? This is why the subtitle of this article is “everyone is a little bit psychotic” — because everyone has some of these beliefs rolling around their heads. It may be “I’m not good enough”, or “I’m not attractive enough”, or “I’m not likable enough”, or conversely “I’m great”, “I’m the best at this”, or “I’m the most popular person around.”
When has nature ever looked at a flower and come to one of these conclusions about it? When has a tree ever looked at its withering leaves and thought, “I don’t deserve to be here”? So why do humans do it? Why are humans the only ones who come up with these crazy stories about themselves and about the world?
The truth is, you are fantastic just as you are. With all your
faults, all your blemishes, all your past embarrassments and
failures, you are fantastic just as you are. Why? Because you are
living in this incredibly complex and mystifying world and you are
doing your best to navigate it, while trying to manage all the crazy
stories going around about who you are and what you’re worth.
So, how does it feel to be labelled as schizophrenic? Well, it feels pretty normal. I went through a period of my stories taking over completely and losing touch with what was real and what wasn’t, but now I’m back. I don’t believe any of the stories my mind comes up with about myself or about the world, I just think to myself, “hmm, that’s an interesting perspective you have there”, and that’s about it.
The truth is, we actually don’t need stories as much as we think
we do. Some of them can be very useful to navigate the world, so long
as they’re based on our direct experience, but so many of them are
simply just stories. A byproduct of our species developing very
sophisticated language. And along with that, a whole lot of suffering
that no other animal on the planet experiences to the same degree.
So why not just get rid of all your stories that you can’t be
certain about. I’ll bet you there’s really not much left once you
do that. Just the practical everyday things the mind can be useful
for. e.g. I drove to the store today to pick up some food. Great.
Awesome story based on direct experience. But how about all the other
ones we come up with along the way? Are those really necessary? Are
they based in certifiable direct evidence, or are they just a crazy
story you picked up somewhere along the way?
As always, in love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
As humans, we often like to think of ourselves as very rational, intelligent beings. We like to think that we make decisions based in rationality and observing all the facts at hand.
I argue this is not the case, and that our emotions are actually the driving force behind most of our decision making, not the other way around.
You can see this in day-to-day conversations where people have instantaneous negative (or positive) reactions to a given proposition, when they clearly haven’t had the time to really consider the proposition in question.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume was one of the main proponents of this idea – that we accept or reject propositions based on how it affects us emotionally rather than whether the proposition makes sense.
This may sound like a dreary view of humanity, but it isn’t. You see, I think our emotions are excellent guides for how to live life. The problem is when these emotions are repressed (because we try to avoid uncomfortable feelings), and are thus turned into distorted and conflicting emotions.
In my opinion, this is why girls and women are often considered “crazy”. It’s not because emotions are inherently crazy; it’s because we’ve suppressed our emotions in society to such an extent that they are bottled up until they explode in unhealthy and irrational ways.
But emotions can be rational. Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly felt, “I shouldn’t be here”? That’s not a rational response, it’s an emotional one, and if the person pays attention to their emotions, they’re often giving us very good advice. The “gut feelings” we have about things, so long as our emotions are not suppressed and distorted, are usually very accurate perceivers of what is going on in any situation.
As far as I see it, emotions should be the basis for how we navigate life. We should leave the mind to doing what it does best: sorting out practical things that need to be done – not ascertaining the ultimate truth of any given situation.
I think the reason humans live in such a conflicted state is precisely because of this avoidance of emotion. We hate experiencing negative emotions so we’ll do anything to avoid that, even if it means agreeing with propositions that are clearly untrue, just to remain comfortable in our safe small bubble of false emotion.
I have experienced this in my own life. To take one example, a friend was talking to me about 911 once, and how she thought that the official story was bogus (a sentiment I now agree with). At the time however, I was in such a protected state of emotional avoidance that I forcefully rejected her proposition before she even got a chance to state it.
Why? Because considering the fact that some shady things had gone down on 911 made me feel very uncomfortable. It made me question my version of reality with something quite horrible, and I wasn’t emotionally equipped to be able to deal with that.
I can see this now in people I talk to about this. Some people are open, some people react badly and want to shut down the conversation straight away.
In my case, this was clearly a distorted emotional response to something when it should have been a rational and intellectual discussion of a topic.
The same goes with any difficult truths you are trying to share. I am now of the belief that extraterrestrials exist, and when talking to people about it, I can see some people are open to it, and some people shut down the conversation straight away without even hearing any of the evidence I am presenting.
This is a very strange phenomenon. Wouldn’t we all want to listen to all perspectives and evidence in order to ascertain truth? Why shut down a debate before it has even begun?
