Spirituality and Atheism: Not Two, Not One

(Here we go again, climbing the steeple of faith. It's always such a shock when your handholds begin to crumble.)
The Gospels may have been canonized, but they are not static; they allow multiple interpretations. Today, we are still discovering “new” gospels, which are variously legitimate and which may or may not add anything to our interpretation of the canonical texts. People are always looking for new ways to interpret Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John so that their words – the words of Jesus – will fit their lives, the society in which they live, and become compatible with new advances in knowledge such as science. When I heard Witherington speak last Friday, I was impressed with the enormous amount of research, science, and contemporary scholastic theory he was able to incorporate into his reading of the Bible. His arguments for God’s existence were at least pseudo-scientific and he used scientific validity tests to give credence to his beliefs. His Christianity is different (if only slightly) from the Christianity of any other Christian and certainly the Christianity of centuries and millennia past. Indeed, he challenged fundamentalist Christians to “wake up and smell the coffee” because we are no longer living in a pre-scientific world. If Christianity is to remain viable in America, it will have to keep up with the times. (Reading D’Souza has made me wonder whether this is really true, especially for Islam. Based on American values and seeing as most Americans are not first and foremost religious as many Muslims are, it seems as though American religion must stay up to date less it risk falling by the wayside.)

Last semester I read Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes was one of the forerunners of the Enlightenment and he tried to reconcile Christianity with developing Enlightenment worldviews. He analytically dissected Biblical texts, attempting to treat them rationally as one might treat any other item of literature – or in his case politics – under examination. Contemporary authors are still rewriting the Gospels. I read to such examples last semester: Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief and Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son. From these books I adopted the argument, Why must Jesus be divine, why can’t he have been an incredibly compassionate human being, virtuous and wise, even a visionary? Aren’t his revolutionary beliefs and human actions enough? Since then, I have learned that, of course, this is not enough for most Christians. A core teaching of Christianity is that Jesus is the Savior, that he will return for a final day of judgment and that it is through faith in him that we “shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35, p 87). My attempts at interpreting the Gospels intuitively in a way that aligned with my own spiritual beliefs were foiled by most others. And that’s totally fine. It’s difficult to concede that faith is a matter of faith, but at its core it truly is.

(Why must Christ's resurrection be interpreted literally? Are his teachings, his proclamations of divine awareness not enough? I cannot believe the mythic interpretation of his literal ascendence or Moses' literal parting of the Red Sea.)
I guess the point I’m getting at is that interpretation and belief are in some ways inextricable. Which gives rise to other I cannot say. Interpret the Bible with my own belief system, but certainly my beliefs come from they manner in which I interpret the world around me. The following are some of the lines from John that really grabbed my attention, ones that might easily appear in a Hindu or Buddhist text. “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30, p 95). Jesus is proclaiming his union with the divine. Many Kosmic realizers have made similar claims. They perceive a sense of unity with, they in fact become, what cannot be described as other than God, the Ultimate. They practice compassion and contemplation just as Jesus does, and their teachings in many ways resemble his. “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8: 58, p 92). Jesus’ statement expresses the eternal nature of the Divine. The divine, ultimate consciousness is outside of time. As Bump put it, we are “conduits” for this magnificent power. It is not us personally that is eternal, but something that shines through us, is us and much more. “I am” is a name for God, Atman commonly invoked by sages to try to express that divine identity, the Always Already, that we may each find within ourselves. “He spake of the temple of his body” (John 2:21, p 79). Mother Theresa used the same analogy to express levels of consciousness or energy centers in her body. It is analogous to the seven chakras. Higher levels in the temple correspond to higher more subtle energy centers. Mother Theresa even divided the temple up into seven very similar stages. “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that come down from heaven” (John 3:13, p 80). This conveys the Eastern idea of involution and evolution, agape and eros. The cycle of death and rebirth; the way that we are brought down into the gross dimension upon conception and steadily evolve throughout life back towards more subtle, causal, or even nondual awareness. Each day and night we go through this cycle. During the day we are awake; we are in the waking state and supported by the gross body. When we “go to sleep,” we pass into the dream state, supported by the subtle body. From there we pass into deep dreamless sleep, a state supported by the causal body. We go through the same process in reverse as we awake. Involution and evolution, many say, is happening in every moment, with every inhalation and exhalation. I do admit, it is easy to read nearly anything into a text if you set your mind to it. I was disappointed by my lack of interest in reading John yesterday because I know how rich it is. I suppose it will just take another cycle of disillusionment and enchantment for me to see the light in it once again.
(These might be the hands of anyone. Devotion, prayer, realization is not limited to Christ or his disciples.)

