The Ground of Being
Two summers ago I started an essay entitled The End Goal. It began initially as an attempt to honestly explore a question that I had been asked on multiple occasions following my ‘de-conversion’ from Christianity: if you don’t believe in God, from where do you derive your sense of right and wrong? It began as an entirely intellectual endeavor to define the ‘End Goal’ of life. The way I saw it was that as long as I could define such an End Goal, then all question of right and wrong would become a simple matter of what respectively served or opposed the End Goal. But I began to realize that merely being able to talk about the End Goal, merely pursuing it at an intellectual level, was nothing more than a tool to pursue the End Goal at the level of embodied action in the world. In other words, I would have to start practicing in my daily life what I was discovering at an intellectual level.
This is probably my greatest takeaway from the last two years of writing and has now become a substantial part of the essay, as I seek in part to deal with the relationship between our intellectual attempts to understand the world and our embodied attempts to relate to the world. On the one hand, I’ve been searching for a third-person view of the End Goal, the ‘view from nowhere,’ in order to get an intellectual grasp on a conceptual representation of the End Goal. On the other hand, I’ve been increasingly conscious of and intentional in realizing the End Goal in my own life, in the first-person view. The former third-person view, operating at the intellectual level, is descriptive in nature. It tells me what the End Goal is in the form of passive, propositional knowledge. The latter, the first-person view, operating at the level of embodied action, is prescriptive, and takes the form of an active participation in the world.
The conclusion I came to at the intellectual level was that, somewhat paradoxically, it is actually the level of embodied action that is more fundamental; that is, the End Goal is first an embodied way of relating to the world before it is represented conceptually. After all, one’s intellectual grasp of anything is only a grasp of what is merely a representation of that thing. The act of representing the End Goal is not itself the End Goal. Pointing to the End Goal by way of abstract description is not the same as pursuing the real thing.
Herein lies my biggest critique of the modern Western world, and of modern Western Christianity in particular. The critique is this: in our attempts to articulate the End Goal, we come to hold up our particular articulation of the End Goal as the End Goal itself; that is, we articulate the End Goal through some sort of representational structure—a concept, a system of belief—and then reduce the End Goal to a subscription to that particular system of belief. In other words, we make an idol out of the End Goal in the form of the concepts we use to grasp the End Goal. We emphasize the grasping of the concept rather than the pursuit of what the concept represents.
This is especially noticeable within the modern Western Church. As I’ve been exploring the nature of the End Goal I have found it to be taking on an increasingly religious character, such that in many ways it has become almost synonymous with God Himself. It was Carl Jung who, in part, defined God as the highest value in our hierarchy of values. Both God and the End Goal are the Ideal through which all our actions are judged. Both serve no higher purpose other than the fulfillment of themselves. And for both there is the eternal danger of idolatry in the attempt to grasp at an intellectual level. This idolatry, I argue, is one that is so prevalent in Western Christianity that without it one is hard-pressed to even be recognized as a Christian.
To be a Christian now means, first and foremost, to give intellectual assent to a particular system of belief, a belief system consisting of certain metaphysical propositions surrounding the existence and nature of God, historical claims regarding the life, death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and the theological doctrines concerning the cosmic transactional nature of this death and resurrection. It is a reflection of the way in which the West has altogether forgotten about the mystical, experiential, embodied aspect of the life of faith, which is in fact nothing short of the very essence of faith. Instead, faith has become equated with propositional belief, and trust in God—the God which is in some sense synonymous with the End Goal—fundamentally rooted in the intellect’s conceptual grasp of God. It is no wonder then that when that conceptual grasp is undermined by any significant intellectual reconstitution, as it was for me, the thin semblance of faith that was dependent on that grasp is altogether shattered.
The truth is that it is in the very experience of intellectual dissolution, of surrendering our grasp on the world, that true faith begins, for it is in those moments that the idols we have up to that point been clinging to as conceptual substitutes for God come crashing down, and for a few moments we cease to grasp and instead we simply are. And it’s in those moments that one realizes that there is something more fundamental than our understanding. It is what Paul Tillich calls the Ground of Being, a term I prefer in place of ‘God’ simply because it remains free of a certain connotative weight in a way that the word ‘God’ does not.
The intellect wants to know: what is that Ground? And yet, because it is itself rooted in that Ground, it cannot grasp it. Hence the inescapable reality of faith. Faith is not, as both the Fundamentalists and New Atheists would have it, a matter of belief in a set of propositions for which there is insufficient evidence for rational belief. Rather, faith is what remains when all conceptual grasp has been lost. Faith precedes belief. It is deeper than intellect.
