Maintaining Meaning (An Introduction to Spirituality)

Hello everyone,

      In attempt at a sort of roundabout continuity to the previous article, I would like to speak about maintaining meaning. In the last article, I discussed meaning as distinct from happiness: rather than being just an emotion, a mode of Being in which your actions move you toward, rather than away from a given purpose. That article is perhaps worth deferring to in order to generate some thoughts on identifying a purpose for your life. This sounds like a daunting task, but to clarify, purpose is not best utilized as a fixed end—a desired byproduct with the deadline of the end of your life. Purpose is best understood as a dynamic target—as the voice within you calling you out to pursue what you make to be the “highest good.” It may be to cultivate a quality circle of friends now, then perhaps it might call upon you to endeavor to establish a healthy romantic relationship, then a healthy social milieu for a child. The common denominator is that purpose is found when all distractions are stripped away. It is the final thing that stands, which gives you a sense of fullness when you are moving toward it. 

      For many, the process stops here. You identify a purpose, you become, in a sense, addicted to the sense of fullness that the act of pursuit gives you, and you tirelessly chase it. Overall, this is a much healthier approach than living in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure, but it does not lack shortcomings entirely. When you take every breath with your purpose in mind, it is easy to start to identify with it, scrutinizing your every action and assessing the degree to which you are being productive. This is hardly better a life lived than the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure. Now, instead of thinking about how to maximize your pleasure in every moment, you’re thinking of how to maximize your purpose in every moment. Individual moments are not for scrutiny in this way. 

      There is this story of the Mexican fisherman. A Mexican fisherman fishes every day and sells them at his store. An American capitalist comes in and tells him, “if you keep this up, you can hire an employee to fish for you, and you can be a cashier.” The fisherman asks, “Then what?” To which the capitalist replies, as if obvious, “then you can hire three employees.” “Then what?” “Because then you can open up additional locations.” “Then what?” “Then you can take over the fishing industry.” “Then what?” “Then you can be free.” The Mexican fisherman replies “Who says I’m not already free?’

      So, what is the antidote to this never-ending desire for more? Gratitude - being content with what is. It is so easy to get caught up in what could be that we can forget to appreciate what is. In fact, we often organize our world in terms of a “terrible present” and “ideal future.” We act solely with the interest in fixing what is. We presuppose that there is something wrong with the world around us. This is circular reasoning: we need to fix the world because something is wrong with it. It simultaneously asserts the need for fixing what is wrong and presumes that “wrongness” exists. Wrongness exists because things need to be fixed. Things need to be fixed because something is wrong. What if nothing is wrong at all? 

      Immediately, in a knee-jerk reaction, perhaps you reject this pattern of thinking: of course, there is something wrong, of course I could be better. Sure, you can, but is the only way to do so because there’s something wrong with you? What if things could be better because things could be better, not because they need fixing. This may sound like a minute, semantic insistence, but it has changed my life. For so long I was fighting life, trying to prevent things from going “wrong.” Sure, it yielded me much progress on the objective front, but it yielded me nothing in the way of spiritual growth. Like I mentioned earlier, I went from addiction to more in a hedonistic sense to addiction to more in the pursuit of purpose. Now, I am addicted to life as it is.

      It is important to consider your relationship to yourself. This is the heart of a spiritual journey. You inhabit a body and a mind—things which are done no justice by the verbal separation of the terms. You inhabit a body-mind and perceive signals. You perceive suggestions of the mind (thoughts, feelings) and signals of the body (sensations, perceptions). Notice how I did not say you have thoughts. Thoughts have you—a perceiver. The subject of those thoughts. The word subject means “thrown under”—you are thrown under your thoughts and subjected to them. They torture you at times, no? Anxious thoughts of “what if he doesn’t really care about me,” or “what if I didn’t close the door?” This notion of not being your thoughts is the backbone of any spiritual journey. Viewing things this way—the way they authentically are, not the way they are artificially obfuscated to be by the expectations in our minds, is how to transcend the mind, which is too objective for functioning in a bipartite (subjective and objective) world. Remember that you are just an observer, and things are what they are. 