I am a very spiritual person. This phrase alone means nothing. But I am what I would call spiritually oriented. I do believe that something more than colliding atoms animates our consciousness. I do believe that there are mystical levels of consciousness achieved by sages and devotees and on occasion, by chance encounter, the unsuspecting person without a spiritual practice. And I think it likely that Jesus was one such mystical realizer; but not the only one. This is belief. But it is not merely belief. I feel it – conviction, like a rock or a concrete rod running through my abdomen. This does not make my belief any different from many others who hold a similar conviction. After all, even rocks evolve, erode, and grow with time.

GrecoRoman and Jewish Heroes

(A pictorial depiction of the path of perceiving external objects. Words are such objects which we perceive, process, and interpret.)
What struck me after reading page 310 regarding Biblical translation and context, is that none of the assigned reading was originally written in English. Plato wrote the Apologia in Greek; Virgil wrote his Eclogue in Latin; and the selections from the Old Testament of the Bible were originally in Hebrew and Aramaic, and those from the New Testament in Greek. This is interesting because it hints at both the power and limitations of language. Plato and Virgil thought the thoughts that became their masterworks in languages other than English. They interpreted the world around them with symbols other than the ones I use to decode and record my surroundings. It is a profound thought that there is some mutually comprehendible meaning lying behind the symbols used to convey. Though words create meaning and an entirely new world of phenomena in which to explore, some facet of our minds, some aspect of knowledge allows us to translate between symbolic systems and convey meaning that is in some ways common to all human beings. Though I do not use the same words to express “pain” and “love” as Virgil, Plato, Isaiah, or John did centuries ago, intuitively I feel that we can experience pain and love very similarly.

(Charles Sanders Peirce, who philosophized about the nature of language and distinguished between the object a word refers to - referent - the symbolic word itself - signifier - and the import and connotations of that symbol in our minds - signified.)
As I read through these texts, a theme, expressed severally with various English phrases, emerges. Though the word “virtue” may not be explicitly stated, its virtue runs through the Plato’s Apologia and Psalm 41 in particular, but through Isaiah and Virgil’s Eclogue as well. In Plato’s Socrates we see a man who’s life is nothing if not an instrument with which to push toward virtue and knowledge, which for him are one and the same. With death imminent, Socrates does not falter in the least. “Those of us who think that death is an evil are in error,” (Plato, Apologia, 56) says Socrates. “The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness” (Plato, Apologia, 55). Socrates’ righteousness is not founded on reward and punishment, but on pure righteousness, righteousness for righteousness’ sake. His virtue is in his passion, his inquisitiveness, and his serenity in tempering both qualities with NON-ATTACHMENT. (Socrates. "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1863)) Socrates virtuously exemplifies the middle way: “Socrates’ moral seriousness is counterbalanced by a worldly personality who enjoys good food and company – goods which he is also willing to forgo without complaint if they are not available or if the conflict with the much more important pursuit of [virtue]” (Nehamas, “Socrates,” 58). Socrates is distracted from his knowledge quest neither by impending death nor the wrongs that may have been done him by his accusers (he is not even angry with them). His humility brings him strength.

