The Only True Happiness Pill: PED (not PEZ)

No, you can't get true happiness from this...

PEZ may immediately gratify an appetite for something sweet, but little else. Ultimately, we can only find true happiness from PED. PED stands for Pervasive, Enduring, and Deep, and it's these qualities that can only come about by aligning ourselves with activities that satiate our more significant desires. When the effects of our activities move us beyond the self, that is said to be pervasive; when the effects of our activities are lasting, that is said to be enduring; and when we use our higher faculties to engage in particular activities, that is said to bring in depth.

Earlier this year I read Part 2 of Robert Spitzer's quartet, and now I am embarking on Part 1: Finding True Happiness. I suppose my approach is non-linear in the way Truth is non-linear. You have to go where the heart sings sometimes, so this book felt right in the moment. 

Spitzer's desire model resonates with me, in that, we all have desires, but not all desires are equal. My desire to watch the Walking Dead is not the same as my desire to spend time with good friends which is not the same as my desire to get closer to Divinity. Spitzer categorizes these into four levels:

• Instinctual desires (level 1)
• Ego-comparative desires (level 2)
• Contributive desires (level 3)
• Transcendental-spiritual desires (level 4)

While there may be hierarchical approach to these desires and their ability to make us more PED happy, it should be noted that pursuit of a higher level should not preclude the lower level (can you say spiritual bypassing?). Nor should a higher level be conflated with a lower level (can you say spiritual pride?).

So while we don't want to negate the first three levels, there is something significant about level 4 that most folks never consider. “Level Four happiness arises out of three dimensions of God’s interior call: (1) our five transcendental desires for perfect and unconditional truth, love, goodness, beauty, and being (home), (2) our awareness of the numinous and the sacred, and (3) an interior relationship with a transcendent personal Being, which is so fundamental that ignoring it can lead to cosmic emptiness, alienation, loneliness, and guilt.”

And it's this cosmic dread that creates these existential crises in those of us that fortunate enough to have them. Think of it as God's way of provoking us to search for our true purpose, instead of settling for the finite and conditional things in life. 

Sartre, Camus, and the rest of the existential gang were on to something, but they didn't take it far enough. Instead of pushing against our existential crisis with egoic defiance, we can receptively meet it with a surrender to something more PED-like. This calls us beyond the personal to the post-personal, which is still us and so much more.

Spitzer again: “If we take the evidence of human transcendentality seriously, we will see the inadequacies of the first three kinds of happiness, for they can never ultimately satisfy us. Without the fourth kind of happiness, we will underlive our lives, undervalue ourselves and others, and underestimate our full destiny and call.”

Not that we all need a cosmic kick in the arse, but I suppose my stubborn mind did. And I needed several repeatable lessons too. Now, there's the question as to we enter more deeply into the transcendent domain and integrate PED happiness into one's life. Spitzer gets into the need for a spiritual community, contemplation, philosophical and theological inquiry, and service to others. But it all starts with a leap of faith. 

“This choice means acting on the call we have received, which can be done by participating in a church community, seeking a deep understanding of spiritual wisdom and God’s self-revelation, entering into a life of prayer, trying to live according to God’s goodness, and helping others to see their true dignity and destiny. When we act on our choice to enter into a life of transcendence, God will invite us to experience Him in ever deeper ways. He will also provide grace, guidance, protection, and inspiration on our journey with Him so that we will be able to reach our most pervasive, enduring, and deep purpose in life, reach new depths of authentic empathy and love, constructively contend with suffering, help others to cope with suffering, and at the end of our lives leave a legacy of transcendent, eternal, and loving goodness. (Spitzer)”

Well said. Now that's a wrap for 2016. Merry Christmas everyone!

Who Turned Down the Entropy?

For those of you that got through high school physics may know something about of our fundamental, physical laws. Without these laws, we'd be screwed big time! So thank God they're in place. But let's not get into who made the laws just yet.

There is one law that would seem to work against us: the dreaded second law of thermodynamics. It says that entropy (or disorder) always increases over time in an isolated system. And that all physical systems will eventually become completely run down and incapable of physical activity. Yet, the cosmos doesn't seem run down at all and has done a pretty good job countering all that entropy. I mean, we've got sexy galaxies, some cool planets, and even lots of crazy life on this one! So the caveat may be that our cosmos is not an isolated system after all. And if it isn't closed, is there something guiding from behind the scenes to create order?

