Materialism vs. Spirituality

There appear to be two ends of the life spectrum: materialism and spirituality.

Materialism involves money, possessions, social status, accomplishments, fashion, beauty, television, physical comfort, judgment, and, when necessary, lying, stealing, and violence.  Friends and lovers are chosen based on physical appearance, wealth, or other things that we can “get” from them.  People hoard their wealth so that they can enjoy more and better food, housing, transportation, entertainment, medical care, etc.  In business we try to “beat” others and maximize our gain.  Compassion is viewed as foolishness and weakness.

Spirituality involves seeing who we are underneath our externals.  We value each other because we are conscious, sensitive beings, and we do not favor one person over another according to their physical beauty, wealth, accomplishments, nationality, skin color, or blood relation.  We are in this world but not of it.  More material (possessions, lovers, social status) does not necessarily make us happier, and in fact will make us less happy if we use it to separate ourselves from others.  If one person is cold, starving or sick, we have compassion and help him (if we are able to) because he is suffering.  In business we provide a product or service for a fair price and do not attempt to finagle more than that, because to do so would be unfair.

Either end of the spectrum can be unpleasant: materiality causes fear, suspicion, anger and loneliness; while spirituality can prevent innovation and leave us vulnerable to being taken advantage of by materialists.  We can balance these, but that might still be unpleasant: a materialist might despise being fair or generous, and a spiritual person might not enjoy having to be distrustful of some strangers or business acquaintances.  Can/should we live a double life of some materialism and some spirituality?  Can we maintain integrity and dignity while doing so?

Perhaps this balancing act is what we need to learn in order to grow.  Maybe that’s why we’re here in the first place.  (There is no way to know of course.)  Pure materialism can cause lots of fear, anger and frustration.  Pure spirituality involves rejection of the world, possibly leading to starvation and disease (if we just meditate instead of growing crops or building shelter).  Developing the ability to balance the two takes growth, effort, honesty, accomplishment, and compassion.

Refusing the Now

We can always have peace and rest now.  But we refuse it.  We insist on thinking.  Sometimes it’s about the future, sometimes the past, sometimes even the present, but we think ourselves right out of peace.  “I have to run these errands.”  “Bob said/did something I didn’t like.”  “My investment might lose value.”  “My thighs are fat.”  “What will happen to me?”  We look for any excuse to reject pure experience.  If nothing bad is happening, we will conjure something up.  We don’t want the Now because we are so focused on selfing that we can’t focus on what is actually happening.  We would rather fret over stuff that happened or stuff that hasn’t happened or how the present affects us than feel what is happening.  So the false self prevents us from experiencing the Now and thus guarantees that we will not truly live.

We often consider the Now to be boring.  We can’t, for example, just accept the feeling of a good stretch, or a sunset, or the wind on our skin, or the song of a bird, or the comfort of a soft couch.  “I’ve got important things to think about,” we say to ourselves.  “Obligations.  Fears.  Regrets.  People I hate.”  And so we resist everything: the present, the past, and the future.  All we can feel is our own resistance.

We torture ourselves with our thoughts while erroneously believing that they are somehow protecting us.  From what?  Even if we were to incur some loss of wealth or social status as the result of not staying “on top of things”, would that be any worse than the horrible state of non-living?  Isn’t this a greater and more immediate threat?  Sometimes it is better to live now and pay later.

The Joy of Not Knowing

Not knowing is fun because it enables the joy of learning.  Opinions and beliefs can make us stop learning because we think that we already know everything we need to know, so we see information as useless because it will either repeat or contradict what we already “know” to be true.

Not knowing what will happen in the future can be frightening (if we choose to see it that way), but it is also what keeps life interesting.  If we always knew what was coming next, so that there were no surprises, how fun would life be?

Not knowing how a movie or ball game ends frees us to enjoy the surprise of it.

Not knowing that a particular religious belief is “correct” frees us to look at life and feel who we are with immediate clarity, without running it through the filter of some man-made thought system and without worrying that we are violating some cosmic law or failing to please some judgmental deity.

Not knowing who we will meet at a social event frees us to make new friends and lovers.

Not knowing that a particular political party is “right” frees us to see politicians and events honestly, without feeling the need to defend one party or villainize another in order to maintain a false self that is built upon identification with one of them.

Not knowing a joke frees us to enjoy the punchline.

Letting Go

You will never find enlightenment, awakening, nirvana, or whatever you call it, via your mind, because the mind is the problem.  The false self, with all the negative thoughts and feelings, is an invention of the mind.  If you attempt to get out of this false self via the mind, all you will do is spin mind gears and remain stuck where you are.

The way to escape from the false self is to transcend mind altogether.  Don’t think.  Don’t try to “figure it out”.  Let go.

Enlightenment cannot be “attained”.  It is not a thing outside of you that you must acquire.  You can’t go to Walmart and say, “I’d like to buy some enlightenment.”

Enlightenment is the opposite of acquiring – it is giving up.  Giving up what?  All those erroneous notions of being your externals, judging yourself and others, trying to maintain an image, worrying about the future, regretting the past, and striving to get things.  It is a simple dropping of the mental baggage – the false self – you have been carrying around.

We do not have to do anything to be enlightened.  We do not have to meditate, chant, find a guru, believe a dogma, give away all our possessions, or attend worship services.  We have only to drop the false self.  Is the stone you carry too heavy?  Then drop it.  Is the false self and all the worry, strife, fear, guilt and anger it causes too much to bear?  Then drop it.

You might cling to your false self because you feel the need to think and do certain things in order to maintain worldly things such as your financial and social status.  If so, you’ve made your choice: wealth, possessions, and public approval are more important than peace of mind.  There is no cosmic right or wrong in this.  But the next time you’re worrying or struggling in order to get something, or feeling anger or frustration because you didn’t get it, you might want to consider whether your occasional triumphs outweigh the frequent emotional pain.

