I can be pleasantly going about my day and suddenly something makes me angry: A driver cuts me off at an intersection; a pushy telemarketer calls; I discover I have been cheated, lied to, or the subject of false and malicious gossip. The anger rushes over me and I want to strike back; retaliate; get even.
I cannot help the arising of these feelings; they happen before I am aware they are coming.
But I can affect what happens next. I can make a conscious decision to restrain my anger or redirect it toward productive action. I can even use it as a trigger; for instance, by trying to remember each time I feel anger to use that energy to accomplish something worthwhile. I can even make a decision to attempt to radically shift my anger toward love or compassion, as many sages have advised. The Psalmist said: “Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.”[1] In a similar vein the Buddha warned, “Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is an ancient and eternal law.”[2] So when I feel anger coming up, instead of organizing around it I can attempt to follow the counsel of Socrates: “One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.” Jesus made this ancient law vivid and explicit: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.” [3]
What Is Character
Spontaneous feelings seem to arise from a mixture of biology and enculturation. On this point almost all agree, mystics and materialists alike. After this point, however, the views of those who believe there is an underlying harmony dramatically veer away from biological and cultural determinism. Determinists assert that all our actions spring from biological processes, or enculturations, but this ignores the huge gap that can intervene between spontaneous feelings and eventual action. The wider this gap, the more likely it is that people will react differently in similar circumstances, even those who have been enculturated in similar ways. This difference stems from conscious choice, combined with efforts made over time to shape the direction one’s actions will take.
In trying to be a certain kind of person, by making efforts to act in certain ways and not others, we move into the realm of “character.” Much of one’s character begins with upbringing, of course; most early actions are molded by the important figures in one’s early life. But as time goes on, each person begins to make choices as to which traits to encourage and which to discourage, so that over time similarities can and often do give way to very different character patterns.
There are attempts to explain these choices through biology, but all I have read are nothing but “promissory biological determinism,” which says: There are nothing but unproven speculations in biology in support of this view, but I have faith that ultimately we will be able to prove them. (I adapted this from Sir John C. Eccles phrase, “promissory materialism.” Eccles, a neurophysiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, said: “We regard promissory materialism as superstition without a rational foundation. The more we discover about the brain, the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena, and the more wonderful do both the brain events and the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists … who often confuse their religion with their science.” [4] Philosopher of science Karl Popper, a friend and colleague of Eccles, is also known for the use of “promissory materialism.”)
Skeptico: What are you trying to say?
Wisdom Seeker: All attempts by biology to explain choices made after reflection, choices to act one way versus another, have been woefully inadequate. Severe early disadvantages in life are usually predicted to bring about failed lives, but there are many, many examples of the reverse—those who grew up in the worst of circumstances becomes the most honored and respected among us. And of course, many who had all the advantages at the beginning of their lives failed miserably. Importantly, no one can predict which will be which, in either case.
Noting we know has been able to explain the wide divergences in the lives by those with similar background and upbringing. Among both the privileged and the disadvantaged, choices make a difference—choices that cannot be predicted. One fascinating finding has been that the most common factor among those with difficult early lives who later found success was one adult who inspired or challenged them to be more. But to accept and rise to an inspiration or a challenge requires many choices, choices that cannot be traced to biology or to very early enculturation.
Most everyone agrees that our first impulses to action comes from biology and from early training. But we humans then have the ability to reflect, consider, and choose. And how this will play out is unknown. Theories that try to explain this by biology alone fit into Eccles category of “a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists … who often confuse their religion with their science.”
New York Times columnist David Brooks captures all this beautifully in his article “They Had It Made,” discussing the decades-long study of a group of young men who entered Harvard in the late 1930s (one of whom was president John F. Kennedy).[5]
The study followed the young men throughout their lives, discovering that how each turned out was unpredictable. Brooks writes:
The categories of journalism and the stereotypes of normal conversation are paltry when it comes to predicting a life course. Their lives played out in ways that would defy any imagination save Dostoyevsky’s. A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success.