The reason, again, I think is simple. Our days are mostly spent trying to experience good emotions and avoid bad ones. This is what Henry David Thoreau was pointing to when he wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
So, what to do with all this knowledge then?
I think the answer is clear: We need to get more in touch with our emotions. Understand them better. Be conscious of what is happening inside us so we can make sane decisions on any given topic, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction of accept or reject based purely on not wanting to feel uncomfortable.
The best way to do this I believe is through meditation. While meditation can be a very difficult thing to maintain – after all, we are facing up to uncomfortable emotions inside us – it is only when we are willing to do that, when we are truly willing to allow anger, fear, sadness be present in us and move with those emotions rather than running away from them, can we truly become rational creatures. Only then can we live up to our name of Homo sapiens – by definition, discerning, wise, and sensible.
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
One of the reasons I find it difficult to write sometimes is not that I have writers block — there are lots of things I could write about — but instead, as I’ve moved along my spiritual path, I’ve begun to see degrees of logic and validity in what almost everyone says. I can see their point of view, even if I think it’s only a fragmented view, or missing the bigger picture, I can still see the truth in it.
I mentioned in one of my previous blogs that there’s a quote which says: “An appreciation for paradox and ambiguity are a good measure of spiritual progress.” I think this is very true. The more I delved into any topic, the more I could see the logic of both sides of most arguments. Some were better arguments than others (some are obviously totally gibberish), but in almost all of them I could still see the valid point they were making.
Which leaves me in an interesting position, both with writing but also in social situations. I’ve always been a pretty quiet person, but now in conversation there’s so much more silence coming from my end because I find myself disagreeing with people a lot less. I may not agree 100% with what they’re saying, but I can agree with it partly.
So when someone asks me my opinion on something, it’s always a tricky thing to answer.
Some questions are easy, “Do you prefer apples or oranges?” Answer: oranges. Easy.
But when the conversations become more complex, there are so many different perspectives to consider, and so many contradictory truths coming from both sides that I find myself in a very odd position of not really being able to answer concisely. I usually end up with a long response which goes something like the article I’m writing here.
Take politics for example. I used to consider myself a left wing type of person, and I think many people would still consider me that today, but over the years I’ve gained a lot of appreciation for the opposing side of politics and the valid points they make. (they also make a lot of invalid ones in my opinion, which is why I don’t consider myself a right-winger).
But let’s take a look at one simple example: unemployment benefits. I’m lucky enough to live in a country where these are available for those unable to work for various reasons. It provides something to fall back on when times are tough, and I think this is a great service offered by our government. However, there’s a counter-argument which also has some validity: If you hand out free money to people, they’re not going to be as motivated or proactive about getting a job and getting back into the workforce. For some people, this could actually be doing them a disservice, because a lot of our self-worth is derived from what we do for a living and what we contribute to society. It may make people lazier, thinking “Well, I’ve got enough to live on, I can just lay back and take it easy for a while.” I don’t think many people would consider this the recipe for fulfillment or happiness. So you see, one simple issue, two opposing points of view, tough love or soft love, both with their own degree of validity.
Or how about the gender pronoun debate? Yes it’s crazy to put people into boxes and say, “You’re this gender therefore that means you must be a, b, and c.” But likewise, it is also crazy to say that there are no biological differences between the genders. So how can you really provide a concise opinion on something as multi-faceted as the gender pronoun debate when there are so many intricacies and subtleties that go into the debate?
Or another: the question of whether humans have free will. On the one hand you could say, everything is pre-determined by physical laws governing us, therefore there’s no such thing as true free will. On the other hand, we make (relative) choices all the time. Some decisions we have a lot of choice in, some decisions we have less choice in, but it’s still what could reasonably called a “choice”.
And this simultaneity of truth or “relative truth” perspective goes down to physics itself. Look at the double slit experiment in quantum mechanics: when not observed, the electromagnetic spectrum behaves as if it were a spread out wave of possibilities. When observed, this wave function collapses to a single point giving us a determined set of characteristics for a given particle. So in answering the question, is light a wave or a particle the answer is: both. Or one, depending on which measurement you’ve taken or chosen not to take.
The physicist Leonard Susskind thought up a conversation which took place between Alice from Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter. It went like this:
Ever since her last science class, Alice had been deeply puzzled by something, and she hoped one of her new acquaintances might straighten out the confusion. Putting down her cup of tea, she asked in a timid voice, “Is light made of waves, or is it made of particles?” “Yes, exactly so,” replied the Mad Hatter. Somewhat irritated, Alice asked in a more forceful voice, “What kind of answer is that? I will repeat my question: Is light particles or is it waves?” “That’s right,” said the Mad Hatter.