In Isaiah chapter 11, we must again aspire to righteousness. “Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,” and with righteousness shall he judge the poor,” though he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes” (Isaiah, 11:5, 4, 3, p 60). Through humility and attention to that which is beyond the individual can man pay service to his faith. Psalm 41 expresses a similar sentiment to that of Socrates as well. Socrates says that his prosecutors have not triumphed and he has not failed. Psalm 41 states, “I know that thou favourest me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me…. Thou upholdest me in mine integrity” (Psalm 41:10, 11, p 70). Socrates distinguishes human from divine knowledge by saying that human’s are wise if they can realize their own ignorance. He does not so explicitly pay tribute to a divine body, but humility is an admirable human quality in the Psalms, Isaiah, and Plato. Though cloaked in different terms and contexts, common meanings underlie all these words. Now in English, I can grasp some thread of the meaning intended by these authors centuries ago.

What Have They Done With Jesus? Ben Witherington

(Ben Witherington, good ol' North Carolina boy)
Ben Witherington began his speech by repeating almost word for word Stephen Prothero’s cry for Biblical literacy. We are, as Prothero writes, “A Nation of Biblical Illiterates” (Prothero, Religious Literacy, Course Anothology, 274). Witherington made it clear, as does Prothero, that it is not only non-Christians who know little about Christianity, but many Christians as well. When asked, Who is Joan of Ark, a response given several times was, Noah’s wife.

Witherington spoke about the need for fundamentalists (to use a blanket term) to “wake up and smell the coffee” because so many of them are still clinging to a pre-scientific worldview. “You don’t have to be Cro-Magnon man to be a Christian!” Many fundamentalist Christians don’t want to have the facts presented to them. Witherington said that he had encountered many such instances while touring through Texas. “I knows what I knows. Now don’t confuse me with none of them facts!” This attitude we must be wary of.


The audience was small, and most of the professors who asked questions appeared to be scientists, likely with Christian backgrounds. One question was about the suspensions of natural laws so that miracles might occur. How could this happen and why would God break his own laws, if they are indeed his? Witherington’s response is one that can never be refuted: We don’t know all the laws. He also said that he had seen miracles of healing in his own life. An interesting interpretation he added was that miracles might be the acceleration of natural processes that usually occur slowly, such as bodily healing. Another question challenged contemporary biblical scholarship. It seems like much biblical study today is merely a reinterpretation of old material so as to fit contemporary standards and better frustrate attacks on Christianity. Witherington spoke about the nature of today’s academic climate, that is postmodernism, in which there are no absolute truths, all interpretations are equally valid because that’s all there is – interpretation, and by which original sources and texts hold little weight because it is the reader who gives them meaning. I agree with Witherington on this point: most of that is self-inflating fluff, poor scholarship, and in most cases contradictory and self-defeating.

Witherington was adamant that none of the Gnostic texts, which have become so sensationally popular in the last several years, add anything to our understanding of Jesus. The best and most reliable accounts are the earliest, he said. “Stick with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and you can’t go wrong.” The Gnostic gospels are not new to biblical scholars and are indeed interesting for understanding the evolution of the Christian church, but add nothing to our knowledge of the historical (contrasted with the hysterical) Jesus. Their sensationalism is merely a marketing gimmick.

(Witherington received his PhD here at Durham University in England. Another old English Oxfordian institute of higher learning.)
He spoke at length about what Jesus thought of himself. Did he in fact consider himself the Son of God. He went on to show that his actions clearly indicate that he did, and that we have good reason to believe that this is the truth. I asked Witherington, How can we reconcile Jesus’ claim to divinity with claims made by mystics of Eastern contemplative traditions? Does Jesus ever say that he alone has access to this union with Godhead? Witherington didn’t address directly whether or not Jesus claimed to be the only such divinely imbued being, but he did say that Jesus claimed that faith in him was the only route to salvation. Jesus did not claim to be the only one to have profound insights – many other wisdom traditions do as well. The distinguishing feature of Jesus’ teachings is that he alone can provide salvation. I wish this meant more to me, but it seems as though if others have access to divine union, what would a savior provide? I wish I had reiterated my question: Does Jesus ever claim to be the only one who can have this divine identity? I do not recall that he ever does.