Brooks goes on to recount the story of one man who seemed particularly gifted, with one researcher writing of him while he was still in college, he “exemplifies the qualities of a superior personality: stability, intelligence, good judgment, health, high purpose, and ideals.” This promise did not materialize, however. Brooks reports:
By 31, he had developed hostile feelings toward his parents and the world. By his mid-30s, he had dropped off the study’s radar. Interviews with his friends after his early death revealed a life spent wandering, dating a potentially psychotic girlfriend, smoking a lot of dope and telling hilarious stories.
Two conclusions in the article stand out, strongly reinforcing the difficulty of predicting through biology or enculturation how an individual life will turn out: “The man who is careful and meticulous in one stage of life is unrecognizable in another context,” and, “There is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stands mute.”
Virtues, Values, and Morality
Skeptico: If not biology or enculturation, what causes the way we act?
Wisdom Seeker: The wisdom traditions say that each of us can develop character by adopting and practicing virtues.
Skeptico: What are virtues?
Wisdom Seeker: The traditions say they are ways of organizing our thoughts and actions that will guide us toward living in harmony with the ground of being.
Intimately related to virtues are higher values. What people value involves whatever they make significant or meaningful in their lives. In that sense, one can value power, getting drunk, or belittling other people, but few would label these as virtues. But think of higher values, and most would consider these to be similar to virtues. In this context, morality is to live by a set of values, to choose a group of virtues and attempt to live them as best one can.
To have character, then, is to attempt to be faithful to a set of values or virtues. The complication is that what seems moral to one person might be considered immoral by another; different people have different values and adopt different virtues, which leads back to a fundamental question: Are some virtues universal? The wisdom traditions answer emphatically: Yes! They all assert that some values are universal and grounded in an objective truth, and that at times each one of us can get in touch with what is right and true and good. We can learn to hear and pay attention to the voice of conscience, the still, small voice within.
Of course, among the major traditions the specific virtues that are emphasized vary. Perhaps this has to do with the needs of a particular time and place, the specific problems with which a culture is grapping. (A culture that has a great deal of thievery might focus on different virtues than one wracked by murderous family feuds). While noting the differences, though, it is important to recognize the sizeable overlap in the virtues between all the traditions. Here, one virtue is emphasized by all: How we are to treat our fellow human beings:
Hinduism: This is the sum of duty; Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you. Mahabharata 5:1517.
Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find harmful. UdanaVarga 5:18.
Christianity: All things whatsoever ye would that [others] should do to you, do ye even so to them. Matthew 7:12.
Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving kindness; do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you. Analects 15:23.
Islam: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. Sunnah.
Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the entire law; all the rest is commentary. Talmud, Shabbat 3la.
Taoism: Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. T’ai Shang Kan Ying P ‘ ien.
Zoroastrianism: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself. Dadistan-Idinik 94.5.
Given the incredible similarity of these core teachings, it is hard to believe that they did not arise from a common source. One possibility would be that the latter borrowed from the earliest (probably the Zoroastrian). The other possibility, though, is that each came from a direct encounter with the field of knowing that is shared by all; that each is an independent message derived from the common ground of being, then adapted by each tradition.
Can I Help Being Angry or Depressed?
Skeptico: You said we can’t help getting angry or feeling fear, jealousy, hatred, or envy. But I thought we were supposed to get rid of those feelings.
Wisdom Seeker: There are two distinct levels, and it is crucial to understand how to respond in a healthy way at each level. First:
(1) Feelings are just feelings: Out of biology, enculturation, and choices made in the past, feelings spontaneously arise. Whatever their source, when feelings arise they are just there, and you cannot control that they are there. You can suppress them or refuse to consciously acknowledge them, but this is seldom a good strategy: Psychology has shown over and over that repression and unconsciousness lead to neurosis, depression, anxiety, and sudden outbursts of destructive actions. A feeling that has arisen, whether you like it or not, is a fact of your existence, and to deny the facts of your existence is not healthy. It is even likely that to repress or deny a feeling gives it more power, like keeping a lid on a pressure cooker too long—the pressure continues to build until the pot explodes. Repressing feelings works like that.
