These days it appears that everyone is talking about spirituality, and getting on the spiritual path, and stepping off their current trajectory of work, work, work. What if the human design included a spiritual component, and the object of life was to seek one’s raison d’être, the reason for their existence. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, said “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” What if life was about experiencing both, a human experience and a spiritual experience. My contention, writing out loud is one of the lines of demarcation depends on one’s age and stage, and what do the sages have to say. There is so much wisdom to draw upon, incorporate, disagree with, add to, and overall, learn.
Life is simple, it is just not easy. Whatever a person wants, whether it is seeking advice to achieve a said desire, there is so much information out there. Those who can follow even one particular formula can find it difficult, and although it is tough, once determined it works, it’s simple. That said, following that advice consistently, now that’s not so easy. In fact, it can be downright hard. If the desire is to be more “spiritual,” do we need to be enlightened. Good luck with that. Those who appear to be enlightened use a different formula.
What does enlightenment look like anyway? There may be some truth that enlightenment can be achieved using the equation, do, have, be. It’s so easy, right? No. Perhaps this partially explains why being human and being spiritual are so closely linked. Maybe we are human and spiritual. Does that mean when we cease being human, that we return to being spiritual? Answering that is not the point of this post. Rather, it is is to suggest a different equation, instead of do, have, be; the equation is be, have, do. Does it make a difference? Yes and no. Isn’t that always the case. The dreaded, it depends. Deconstructing the factors involved and discussing them out loud might bring some clarity. After all, sometimes simple awareness can be curative.
Spiritualists maintain it is way more simple than people make it out to be. A well-regarded spiritualist once said, it’s the most simple thing that a person can do with their life, and that everything else is just complicating the issue. Their advice sounds familiar to others who offer ways to spiritual enlightenment. If a person looks clearly inside themself, what they will see is that we all want to be okay. What does that mean? What everyone wants? It’s sounds so simple when it is phrased that way and it can be said it many ways. “I want to be okay. I want to feel right inside. I want to feel love. I want to feel joy. I want to feel enthusiasm. I want to feel strength. I want to feel well.” All legitimate wants, both spiritually and human.
The former psychotherapist in me would say, decide what you want, then do the things you need to do in order to get it.” It’s so simple. Are you doing the things you need to be doing? This litany of “wants” can be achieved with a plan. Right? Yes and no. Here is a major problem with that: does anyone truly know what they want? Do they know how to get it? Is someone or something holding them back? Maybe they are an emergent adult, ages 18-29 and haven’t quite figured it out yet. That’s normal. After all, neuropsychologists say that the prefrontal cortex hasn’t even come online until a person is in their late twenties. Maybe the person is an emergent elder, in the second half of their life, and making a shift from a human doing to a human being. Let’s say they know what they want. Are they inspired? Have they developed a mature spirituality? And, what of their legacy? Are there things they want to accomplish? That’s the human part, and a mix of the spiritual issues are part of this. Let’s look at the spiritual first.
The spiritualist says that wanting to ascertain well-being, something that everyone wants, all the time is innate. Sounds very human, too. It’s just like our bodies want to feel well. Nobody wants to have aches and pains, or be sick. We want to feel invigorated. We want to feel strong. We want to feel well. We want to feel right. That is so obvious and so simple. There are other wants, too. A person may want to get married. A person may want a new car or a new home. To retire comfortably. A person may want people to respect them more. A person may want more friends. A person may want to be a part of a community. And there is the common adage that has spurred a 250 billion-dollar industry – to lose weight and look better. I confess, I confess, I have many of those wants. (Not the married part, I adore my wife.) Everyone has many things they say they want and they also have things that they don’t want. It is safe to say there are different degrees of wanting to be okay. And, if you want or don’t want, it is psychologically the same. Is that where spiritually comes in? Is it possible to neither want or not want is an answer? Isn’t a person who wants also not wanting something?
Do something different and “you” will feel something different. Will it be better than the feelings I am experiencing? That sounds like the right question. That is the former psychotherapist in me speaking. How I responded in the past to “so, if I do something different will it be better, my response: I don’t know. What you feel will be different in the short-run. Sure. And, in the long-run? Not so sure. “Why doesn’t it stick. I did something different. It felt good. Why can’t I maintain the momentum?” Maybe in the short-run, there was a good outcome. In the long-run, the “doing” wore off and the feelings returned. The operating principle is “ I want this, but, I don’t want that.” Consider it this way, if a person is not doing well because something is bothering them, and they want that “thing” to stop bothering them, and they do something different, they will feel better than when it was bothering them. Voilà, it worked. When a person gets what they want, in the moment, they have an externalized truth, and that is the problem with the way people live their lives. If people do something and “it” works, they store “it” until the next time. If there is a competing want, they may chose to do something else. That is psychology 101, and while it is simple, it is not easy. It can be downright hard to internalize something. Intrinsic rewards are much more satifying than extrinsic rewards.
How do we know if we have internalized something? That’s a great question. If a person learned something in the moment, i.e. controlled their hunger when they were having a tough day, then the next tough day they experience something similar and acted differently – and they don’t clean out the pantry of cookies, they have internalized it. Remember, it is human to do it in the moment, perhaps it is spiritual to be in the moment. Oh, there is that spiritual component again. It is not difficult to want inner well-being, and the litany of things involved in well-being and simultaneously not want all the other things. Simple example, I love food, and I want to lose weight. How many examples of these contradictions can you come up with?
A person’s mind becomes so preoccupied with what they want and what it is that they don’t want. The rest is history. Our spiritual sage says “a wise being realizes if they are not careful, they will spend their entire life trying to get what they really want and what they don’t want. They may even create diversions to avoid what they didn’t want.” He goes on to say, ”the wise [human] being has reached the point they see that is what the [human] mind is doing.” A person is just constantly trying to figure out how to get what they want and how to avoid getting what they don’t want. The [human] mind stays very busy and very active.
The results of all this busy-ness and activity – a person’s energy becomes involved in trying to manipulate life outside of themselves, to be the way their mind thinks it needs to be and it doesn’t bring them happiness. The narrative is set. Not to be disparaging of one’s efforts and it brings out a neurosis. It brings worry that they will never get what they want and they will teeter-totter between getting what they want and not getting what they want. Ultimately, they are not going to get it that way. The person defined what they wanted and what they didn’t want and the worry and accompanying negative feelings become all pervasive. Consider the well-known metaphor of the hamster on the wheel in the cage.
The hamster just runs around and around the wheel. Things are not necessarily going to get any worse, unless the hamster simply runs out of gas. It doesn’t matter how hard they try. They are not going to reach anything until the hamster becomes aware and then it becomes so obvious. They are just running faster and faster. The harder they run, the faster the wheel spins. Just out of reach, trying to get uphill in many cases. If that hamster considered their choices, they might even get off that wheel because it is not doing the hamster any good. And, we are talking about hamsters! Certainly, if the hamster knew what it would be like to be off the wheel, it might realize it was futile. And, we are not hamsters!
It’s not doing a person any good to be on the wheel, and they may not know what it’s like to be off the wheel. Will we ever reach that point? Can an argument be made for the wheel? Wheel of fortune, perhaps. If we reach a point where the wheel is no longer working for us, is there sage advice that can show us how to get off of it? Would we listen? Are we on the want/don’t want wheel? Have we been conditioned or programmed? That’s another great discussion. I will write out loud about that in part 2.
Confessions of a Cowtown Culturalist 
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