Existential Pain

When we live via our false self, we feel deep down that we are on the wrong path.  This produces a constant feeling of fear and anxiety, but we can’t pinpoint just what is causing it.  We feel an existential hole, as though we lack something, whether it be internal (self-worth, power, accomplishment, lovableness) or external (wealth, beauty, the approval of others).  We keep up a smiling façade in public because we fear that others would not understand or accept us if they knew that we were so flawed.

Our existential pain is revealed whenever something unpleasant happens.  Someone cuts us off in traffic, or we fail to accomplish a goal, or someone says an unkind word to us, or we incur an unforeseen expense.  A knee-jerk reaction of anger or frustration surfaces.  That is our pain and fear breaking through the façade.  The pain is too great for us to cover it up.  We might pretend that the pain came from the outside event, because to admit that the event merely triggered the pain that was already within us would show others how imperfect we are, and the ego will have none of that.

Let’s focus for a minute on getting cut off in traffic.  At first it might appear that the other motorist forced us to feel angry.  Well, if that were the case, then everyone who gets cut off should become angry, right?  But not everyone does.  We became angry not merely from the event, but because the event reminded us of our own feelings of powerlessness, worthlessness, and/or rejection (which caused pain), and violated our egoic belief that we are better than others so they shouldn’t get “ahead” of us (which caused frustration).  You see how our own mental processes caused the anger?

We attempt to dull our existential pain by grasping for external things such as alcohol, shopping, money, fashion, television, religion, food, sex, work, and relationships.  The best we get is temporary relief, momentary distraction, because the underlying problem of living as a false self is not solved.  In fact, it is exacerbated, because the external things we grab only make the false self bigger.

Matter vs. Spirit

This entry proposes ideas and questions but makes no assertions about whether we are matter or spirit.

All matter follows physical laws. Nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces make atomic particles behave in certain ways, and each event causes another, then another, ad infinitum, resulting in the formation of stars, galaxies, planets and life, and processes such as birth, growth, death, decay, photosynthesis, volcanoes, tides, etc. Every cosmic incident, from the explosion of a star to a light breeze, is the result of an inevitable chain of events that started a long time ago.

If we are nothing more than physical beings, then there is no such thing as free will because all matter is on an unchangeable course that was set in motion sometime in the past, and we cannot alter this course because we are part of it. Our behavior, preferences, thoughts and feelings are predetermined by a combination of our bodies (particularly our neurons) and our environment, neither of which we chose. We think and act in the one and only way possible because our neurons follow an obligatory course. We might believe that we have the ability to make free choices, but since our neurons are being “pushed” by outside forces, what we really have is unconscious determinism. There is no meaning in our “choices”, because they are not choices at all. And because we cannot choose anything freely and cannot therefore cause anything to happen differently from the way it’s destined to happen, none of us can be praised or blamed for anything. Hitler was just as good as Gandhi.

The only way we can have free will is if we are not part of the physical universe. We must be non-physical “souls” or “spirits”. Sure, we might start life in bodies, families, and neighborhoods that we did not choose, but since each of us is a “ghost in the machine”, not the machine itself, we can choose how to think and act, just as we can choose how to drive a car even if we can’t choose its color or model or what road we start at. Our freedom might be in proportion to our circumstances (someone who is intelligent and loved might be more free than someone who is mentally challenged or abused), but we still have at least some ability to choose.

The fact that our brain state largely determines our perceptions might make it appear as though we are merely physical. However, it could be that the brain is merely a “portal” into this universe, so when it gets altered (e.g., by chemicals or trauma), it is the portal that changes, while we (as non-physical spirits) do not change. Alterations to the brain might cause changes in sight, hearing, balance, pleasure, pain, hunger, nausea, fear, excitement, anger, peace, despair and love, but the conscious entity experiencing them does not.

If we are non-physical, then how is it that we are “stuck” in our present bodies? Why can’t we leap out? For that matter, how did we get behind the helm? What allows us to control our bodies? How does free will result in thoughts and movements? Where do we go after our bodies die? Do we float around in some metaphysical ether? Do we leap into other bodies? Can we exist without a body and an environment? How could we experience anything without them?

“No Self”

What is meant by the Eastern concept of “no self”? Does it mean that we do not exist? No. Of course we exist, for if we didn’t, then how could we perceive, enjoy and suffer? The “self” in this context refers to the sense of self, so “no self” means “no sense of self”.

Selfing is a mental process that creates a mental “me”. We picture ourselves as action figures that need to obtain accessories such as clothing, reputation, money, educational degrees, and so forth. We think about how things affect us. All this mental activity prevents us from fully experiencing the present moment. Instead of experiencing what is happening, we experience thoughts. Some of these thoughts create painful feelings such as desire, worry, regret, arrogance, fear, and resentment, but even those that don’t still interfere with pure experience because any thought takes at least part of our attention, thus blocking awareness of what is happening. 

When we get engrossed in something – a sport, a hobby, a sunset, a song, a hug – it becomes our entire reality. There is no thought of “I am experiencing this” or “I want to achieve thus-and-such”. There is no notion of self or time. Just pure experience. We are aware, but not self-aware. This is what is meant by “no self”. It is the blissful state of thoughtless awareness.

Thoughtless awareness cannot be experienced by trying to experience it. It is not something to achieve. Rather, it is the natural state we are in when we don’t think. Thinking requires effort; therefore it is only because we make efforts that we fail to live in thoughtless awareness. It takes no effort to be thoughtlessly aware. So we don’t need to do anything in particular -- we can simply do nothing!