I see this pattern in all of human thinking and human endeavours, which is why philosophers, despite going hard at all these problems for millennia, have never come up with any good unifying theories for how to explain life or any other issue they were discussing. They’ve merely been circling around the whirlpool trying to sneak a look in at truth.
But truth is multivariant. There are so many different layers to truth that to put in down in words — in the language of humans — is an almost impossible task.
Right now there are many ways to discuss what’s happening here while you’re reading this. First, there are subatomic particles which were set in motion at the beginning of time and were all pre-destined to make it to this point and to having this conversation. Second, we’re having this conversation because of the cultural situation we find ourselves in. Third, there are electronics within our computers which are processing the input and transferring it to your phone, allowing for communication. Fourth, at the level of quantum mechanics, we have very little idea how this functions but it seems like an infinite wave of potential is collapsing in every moment giving us this exact experience.
All of these are simultaneous truths, and one doesn’t discount the other, which makes it difficult to really discuss exactly what is happening. You have to first set up a premise which is never ultimately true, in order to have a conversation within defined parameters.
I personally believe this will always remain the case. When you look at how our minds evolved, they are basically like those little labeling machines from the 80s. We think if we stick enough labels together we can come up with a coherent story to explain things. But those labels are still just labels. In Zen there is an expression: “Don’t mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself.” That’s the mistake our minds always make. In order to simplify things and find a “yes” or “no” answer to every question, we dumb down reality (and ourselves) by clinging onto these simplistic solutions.
And us humans hate this. This “yes and no” response. We want set and defined answers we can guarantee on and thus know how to navigate this world we find ourselves in a bit better (or, just as often, to feed into our egoic self that we’re right and we’re smart).
So what should we do in a world that’s so contradictory and holds so many valid but opposing points of view? Well, this for me is where the logic of love comes into play. I believe we are all really on a search for love; a search for unity and connection. So why not just start there, where we’re all aiming to reach anyway? Why not just love the person or situation as they are without the need to label them as good or bad, useful or useless, right or wrong.
I have found in my own journey, as my mind’s fixed positions began to crumble more and more, I experienced more empathy and compassion for those around me, and I also funnily enough became smarter. I became smarter because I was looking at each situation with an open mind, and considering whatever the proposition was entirely on its own merits, not relying on my mind’s previous conclusions about the subject in question.
And this is still happening to me today. My mind is still crumbling and crumbling, but I’m getting smarter all the time. I’m definitely not the smartest person in most rooms, but I can seem like it because I have such an open mind and can see things from a bigger picture than I used to be able to.
That’s why I think love is not just an ideal to hope we run into, but one we cultivate through expanding our awareness and understanding those with different points of view.
As one of my idols Helen Keller said, “The highest result of education is tolerance.”
Imagine the world we would live in if people everywhere started to consider all possibilities when having discussions, rather than doggedly arguing for their set point of view, with all its inherent limitations and contradictions.
At the end of the day, when the mind begins to break down, and you can see people who are still totally enslaved by their own mind, compassion arises. Love arises. This is why I consider love not just an emotion but the most logical position given the circumstances we find ourselves in.
So, as always, and to the best of my ability, in love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
I believe there is a great spiritual awakening happening on Earth.
If you had told me this ten years ago I would have stared at you blankly and thought you were a bit nuts.
How times have changed.
The reasons for this are many, but I think it boils down to two main reasons: 1. People are ready. People can sense there’s something wrong with the way life is being lived on our planet and they are looking for alternatives; and 2. The conditions are just right now for the spread of information and therefore wisdom to occur (the most obvious avenue for this being the internet). There is a third factor of technology that I will discuss, but I see it as secondary to these first two reasons.
There are two sides to spiritual awakening itself though. One side is about waking up to absolute reality, what Jesus called “God”, and what many others have called “enlightenment”, “self-realization”, or “awakening”. And the other side is the progression of life on our planet: our cultural evolution, if you will.
To deal with the first aspect: A lot of people don’t know this, but there’s this crazy little thing called consciousness which makes up literally everything we experience.
Don’t believe me?
Try and find something in your experience that is *not* made of consciousness (i.e. your sight, taste, smell, touch, etc). Pretty difficult isn’t it?
Well that’s because everything we know of the world IS made of consciousness, according to our direct perception of it. Everything, in a very real sense, is just in your head. And this is now being backed up more and more by modern physics, which for over a hundred years has been suggesting to us that things are not really things until they are observed – i.e. until they appear in consciousness. In fact it suggests that things are not even things when they do appear in consciousness. It suggests our whole world is made up of nothing but consciousness. This is what the Buddhist teaching of emptiness points to – empty of substance.
This is an amazing fact, and often overlooked because of its simplicity.
But people are beginning to take notice. Not just of the physics, but of consciousness itself. People are starting to question more than they ever have, “what is the truth of all this?”
