What determines whether a soul has basic trust? Basic trust is the effect on the soul of a particular aspect or quality of Being that we call Living Daylight. We call it this because if one’s perception is subtle enough to visually see and kinesthetically feel the substance of one’s consciousness, it actually looks like daylight, and is felt as an alive consciousness. It is experienced as something boundless, in the sense that it is not bounded by one’s body but rather is experienced as something that everything is made of. It is a universal sense of presence in that it pervades everything and is everywhere. The first level of experiencing it is to perceive that it is everywhere; the second level is to see that everything comes out of it; and the deepest level is to know that everything is made of it. At this deepest level, everything in the universe is seen to be originating in, bathed in, and constituted by Living Daylight.

This is definitely in the territory of the mystical, but I like Almaas’s ability to explain mystic experiences through less-mystical origins (e.g., pointing out that we’re essentially looking at the nature of our own consciousness, here).

I’m getting a ton out of slowly making my way through his new book The Unfolding Now. I hope to publish a fuller review of this book at some point, because it’s been quite profound so far.

I would assume that, like me, you have consulted many doctors and they aren’t able to do much to help. In this case, one of the most powerful therapies is what we might call “radical acceptance.”

The basic premise is that we often don’t realize how much of our suffering is of our own creation, created by how we react to the pain in our body. Sometimes the core of pain itself can be like a grain of sand in an oyster; but through our irritated reaction, it grows and grows and grows, like a painfully hard pearl, into something large and hard that impinges on our ability to live.

I use the word “radical” acceptance because normally we think of acceptance as a sort of trivial cognitive process: I know I’m in pain. OK, I accept that — but it’s not going anywhere.

On a more influential level, though, real acceptance is not just cognitive but also emotional, and has roots deep in the body and the unconscious mind. And so the process for those of us who experience constant pain is to learn to look deeper than our thoughts, deeper than our surface emotions, and observe our own reactions to the pain in a very intimate way. Instinctively, it is often the last thing we would think to do, since we just want the pain to get out of our way; but if we become skilled at looking deeper and with greater compassion, it can help a great deal.

One of the first steps, especially for those of us who tend to get caught up in our thoughts, is to learn to be more deeply present with “the now” — and not just when we sit down to meditate or do yoga, but as a way of life. In this area, I know of no better teacher than Eckhart Tolle. His book The Power of Now is perhaps the best instruction manual for learning to get more deeply into the present moment and stay there.

I particularly recommend listening to the audiobook version of The Power of Now, so you can hear his voice and join him at a psychological level as he models the quality of consciousness of which he speaks.

When it comes to more intensive meditation and personal inquiry, another teacher I’ve learned from immensely is Adyashanti. His True Meditation audiobook is particularly incisive, even though the recording quality isn’t great. For anyone with some prior exposure to Buddhism, I would also highly recommend his Spontaneous Awakening recordings.

Adyashanti’s basic teaching is very simple. He teaches that if we want to reach our true potential, we must learn to stop trying to manipulate our mind into artificial states, wishing for our experience to be different, always longing, striving, aching for reality to be other than it is — wanting to get somewhere faster, to gain more insight, to overcome our struggles, to change the way we feel, to improve the way we think, etc. This striving creates a conflict in our minds, so that we do everything from a place of effort and tension, rather than ease.

And so his basic spiritual teaching, regardless of your level of meditation experience, is to simply let go of control and allow everything to be as it is.

In my own meditation practice, I often sit on a small bench, put my torso in a nice relaxed upright posture, get in touch with the feeling of my in-breath and out-breath, and then start paying attention to the tension in my body. As I see my emotional tension, I notice where it is at in my body, observe it as intimately as I can, and then let go of it.

Then I repeat that same process with any urgent thoughts that come to mind, any aching tensions in my body, any well-intentioned efforts to improve my state of mind, etc. The answer to each of these things, almost like a mantra or a psychological balm I administer to them in equal measure, is: Let go of control and allow everything to be as it is.

And I keep repeating the process. The first time notice some mental tension and let go, I might get 10% of the way there. But as I keep repeating it, with each tension in my mind and body, I get deeper into a state that actually looks like radical harmony with the way things are.