Sir Fred Hoyle once remarked, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with the chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”

But we don't want shun all questions to the answer of God just yet. That would be rude to our skeptical readers. It seems to me there is still an interesting, rational theory that can explain order in the cosmos. 

Kevin Kelly, who leans towards secular explanations, came up with a clever term for this decreasing entropy: exotropy. He says, “The multibillion-year rise of exotropy—as it flings up stable molecules, solar systems, a planetary atmosphere, life, mind, and the technium—can be restated as the slow accumulation of ordered information. Or rather, the slow ordering of accumulated information.”

So information may be where it's at (along with those turtles all the way down). For many years we believed the material universe to be made of matter and energy. And now some scientists are willing to concede that information may be behind it all. I suppose this is one way to get esoteric, without losing your academic credentials.

By its very nature, the informational dimension of any thriving system is going to be dynamic and unpredictable. It is also how systems change and grow: including physical, biological, and economic ones, etc. In other words, entropy creates something new, but requires exotropy to integrate all the new information in the system. 

George Gilder says, “All information is surprise; only surprise qualifies as information. This is the fundamental axiom of information theory. Information is the change between what we knew before the transmission and what we know after it.”

If we take this from the macrocosm down to the microcosm, this “surprise” depends exclusively on human agency because creativity comes from people, not from systems, who are part of systems. It is indicated by the idea of something new that defies prediction because that only works in closed systems. If a system is closed, it cannot experience the “surprise,” that infusion of new information that contributes to its survival and growth.

This is how creativity can create value through individuals willing to take risks investing their capital, prowess, and labor. Through this effort, new information is brought into light that others can't see or do. Gilder notes that this can fail when it violates a key principle of information theory: “It subordinates a higher and more complex level of activity — the creation of value — to a lower level, its measurement and exchange.”

This is the beauty of creativity via human agency, in that like the flow of information within a cable line, we can hone in on a signal from all the noise. Yet, our creative endeavors also require a stabilizing, grounding force, like the cable line itself. As Gilder notes, in our civilization this includes “moral codes, constitutional restraints, personal disciplines, educational integrity, predictable laws, reliable courts, stable money, trustworthy finance, strong families, dependable defense, and police powers.” 

And so a key principle of information theory is that “it takes a low-entropy carrier to bear high-entropy creations.”

So dude, who did turn down the entropy?...

If You've Got the Freedom, I've Got the Truth

I've been thinking about the convergence of freedom and Truth lately, and how one without the other just doesn't work. If you don't have freedom, then you can't choose to discover and align with Truth, and if you don't have Truth, then your freedom is just baseless chaos. 

I mean when people say it's a free country, what does that really mean? Some would say pretty much anything except yelling fire in a theater (which will definitely show you what chaos looks like pretty quickly). 

The Founding Fathers professed freedom, but it seemed to me it was always a means for some ends. In other words, we created a country that offered freedom from tyranny, but that wasn't the whole point. I do recall something about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness too. And liberty is essentially ordered freedom. 

As Bob said, “Like any other form of freedom, it cannot merely be "freedom from." If it isn't simultaneously freedom for, then it is worthless. It equates to nihilism, or freedom to be absurd (which is no freedom at all).”

So in a world of too many choices, freedom alone has little value. We can only give a free life significance when we align with Truth. And that alignment will always require a commitment of some sort. Think of the deep satisfaction a couple has when they have been married for many years, and can reflect on all their trials and tribulations together through the commitment they made to each other. If each of them were free to do what they wanted, the results certainly would not be the same. 

So in the bigger picture, we are all on a metaphysical adventure that our deeper nature yearns to align with. Some may deny this or marginalize it, but it's right in front of our noses. Yet, in our feeling-inspired culture, most would find this as stifling: you mean I can't do what I feel like doing? 

The irony is commitment to Truth gives you more freedom because you’re no longer distracted by the things in life that are unimportant and frivolous. It hones your attention and focus, directing you toward what is most effective at making you healthy and happy. Commitment to Truth also makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more? And it allows you to focus intently on what's important and achieve a greater degree of life satisfaction than you otherwise would.

The paradox of choice is less is more, but we just need to affirm that the more is what we want. And what is the more? Possible answers: (a) fame, fortune, and your own YouTube channel; (b) salvation, liberation, evolution and love; or (c) frozen yogurt.

Onion Peels

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” — G.K. Chesterton

Some of us love maps. Sometimes it's a guy thing, because I suppose it feeds our desire to explore. Or maybe we are just not relational enough to ask for good direction. But a decent map can lay out the gist of a heroic journey to get some where we are not.