You see, as Morpheus said to Neo in the Matrix – one of the best documentary series ever made by the way 😛 – we’ve been living in a dream world. A kind of trance state created by our minds, which says with absolute certainty that things are things whether or not we are looking at them. Physics says “nu-uh”.
And for some inexplicable reason, there is a massive amount of interest gaining in areas which treat consciousness seriously. Ten years ago you could go to a 10 day silent meditation retreat whenever you wanted; now you have to book months in advance to reserve your spot.
The second part of our cultural evolution and awakening is about ideas and questioning our assumptions to come up with better ways of living. This is the natural selection of ideas which Richard Dawkins coined “memes”. You see this everywhere. How many people do you know who are suddenly interested in the gender pronouns debate? 10 years ago this topic was unheard of. Now, debates are happening all over the place. And, even though it may look crazy and dysfunctional on the surface, what people are really trying to do is make sense of things: refine our ideas so we come up with better, more inclusive ideas.
It may look like not much progress is being made on the surface: Just two people stubbornly arguing for their point of view, but really there is much more going on. People are at least considering the other person’s perspective, even if they won’t willingly acknowledge this during the debate. They are starting to see that there could be some truth to both sides of the argument. There’s a quote which says the progress of spiritual maturity is gauged by an appreciation for paradox and ambiguity. I think this is very true. Take the gender pronouns issue as an example. There is no cut and dried answer to this, just as there isn’t to most questions in society. It’s ridiculous to claim to that gender differences are an entirely social construct, just as it’s ridiculous to claim that social constructs don’t play a major role in gender identification. It’s all about, as Richard Dawkins also once said, “consciousness raising”: appreciating that there may be another side to the story which you haven’t fully understood yet. (note: Richard Dawkins is not a favourite intellectual of mine, but for some reason he popped up twice in one article, go figure).
And the third aspect I mentioned – that of technology. Technology is going to drag us into the 21st century whether we like it or not, and it’s also going to radically change our way of life, as if it hasn’t enough already. The warning that comes along with this is that when a culture develops highly advanced technology, it had better be mature enough to be able to handle it! Which is why I think we are seeing more and more mature debates being held all around the world. People are becoming fascinated with thinkers like Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and many others. I noted that, off the top of my head, there are not as many influential female speakers, and this is something that will definitely need to change: we need to listen to the feminine more if we’re going to evolve as a spiritually mature, advanced species. Women may not always speak the same language as men; they may not always give your mind as much of a bone to chew on, but their contribution is just as important, if not more important, given the imbalance that currently exists within our society.
So in general I think people are starting to pause and say, “Hang on, this isn’t working.” “Something’s not right.” “Things aren’t how they’re meant to be.” “I’m unhappy.”
And when people start to realise they’re unhappy – or at least, not as happy as they could be – and usually after a long period of wallowing, they start to look for cures. They begin “the search”. They look everywhere for this thing called happiness, in people, places, ideas, things, but never seem to be able to find it. Or if they do, it’s only temporary. This is when a lot of people start to look at the bigger questions of life, and start to look into spirituality. This is the beginning of the end of their road of unhappiness.
Not that enlightenment is just about curing unhappiness. That’s just a byproduct. Enlightenment is about truth. Truth, it seems, just brings a lot of happiness along with it (eventually).
But this transition won’t be easy. There are a lot of hard truths we’re going to have to face up to as a society to make it through this. A lot of really horrible shit has gone down while we’ve all been sleep-walking our way through life. Enlightenment is sort of like shining a torch in the darkness. When you shine a torch, the first thing you see is all the rats, so you’re horrified. But the next part is the part that’s worth it: the rats hate the light so they begin to flee. So that’s all we’ve got to keep doing; keep shining our torches (mostly on ourselves, because as Adyashanti once said, “enlightenment is an inside job”). I won’t go into the details on what these hard truths will be because a. I don’t know them well enough myself yet; and b. my intention is not to fear-monger here, only to raise awareness, so I don’t think it’s necessary to go into the specifics just yet. Let’s just say, to use a quote from Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” In other words, there have been more things going down on Earth than most people have realised.
My prediction is that we’re going to be in for a very rough ride when we finally start to see all the rats that have previously gone unnoticed, but it’s the first step to a life free of these rats. There’s no other way to go about it. You can’t just keep living pretending the rats don’t exist. Well, you can, but it will only continue the suffering we all experience. As the song by The Clash says, “If I go there will be trouble; if I stay there will be double.”
So we all have a choice now. I say go. Even though it’s going to be painful and difficult, the alternative is much much worse.
Which decision will you make?
