Women, please skip this paragraph. Message to men: is it just me or is that BONKERS? There are things we’ll just never get, aren’t there? Do you fancy a beer? I need to get out of this teary environment and head for a watering hole, pronto.
Hello again, women and men. We’re back. Women, get a grip. ‘Ouch, Gaia, that hurt.’ No, emoting is good. We men bottle it up far too much. And so do some women. But don’t splash the bottle all over the place indiscriminately. Use rational thought OCCASIONALLY. And learn how to use an Excel spreadsheet, too. They’re great for developing that side of your brain. That’s my advice, when you feel very emotional, even if you’re not sure what about, open up a new Excel spreadsheet and have a play. You’ll brighten up in a minute.
The point: it is possible to be too heart-focused. The brain and its rational thinking has its place. Use it occasionally. Otherwise you’re trapped in the prison of the emotions. And that, like everything else, takes a nice F**k It to get out of.
A MATERIALISTIC PRISON
By ‘materialistic’ we don’t mean those who like shopping, and for whom what they own is more important than anything else, though it’s self-evidently a pretty barren and restrictive prison to live in.
No, materialism here is the idea that everything is matter or energy (in the traditional Newtonian idea of ‘energy,’ not the Eastern one). We are separate, solid human beings working within Newtonian physical laws, on a planet that is (largely) explained by the sciences. And most people live their lives with this perception (even if they say that they ‘believe’ in God, their day-to-day interaction with reality is materialistic).
A materialist has explained practically all phenomena scientifically. We understand how just about everything works in a way we didn’t 100 years ago. In a very obvious way, materialism replaced spiritualism for many people. In times past, everything was a vast mystery, from what we saw in the sky at night to why it rained, to how our bodies worked, to how life was created. Unable to explain these mysteries scientifically, as we can now, humans explained them spiritually. There were gods for the elements, gods for love and war. Then someone had the bright idea that there was just one God. Anyway, the gods or God helped explain everything, because we’re not very comfortable with NOT KNOWING. We want to know. Even when we watch a ‘mystery’ on TV, we’re only happy with not knowing for a while and want to know who did it before we go to bed.
So most people now know. We know most of what could have bothered us in terms of the big questions of how things around us work, thanks to science. And the rest has simply yet to be worked out by the scientists. And, man, do they work hard to figure it out – just look at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). Though many people still use God to explain the things that we don’t get. In fact, some people use God to contradict the bits that we do seem to get.
But let’s assume that most people are, in a practical sense, materialists. They look to science for their answers. And the answers are usually good (even if they aren’t as palatable as the spiritual answers). It’s not that they’re cold, dry rationalists, as a spiritual person might imagine. The beauty, diversity, and complexity of such phenomena can still overwhelm someone who has a materialistic explanation for the manifest phenomena that surround them. The materialist might understand the process of reproduction, fetus growth based on DNA blueprints, and birth. But does the explanation of the process kill wonder at the manifestation of these processes? For most people, no. Most people are no less astonished by birth, by the beauty and magnificence of nature now they understand the materialistic derivation of such phenomena than they were when it was all a mystery and they decided it was all the work of gods/God.
Gaia and I prefer to stay open. To stay in the question, rather than try to settle on an answer: to be okay with NOT KNOWING. It doesn’t mean we’re not curious. We’re philosophers in that we love the unending questioning. But we don’t settle on any answer, we keep asking questions. We stay curious. We enjoy the wonder and mystery of life unfolding before us in every moment.
We use the word ‘sense’ a lot. It tends to indicate that ours is a continuous questioning, that we haven’t fixed on any answers, and that we’re humble enough not even to use the word ‘know.’ We have worked with energy or qi for many years. Our sense is that this energy underlies everything, and it is the conduit for the astonishing non-materialistic phenomena, as well as the essence of the equally astonishing materialistic phenomena, that we observe.