Another common respond to unwanted feelings like anger, sexual urges, envy, and the like is to get mad at oneself for having them. But there is no value in getting down on yourself for something that is normal. A feeling that arises is simply a natural result of all the factors in your life up to that moment. Since you can’t change what has already happened, the healthy response is to accept the feeling as the raw material of your life.
Skeptico: So you are saying I should just wallow in whatever negative feelings come up?
Wisdom Seeker: No, that is not what I mean to say. But your biology and past conditioning, molded by your own decisions up to this point, determine what will arise in this moment, and none of those things are under your control. After a feeling has arisen, however, there are many different responses to choose from, and those choices are at least partially under your control, which leads to the second level:
(2) Working with the story: The first step when a feeling arises is to decide what you consider the appropriate response. Some options: let your feelings rip, under the belief that you have a right to all your feelings and repression is unhealthy; try to repress or deny them because you don’t like them; assume that all your actions are determined by your biology and try using drugs to modify feelings you don’t like. Each of these has some value, but there is another possibility—to assume that each feeling is an opportunity to learn and grow.
Making this choice, the starting point is to recognize that most feelings have to do with a story, either imprinted by your culture or put together within yourself in response to the events of your life. With this assumption, if you don’t like a feeling, begin searching for the story in yourself from which that feeling comes. If you can identify the story, you can work with it.
Thought Experiment – Working With a Story
After you have identified the operative story, consider whether you are sure it includes the whole picture, or whether there might be some factors you have not yet included. Next, ask what the feelings might be trying to teach you. Then consider if this is a story that you want to organize around, and if it is not, put together another story that fits the facts just as well, or even better.
Skeptico: What result have you gotten with this approach?
Wisdom Seeker: I have done this hundreds of times, and I have never discovered a story that contained all the facts, or one that could not be put together in a way that fit the facts more completely than the old story. Further, when I have put together a new story, in most cases doing so affected my life in a positive way. (Not always though; I have made mistakes in working with my stories. When mistakes are made, however, I can always go back and work with the story again.)
Another way to say all this is that when a feeling arises in me, rather than deny it or condemn myself for having it, I can reflect on the feeling, try to understand where it comes from, and consciously choose to expand my understanding. Most importantly, I can begin to replace the underlying story that gave rise to the feeling with a broader and healthier one. In this process, the biological level is involved, for there is evidence that our feelings lay down neuronal pathways, and that once these pathways have been built, they tend to used over and over. Further, the more they are used the more prominent they become in experience.
This is one reason that denial and repression are not effective: The pathways are there, whether you acknowledge them or not. You can deny to yourself that practicing the piano is laying down learning pathways in the psyche, but the pathways are still there. But understanding this leads to an effective strategy in relation to unhealthy thoughts and feelings: Change the subject. Begin to lay down new, positive pathways by creating new images about who you are and new habits that lead in the direction of who you are trying to become. Choose virtues and practice them, and in so doing you will build new and more healthy patterns and pathways in your life.
Skeptico: But how do I know which pathways are healthy?
Wisdom Seeker: To make such a decision always involves conscious thought and reflection. This is the point at which explanations from biology fail. I have never encountered a biological explanation that seems convincing as to why a person acted in a particular way after reflection on a feeling. In the same circumstance, different people act in spectacularly different ways. Some biologists say they will eventually be able to explain these diverse reactions, but such claims always have the flavor of John Eccles promissory materialism.
One major reason is that when we start to reflect on a feeling, the ego begins to play a role, and there is no understanding of the ego in biology.
Skeptico: Why is that?
Wisdom Seeker: It’s simple enough: The ego is a mental construct, not made of biological components (at least as far as anyone has been able to discover). Where is the ego in the brain? What material is it made of? How is the material stuff in the brain configured into an ego? Just to ask these questions makes vivid how the ego is not a material thing—which is why reductionist biologists tend to ignore it.