Faith, Religion, and in Between

(Hindu scripture)
Prothero proclaims that “faith without knowledge is dead” (276), and even worse, that it is hazardous. Yet all forms of knowledge rely on a kind of faith as well. In science, all our measurements are based on the faith that our tools of perception can indeed reliably perceive the world around us. We must, I believe come to this conclusion, or else we drown in isolated solipsism. In relationships, we must have faith in communion, mutual understanding, and the ability of human (or sentient) beings to relate. The vicissitudes of all life forms demand that we have faith from moment to moment. I have faith that when I walk out of my dorm room I will not find myself deep in the sultry tangles of an Indian jungle. I must have faith.


The inevitability of faith does not, however, lessen its value, nor the necessity that faith be informed by knowledge. As Prothero points out, blind faith is dangerous. Ideally, our faith should be informed by our perceptions of the external and internal realms. Faith should be open to question and experiment, subjected to a sort of religious Darwinism. The most inclusive, accurate, and likely most profitable of faiths should be set on the battlefield to contend with all other systems of belief, scientific and religious alike. The strongest of faiths is not then the one that denies and crushes all others, but the one that tests its values against others, dropping ineffective or inaccurate beliefs and adopting more adequate ones. Faith ought to be open to evolution. As the Jain philosopher Haribhadra asserts (and the mighty Bertrand Russell concurs), “the biased thinker twists logic to suit his preconceived theory, whereas the unbiased truth seeker revises his theory to follow the dictum of logic” (296).

(The Quran)
I recently heard a new interpretation of what a spiritual person might be. Not one with devout faith in any deity or mythic text, but one who is an individual seeker. Someone who experiences the world fully for themselves by internalizing observations and the beliefs of others and comparing them, judging them, and determining what is right – not just what feels good in a hedonistic sense – but what really feels right in his or her own life. (Really, this is another way to describe the maturation process, also the process of meditation and writing. As we grow, witness, and construct, we increasingly subsume the world around us to mold our own.) Often this feeling has a tinge of the transegoic; morality transcends the individual ego. This process of internalization paints the most accurate picture of a person’s world, because though there are external referents, we all interpret them slightly differently. "Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life" (William James). (William James: great American philosopher and father of psychology) Pragmatically, religion is a tool men and women employ to cope with being human, whatever that means to them in their society, in their time.

Also regarding faith and the way in which it encourages us to participate in the world, William James says not that beliefs determine our actions, but that our actions form our beliefs. We have plenty of ostensibly good ideas scurrying around in our heads upon which we never act. We do not really believe these ideas. We may in theory disagree with the morality or propriety of some of our actions, but our action demonstrates our true belief. Not until we act do we truly believe.


Prothero is adamant that every individual’s belief system be informed by the beliefs of the enduring religious traditions the world over. Our global village is saturated with religion, most of it having its roots at least 1500 to 2000 years in the past. How can we relate to people without some knowledge of their fundamental guiding tenets? The “question is whether it is constitutional to teach about religion in the public schools, and the answer is an unequivocal yes” (278). Definitely, religious education should be improved. But I don’t think that we should stop there. Once we are informed, we can actively participate in transforming our world, easing the global strife inflicted by irascible religions that do not see just how similar they are. Education, compassion, and reconciliation all begin with the individual’ societal change always does. “It is only when each person adopts a simple moderate lifestyle that humanity as a whole will stop polluting the environment” (298). When the individual believes, not just thinks, he or she will live with compassion. The human beings who preserve religions of all forms must believe in their commonality. Again we must find the middle way.

Gita 2: Words, Duality, One Taste

(Alex Grey's vision of Kosmic consciousness.)