      How could you possibly reinforce this so-esoteric notion of being solely a consciousness, solely a perceiver? One decent place to start is meditation—another idea which I’m sure many will immediately reject. Meditation is not magic, nor is it just for hippies. I am not a hippie. I did not start meditating until I read several scientific papers indicating its utility. So, I gave it a shot, with no real goal in mind. I closed my eyes and sat with my legs crossed, listening to some Indian guy on YouTube whisper “I am not the body, I am not even the mind.” Now this sounded like nonsense to me initially, until it started to think in: I am neither a body nor a mind. I inhabit a mind in a body. This is a great notion to remind yourself of to re-center yourself. Now, for some other practical benefits: my level of anxiety reduced dramatically, and my attention span increased dramatically. Just taking 5 minutes a day to not do anything is profoundly powerful – and it’s just five minutes. If you find yourself mentally contending with the idea of giving it a shot, perhaps ask yourself why?

      For one other suggestion that I have personally found helpful in my life (I don’t want to discuss things that I have not seen work), is journaling. Like meditating, there are many ways to go about journaling. A great and easy place to start is gratitude journaling. I simply write down 3 things I am grateful for each day, with a sentence or two justifying the choice. This really isn’t too terrible—it takes no more than a few minutes. What’s useful about this? It allows you to express gratitude for what is. It might feel trivial, but considering how powerful it could be to let go of expectations, and just live, rather than fighting life, why wouldn’t we make use of such a simple exercise to move us toward that goal? Journaling in general is an excellent practice because it gives form to the formless: when journaling, we transmute the formless thoughts that torture us on a daily basis into a form that we can read over and over. Once you write them down, they are just things—not terrible things anymore. You are taking the power back from tyrannical thoughts, by reducing them to ink on a page. This is why journaling about things that you’re afraid of us particularly useful. You are in a sense, transmuting Chaos into Order. If you’ve ever read the bible, you know that’s a big deal. Give it a go—just 3 things before bed tonight. See if it makes you feel terrible (I bet it won’t).

      I want to suggest one more useful tool in a spiritual journey: understanding the flow state. The flow state is essentially a state of pure consciousness. It is being “in the zone.” Your sense of self is severely reduced—you are fully immersed in the activity you are engaging in. Now, there are many ways people induce flow states—playing music, playing a sport, running, hiking, walking, running, video games, painting, and so many more options. There is no standardized set of activities for inducing flow. There is, however, a standardized set of rules to achieve flow, as laid out by the eminent psychologist in the field, Mihaly Cszikszentmihalyi. To be in flow, you have to have tightly coupled feedback between you and the environment (e.g., if you score a point in a video game, you receive some sort of satisfaction immediately—not the pleasure you might achieve from an investment doing well after a year). Failure has to matter (e.g., a rock climber has to deal with the fact that they could die if they’re too stupid, but there are far less dire examples). Lastly, the demands have to exceed your skills just enough that you do not fall into boredom (if the activity is too easy) or fall into anxiety (if the activity is too difficult). This might sound difficult but consider the things you’re drawn to doing every day. Let’s return to the rock-climbing example, presuming it’s your favorite thing. So, you’re saying that the most satisfaction you obtain in life is by essentially risking your life, doing what seems like an ancient torture method. That’s disturbing if nothing else. But at the same time, it is certainly inducing a flow state, whether you’re familiar with the term or not. Whatever your favorite thing to do is, that “puts you in the zone” and “takes you out of yourself,” continue to do it. That’s important—it might be your only glimpse of pure consciousness—that state of bliss, where expectations cannot dilute what is good, and things improve only for the sake of improvement, rather than to contend with diminishment. Understand these three parameters and cultivate a life in which you spend as much time as possible within them. Studies show that this will improve wellbeing. 

      I am in no way opposed to “the grind,” this popular sort of Protestant work ethic. I find it to be a great fit for myself. But only if I am simultaneously growing spiritually. Do not forget to attend to the subjective, as you are merely a subject, and perhaps give meditation and journaling a shot, and induce a flow state to the degree that you can. This way, you can maintain meaning—you can find meaning in all things, in pure consciousness—it will not wax and wane with your all-too-human progress.

*Some of these ideas are largely of the spiritual teacher Michael A. Singer, in his book The Untethered Soul. Worth a read if you’re interested in spirituality!