I am not designed to be a Shackleton, exploring stormy, unknown seas, or an Elon Musk, who is ready to fly off to Mars. I am more an explorer of the interiors. That doesn't mean I've always been good at it. I've gone off the path too many times to count (which is always part of the ultimate path). But the intention never leaves. I am steadfast, so a good map hopefully can only help.

Consider all the map-makers I've been attracted to: Ken Wilber, Daniel P. Brown, A.H. Almaas, the Tibetans. These folks recognize the territory is primary, but if there's a map to address it, I'm sure they would say theirs is the best. My latest favorite map comes from Ric Weinman, who I recently came across in an interview on BatGap. His book takes on the path to awakening, unveiling all the layers of the self (which I liken to onion peeling, and I do love my peels). 

There are some nice tidbits in the book. Let's see what I highlighted...

From an awakening perspective, life is simply the opportunity for the Source of All to experience its own potentiality. [Thank God for that! We need to be liberated toward a telos.]

Awakening does not fulfill the self but rather deletes it from the picture. [Yes, but something remains which is the True Self.]

People live in their heads because the ego uses its mental story about itself as a support for its existence. They also live in their heads as a defense against feeling overwhelmed by their emotions and to defend against the experience of simply being open to life as it is. [Tell me about it! I always thought I wasn't that emotional, but the truth was I used my ruminations to run away from them.]

Yet the general rule is that the more of you that disappears, the more your partner will like it. [See the irony here. Unless your relationship is based on ego-dependency.]

I once heard Wayne Liquorman (an awake teacher) say that awakening was like the relief of taking a pebble out of an old, well-worn shoe. The problem is we all think we’re going to get a new pair of shoes. [Mistakenly so, we often think awakening will make us a new me.]

So, freedom has nothing in it that the ego desires. What the ego wants is transcendence and expansion into a higher state of security and power. That’s why the idea of ascension is so popular. [Ascension is just the expansion of a self that is still a self.]

Yet I have noticed one very consistent initial response to Basic Awakening: the experience simply has nothing to do with whatever was expected. [Yup, best to look into the unknown.]

The awareness that you lost your awakeness is actually the awakeness itself making itself known. [Just remembering is awakening.]

The Map can only describe the levels of awakening, not the degree to which it has been incorporated into one’s life. Someone who has not awakened deeply but is more fully living from their awakening may seem more awake than the person who has gone deeper but allowed it to move more into the background. [I love this excerpt. It made me think of all the people I've come across who have higher attainments, but are still arseholes. It all comes down to intention.]

If you can find where laughter comes from you will find Divinity. [Another quote I love! Humor releases us to Source.]

So, you do have free will, but the person you experience yourself to be doesn’t. [Yup. We're not that free if it's all that conditioning that is reacting.]

Fixating harder on something that is known won’t open the door to the unknown. [Another great quote!]

Here’s an extra little trick: think of the source of the mind as existing in the heart. [Ahh, the cave of the Heart. Makes me smile.]

Consciousness has the quality of emptiness. If you think of light as having a quality of fullness and the shadows it creates as having a quality of emptiness, then this aligns with awareness and consciousness: awareness has a quality of fullness, and consciousness, the ‘shadow’ of awareness, feels empty. [I like this distinction between consciousness and awareness.]

You might think that losing the sense of the personal would make you more emotionally cold and impersonal. It turns out this isn’t true. In general, the deeper your awakening goes, the more ‘real’ you become, the more you become what you really are. So you become more open, more present, more heartful. You will have more detachment as well, but the detachment created from the awakening will have no walls— it is open space. [Some Buddhists get mixed up in this detachment, where they are not truly available. It's just a state of repose and not true awakening.]

Because we want to hold onto our awakening, there will be a tendency to turn our awake space into an image that we can then hold in consciousness. In addition, we want to be that awake space, so we will identify with that image. That turns what you are into an image in consciousness. Be on the alert for this, and remember that whenever you become something, you have moved into illusion. Only in being nothing does the everything you are reveal itself, and it reveals itself to no one. [A good reminder!]

My only guidance for learning to live from this level of awakening is to distinguish what you are from what you keep becoming and what you experience. Then keep dropping into what you are. [A pith instruction we can always use.]

Overall, Ric's book was a delightful read. I don't know why some teachers resonate more than others with me, but I always appreciate a fresh perspective to the path!