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
Well, I shouldn’t say that. Life turned me into a potential alcoholic, writing just gave me the final push. I had never been even slightly tempted by alcohol as a substance to abuse until I started to write.
Why? Well, I have a lot of anxiety. It’s a long story that goes way back, and I’ve tried to manage it in various ways. An opioid addiction, antidepressants, withdrawing from life completely, and – that’s about the end of the list.
But then I came upon the idea that I was meant to be a writer, of sorts. I felt like I had a lot of things to say, and I felt like they were important. I still feel that way. The problem was: I could barely sit still long enough to type a title, let alone an article.
I started living with my dad for reasons that relate to my first blog post on here: “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, and he was a drinker. Not a come home and yell at everyone in the house type of drinker, but a drinker nonetheless. I was never very attracted to it. It didn’t seem to be my drug of choice. I had the occasional beer with him, but that was about it.
Then I started writing, and found it only compounded my agitation and inability to sit still. So I’d have a beer to calm the nerves. Then two. Then, over the period of a day, eight. One month as a “writer” and I’m already a cliché. Hooray.
The irony was, I was actually kind of prolific during this period. And I produced some fairly okay writing. It really did seem to help the writing process for me in a way that my other coping mechanisms – coffee, anti-anxiety pills etc – didn’t.
In “The Way of the Superior Man” (which is a great book, and everyone should read it, male or female), David Deida refers to alcohol as a feminine substance. He didn’t delve into why this was, but I imagine it’s something to do with getting in touch with your emotions – and with my experience now I wonder whether that’s true. Maybe it dulled my emotions just enough so they were manageable enough to engage with.
I don’t think I’m going to keep up this alcohol-fuelled writing thing for long though. I don’t see it being a viable long-term method for personal success. I’m not at a point where I feel I can meditate every day, but I’m doing other work with a couple of people which I think will help a lot with my state of being. I’ve got some akashic (I still don’t really know what that means) trance/hypnosis sessions lined up with a great guy at “Alchemical Child”, and I fortuitously met a woman in a health food/spiritual store that I had a great connection with, so I’m looking forward to delving into my subconscious a bit more with these people. I think that will really help. I’m also booked in for a 10 day silent meditation retreat up here in Queensland which I’m in two minds about attending, but I’ll feel into it closer to the date to see if I’m ready for another one of those (they are intense).
I’m still on “leave” from my main spiritual teacher: she has cut me off completely as a way to force me to stand on my own two feet and not use her guidance as a crutch, which has been… frustrating at times, but I understand why she’s doing it.
Fingers crossed I can get through this period and come out the other side a more functional human being.
But still, as always,
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
Last year I was having a conversation with my spiritual teacher (a woman in her 50s), and I was about to bring up a YouTuber I was following which related to the discussion we were having about extraterrestrials (the YouTuber’s name is Bridget Nielsen, around 30 years old, and she’s fantastic).
The conversation was going along fine, but then when I went to bring up this YouTuber I stumbled: “Yeah,” I said, “there’s this… um… girl or… woman… I’m kind of at an age where I don’t know whether-”
“To call to someone a girl or a woman.” My teacher finished my sentence.
“Yeah.”
“Well, look,” she said, “I generally feel with the mentality of our society if you meet a female who is 25 or more it’s actually demeaning to keep calling them a girl.”
“Yeah I know, but woman just sounds so… formal.”
“How about lady?”
I screwed up my face, “No. That seems stranger.”
“I kind of feel like we need a word like “guy” for women and girls.” I said.
“Well, I know that in Aussie vernacular it’s “chick”, isn’t it?”
“Yeah I don’t find that useful.”
“Me neither.” She agreed.
“Well, what else is there?” She asked.
“Yeah, I think we need a new word.” I replied.
Laughter. “Alright, come up with it, Will! … Well what is it?” She paused… “How about fem?”
“… Maybe?” I said. I didn’t strike me as wrong straight away. “I don’t know… yeah that sounds alright.”
“Yeah, guy/fem. “I went on a date with a fem”” She proffered.
“Yeah, I actually kind of like that.”
“Well go on then Will, see if you can get it started.”
So here I am, seeing if I can get it started.
Now, I know “femme” is a word already used in the gay community to refer to a type of lesbian (i.e. butch or femme) (as far as my understanding of the gay community goes), but I think we need this word fem as an all-encompassing counterpart to guy. I think there is a gaping hole in our vocabulary which needs to be filled, and is important to be filled, so we can stop infantalizing women by continuing to call them girls when they’re clearly not still girls.
What do you think? Can we get this word started? Do you have any other suggestions which might work?