Do you see how that word ‘sense’ helps? We don’t say ‘we know,’ as either a materialist or a religious person would, and not with any false humility but because the assertion of such ‘knowledge’ fixes it. And if we know anything about energy and the phenomena it seems to manifest, it is that it’s ever-changing, impossible to fix, and very difficult even to name. (The Taoists, for example, assert that if you can describe the Tao – the force that pervades everything/is everything/creates everything – then you haven’t got it). And, for the record, we aren’t Taoists.
We aren’t anything. We question and experience and live in wonder, and share what we sense with you.
So, yes, we have more sympathy with the materialist than the fundamentalist. But a rigorously materialistic approach to reality, without any questioning about non-materialistic (spiritual/energetic/magic) explanations or phenomena can create a prison of experience. The limited range of explanations for the complex and diverse phenomena bombarding your senses traps you.
We say F**k It to fixing anything into set theories and explanations.
A SPIRITUAL PRISON
It’s probably obvious to you why the fundamentalist approach to spirituality creates its own prison. It is also dangerous to others. I’ve never understood anyone who can say ‘I’m right. You’re wrong. And you’re going to hell.’ I do get that, if you really think you’ve found the answer to life, the universe, and everything, and you sincerely believe this message can help everyone, then you’d want to go around and talk about it. But don’t tell everyone they’re wrong. Don’t deny others the right to believe stuff other than what you believe. And certainly don’t kill anyone if they believe something else, or say anything about what you believe.
But that’s all probably obvious to you.
And there probably aren’t many fundamentalists reading this anyway.
But there are probably many of you who regard yourselves as ‘spiritual’ people. I love the diversity of spirituality in today’s Western society. There’s a huge openness to spiritual ideas and an immense range of spiritual ideas on offer, and everything is easily accessible (it has not always been like that).
Many of us now have a ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ approach to spirituality. Now, ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ is when you serve yourself from a range of candies, such as jelly babies, chocolate buttons, cola bottles, flying saucers, chocolate-covered raisins, pineapple chunks, gobstoppers (jaw breakers), licorice torpedoes, cola cubes, white chocolate mice, etc. You peruse the large selection of delicious, E-numbered sugar concoctions in their plastic containers, your paper bag in hand, then use the plastic scoops to create your mix.
The spiritual candies we scoop into our spiritual bag aren’t as delicious, but they’re better for your figure. Here are just a few samples from the range: Reiki, astrology, Buddhism, Shamanism, NLP, EFT, crystal healing, distance healing, Taoism, Hinduism, angel therapy, hot stone therapy, yoga, Tai Chi, energy arts, dark arts, healing arts… and so on. Some we add to our bag, others we leave because we don’t fancy them. There’s little set ‘dogma’ for the ‘New-Age’ spiritual seeker to subscribe to – either we say that we are ‘spiritual’ or have a ‘spiritual side,’ or that we get in touch with our ‘higher self’ or ‘soul.’ They cover as much to do with the mind as the soul, as the genres leak into each other. And they include as much to do with the body as with the mind and the soul. Some integrate the three (that’s often the point of ‘holism,’ another ‘ism,’ to recognize the interconnectedness of a
ll these elements).
Take yoga, for example, which has a spiritual aim (to create ‘union’ between the material and the spiritual), and uses the physical asanas only as one means to achieve this union. Many people, however, practice yoga solely as a physical discipline, like a twenty-first-century aerobics class. Having run a yoga retreat for seven years, we know something about this. I read countless feedback sheets filled out by the metropolitan new yogis with sentiments such as: ‘The yoga was way too spiritual,’ ‘The yoga was great, just less of the spiritual stuff next time, please.’ ‘Loved the yoga, great teacher, but enough with the spiritual messages.’
‘Dear Priest, loved the service… the hymns were excellent, really enjoyed that kneeling position, and the bread and wine were delicious… but enough with that God thing, way too spiritual for this day and age.’