The conclusion here is that the grasping intellect must ultimately be a tool in service to our embodied being, and our embodied being grounded in an ineffable faith, a conclusion I arrived at on the intellect’s own terms. But such a conclusion meant that if what I was learning from my exploratory writing was to be taken seriously, then I would have to start exploring not just at the level of the intellect, but at the experiential level as well, to integrate the intellect with the body and the unconscious, to know at the level of embodied experience the true Ground of Being from which all things have their beginning and to which all things return.
This process of integration, of making whole, is at one level of analysis the End Goal. It is the key principle underlying the proper function and adaptation of any autopoietic system, the goal of psychotherapy, of all spiritual practices. And so little by little I have begun to integrate my intellectual discoveries into the story of my embodied being, and my embodied experience with my intellectual framework, knitting the two together. Moving forward in this process, more and more gets integrated as one moves outward in scale. I started, timidly, to try and bring my family together, and especially to heal my relationship with my dad. Over time, my ability to be vulnerable grew as my courage grew and as my life became more integrated.
Getting out of my head, away from identification with the intellect, free from my habitual neurotic withdrawal from life—this is the trouble I’ve had for as long as I can remember. So in conjunction with my attempts to improve my relationships with my family and close friends in the last year, I sought out as well therapeutic practices for integrating the mind and body, one being Vipassana meditation, the other musically-guided psychedelic therapy.
I attended a 10-day Vipassana retreat this summer at the Northern California Vipassana Center. Vipassana is a Buddhist practice, a practice that the Buddha himself uniquely contributed to the world. It consists simply of observing physical sensations in the body, and that’s it. For ten days, and for ten hours each day, I sat and observed the sensations in my body. The schedule was rigid and intense. If I wasn’t meditating, I was either sleeping or eating. No phone, no reading, no writing, no listening to podcasts or music, and no talking, making eye contact with, or communicating in any way with my fellow meditators. It was just me, my mind, and my body. This was the intent of the whole course.
I will not write extensively about the ten days here, for there is too much to be said, but will sum up my experience for the purpose of this essay. The two keys to Vipassana are concentration and equanimity. By training through rigorous practice to focus solely on bodily sensations, you still the mind from its usual neurotic and imaginative wandering. And by practicing for hours each day at remaining equanimous, unreactive to whatever sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, one observes in the body, one comes gradually to the (increasingly embodied) realization of the impermanence of all things, that all sensations—all pain, all pleasure, all joy and suffering—will inevitably pass away. And in the acceptance of this law of impermanence comes a quiet peace and bodily presence.
But none of this was told to us at the beginning of the course, and none of the first-time students are expected to know any of this. It is in the tradition of Vipassana that the theory go hand in hand with the practice, never one without the other. That way you avoid making an idol out of the theory while failing to actually do the practice, and you also avoid the danger of blindly following a practice you know nothing about. So rather than having some idea of what the goal was ahead of time, or knowing what I was doing before I was doing it, I was learning the ‘why’ at the same time I was practicing the ‘how.’
As a result, there was throughout the course some doubt in my mind about the whole practice, and a whole lot of pain over the ten days that I seemed insufficiently prepared for. It turns out that sitting for an hour at a time without moving is extremely painful, regardless of what position you are sitting in. But that pain is built into the course for a reason, and this I only came to see later. It is through observing one’s pain openly and fully, without trying to distract oneself from it, and all the while remaining equanimous to it, that one becomes liberated from the attachments that keep us from engaging fully with life.
Despite the pain, despite the feelings of isolation, distraction, frustration, despite the misery that the majority of these ten days were for me, I stuck with it to the end, eventually letting go of all expectations, till all that remained was a simple determination to do the practice as I had been taught, and to do it as best I could.
And by day 9, I had arrived at that subtle and yet clear sense, a peace and presence with my body that I have never before felt, and yet it was a sense that felt truly natural, almost familiar. Everything in me was still, resulting in the purest childlike joy towards the simplest pleasures of life, without resisting their impermanent nature. I sat at lunch and ate with full presence and awareness with the food I was eating. I looked at the bowl of soup that I had yet to try and thought, Hmm, I wonder what this tastes like. I took a spoonful of the soup. Mmm, that’s so good!
I was also aware of my body to a degree that I’ve never felt before. The whole course felt like a gradual awakening to the sense that my body was actually alive, almost like it had its own personality or collection of personalities that I could relate to as I would another person, but not personalities entirely detached from my own. I was deeply integrated with my body and to a greater degree than normal was my body. I was no longer solely identified with that sense of self located somewhere behind the eyes and between the ears, but rather I was increasingly identified with an integrated chorus of personalities joined together throughout the whole of my nervous system, in the extremities of the body.
