No-Nonsense Spirituality
What we can learn from the "essentials of all religions" and traditional cultural traditions.
Hello, good people! I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July and are doing well! In honor of our new membership program, today will be a re-release of a past article:
No-Nonsense Spirituality: A Structured Pursuit of Better Living
Additionally, I wrote a related article for Breaking Muscle that published yesterday:
12 Rules to Optimize Your Health for the 21st Century
And now to the Stuff!
From the Ages
An Edict on Tolerance that Emperor Ashoka issued in India around the year 250 BCE:
Beloved-of-the-Gods, the king who regards everyone with affection, honors both ascetics and the householders of all religions, and…values that there should be growth in the essentials of all religions. Growth in essentials can be done in different ways, but all of them have as their root restraint in speech, that is, not praising one's own religion, or condemning the religion of others without good cause…. Whoever praises his own religion, due to excessive devotion, and condemns others with the thought "Let me glorify my own religion," only harms his own religion. Therefore contact between religions is good. One should listen to and respect the doctrines professed by others. Beloved-of-the-Gods, the king who regards everyone with affection, desires that all should be well-learned in the good doctrines of other religions.
From Today
“The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly… and a thorough study of religion could give us all sorts of insights into areas of life that are not going too well.”
Source: Alain de Botton
From Us
No-Nonsense Spirituality: A Structured Pursuit of Better Living
Click here to read this on IHD.com
Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What happens when you die? (And why do my dinner guests never come back?)
For most people, the answers to these questions are a direct consequence of the set of religious beliefs they were given as children. Which begs another question: Why would the story you were told be more correct than the story told to someone born in India, Turkey, Israel, or Japan?
At some point in our lives, we ask ourselves that final obvious question. It can create a lot of anxiety. After all, faith - believing a set of dogmas - is the grand responsibility demanded by most modern religions. Its presence bestows all gifts and its absence ensures all punishments. But you can’t control what you actually believe.
Some time in high-school, I began having doubts. Nothing seemed to jive with my experience, my education, or my intuition. Most are told that religious doubts are natural. An occasional sense of uncertainty is deemed healthy, but under the clear understanding that allowing those doubts to cross into disbelief is the gravest of all sins. Many incentives encourage us not to explore these doubts too fully:
rewards (you don’t have to die and heaven is really awesome);
avoiding punishment (your doubts could be wrong and burning would suck);
social acceptance/your old identity (it is terrifying to let people down and to be different);
and there is a comfort in having all the answers.
But here is where “faith” can become destructive. By shutting ourselves off to fully exploring our honest thoughts and proportioning our beliefs to the evidence, we entrench ourselves in patterns of self-deception. We can actually weaken the connection to our intuition, muddying our sense of truth, reason, and legitimate faith. We learn to follow the herd, rather than our true beliefs and to avoid exploring those ideas that might, terrifyingly, pull us down a more honest path.
The Science-Spirituality False Dichotomy
What would you believe in a vacuum? Say you had a clean slate and took 20 years of your life to study, read, travel, and come to your own conclusions. You explored each culture taking time to visit its cities and escape to the best wilderness they had to offer. You looked at each country, its history, its traditions, its religions, its scientific heritage, its norms, and the way its people socialized. After 20 years of this open, unbiased exploration, would you choose the same religion you were handed at birth? Would you conclude that the truth was any one set of precepts handed down within the last 4,000 years? Almost certainly not.
Yet, after 20 years of exploration, you’d be equally dubious of the notion that science and logic held all the answers. Not to diminish these bedrocks of progress. Most would do well to better understand the basic principles of scientific inquiry. But allowing science to shroud out any possibility of “spiritual experience,” closes one off to a very rich, essential, and real part of life.
Many people grapple with their faith for years before finally coming to a reluctant acceptance that they just don’t believe in the story they were handed. Unfortunately, the next step is often to resent that early religious indoctrination to such a degree that any concept of spirituality is discarded - tossed aside with the entire collection of myth, magic, and blind devotion.
Most move right to nihilism. Nothing matters. You are freed to behave as you wish. Yet, in nihilism you can’t help but feel the spiritual void of valuelessness.
Many are thwarted by an unnecessary split between the logical-scientific and the spiritual-artistic. You either subscribe to dogmas and the popular feel-good tropes - “Everything happens for a reason.” - or you accept the evidence that seems to contradict them. You either give weight to the deep emotions you’ve experienced in religious traditions or you err towards logical explanations and commit to striving towards truth. However, this is a false dichotomy. Science and rationality are totally consistent with spirituality. In fact, the attempt to separate the two can breed a confused, distorted lens of reality.
“We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly.”
-Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The best path often requires embracing a bit of paradox. We don’t want to be controlled by impulsive emotions but an absence of emotion is an absence of care. This is a lobotomy. Similarly, using science for a positive impact requires connections to our values and a capacity for judgment. We must honor the wisdom of our intuition while tempering our immense propensity for bias and self-deception. Both reason and intuition can work together in one seamless expression when we filter them through a better question: “How do we live best?”
Absent of an intentional effort to live well and define what that means, our mainstream cultures revolves around a hedonistic ethos where the only markers of progress are more pleasure and less pain. Goals orient us towards Huxley’s conception of a future buffered from all discomfort, with no regard for the dehumanizing dependency and purposelessness that come with it.
Today, despite our material opulence and abundant entertainment, depression, anxiety, obesity, and drug overdoses have reached unprecedented peaks. What we are facing is a spiritual crisis. Not that we’ve lost faith in a god and not in the “kumbaya,” read my horoscope sense where we delude ourselves into stuff we know isn’t true - but, in losing our connection to ourselves, to nature, and to each other. We’ve lost our connection to what is deep, opting instead to scroll across the surface of life driven only by the most rudimentary animal drives for immediate pleasure and less immediate pain. The solution is to actively seek just the opposite. We need to act, despite the ever-present allure of the path of least resistance.
The failure to honor the needs programmed by millions of years of evolution ensures emotional pain that far surpasses the physical discomfort humans try so hard to avoid. In order to determine how to live best, we must go back to basics.
What the Cavemen Can Teach Us
The human-animal has spent most of its history in small, tight-knit bands hunting animals, gathering plants, and working to ensure the survival of their tribe. We often conceive of ancestral humans as a primitive, lesser species, grunting their crude languages and coming to laughably ignorant conclusions about how weather and other natural phenomena came about. We deem them inferior for having lived prior to the agricultural revolution and the breakthroughs it set in motion. Yet, we aren’t so different. We come into the world with the exact same packaging and programming that they did. Like us, they played, danced, sang, enjoyed stories, loved, dreamed, and sought meaning. The only differences between them and us lies in the different environments we’ve experienced.
In the natural environment, human instincts to avoid pain, seek comfort, and conserve energy were constructive, contributing to survival in a dangerous world. Seeking comfort meant collecting firewood to reduce the bitterness of frigid nights, climbing trees to gather fruit, crafting tools to hunt animals, building impermanent shelter, and trekking on in pursuit of herds and more abundant plant cuisine. There was no air-conditioning, television, mattresses, or Pop-Tarts. No one had the option to spend their day idly consuming entertainment, food, and material goods. You only owned what you could carry, only ate real food, and only consumed entertainment actively produced by close friends and family. Seeking comfort, in the natural environment, prompted action, engagement, and connection. Everyone satisfied their need for growth, contribution, and connection because the alternative was death.
Today’s humans may know more about what causes diseases and the tides to roll in, but our primal ancestors had far more sharpened senses, awareness of nature’s rhythms, and insight into the realities of the human condition than most today. They were far more physically fit, mentally active, and connected to their environment and the people around them. We may have more comforts and access to vital medical breakthroughs today, but what have we lost?
There is no doubt that society has made many ethical advances since the ancient order where rampant slavery, violence, and unbending social stratification were more common. However, in our rush to move away from the flaws of ancient honor cultures, we’ve moved to another extreme. We’ve grown dogmatic and sensitive. People either double down on outdated magical interpretations or they assume that spirituality no longer has a place. We see the extremes of religion - completely ungrounded by any sense of logical reasoning or pursuit for actual truth - and the extremes of rationalism - hyper-compartmentalized, valueless, blind to intuition, and in complete denial about the limitations of rational thought.
In his transcendent book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig draws the connection between what he refers to as “Quality,” and that undefinable prime source of harmony that is revered across the ancient world. Depending on the civilization, it may have been labeled as the Tao, Dharma, Oneness, or arête. This is the path to improvement, excellence, and higher quality. Not in the mechanical sense where more efficiency or profit is better. Not in the impulse-driven consumerist sense, where more sweets and Christmas presents is better. And not even in the moralist sense (which is really just an over-systematization of values), where emotions and creativity are stifled in favor of rigid ethical doctrines. Pirsig’s theory of quality reunites the scientific and the artistic into a genuine display of excellence. It is the move towards higher quality living, which requires self-mastery, exploration, intuition, play, and honesty.
Quality breaks down the barriers of all our reductionist categories to unify all. Spirituality lies in the things we do, but just as importantly in the way we do them. As Pirsig explains:
“What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism,” Kitto comments, “is not a sense of duty as we understand it — duty towards others: it is rather duty towards himself. He strives after that which we translate ‘virtue’ but is in Greek arête, ‘excellence’ ….