“We can’t attain Buddha-nature any more than we can attain our feet. We can simply look down and notice that we have feet, we can remember that we have them. It sometimes helps, if we think that we do not have feet, to have somebody come along and point to them. A Zen Master will be glad to help. When you earnestly say, “I don’t have any feet,” the Master will stomp on your toes and see who yells out loud. Then he looks at you: ‘No feet, eh?’” (Wilber, One Taste 335).


I do believe that transcendent experience is in fact possible, that with practice and sometimes at the hand of some unforeseen force or circumstance higher levels of consciousness can be attained. And I also believe that Westerners can reach this level of awareness. This is largely due to convincing accounts I have read and heard, but it has become my firm belief because some inexplicable faith inside me pulls me to believe. This seems like a relative desire – and it is, I am compelled by one of the Qualities, but the Gita announces (does not solely denounce) the Qualities as the kicking off point for transcending them. “Purity, being luminous, strong, and invulnerable, binds one by its yearning for happiness and illumination” (Gita 113). Now, I have not had any extended experience of this condition, but I have seen brief glimpses of it. As Ryan said, What if the Gita is totally wrong? What if the Gita was written by a psychotic, or what if evidence was unearthed that it had been crafted by some Hindu Hitler of the sixth century before Christ? What if I am deluded and my experiences were psychotic regressions to infantile desires? Fortunately, the Gita offers a way to verify its experiential claims. (They are indeed claims founded on experience and not merely intellectual contrivances.) The only way to know if the Gita, and all of the great Wisdom traditions of any culture, is valid is to test its claims for oneself. THIS MEANS PRACTICE.

“Having thought over it, you are free to act as you will” (Gita 149).

It is true: everything I have written here, everything I will ever write, every single word printed in the Bhagavad Gita is merely a concept. All concepts and ideas and words are dualistic; they have meaning only in terms of their opposites – the one and the many, inside and outside, the near and the far. But the Gita suggests a way to remember the non-dualistic ground of being that gives rise to our dualistic relative plain. Pure Subjectivity, pure Witness, pure Love, pure Action through practice, yoga, meditation. “Beyond comparison of the eternal with the non-eternal am I” (Gita 121). Even though our words are dualistic, this should not confine us to silence. (Saul Williams, passionate Kosmic poet, demonstrates the power of visionary words, asking us, “What is the density of an egoless planet?”) Words cannot substitute for direct experience, but they can still describe and approximate experience as long as we – that’s intersubjective – are clear about what we mean.

These are all words, as Bump announced, that we are bandying between us, and that is problematic because each of us interprets the meaning of any word differently. What is ‘detachment’? Well we have this nebulous cloud of meaning around which our individual associations and connotations swirl, but in order to have a meaningful conversation we need to do our best to clarify what we mean by ‘detachment’. To me it means recognize that you recognize objects – the table, food, trees, your body, your desires and emotions, and even your thoughts – as objects, not as part of you as a subject. Interior growth is the process of going deeper into your subjectivity, recognizing objects so that you no longer have to be identified with and controlled by them. As renowned developmental psychologist Robert Keegan defines growth, “The subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next stage.” A transcendental experience means pushing this growth to its zenith where you are no longer identified with any of the passing objects that float by in your infinite awareness. You become pure subject, or Subject. Atman blends into Brahman.