We have ‘spiritual’ ideas in our spiritual paper bag, too: we believe that everything has a reason; that everything’s perfect; we try to live in the now; we talk a lot about ‘trust;’ we ‘go with the flow;’ we recognize that thoughts create reality; we know we can spiritually manifest anything in our lives; we think everything has an energy; we like other people’s energy (or not); we try to accept things as they are; we love what is; we try not to judge; we’re on our ‘journey’ (a spiritual one at that) and everything is part of that journey; we don’t believe in traditional moral notions of right and wrong, but we believe in love; we believe in free love (nice), and we believe in peace; and we want to cleanse negative energy and spread peace…
We put actual stuff in our spiritual bags to help us on our spiritual journeys: Tarot cards, angel cards, crystals, essential oils, prayer flags, incense sticks, smudge sticks, talking sticks, drum sticks…
We eat well on our spiritual journey, too: meat-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, cruelty-free, pesticide-free, humor-free, and certainly never ‘free.’
And, though Gaia and I find it funny, we also use and subscribe to a lot of that stuff, too. But always in a pick ‘n’ mix way. And what we pick ‘n’ mix changes. We never get stuck on anything. And we always take it all with a pinch of salt (which doesn’t quite work with the ‘confectionary’ metaphor, as it would make all the candies taste DISGUSTING), because the pinch of salt makes it fun and fascinating.
So, where’s the prison in this type of pick ‘n’ mix spirituality? Taking it too seriously; fixing on anything; believing any one thing is the ultimate answer (and even worse, if you then think that everything else is wrong). Also, it’s easy to create new hierarchies of ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ We may no longer think sex before marriage is ‘bad,’ but we might see anger as bad, or materialism as bad, or selfishness as bad… or we might detect bad energy (in people and places), bad vibes. We are relentlessly dualistic beings, we always want to differentiate and separate things. We often separate out our ‘spiritual side,’ we separate the good from the bad, we separate our ideas from other people’s, and we separate ourselves from others. (Or, rather, perceiving and believing we’re separate from others and worried that others are ‘better’ than we are, we find ways to feel we’re better. That’s religion, actually. It’s also the source of much of our pain, our fighting, and our wars. Believing we’re separate, worrying we’re not good enough, we amplify our separation by distancing ourselves from others and even fighting them.)
Say F**k It to fixing any ideas. Hold it all lightly. And get a ‘sense’ of one possible ‘spiritual’ truth: that we’re not separate at all, that we’re all connected, maybe even all one. Our perception of separation is just an illusion – an illusion that creates all suffering. But don’t make a jump and ‘believe’ that, because you might well be jumping into another prison.
My, we do like our prisons, don’t we?
1 Act of abandoned copulation.
2 Eccentric and a bit crazy (in an endearing sort of way).
3 Idiom, in certain parts of the UK, for dinner and not to be confused with afternoon tea, which involves small sandwiches, cake, and the odd pot of tea – nice.
4 Revelatory exclamation not found in any worldly lexicon.
5 Usually derogatory: meaning a bit too brainy for his or her own (and usually others’) good, and a bit of a smart-ass.
6 Meaning ‘men,’ and implying ‘proper’ men at that, with ‘proper’ manly interests such as drinking beer, sports, and traits such as crotch scratching.
WHY DO PRISONS EXIST?
A PRISON IS SAFE
Occasionally, our metaphor will be stretched a little too far, particularly when I say that a prison is safe. Because a regular prison probably isn’t a particularly safe place to be, especially if you’re a pretty boy with a cute ass… or a sex offender.
You’ve created a prison for yourself for many reasons, and one of them is likely to be that it feels safe. It feels safer, for example, to fix your opinions and beliefs than to stay not knowing… that’s not a comfortable or easy place to be. A more simplistic, fundamentalist faith always feels safer than a liberal, open, questioning faith. It’s safer to believe that there’s a God up there looking out for you and there’s an afterlife, even if those beliefs close you to a more sophisticated understanding of the likely nature of ‘God’ and the meaning of His words in the scriptures.