Amazingly, the more I let go of control, the more my mind and body are able to join this harmony, accomplishing things I could never have accomplished through deliberate effort: My mind is more clear, I have more energy available, I’m able to think more creatively, I feel more relaxed, and my aches and pains gradually shrink back to much more manageable proportions.

Lately I use this instruction-mantra not just when I’m on my meditation cushion, but when I’m typing e-mails, when I’m in conversations, when I’m doing the dishes, when I’m shopping, when I’m working, when I’m driving: Let go of control and allow everything to be as it is. It’s amazing how much it helps.

If you get to experimenting with these ideas, I’d really enjoy hearing how it goes. I know many friends who have been helped by them in one way or another. I wish you luck in your journey. Feel free to write if you have questions or want to know more about something.

It’s a topic that interests me, as I’ve long been fascinated by the fact that peace sometimes requires something that looks an awful lot like war — and perhaps, occasionally, even war itself.

Her post begins:

“conflict is essential to the development and growth of man and society. it leads either to the construction or destruction of an entire group or state. . . if there is no conflict – internal or external – there can be no growth.”
-sun tzu, the art of war

thinking about this quote brought a conversation from many years ago to mind. at the time, i was an idealistic new college graduate in my 20s and was tutoring high school and middle school students. one particular student challenged me when i talked about peace as an important ideal. he defended war, and he called it a completely natural thing. “war is even something that happens within our bodies,” he told me. that teenager so eloquently left me flustered. Keep reading

See her full post for more.

Perhaps I should write a post about it, sometime, for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, who see it as a “mystical” concept, or who are skeptical that it has any value. Meantime, I know a few of my readers are acquainted with Adyashanti — or “Adya,” as students often call him — and his teachings.

In any case, a friend said the following to me today during a chat conversation, and it struck me as worth repeating:

nobody can choose to be enlightened

but spirituality is not so black and white

enlightenment is a gradient

even adya says the once and for all sudden enlightenment is extremely rare

it’s a gradual process of openings

that, i’m committed to

continuous opening

curiosity about my experience and how it unfolds

and all the great things that come about as a result: adventure, discovery, love, peace, etc

thats both a spiritual life, and a worldly life

Very well said — and something I agree with entirely.

It turns out she has a blog as well, called A Peaceful Human Race. Reading it, I was moved by this post:

for the last couple months, i’ve been reading the gentle art of blessing by pierre prandervand.

a little excerpt from the book can give you a taste of what this book is about, or you could click the title of the book above, order, and check it out yourself.

pradervand enthusiastically shares the journey of his discovery and practice of blessing as an everyday art. as his ideas have begun to sink into my own mind and way of being, i’ve realized how fantastic blessing is as a tool to transform what would otherwise be a painful and conflicted interactions.

when i first started reading the book, life presented me with an opportunity for blessing. a student came into my office one day and informed me that he’d gone to the administration to complain about me. as he told me about my unfairness in grading, my adrenaline started to pump, and the knee jerk reaction to defend myself and point out his deficencies started moving towards action.

luckily, i recognized this as an opportunity to put my passion for peace into practice, and i stopped myself. instead of picking up my own sword and fighting back, i could choose to bless him. i could see his integrity, his goodness, his desire to connect and succeed. i could see his blame as merely one small part of all he was bringing into my office, and i could honor and recognize how much more there was to him and to what he was saying.

as i resisted my initial conditioned response, i sat quietly and worked to hold a loving space. i detected a little surprise from him that i was so calm, and the entire encounter was over as quickly as it began. i’d be lying if i said it didn’t cause me some anxiousness, but overall, the discomfort on my end was considerably less than during tense student situations in the past.

the real testament to the power of this practice came as the semester continued. Keep reading »

I feel inspired to read the book.

I definitely think her novels provide the best introduction to her ideas. They’re easier, so they’re more accessible to many people. They’re best sellers over the last 40 to 50 years, so obviously they’ve appealed to many people. But also, they set her ideas in the context of the real world and, if you read The Fountainhead first, you’re really treated to a beautiful introduction to her thinking. It’s the way she came to her ideas.