Thus the hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Pheacian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by song. He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing arête.
Arête implies a respect of the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency — or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself.
The reality is that the questions I opened with (Why are we here, what happens when you die, and what is the meaning of life?) have no answer that someone can give you. We don’t actually know why we are here, dead people don’t talk, and the meaning of your life isn’t spelled out in any book. But that doesn’t mean nihilism is the answer, either. As ancient religions knew well, the development of real purpose and harmonious values is the consequence of experience and self-work. As our world becomes more specialized, temptation saturated, and divorced from nature, a structured self-development program is more important than ever.
Embrace the Pillar Experiences For Higher Quality Living
“It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting.”
-Millard Fuller, Founder of Habitat for Humanity
In my article, Transformative Experience, I introduced the concept of Pillar Experiences. These are the experiences that have been universal to every tribe, religion, and moral philosophy. They are the actions once innate to human experience, which foster the self-understanding and growth we all need for fulfillment. Communities thrived when the Pillar Experiences were structured and consistent as they tended to be in most cultures. These pillar experiences include:
Fasting
Finding Food
Fighting
Foot-driven trekking
Frequent and extended time in nature
Building/creating
Art (Music, dance, story-telling, craftsmanship, etc.)
Giving to charity
Gratitude/prayer
Meditation (nearly every religion has noticed the power of this to varying degrees - people may meditate in the traditional sense, or through chanting prayers, or focus on the feeling of a presence)
Play
Fellowship
Our theory, at IHD, is that as we distance ourselves from these once fundamental human experiences, we fall away from our true nature. We aren’t fully activated and we remain a shell of our potential. Our values remain unrefined and, consequently, our actions unfulfilling. This feeds a devastating spiral towards evermore vacant values and pursuits.
Ancient philosophies failed to explain the order of the universe. Yet, living closer to the primal biological norm, most did a great job promoting the pillar experiences that cultivated maturation and endeared those truths of the human condition that can’t be explained in words. They understood that humanity required training for optimal fulfillment.
In his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari quotes an Edict on Tolerance that Emperor Ashoka issued in India around the year 250 BCE:
Beloved-of-the-Gods, the king who regards everyone with affection, honors both ascetics and the householders of all religions, and…values that there should be growth in the essentials of all religions. Growth in essentials can be done in different ways, but all of them have as their root restraint in speech, that is, not praising one's own religion, or condemning the religion of others without good cause…. Whoever praises his own religion, due to excessive devotion, and condemns others with the thought "Let me glorify my own religion," only harms his own religion. Therefore contact between religions is good. One should listen to and respect the doctrines professed by others. Beloved-of-the-Gods, the king who regards everyone with affection, desires that all should be well-learned in the good doctrines of other religions.
Ashoka demanded an open-minded marketplace of ideas similar to what enlightenment philosophers would advocate 2,000 years later for the secular world. With his lens on inter-community interaction, diverse societies would be more likely to refine religious tenets into better beliefs, dispatching what didn’t make sense while preserving what worked best.
Unfortunately, intolerance drove out this worldview. Proprietary religious interpretations came to dominate a majority of the world, largely because proponents could proclaim to have the full body of all wisdom for which nothing could be added. They claimed to have finality, a most attractive tool for anyone yearning for social superiority. Each society that was swayed towards religious intolerance became vehemently opposed to any new ideas and convinced of their duty to spread these insular doctrines. When the enlightenment finally did come around, it focused on religion’s rigidity and refusal to openly explore evidence and, thus, threw the baby out with the bathwater. It threw the pillar experiences out with the rest of fundamentalism. The culture-at-large stopped having any conversation about the life well-lived.
Ironically, as evidence mounted against fundamentalist interpretations, religions de-emphasized experiential training while doubling down on feel-good simplifications, dogma, and linguistic gymnastics. Driven by the demands of comfort-driven culture, mainstream religion has largely abandoned spiritual practice and the Pillar Experiences. This is most unfortunate because it is where the value lies. Now, more than ever, we must recommit to structured experiential training.
What Religion Can Teach Us
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information.”
-T.S. Elliot
You go to school and they give you information. Wikipedia gives you information. Television, YouTube, and Facebook give you information. The world is run on this concept of constantly acquiring more data, but we have no means of filtering it all and we rarely work on the vessels that have to do that filtering. You can always get more information. It is free and abundant. Yet all that information doesn’t seem to be making us anymore competent or happy. We need to go very deep into the lessons that change us and our own tools. We need less distraction and more focused action.