(Ken Wilber explicates the seeming contradictions of spiritual claims. "Hurts more, bothers you less.")
Neither does this entail apathy or lack of participation in the world. Andrew Harvey makes this clear in his Foreword to the Gita: “It is clear, I think, to anyone who sees the depth of the global predicament we are in that there can only be one way out now – the way out of ‘mystical activism.’ An activism that is not fed by mystical wisdom and stamina will wither in the fire of persistent and persistently exhausting disappointment and defeat and tend to create as many new problems as those it tries to solve” (Harvey, Foreword xii). When you remember your Original Face, you don’t fall out of the world. By recognizing the transience of the relative world it does not therefore become unimportant or uninteresting. “When you realize that ordinary life is just a dream, just a movie, just a play[,] [y]ou don’t become more cautious, more timid, more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely because it’s all a dream, it’s all pure Emptiness” (Wilber One Taste 67). I cannot confirm (nor can I contest) this realization, but many great mystics the world over – Buddha, Jesus, Plotinus, Sri Ramana Maharshi – have. “Enlightenment is thus not catching a really big wave, but noticing the already present wetness of whatever wave I’m on. Moreover, I am then radically liberated from the narrow identification with this little wave called me, because I am fundamentally one with all other waves – no wetness is outside of me. I am literally One Taste with the entire ocean and all its waves. And that taste is wetness, suchness, Emptiness, the utter transparency of the Great Perfection” (ibid 338). Just begin.

Eloquence and Practice: the Bhagavad Gita

Disclaimer: An academic essay, such as this one, is always at least one step removed from the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. Even the Gita itself cannot touch the implications of its words, which are practice and experience of a higher consciousness eventually dissolving into unqualifiable non-duality. “Only the ignorant speak in figurative language. It is they who extol the letter of the scriptures, saying, ‘There is nothing deeper than this’” (Gita 17). Henceforth, please excuse my blabbering about spiritual realities of which my knowledge derives largely from written sources. Somehow, these accounts engender an awesome, guiding faith in me. I have no definitive rationale for my belief.

Let me begin by saying how much I enjoyed reading the Bhagavad Gita. The writing is beautiful and the characters and teachings even more so. The commentary enriches the reading, especially the profound quotations from Sri Aurobindo, and the foreword nails aspects of our global village that might be improved by renewed attention to the teachings of the Gita. Andrew Harvey’s foreword is insightful and felicitous because it does not read like an academic exposition. Religious studies, critically analyzing spiritual works can become incredibly stultifying. Harvey’s call to battle cuts to the core of the Gita’s teachings and he maintains that their value lies in application and practice beyond mere pedantry. Relax your critical mind, loosen your hold on what you know, because one of the things that will “open to you the doors of the Gita’s splendor is to forget all the academic and religious arguments about which of the different ‘yogas’ or ‘ways of divine union’ it celebrates” (Gita foreword X). The Gita is not a biased argument for jnana, bhakti, or kharmic yoga because they all lead to God.

And what does that mean? Clearly it does not mean the grey-bearded old gentleman in the sky. Atman, the inmost Self, is identical with Brahman, unqualifiable God essence. This claim is not arbitrary; it is not narcissistic. It is not an invidious attempt to supplant a mythic god with an egoic god some people happen to prefer. This conception of God can be directly experienced. Finding Atman to be Brahman may begin with belief, intellectual or academic, but it does not end there. “For the sage who seeks the heights of spiritual meditation, practice is the only method” (Gita 49). (Look through a telescope; meditate.) This experience demands practice, and through practice many dedicated practitioners have verified that this perception of the world is indeed feasible. In this way, the Gita’s God can be put under a type of scientific scrutiny (though it will never be ‘proved,’ or even affirmed by many) that a mythic God cannot. If you want to observe Saturn, get a telescope. If you want to understand Hamlet, learn to read. If you want to know whether this experience of godhead exists, take up the practice. Meditate. Once you pick up the injunction – the practice – then you can collect data. You can record information about Saturn’s craters, interpret the meaning of Hamlet, and experience a higher consciousness. The third step is to then verify your data, interpretations, experiences. Talk with a community of the adequate, those who have performed the injunction and recorded the data. No one who has not looked through a telescope can talk about Saturn’s topography. Just so, no one who has not persisted in meditation has any reason to believe that Brahman can be directly experienced. Why should they? But we must allow that this experience is indeed viable until we have confirmed individually that it is not.