And in my deeply embodied peace and presence there came to mind the words from the book of Psalms:
Be still and know that I am God.
These words took on a new meaning in those moments. This was not merely an instruction to stop moving my body and remind myself at the intellectual level that God exists, as if doing such a thing might have any significant transformative effect on a person. No, this was something different entirely. To ‘know that I am God’ was not a passive kind of knowing in the propositional sense. It was not merely giving intellectual assent to the fact that God is God. It was, rather, an active knowledge in the participatory sense. In those moments of stillness I was knowing God by participating in God, in the Great Mystery of Being, not at the intellectual level, not at the emotional level, but at the level of the body.
In those moments God was not something other, an object to be witnessed with myself as the subject. Rather, God was both object and subject, the place where the dualistic division between the objective and subjective dissolves, where the two worlds collapse in on one another, such that in some sense I, the subject, was identified with God in those moments. I started to wonder who was saying those words from Psalms. Was it God saying those words? Was it me saying those words? Who was telling me to be still? Who was I knowing to be God? Who was I?
I found myself expressing the Psalm as the following:
Be still and know: I Am.
I can’t help but quote Alan Watts:
When we form images of God, they’re all really exhibitions of our lack of faith, something to hold onto, something to grasp. How firm a foundation, what lies underneath us, the rock of ages, or whatever—Ein feste Burg. But when we don’t grasp, we have the attitude of faith. If you let go of all the idols, you will of course discover that what this unknown is, which is the foundation of the universe, is precisely you. It’s not the you you think you are. It’s not your opinion of yourself. It’s not your idea or image of yourself. It’s not the chronic sense of muscular strain which we usually call ‘I.’ You can’t grasp it. Of course not. Why would you need to? Suppose that you could. What would you do with it? And who would do what with it? You can never get at it. So there’s that profound central mystery, and the attitude of faith is to stop chasing it, stop grabbing it, because if that happens, the most amazing things follow. But all these ideas of the ‘spiritual,’ the ‘godly,’ as this attitude of ‘must,’ is not the only way of being religious and of relating to the ineffable mystery that underlies our self and the world.
After breakfast and cleanup on day 11 I packed my things, got in my car, and put on The Ground by Ola Gjeilo, a choral piece I had been hearing in my head since day 3, and yet the title had escaped me until that morning as I was leaving. I pulled out onto the mountain road just as the piece began. Never in my life had I experienced the degree of joy I experienced in the moments that followed. I was overwhelmed with the beauty of the trees, the music, the peace, the presence. I began to laugh and cry at the same time. It was too much to not express in some way.
The remainder of my three-hour drive was filled with little moments of appreciation that I could not have had without the presence and peace that my ten days had given me. The most remarkable thing to me was the relationship I had with the music I was listening to. It felt almost like my identity was wrapped up in the music. I had the subtlest sense that the music was in me, like it was spatially located inside my body, or else that I was located inside of it. Somehow, I was united with the music through my body, but it was not something that can ever be properly articulated. Like the Ground of Being, it must be experienced to be truly known.
Three weeks later, I took a low dose of psilocybin mushrooms, about 1.25 grams. By comparison, a full dose is about 3.5 grams. As the effects were starting to hit me, I put in my earbuds, laid down on the floor, closed my eyes, and listened to a music playlist I had created specifically for this occasion. There were vague geometric patterns slowly taking shape before the darkness of my closed eyelids, continuously dissolving, changing shape, making way for something new. And slowly it was as if the depths of the unconscious rose up to meet the intellect in a kind of dance. And all became one.
The music from The Return of the King came on, from Aragorn’s coronation, when Middle Earth has been restored and all is at peace. And I became fully immersed in a story. Not just one story, but layers of stories that were all flowing in and through one another, and I was moving through them fluidly. They were stories reminiscent of the world of the Lord of the Rings, about fellowship, particularly fellowship between men, of which I was a part, fully embedded within. They were stories of adventure, and the whole point of the story was the adventure. I was connected to the men in these stories through the simple adventurous engagement with life.
Then came the theme from The Patriot, by John Williams, and I was whisked away with the sound of the violin solo, onto prairie lands, where clothes hung from a clothesline in front of a farmhouse, a breeze blowing through the tall grass. I was to take my place as a man and care for all of this, for the land, for my family. I walked beside my father in this story and learned from him. This is how it always is. My ancestors alive in me, and I carrying on their work. Of course that is what we are all here to do. How could it be any other way?
The ordinary division between the five senses and between emotion and imagination and thought was dissolved, and all that was being experienced was of a certain unity that can only be described as a story, like a dream, but more real than a dream. Layers and layers of stories, flowing through and between one another, and I flowing through and between them. This was it. I could see it all. The eternal unfolding of stories. An ongoing, ever-changing, adaptive work of art. And it was beautiful.