We need assistance on our path to living well and schools, the cultural nucleus of modern societies, now neglect this entirely. Rather than pursuing human excellence and flourishing, we look at humans as cogs in a grand efficiency machine. Art is only worthy insomuch as it can be monetized. Education is just a means to a material end. The disconnect between quality living and daily experience breeds a spiritual void that ravages society, despite our comfort and convenience. It boils down to a simple, obvious issue: we have more, but we are a lesser whole.
In his brilliant TED Talk, Alain de Botton, analyzes the powerful mechanisms religions use to transmit culture and endear complex values to its adherents. One of the most distinct differences in the religious approach is that they don’t shy away from repetition. They aren’t deluded by the need to constantly stay up with the trends and follow style. Religions seek classic, timeless beauty and essential wisdom. They aren’t always adding new books to go through, but are invested heavily in deepening their understanding and returning to the most essential and timeless lessons. The focus is on influencing quality action, rather than quantity for its own sake.
So often I’ve found myself scurrying for the next book - questing to have another one “finished.” It is easy to approach books like they are trophies to throw on the mantle or trump cards to reference in conversation. There is certainly nothing wrong with seeking new ideas, but how much more could we extract from the very best books if we allowed ourselves repetition and immersion.
I’ve begun to identify those most impactful books and force myself to revisit them. I’m always amazed by how new they read and what profound details I notice that I was not primed to appreciate before. Even more, I’m struck by how many transformational lessons I never took the time to apply as I plunged myself into the next book. We need a structure to help us seek out the new and novel, while also bringing a disciplined desire to narrow down what matters most and revisit those most timeless works.
This respect for the power of repetition is also evident in the religious approach to ritual. Say you’ve read the science on how a daily gratitude practice rewires your brain for happiness and opportunism, but every time you try to create the habit it gets pushed out by your hectic schedule. You can’t seem to find time to fit it in. Religions don’t have that problem. They close their eyes and do a gratitude practice before every meal. It is baked into their day. Why don’t we all reflect on what we are grateful for before every meal?
Similarly, traditional religions arrange the calendar around the most essential lessons in order to ensure that they are repeatedly pulled back towards the experiences that matter most. They respect the cyclical nature of life and our annual seasons and use those cycles to organize annual calendars that repeatedly bring people through transformative, value-endearing experiences. As de Botton explains:
“Take the Moon. It's really important to look at the Moon. You know, when you look at the Moon, you think, "I'm really small. What are my problems?" It sets things into perspective, etc., etc. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often. We don't. Why don't we? Well, there's nothing to tell us, "Look at the Moon." But if you're a Zen Buddhist in the middle of September, you will be ordered out of your home, made to stand on a canonical platform and made to celebrate the festival of Tsukimi, where you will be given poems to read in honor of the Moon and the passage of time and the frailty of life that it should remind us of. You'll be handed rice cakes. And the Moon and the reflection on the Moon will have a secure place in your heart. That's very good.”
The cultural traditions within our Standard Model tend to be far less rooted in human wisdom and intentional value transmission. The wisdom in each celebration is lost in pageantry, social media curation, and consumptive fervor. But nothing is stopping us from restoring a more spiritually nourishing approach.
Structuring the Pursuit of Better Living
The IHD Seekers is a membership group for “life-long learners and explorers. It is a place to connect over shared values and grow together through thoughtful conversations and shared experiences.” Together we will discuss readings, explore ideas, and share challenges and habits that will prove far more valuable than anything Justin, I, or anyone else could write.
Experiences will have many layers and levels of depth to choose from. For example, when it comes time for our bi-annual fast, you might dip your toe in by fasting for 16 hours, or you might have a little better foothold and want to do the full 48. The point is to keep showing up, keep exploring, and keep communicating with those who have embraced a similar path.
Which brings me to the last essential quality of religion: community. Today’s philosophs tend to be lonely, isolated individuals who live in quiet thought, but thinkers weren’t always isolated in traditional religions. Religions strive for collaboration, fellowship, and mutual support. This is another goal of IHD. We can talk about walking outside the Standard Model, yet there is no denying our herd instincts. Embracing a different path becomes more likely and enjoyable when we are in a community of people who are doing the same. This is more necessary and more possible now than ever with the rise of podcasts, videocasts, and an infinite number of communication platforms.
Communities strengthen through common experience which makes the new features of our IHD Membership an even more powerful avenue for instilling strong values. As more members go through the 30x30 Challenge and embrace the experiences and lessons suggested on the monthly calendar, we hope to see a community grow of like-minded individuals who are able to offer their own unique experience to help others overcome similar obstacles. We all need more places to connect with people who care about living better lives. This is the point of the IHD Seekers.
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Thank you for reading and sharing with any kindred spirits. The IHD Seekers are planning our first virtual meeting for July 19th and an extended fast to coincide. We’d love to have you with us!
Life is too short to be normal,
Shane