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
Content warning: This post contains references to pedophilia, which may be upsetting for some people. Apologies if so. ❤️
This post was inspired by a conversation I had with a friend about the spiritual teacher Fred Davis, who – about 40 years ago when he was a teenager – indecently assaulted some of his younger nieces. This created a bit of a storm within the spiritual community: some coming to Fred’s defence; others lambasting him and saying he shouldn’t be allowed to teach spirituality.
Well, Fred, after spending much of his life as an alcoholic, and at times being homeless or in mental institutions because of this, finally joined Alcoholics Anonymous to try and fix his drinking problem. He did fix it, and ended up becoming a much-in-demand AA guide for others who were trying to do the same.
As part of the 12-step program in AA, one of the steps is that you need to connect with and apologise to all the people you have wronged in your life. Fred did this, and obviously one of these things was writing to his nieces to apologise for his actions. He offered to talk to them too, if they wanted to. Four years later, a couple of them did, and they recorded the conversation and gave it to the police. Despite this being some 30 years in the past at the time, the state where Fred lived, South Carolina, had no statute of limitations for sexual offences, so he was brought before a judge and convicted of the crimes. The judge took into account his recovery from alcoholism and the good work he was doing being a guide for others to do the same, and sentenced him to weekend incarceration for a period of 90 days in jail, registration as a sex offender, and some other strict provisions for five years. Some may say this was too lenient, but I’ll let others be the judge of that. Fred wrote a blog post about this back in 2014 when it all came out, which can be found here, and it is an interesting insight into the nature of what happened. I recommend reading it: https://awakeningclaritynow.com/glass-houses/
Which brings me to the topic of this post, and WHOAH, what a heavy topic it is. Probably the heaviest topic you could possibly discuss: An adult taking advantage of a young, innocent child for their own gratification, thereby causing untold grief and trauma to the victim. Like I said… heavy.
So where to start with such a topic? How to start with such a topic?
I have always found myself in a peculiar situation whenever the topic of pedophilia comes up. I obviously feel great remorse for the victims and the amount of suffering they must have endured as a result of their experiences, but I always also felt something else simultaneously: compassion for the perpetrators. I always felt, wow, this is considered the most reprehensible crime you can commit in society, and this person just committed it. That must be a horrible thing to experience, regardless of their guilt.
This is not to say it’s not a horrible thing that they did – it is. It’s just to say: these people were so mentally unwell that they committed what is considered to be one of the worst crimes in society. And pedophilia, it must be said, IS a mental illness: There is no biological reason why an adult should be attracted to a pre-pubescent child, it makes no evolutionary sense. Therefore, the cause must be a psychological illness which has made them act in this way.
Which leaves us in an interesting position. Most people who are mentally unwell are usually treated with compassion, even those who commit crimes. I myself committed a crime during a psychotic episode (assault), and I was treated (mostly) with compassion and understanding. But not pedophiles. Oh no, their crimes are just too egregious to have any compassion for whatsoever.
I think this is wrong. I think every person deserves compassion and understanding regardless of the crimes they have committed. And yes, this too includes Hitler, the one person who is often singled out as the example for the most evil man in history.
The reason being: I consider all life as one, you see. Not just as an idea, but as a fact. So I consider anything anyone does to another person that is harmful to the other person as a sign of a kind of mental illness on their part, a misperception about the nature of reality. If they saw clearly, I argue – if they saw truly that life was all one, then they would not have done it. But they weren’t seeing clearly, therefore they had some degree of mental illness.
In fact, I consider 99.99% of the population to be to some degree mentally unwell. If you look into your own life, I’m sure you can find examples where you’ve acted a bit crazy or a bit irrationally. Sure, you may not be as mentally unwell as some people, but it’s still a sign of mental illness. In this sense, I consider everyone who doesn’t clearly see the oneness and interconnectedness of all life as, to varying degrees, mentally ill. This includes myself. I haven’t yet reached a point where I see life as all one all the time. I have had glimpses of it, which is how I am able to write this, but I don’t walk around all day seeing oneness. There’s still too much mental activity clouding my seeing of this simple fact.
And it is a fact, even just from a logical point of view. When you think about it logically, life has to be all one, ultimately speaking, because it all comes from the same source. It is a logical impossibility that there could be more than one source for existence. Why? Because if there was more than one source, then it wouldn’t be the ultimate source, it would only be a relative source. If there was more than one, then there would have to be another source from which those two sources sprung. You can’t have a split at the base of existence. This is where the philosophy of nondualism is so accurate and so valuable. It is not the only truth, there are still other relative truths – but it is the truth. This is why it is called in Hinduism: advaita vedanta – which translates to “not-two”, and “the end of the vedas”, indicating this is the highest teaching.