She was originally very interested in the notion of how do people maintain their independence and integrity in the face of a world that demands compromise and The Fountainhead is about that. And you read that book and you really, you get a personal introduction to her ideas. Then you can read Atlas Shrugged and she shows how that same idea plays out in aesthetics and romantic love and politics and ethics and, by the time you get to Galt’s speech, you’ve pretty much got it all laid out in front of you.

There are few places where she really distills it down to a crystal clear formulation quite the way she did in Galt’s speech. On the one hand, it’s the intellectual climax of the novel, it’s the place where the plot tension that’s been going on through the whole novel is finally explained. You understand why the producers have gone on strike. On the other hand, it’s the opportunity for Rand to lay out her philosophy as a system for the first time in the world.

The part of the speech that bowled me over the most and continued to impress me for years as I was re-reading it was her derivation of ‘ought’ from ‘is’. And I continue to think that’s one of the most valuable things that Rand did as a philosopher, is helping people understand in a clear, lucid way how you can derive principles of what you ought to do in your life from factual information about the nature of human life. So she was identifying, you know, requirements of biological life and how those lead to the need of a system of ethics and guidelines for leading the good life. And that connection which she outlined, I think first in Galt’s speech, is — it’s brilliant. You know I’ve heard philosophers complain that it’s not rigorous or they disagree with it in one way or another, but I don’t know anybody else who has provided — for everybody — a lucid, easy-to-understand explanation of why ethics is ultimately rooted in reality and in our nature as biological beings.

As a novelist, she was doing something very radical in trying to portray an ideal human being. There are very few novelists now or, I think you have to go back pretty far in history to find novelists who were comfortable with the idea that their role as an artist was to uphold an ideal. Rand was not only trying to create that ideal but she had enough of a good vision of what that ideal consisted of that often you can tell a lot about people by how they react to it. For example, some people find it hopelessly corny that she was trying to paint a picture of the ideal person and other people find the very idea of a novel extolling selfishness to be, you know, just ridiculous beyond belief.

When people ridicule Ayn Rand, I often sense that there’s something at a deeper level, there’s something about idealism itself, that’s a little uncomfortable to them. And, in that sense, her novels can be a very useful touchstone for understanding: To what extent do people share my belief that human beings can be noble? To what extent do people share my belief that thinking for yourself is really important? I find when people are uncomfortable at a visceral level with Rand’s characters … they can still be good people, but they’re probably not people who I’m going to be able to hit it off with as easily or as deeply.

Rand’s ethical teaching that I personally found the most useful is, I think, a line from the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness. She says “the basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that every man is an end in himself” — and it’s a good razor, ethically, if you’re sizing up a situation politically or in your personal life, to ask yourself the question, “Are we creating a solution here where everybody’s treated as an end in himself, where their own happiness is the most important thing for each person — or are we creating a situation where some people are expected to sacrifice to others, where some people’s interests are subordinated to others?”

Rand’s ethical vision was really one where we want to create a win-win world for everybody and that there shouldn’t be conflicts of interest among rational people if you’re using an ethical system where everyone’s treated as an end in himself.

When Rand was writing, selfishness was really a dirty word. You know, you almost couldn’t talk about it in polite company. In the years since then, we’ve had … the hippies have grown up, the 60′s culture has matured, they’re now, you know, running the world. And selfishness, it’s really different to talk about selfishness now.

In our age, in contrast to Rand’s age, it’s a much bigger problem, people who are stuck on narcissism. I think one of the dangers of Rand’s philosophy at this point is that if you are disposed towards narcissism, Rand’s going to give you all the justification that you need to keep doing that, maybe even become worse.

So, in today’s culture, I think it’s important to point out that it really is about treating people as ends in themselves. You know, when you talk about selfishness, if you take that ideal to the extreme, depending on how you interpret it, you can end up with a lot of bad behavior. But if you take an ideal like treating people as ends in themselves, it’s hard to go wrong with it.