But ignoring the ego does not get rid of it, just as ignoring the wind does not eliminate the wind. If, however, the ego is a construct, then the stories of out lives, the material with which the ego works, are not material things either, and thus completely defy all biological explanation. Our stories are a part of consciousness, and there is no biological explanation for consciousness.
Skeptico: If it is not biological, what is it?
Wisdom Seeker: The wisdom of the ages says that we human beings are capable of making choices that will move us toward alignment with higher values. We do this by developing character, and we develop character by adopting and practicing virtues.
This wisdom has the merit of corresponding perfectly with my experience. Any time I reflect on a feeling that has come up, my internal sense is that I can make a conscious choice as to how to act in relation to it. (I can’t keep the feeling from coming up, but I can choose what I will do next.) So when anger arises in me, I have the experience of being able to choose what I will do. I might want to kill someone or beat a person up, but many times I have chosen not to do so. I have instead tried to understand their point of view, and even at times made an effort to remember a time when I did something just as bad as the action that is making me angry.
Thought Experiment – Role reversal
The next time you get angry at another driver, try to remember a time while driving that you did something just as offensive to someone else. For the advanced course, go through this exercise with something that bothers you that another does every day.
The belief that we have the ability to make a choice in how we will respond to a feeling is fairly universal. Furthermore, the assumption that we can make conscious choices is the basis upon which societies are organized. Laws would be of no use if societies did not assume that their members had the capacity to choose between possible actions. This is especially true in democracies, which is the reason many thought of the early government of the United States of America as the “republic of virtue.” Democracy in part depends on a mutual acceptance of living by virtues—if each person is constantly attempting to take advantage of the system, to break the laws if they can get away with it, democracy breaks down and only a police state can create order.
In my own experience, from the study of human nature and talking with many people, I have become convinced that one overwhelming experience of being human involves the ability (at least at times) to make a conscious choice as to how we will respond to events in the world, as well as to feelings within ourselves. This conclusion is even confirmed by the actions of several people I know who argue for a strict determinism, but whose actions and explanations of their actions are never simply deterministic. For instance, they do not explain the particular person they choose for a spouse or significant other that way. They do not explain the career they have chosen that way, or the movies they prefer or the books they choose to read. Most tellingly, I have never heard someone say that the reason they wrote a book about biology was that their genes made them do it. My experience is that they believe that their views are “right.” But if their genes made them write the book, how do they know their view is “right?” In the biological model, genes are always throwing up new variations, but most of them do not work. If it is just biology, then the odds are extraordinarily great that their views are simply another failed experiment.
Think about this: If each person’s genes are making that person do what they do, then my genes are making me take a different point of view from the determinist’s. Further, the genes of the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived made them take a different point of view from the determinist view. What, then, is the point of writing books or making arguments to convince others about determinism? Surely they don’t believe they are going to change my genes’ beliefs by their arguments! So it seems pretty clear that in writing a book or making an argument they are appealing to my conscious mind and assuming I can choose to change my mind, although their argument denies this very assumption that is implicit in their actions. The fact is, every biologist I know or have read, no matter how deterministic, acts as if their ideas are at least partly their creation and that they personally have something to do with the process. They do not act as if they believe they are programmed robots. In my more irascible moments, I like to ask determinists: “Did your genes force you to write that article?”
The Ego and Morality
Skeptico: If the biological level doesn’t control what I do, how do you think it happens?
Wisdom Seeker: Virtues are the guidelines the wisdom traditions have given us to help us develop character. At first it is strictly a matter of ego work: Most of the examples I have heard of people with good or strong character involve those who steadfastly follow the values or virtues given to them by their culture. To use the Freudian model, the enculturated superego unconsciously insists that a person follow a set of virtues, and the ego, somewhat consciously, works very hard to follow those proscriptions.