But please don’t take offence to what I’m saying either. I’m not labelling you personally as mentally ill, I’m just saying it is the nature of the mind, because of the way it evolved, to often misunderstand things. You see, as I’ve mentioned numerous times in my blogs, our minds really did only evolve for basic biological functions and to survive in the apparently physical world we inhabit. It didn’t evolve to understand reality, only to surviveand reproduce in it. There’s some great work done by the cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, where he computer-modeled evolutionary scenarios to see which conditions would win out. To his surprise, the one determining factor in evolutionary success was survival – i.e. passing on your genes – not perceiving reality as it really is. Here is his Ted talk on the subject (20 minutes), called “Do we see reality as it is?” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY He ends the talk with the quote: “Dare to recognize that perception is not about seeing truth; it’s about having kids.”
So how does all this relate back to pedophilia, you might ask? Well, as I mentioned, I think we are all, to some degree, mentally ill, because we do not see reality accurately. Some of us function well in this survival-oriented paradigm, others function less well, but in neither case are they seeing reality accurately. And this I believe is where all harm stems from: not seeing things clearly. If Fred Davis, or Hitler, or anyone else you want to mention, saw clearly at the times they were committing their crimes, they would not have done them. Why? Because they would see that it was really just another aspect of themselves they were harming. As the nonduality teacher Gary Weber once said, “It would be like cutting off your own hand – it just wouldn’t make sense so you wouldn’t do it.”
So I believe everyone deserves compassion and forgiveness. Not because their crimes don’t matter or the victims suffering doesn’t matter – it does, and people should still be sent to prison if they commit these acts in order to protect others and to act as a deterrent for others. But everyone deserves compassion and forgiveness, because when we harm another it is only ever because we are not seeing clearly. We are acting from a deluded perspective, and thus are deserving of sympathy, not hatred and judgment.
What a world we would live in if people saw those who committed heinous acts as deserving of understanding and compassion rather than hatred and derision? A much nicer one, I think.
Something else came up when I was talking to my friend about this, and that is the idea of “what you resist persists”. Eckhart Tolle – another great spiritual teacher – once said that he thinks a big part of the reason there is so much pedophilia in the Catholic church is because of their demonization of sexuality. If you demonize something, you often, in a strange way, make it somehow more appealing. Just like the illegalization of drugs. If someone says you can’t do something, you kind of want to say, “Oh yeah? Why not?” Tolle noted that the suppression of sexuality in the Catholic church often led to it becoming distorted and manifesting in perverse ways. I agree with his judgment on this (although I accept there are most likely other factors too, but I don’t want to make this post any longer than it already is). [Important note: I just want to be clear here: I am *not* saying that we should accept pedophilia and then it might go away; we should *always* as a society say that pedophilia is wrong and immoral, I am only talking here about the demonization of sexuality in the Catholic church (and, to a lesser extent, society as a whole) which has led to sexuality manifesting in perverse ways.]
The spiritual teacher Adyashanti once said this too: “Whatever you resist you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion, you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.”
I think the same goes for things like pedophilia. In the case of the Catholic church, they have resisted human sexuality to such a point that it has become a taboo perversion for them, rather than a natural expression of love and unity (or whatever else you want it to be, so long as it’s done with mutual respect and consent).
But it’s not just the Catholic church who do this: we do this all over society. Imagine a society where instead of demonizing and hating pedophiles, we treated them with understanding and compassion. Imagine the effect that would have on the pedophiles themselves? If you’re told by society that you are the lowest of the low, beyond forgiveness, you are more likely to act in that way. If society instead treated them with understanding and compassion, the would-be pedophile might instead think, “oh, I am just mentally unwell, it’s not that I’m an evil person”, and they would be much less likely to commit the act in the first place – they would seek help and feel supported.
This is not to say it is wrong to feel anger, or wrong to feel sadness when things like this happen. That is a misunderstanding of what I’m saying. Anger and sadness are legitimate responses to bad or unwanted situations. So I’m not saying don’t feel anger when things like this happen. I’m just saying, look to see if you can’t also find the part of you that contains forgiveness. The part that has understanding and compassion. The part that knows this person acted out of their own illness, not out of a conscious decision to harm another person for no reason.
Thanks for reading, and as always,
In love and light,
Will.
For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!
Cults are an interesting phenomenon, and they definitely do exist. From Charles Manson to Jim Jones, there’s no shortage of examples of these charismatic yet deluded figures leading their followers, desperate to believe in something, off the proverbial cliff.
But the word cult gets bandied around a lot, and often in a very casual manner.
So what really defines a cult? Well, for me, the defining aspect is when the teacher becomes more important than the teaching, and the teachings are defended blindly against the weight of evidence against them.