This is why the Gita is so beautiful. It is elegant in its description, yet its beauty hangs on the bare branches of practice. It is adamant, even fiery, fortified by equanimity and the knowledge that any human being regardless of caste or creed can remember his Original Face. “All beings are in reality forms of the divine, but most are unconscious of their true identity, while the Avatar is infinitely conscious” (Gita commentary 32). As Andrew said Goethe said, “Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is” (Andrew Hill). These paragraphs feel a bit like diatribe, but writing these beliefs, composing them in my own mind and expelling them concretely, pushes these concepts toward reality. “Writing is at bottom manipulating and modifying inner speech,” which is otherwise “re-cycled” and “perpetuates our limited and false notion of reality” (Moffett 181, 183). Practice rearranges inner speech, which alters and is not separate from our ways of inhabiting this world.

Cracking Open

(A photo of last semester's contour.)
Topographically, my first semester at UT looks like a valley. I started on high, powered by a summer of love and joy. A wave of confidence carried me through the stress of classes. My meditation practice helped me put issues in perspective and maintain a stable heart rate. I was really very happy. And then began to descend. I’m not sure how exactly my strong sense of self eroded. But it definitely did. I slipped into stress. Assignments began to feel like attacks on my right to happiness. My perspective shrunk from a nested hierarchy of assignments inside classes inside school inside my education inside my nineteen years of age inside life to a mess of bumbling, competing ideals and duties without much coherence. When you try to walk through a sea of marbles, you never really get anywhere. The ground is perpetually shifting under toe and moving your whole body forward is frustrating when there is nothing stable to press against. Somehow, however, by the end of the semester I found myself on a ledge higher than the one on which I was standing at the semester’s start. Looking back, I think my investigation of Ken Wilber’s work and life inspired me to grab hold in my own. I rejuvenated my meditation practice and began to workout regularly. Taking time to laugh with my friends every night at dinner and have really fascinating conversations balanced my studiousness. I am really excited about picking up this semester where I left off in December.

Reflecting on my descent and ascent last fall, I see a lesson – a big one – materializing. It came to a head over the winter break, when I spent most of my time with my girlfriend and her family. As I spent time in their house, I began to perceive the complexity of their family dynamics. Every family has them, but when first introduced to a new set of dynamics they are particularly striking. Spending so many hours with my girlfriend’s family, I became a part of this complexity. I began to see approaches to healing and food and lifestyle through their perspectives. (Genpo Roshi facilitating Big Mind, a psychotherapeutic meditation exercise that uses voice dialogue to help participants see themselves through different perspectives. By distancing ourselves from the self, we can get a glimpse of the Self. It's a really exciting process.) I even saw glimpses of my own family through an outside perspective. That’s what really hit me hard. Beliefs and habits I have taken for granted for much of my life began to unravel. Why? What benefit do these herbal remedies have? Why don’t you like movies? For the most part, I don’t really know. These aren’t questions my girlfriend or her parents asked me, but questions that I asked myself when I realized that alternative perspectives are out there, indeed, all around me. The shades through which I have judged the world are slipping down the end of my nose. My mother’s beliefs are embedded in my belief system. Now that I have left home, my belief umbilical chord has dried up; my perspective is no longer directly fed by the nutrients at 414 Byrne St. So contexts are cracking, ideas drying up, and my belief system flaking away. I feel a bit like I’m shattering; it’s scary. But I know that I am building a core of Wiley and that’s really exciting.

Building this core is, after all, a large portion of a human life. Last semester added experiences and ideas, some of which I have kept, others of which will fall by the wayside. Each semester will have a topographical contour. If college (life?) is at all like the stock market (should I buy or sell?), then hopefully an overall upward trend will guide my ups and downs. College has been the first time I’ve actually understood that I have to build my own belief system. The lesson is to put myself out there. Express my beliefs, have them challenged, see how others live, smash perspectives together, and may the best one win. It’s easy to forget that we interpret the world through a perspective. It is not the right perspective, as many of our judgments tacitly imply; it is our perspective, my perspective. I want to see with many eyes, and try my best at compassion, even as my own perspective is cracked open, and a new life leaks in.