And I think if you really want to realize the potential that Rand outlined in her philosophy and her writings, I think you need to keep an open mind, learn from a lot of different places, even in unsuspecting places like Buddhism. One thing that Buddhism, at it’s best, and Objectivism have in common is a great respect and emphasis on fidelity with reality. And in Objectivism, that fidelity with reality takes the form of logic and making sure that what you believe matches what’s really true. So it’s intellectual. And in Buddhism the emphasis on fidelity with reality takes the form more of emotional fidelity and learning to identify your own emotional resistance to the way things are. So the Buddhists have emphasized acceptance, meditation, sometimes a sort of strategic mental detachment so that you can maintain more objectivity about your emotions and your thought processes.

Sometimes I see Buddhism as a set of practices in search of a philosophy in an analogous way that Objectivism could be seen as a philosophy in search of a set of practices for doing things like raising your level of consciousness, being more productive, having a happier life, having more harmonious relationships.

So what would it look like if you combined the ideas of Objectivism with the practices of Buddhism and the kind of personality that that creates? You know what that would look like? I think it would look like Howard Roark. And I think it would look like John Galt, too. If you want to look at a face without pain or fear or guilt, look at Buddhists. Those are people who’ve learned, they’ve learned to interact with their own mind and their own emotions in ways that lead to the kind of serenity that Rand advocated in her novels.

So in that sense I think the issue of suffering is important: I think denials of it lie at the root of many problems.

I do wonder, though, if this gets at what you are talking about. I sense you may be referring to something more.

Good points. And yes, I am groping for something more, here.

In a nutshell, it’s this: I have come to the view that suffering, if you respond to it correctly, will open you to a sense of deep and profound connection with the world.

Responded to incorrectly, suffering will cause you to close and pull inside.

Responded to correctly, you have no choice but to open to it, feel the emotions at a deep level, and allow your conceptions of the world — your ideas of separateness, isolation, ego, and the many neuroses they carry with them, such as depression and anxiety — to fall away.

I’m describing it in conceptual terms, but it is an experiential observation. It’s not something I’ve arrived at by thinking, but by doing it over and over and observing the results.

When I feel fear or pain, and I surrender to it completely, and I feel the emotions fully, I fall out of my self and am left with a sense of openness and connection to the world that feels transcendental.

Is it possible to feel that openness and connection without suffering first? Probably. And I envy anyone who has that opportunity, however rare. (Or maybe it’s what we all feel as infants? I’m not sure.)

But mostly I look around and I see people who have suffered (and responded well to it) displaying this openness. And I see people who have suffered (and not responded well to it) displaying closure and stunted spiritual growth.

Nobody experiences life without suffering, so the question is: do you allow it fully into your experience, allow it to transform you, to teach you, to open you? Or do you close and try to withdraw from it?

And to me that’s what it means to acknowledge the significance of suffering — to open to it and allow it to transform you. Respond to it like a teacher, or a form of corrective feedback, or a therapy. If you don’t do this, then you miss the greatest spiritual lesson life has to offer.

So I guess what I’m saying is the complement to what you’re saying. You said that denials of suffering lie at the root of many problems. And I’m saying that fully embracing your suffering, when it inevitably happens, gives you the most profound opportunities for aliveness and growth.

I need to say more about what is means to embrace suffering. I don’t mean wallowing in self-destructive thinking, or moping around depressed, or developing a new identity for yourself as “someone who suffers.”

What I mean is a very specific way of being present with the emotions (learning to locate and be present with them in your body but not getting caught up in thinking about them) and then learning to feel them in a very pure and intense way, so the emotion can move through you freely rather than getting trapped inside.

This ties in with another post I hope to be able to write soon, about how best to respond to pain and fear. Coming soon….

In that post, I concluded:

So to me, the case for the significance of suffering, once we look at it closely, seems overwhelming.

Does this mean we resign ourselves to suffering, or become taciturn? No, but it does suggest that there are whole areas of life that we may be blind to, and controlled by just the same, if we don’t consciously acknowledge their significance and respond to them appropriately. I find Buddhism helpful in doing the latter.

I would expect this to be a somewhat controversial or at least interesting claim, particularly for anyone with a background in Rand’s ideas. But six years later, the post still has no comments — so I’m dragging it back onto my home page, with this post.

What do you think?

