Silent Musings

Something that becomes more and more evident as one experiences new openings into spiritual awakening is the violent nature of our culture. If you are paying close enough attention, you will notice violence being perpetrated in almost every aspect of life. Much of the violence is obvious, such as the human rights violations of Guantanamo and Abu Graib, the war and sectarian violence in Iraq, and the everyday crime we see and hear about in our cities and small towns alike. However, there is a great deal of violence that goes unreported and unrecognized, and in fact, is even painted with the glitter of good intentions.

Here is an example which isn’t so obvious on the surface. Recently, U.S. Presidential candidate Barack Obama delivered a speech in Philadelphia, which has since come to be known as, “A More Perfect Union.” Many people watched this speech on television, or on YouTube. I’ll not go into details of my own experience of it, other than to say that I laud Mr. Obama’s courage to say what is commonly experienced, but rarely acknowledged. What was perhaps far more telling than the speech itself was the aftermath of commentary and analysis. Pure violence. Subtle in many cases yes, but violence nonetheless. I invite you to try this experiment: watch the speech (again if you have already seen it), and then type “Obama speech” into Google News and begin to read articles from all angles deconstructing the contents and their effects. Can you see the violence in this type of communication? All sorts of “truths” are asserted; however, none of them are the speech itself.

This sort of “analytical violence” is so commonplace in our culture that we don’t even notice it any more. Do you do the same to your husband, wife, children, parents, friends, or coworkers? Do you think you “know them”? Do you limit them with this “knowledge”? Tell the truth. If not by analysis, then almost certainly by various subtle forms of manipulation. How many people have you heard after they got married say, “Wow, I’m so fortunate that the person I married is exactly what I wanted and expected, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about him/her”?

There are many other forms of subtle violence that we take for granted as part of the culture. For example, do you ignore the people on the street who are asking for money? What is the communication in that action? If you don’t have much money, what are your feelings towards people who do? What are your feelings about George W. Bush? Do you communicate those feelings to other people? If so, would you call that communication gossip? (Hint: yes).

Does your participation in various forms of such violence make you a bad person? Wrong question. A better question is, how do you relate to the violence within your true nature? The world can be a harsh and unforgiving place. Death and devastation are integral to life. You do have choice about how to react to everything that life brings to your milieu. You also have some choice about how to relate to violence.

One of the most common reactions to the perpetration of violence is what I’ll call the “criminal consciousness”. The basic structure of this “form” of consciousness is that which must invent justifications for the perpetrations that have been committed. Such justifications are often elaborate and twisted, but invariably rob a person of his or her clarity. Then justification begets more perpetration, and a downward spiral ensues. The only way out of this cycle is “confession”, in which all justifications are abandoned, and a person takes full responsibility for his or her actions. Whole novels have been written about this theme, the most famous and perhaps most detailed of which is Преступление и наказание by Фёдор Достоевский (Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky). The real problem with this cycle is that one must believe all the justifications to keep the harsh reality of the violence at bay, and thus one’s views become severely distorted.

The criminal consciousness is prevalent in modern cultures, as it has been for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It comes in many forms, often with nice packaging, such as “we’re defending democracy and freedom from radical forces of evil,” and, “we must defeat the capitalist and imperialist infidels.” Or on a smaller scale, “Mommy, I hit Jimmy because he wouldn’t stay on his side of the seat.” At its heart, the “human machinery” is the same in all cases.

There have also been whole religious movements dedicated to the eradication of violent actions. The first yama of yoga is ahimsa (non-violence). Such practices often have benefits, but they also come with pitfalls as well. When one has engaged in the criminal consciousness spiral for many years, the repression can be very deep and painful. Ahimsa (or your religion’s equivalent) can easily be distorted into a more acceptable form of repression, and thus keep the spiral going (in secret, of course).

What do we do with all this violence? I don’t have answers here for you, and I will never claim to know what is best when it comes to violence. All I can say is that you don’t need any rules to recognize violence when you experience it, whether you are perpetrator or victim. Everyone who isn’t lying to him- or herself knows what violence is. In my own case, I do my best to discover the true nature of all my actions. When I see that my actions are violent, I acknowledge them as such and then choose my next action. One huge consolation is that the natural state of human being is Love. But on the other hand, it is also Violence. After all, human being contains the entire universe.

As for the final words on the topic of violence, I offer you the following:

It never ceases to amaze me when I read all that is written about spirituality in books and on the internet. I suppose people would express equally diverse and obtuse views to each other directly were it not for the cultural taboos that prevent such conversations from being common. Thank goodness.

Most of these so-called ’spiritual’ writings in one way or another address the question, “what does it mean to ‘be spiritual’ in today’s world?” Often, this question is disguised in other language, using exalted and confusing terminology, but invariably it essentially boils down to the same game of “seeking to become enlightened” (i.e. that which one is not). If you ask me, it’s a foolish game to be playing, and the wrong question to be asking. Like many other questions we encounter on a daily basis, such as “how do we keep the economy growing?”, or “how do we defeat the terrorists?”, the question makes an assumption which itself should be seriously doubted.

In the case of the economy, the assumptions that exponential growth is sustainable and/or would be beneficial are rarely questioned. And yet, even a simple-minded understanding of what exponential growth is exactly makes it clear that the goal is foolhardy in the long run. Similarly, in the case of terrorism, there is an assumption that a person can be labeled “terrorist” or “non-terrorist”, as if it’s a fixed and true classification. And yet, sociology has proven time and again that people’s behavior is largely a function of their environment; and thus, absent a fixed environment, the classification falls apart upon examination.

Similarly, the goal of “being spiritual”, much as in the case of “defeating a terrorist”, is an ideal that when pursued, can do a better job of keeping one away from how one really wants to live more so than most people realize. I assert that there is no such thing as a “spiritual person”, and anyone who claims to be is still struggling with some significant attachments.

If you don’t believe me, here is a simple experiment you can conduct to test this assertion. If you are certain that such people exist, then go find the five most spiritual people you can, and ask them if they consider themselves “more spiritual” than any other man or woman. If even one says “yes”, I would be quite surprised. I would also recommend running away, and then re-examining your reasons for choosing this person as an exemplar.

Perhaps more meaningful questions than, “how can I become more spiritual?” that one could ask oneself are, “who or what am I?” and, “what actions shall I take at this moment?” Or simply, one could inquire into what it is to be, period. The questions are far more important than the answers. And in our deeds we may find that there are “answers”, but not in the conventional sense.

There is no doubt that something happens to us when we embark on the long journey of spiritual awakening that is brought on by Grace, or by intense desire and practice. What it is that happens exactly, is a mystery that one can never resolve in commonly held human terms. I suspect that for most people struggling to come to grips with it, the most difficult aspect to accept is the stark simplicity of it all. Our cultures have become so complex in today’s world that we have a very difficult time stepping back to see what is right in front of our noses.

There is a famous story, an urban legend of sorts, for which there is no apparent agreement as to the origin. Nonetheless, stories like these are often worthwhile. This version appears in Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Is the scientist really wiser than the old lady? Or vice versa? Maybe it doesn’t matter. In either case, the argument is based on a lot of assumptions. What is left when assumptions are removed? Or is it assumptions all the way down? Hmm …