Everything had its place. The good, the bad, the joy, the pain, the saint, the sinner, the mother and father, the child. And encompassing it all: peace. Nothing was shut out of the Unfolding. Of course it was this way. How could it be any other way?
There was birth, the naked forms of the people I love, awakening from their primordial slumber. Their bodies were hidden from me behind a sort of frosted glass, but their feet I could see, and I knew each of them by their feet, and felt the purest love for them.
I saw the feet of my dad. Nothing more, just the simple and pure presence of his bare feet. And he was saying to me, I love you. I’m proud of you. I love you. I’m proud of you. And of course he did. I always knew that. And here he could finally express this to me, say everything that he wanted to say yet has never been able to, and it was good.
A song called Peace by David Tolk.
He and I walked barefoot along a beach, side-by-side, our arms around each other. And all the things that needed to be said but hadn’t yet been said were said there in the simple act of walking alongside one another. And the tears came and there was peace.
I stood beside him and waited for him to take his place so that I could take mine after him. He seemed to be saddened, sorrowful that he has for some reason been unable to do so. And I wept for him in his pain. It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. And there was peace.
Some of the stories were taking me to someone, someone waiting for me at the end of the road. It was different people in different moments, but all of whom men who embodied a certain archetypal masculine wisdom. It was as if the essence of this masculine wisdom was what was waiting for me in these stories, and I could only apprehend it in the form of specific people or characters I had encountered in my life. I was swept through these stories, and over each story presided this archetypal wisdom in the form of the masculine heroes of the past, and of the greatest works of fiction.
And the essence of their wisdom was love. It was grace, it was understanding, it was a calm presence and peace, a willingness to do the work that needed to be done in order to continue the Unfolding. It was the hero fighting for the safety and renewal of his people. It was the father getting down on his knees to comfort the son, to encourage and discipline him. It was an infinite solidarity with the suffering of the world. Of course this was wisdom. How could it be any other way?
A Gaelic Blessing by John Rutter
One of the most prominent men was Jesus. Not the Christian God, not a mythological figure, but just the historical man from Nazareth. He was walking, surrounded by people whom he was teaching, laughing with, breaking bread with. Nothing more. And of course there was nothing more. To walk, to teach and to learn, to laugh and to cry, to eat and to drink—that is the whole point of it all. Of course it’s the whole point. How could it be any other way?
Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the gentle night to you.
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Deep peace of Christ,
of Christ the light of the world to you.
Deep peace of Christ to you.
My intellect emerged from the flow of stories, searching, grasping, trying to understand, ensuring I wouldn’t forget. And of course it was. That is its job. It too was part of the Unfolding, not above it but within it. And there was grace and gratitude for the intellect. To learn to let go and return to the larger flow when the time comes to do so—this was the only lesson here. Yet in the meantime the intellect wanted to know, out of all these stories, which one was most fundamental? Which one would serve as the ground through which I could navigate this flow of stories, through which I could know when to let go of one and enter into another? And the answer came: the grounding story in which this eternal Unfolding is rooted is the story of peace. How could it be any other way?
But the neuroticism. The self-consciousness. Here I was experiencing the positive side of reality, but I could easily flip over to its negative underbelly. What then when that happened? What if I lost this peace, as surely I was bound to? How would I find it again?
But of course there will be the negative. Of course there will be neuroticism. It too has its role to play in the Unfolding, in maintaining, in defending against that which would have an end to the Unfolding. But it is not the most fundamental story.
And what about those who would bring about an end to it all, the ones who would take innocent life, the ones who would curse this world and everything in it? How can even they have a place? They have a place because the stories of resentment have their place, the stories of anger, even hatred. Of course they do. But somewhere along the way these people got stuck in these stories, losing sight of the more fundamental presence of peace that would have allowed them to let go and return to participating fully in the Unfolding.
If this peace were to be something I could fully inhabit at all times, I felt as if I could actually live like Jesus, fully committed to the redemption of the world, all in on bringing about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, fully immersed in and engaged with this eternal Unfolding. Somewhere within me now, forming both the ground and aim of my being, is a wise, old, compassionate man, the embodiment of this peace, a man who has seen it all and is at peace with it all, and whose role to play in the world is to guide others in this peace.
Nothing is ever shut out, for the Unfolding encompasses all, and all is one. There is joy and there is suffering, and surrounding all is peace. I cannot fathom a more beautiful vision of the Ground of Being, that of a Heaven which takes Hell into itself, and from it weaves a still more beautiful story.
But of course.
How could it be any other way?