Not happy with the prison of religion you grew up with? Choose another one then. Like lovers on the rebound, many people leap into the nearest, coolest version of, effectively, the same thing. Or they turn what are interesting philosophies into religions.
Buddhism is a case in point. Buddha was not, is not, a god. He was a man who ‘woke up’ to the ‘true reality’ of life (I know, I don’t particularly like putting inverted commas in there, but they help to show that I’m not saying he woke up to true reality… who knows, but he thought he had, and so do Buddhists). But many Buddhists have deified him. The whole point is that he was an ‘ordinary’ man. (Oh, there I go again… this time I had to do it because though he was a mortal, and not a god, he wasn’t exactly Everyman, as he started off as a prince.) He was like us, so we, too, can wake up… if we could only find that Bodhi tree.
But this isn’t just about spirituality and religion. When facing difficulty, we find refuge in places that can so easily become prisons for us later. Let’s say that someone finds they have a serious illness – a treatable form of cancer, for example. They can find refuge in the sophisticated science of oncology – learning about their good chances of survival with various forms of treatment, and beginning a course of the right one. Or they might resist the idea of any form of treatment at all and find refuge in their belief that the body is its own most powerful healer and, using a variety of natural therapies, work on remaining positive and relaxed in the knowledge that healing will happen naturally. (Incidentally, that’s not an unscientific option; the power of the mind in healing is widely demonstrated scientifically.) Or they might, while undergoing treatment, find refuge in God who has a Plan for them, and this is just part of that Plan – they trust in God, no matter where God leads them, and that trust is very comforting. Or find refuge in trying to help other people who have been diagnosed with the same cancer, creating a support group for fellow sufferers. Or find refuge in raising money for further research to improve survival rates. Or take the diagnosis as another example of their rotten luck in life, and that it always happens to them. Or investigate what ‘lesson’ the diagnosis has to teach them. They work with a counselor to uncover the true cause of their illness – the emotional seeds that have sprouted such a toxic plant – and believe that once those seeds have been discovered, and worked with, then the cancer will recede.
There are limitless models that we create or subscribe to when we’re in need and are facing difficulty. All have their value and can help. But all can become our prisons later, because fixed models are inflexible and tend not to respond to differing circumstances.
So play with the idea of saying F**k It to holding on to any model, especially if it simply feels ‘safe’ and inste
ad look out for what feels, simply, ‘true,’ in each moment.
A PRISON IS NATURAL
It’s very natural to want to fix everything, though. It’s very natural to find the model that seems to work, then stick to it. We are creatures of habit.
The neural network in the brain works in exactly this way: when we respond to incoming stimuli in a certain way, that response or behavior is laid down in the form of a neural pathway. If, the next time we are faced with the same stimuli, we respond in the same way, then that neural pathway becomes stronger. Just as if you walk across a fresh cornfield, you make a path, and the following day you follow the same path, then that path becomes more permanent, so numerous neural pathways are formed in your brain. And, as these pathways become established, it means that you’re very unlikely, faced with the same stimuli, to react in any other way than you are accustomed to. You are a creature of habit.
In fact, it’s not just that we’re reacting in the same way to similar stimuli. We are actually choosing the stimuli we take in to process based on our programs in the first place. In any given moment your brain is being bombarded with billions of bits of information. You can most easily picture this if you imagine walking down a busy high street with all its activity, movement, noise, smells, heat, or cold, etc. With your eyes and other senses fully functional, you absorb huge amounts of information. But you’re conscious of only a tiny proportion of it, and the unconscious parts of your brain register most of it. But you’re still constantly filtering the incoming information based on models of what you’ve experienced before. It’s most likely that you actually wouldn’t recognize something that wasn’t within your current range of experience.
F**k It Therapy Page 3