UPDATE: See related previous discussion following my post Does Suffering Build Character?

From Reason TV’s summary:

Joshua Zader’s intellectual relationship with Ayn Rand began as it does for so many, during his college years. He then blazed a trail uniquely his own among Rand admirers by creating The Atlasphere—an online networking and dating site for the fans of Rand’s novels with particular emphasis on The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Zader found inspiration in Rand’s portrayals of independence and integrity, saying: “Rand’s ethical vision was really one where we want to create a win-win world for everybody, and that there shouldn’t be conflicts of interest among rational people if you’re using an ethical system where everybody is treated as an end in himself.” Zader has seen the real life impact of Rand’s ideas through his work on The Atlasphere, which currently boasts over 19,000 members.

Zader discusses the some finer points of Rand’s thought and novels, her supporters, her detractors, and her continuing impact. As a student of Buddhism, Zader explores how her ideas relate to what may seem like a conflicting view of the world. Zader: “Sometimes I see Buddhism as a set of practices in search of a philosophy, in an analogous way that Objectivism could be seen as a philosophy in search of a set of practices.” Joshua Zader blogs at Mudita Journal.

Approximately 10 minutes. Joshua Zader was interviewed by Ryan Seals, filmed by Alex Manning and edited by Hawk Jensen.

I felt Ryan Seals did a good job of coming up with interview questions. I remain grateful for his creativity in suggesting topics to explore.

I will be very interested to hear how other Objectivists respond to my comments about Objectivism and Buddhism, which are bound to be controversial, at least in some circles.

What do you think?

UPDATE: I now have a transcription of most of the interview, for those who would like a text version.

In his latest post, “Wishing George W. Bush Well,” Amod explores a theme dear to my heart — learning not to vilify those with whom you disagree strongly. At the urging of a spiritual teacher, Amod had begun exploring his ability to wish other people well, including his own “enemies.” He writes:

So I thought: who is my greatest enemy? As a lifelong leftie, in 2005, it didn’t take me long to identify George W. Bush. And so, as part of the practice, I tried sincerely to wish that man well.

The experience was more than unsettling. I cried in the process. But it helped me grow a lot. I had spent a long time feeling such poisonous hatred for that man, which did terrible things to me and my own well-being – in a way that Śāntideva warns us about. It’s a terribly unnerving, but highly rewarding, thing to wish your enemies well. Since your enemies are only human it makes philosophical sense to do so, really, if your main aim is consequentialist – that is, to produce the best results for yourself or for humanity. The trick is that it requires you to give up retribution as a goal, and even for a consequentialist, that’s not easy.

I posted the following in response:

Thank you for posting about your experiences here.

I suppose I’m in the tiny minority of people who think that both Barack Obama and George W. Bush are fundamentally decent people. I wrote a bit here about the Bush side of things.

This put me in a difficult situation once, when I attended a lengthy, delightful Theravadan retreat that was capped off with a lengthy “dharma talk” that included, of all things, a discussion of how evil George W. Bush is.

I wish more Buddhists and liberals would follow your example, because it seems like it would be good for their integrity.

I find myself longing to hear even more from you on this subject. Why did you cry? What did you learn about yourself and about George W. Bush as you did this exercise? Did it make you re-think any of your conclusions about Bush?

I think it would be fair to say that I oppose Obama’s policies as thoroughly as you opposed Bush’s. In my case, it’s hard to identify with either gentleman’s policies, since I am a libertarian and neither administration accurately reflects my desires for U.S. policy, either domestically or abroad.

I often feel that a great deal of damage is done by “hating” the other side, and liberals really went off the deep, cancerous end with Bush for the past eight years. There must be many people in need of the healing you have undertaken yourself.

Buddhists and Quakers seem like excellent candidates to lead by example, in this regard.

Amod has responded in the comments, and I have the sense that I’d like to push him further on the subject of understanding George W. Bush from his own perspective, rather than from within Amod’s worldview. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to explore this with him more soon.

Meantime, check out his blog. I’m glad to have the opportunity to point some readers his way. I’ve also invited him to write a guest post for Mudita Journal at some point; I hope he takes me up on it.