Now, just to get my side of the story out of the way first – I’m definitely not in a cult (said every cult member ever). As a former science student, the idea of any type of belief, scientific or otherwise, is anathema to me. Beliefs, I believe (hehe), are the opposite of the scientific and true spiritual method of making observations based on direct experience. And direct experience is ALL we ever have access to in determining truth, so using something other than direct experience to guide our lives seems pretty silly to me.
Which is why it is so strange to me that I, of all people I think the least cultish person I know, have been accused of being in a cult.
The cult I’ve been accused of being a part of is the one surrounding my spiritual teacher, Isira, and the organization supporting her teaching, Living Awareness.
It seems that any time two or more people gather around a common spiritual cause, it’s automatically labelled a cult. But what did Jesus say? (another person who was accused of running a spiritual cult) – “Wherever there are two or three gathered in my name, I am there.” This is also probably why Buddhists hold sangha (spiritual community) to be the most important aspect of spirituality – because we learn more from our interactions with others than we ever could just going it alone.
The irony is, I’m only ever accused of being in a cult by people who have never heard my spiritual teacher give a talk. Their knee-jerk reaction is: “Someone’s teaching you something that is not (yet) the norm in society?” – CULT! Anything that is the norm in society – science, politics, medicine, etc – they’re all fine to have teachers for, but nothing esoteric, nothing that isn’t easy to understand. This really is ironic because there is so much more cultish behaviour in these fields than in any spiritual field I have personally encountered. Although I do consider myself lucky in that sense – I had a good, skeptical, scientific training before ever becoming interested in spirituality, so I was always quite cognizant to never believe stuff just for the sake of believing in something.
Which is what I think all cults, spiritual or otherwise, really boil down to: belief. In my opinion beliefs should not exist. From a scientific perspective, a belief is something you form when you say, “Okay, we’ve had this result, we’ve seen the evidence, we can make a conclusion now and stop any further investigation into the matter.” Why would anyone ever want to do that? In that sense I think beliefs have no place not only in science but in society as a whole. They are just psychological crutches people use because the world is so complex and the psychological need for humans to have some guiding principles is so great that we’re quick to latch onto anything that we feel gives us security.
People think we NEED beliefs of some kind in order to function, but we really don’t. Casual beliefs, like the belief in time and space (they don’t really exist the way we think they do, so yes, these too, are beliefs), are fine to have and to use in everyday situations. So long as we acknowledge that they are indeed beliefs, and don’t actually represent the true nature of reality.
I realise I’m asking a lot. Letting go of beliefs is a TOUGH road. The reason being is that our thoughts are so tied in with our emotions. They are inextricably linked to them. So to let go of a belief is not just to let go of a belief, it’s to let go of the feeling attached to that belief. And to do that, we need to experience that feeling in its raw state. Hence the resistance. We often think, “If we could just make sense of the world… if we could just finally get that last puzzle piece that fits everything into place then we’d have a full picture of how the world worked and we’d be *secure*.” We could finally relax.
Well, I don’t think it’s ever going to work like that. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I don’t think our minds really evolved to understand the true nature of reality. They evolved for relatively mundane tasks like picking berries, having sex, spotting predators, etc etc. We’ve done pretty tremendous things with this very limited brain of ours, don’t get me wrong, but in terms of understanding absolute reality – not a chance. As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, it’s a logical impossibility for a system that operates within a system to fully understand the system it operates within. This is what Einstein’s theories of relativity were all about – it is all relative to the particular observer, at their particular reference point in space-time.
But this principle applies just as much to our regular lives as it does to what we could call “Einsteinian post-modernism”. I’m not arguing that we completely throw out tradition and culture – a lot of things are here because they do, more or less, work, and serve a function.
Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ve discovered the ultimate answer to something, because, you know, around the corner there’s always something waiting to say, “nah, that doesn’t describe me.” It’s a little bit like women – if you try to figure them out you’ll come up against a LOT of problems, and they will certainly let you know about them.
So what to do in a world we can never understand fully? Well, the same thing we do with women I think. To borrow a quote from the legendary Oscar Wilde: “Women are meant to be loved, not understood.”
Love in the face of not understanding is the key that unlocks all the doors in my estimation. Because when you think about it, love is really the end goal of everything we are aiming for anyway. Everything we do, ultimately, is to find and experience more love. So why not just skip the whole process and start with love itself, the place we’re all really aiming for anyway?
In conclusion, keep using your ideas so long as they are useful, just be careful about turning them into beliefs of “that’s just the way things are”, because sooner or later in this incredibly complex world of ours, you’re going to run into a situation where it doesn’t fit.
And as for my “teacher”? Well, if she suddenly started to not make sense or act a bit cuckoo, I’d be out of there in a jiffy. So far, that hasn’t even been close to happening, so I’m quite happy with hearing her wisdom for the time being.
As always, in love and light,
Will.
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