The first level of the process I call cultural morality, and it goes like this: (1) We are enculturated into virtues that our tradition says comes from a universal ground. (2) Some of our urges and desires rebel against this enculturation. (3) We make a series of choices as to whether to follow our urges or to follow our enculturations. (4) If the enculturation we received was a relatively good one, and our ego chooses to follow it and implements this decision reasonably well, we develop character, cultural character. In this framework, if our culture was a reasonably healthy one, the values and virtues it gives help us to make choices that will bring us into harmony with the shared ground upon which they are based.
The reason it makes a great deal of difference whether one believes that the wisdom traditions truly capture at least part of an objective ground of values might be stated this way: Imagine a small boy enculturated to be a pickpocket or a girl enculturated to be a sex slave. Each might follow their enculturations extremely well, but they would not be seen by most of us as having character, for the values into which they have been enculturated are not primarily organized around that deep shared ground. These are of course extreme examples, but how do any of us know for sure whether the values into which we have been enculturated are really healthy?
Skeptico: I guess that is why you said there is a second level. What is it?
Wisdom Seeker: I call the second level enlightened morality. A person who is working to become more conscious begins to question some of the enculturated rules and begins to develop his or her own beliefs about what is truly virtuous. If there is a shared ground of values, then those who are becoming conscious can begin to access for themselves the higher values that objectively exist, and can increasingly choose to live and act from those values. (This is a potential for everyone, even those raised in unhealthy cultures—so the pickpocket, as well as those raised in cultures of fear, anger, resentment, envy, hatred, or greed—have the possibility of a healthy life.)
This process involves a great deal of ego work as well. Some quarrel with using the word ego here, asserting that when a person has an experience of the ground of values, and from that experience has a sense of how to live, then that person has no need for ego involvement. I agree that when someone is in an out-of-time moment, in touch with the ground of being, that person can act from a place that needs no ego. But hardly anyone stays in such a place permanently (although a lot of folks try to convince themselves they are still there even though they have fallen back into ego consciousness).
As the ego returns (whether one acknowledges that is happening or not), as soon a person begins to reenter the everyday world with even the slightest trace of expectation or desire, then some aspect of the self has to organize one’s life in the world of time; some part of the self has to make choices as to whether to follow the values one touched in the out-of-time moment or whether to follow the urges and desires that are coming up right now. And the part of us that psychology tends to us to indicate the aspect of us that does this organizing is the “ego.”
You could of course call this organizing part the higher self (some do), and as long as your definitions are shared with those with whom you are talking, this can work. In communicating with a broader audience, however, and especially with the world of psychology, the word ego is more useful. In addition, using ego for this purpose reserves the phrase “higher self” for times one is truly free of ego influence and the need for ego activity.
At this level of character, then, as we make increasingly conscious choices about the virtues we will practice and as we become increasingly effective at implementing our choices (which have come from moments of being in touch with the ground of being), we move into a deeper and deeper connection to and harmony with the shared ground of being. Our pattern of choices creates a set of habits, and slowly we create our character, beyond the effects of enculturation. As Charles Reade described it, “Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character.”
The difference between cultural morality or character and enlightened character can be sharpened through examples. I have known a number of people through the years who had strong character, most of whom lived primarily from cultural character. Each had been given a strong sense of right and wrong while growing up, and each had made a commitment to living by the values and virtues given. I often respected them, but at the same time could see how their character was somewhat rigid, and that at times they followed values that did not seem to me to be healthy or wise, for the people around them or for themselves. Considering historical figures, Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill seem a bit this way to me, as well as a number of those who fought for causes they believed in but did not seem to recognize the validity of other points of new.
On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela developed a much larger measure of enlightened character. Each changed considerably in terms of the values they believed in and lived, and each developed great understanding and even compassion for those who had a different point of view. This did not keep them from acting on their own beliefs, but they could do so with a different attitude and energy than those who are righteous.
Another way to approach the distinction between the two types of morality is to say that cultural morality comes from following the morality of one’s culture, while enlightened morality flows forth from a person who has personally connected with the ground from which values arise, and is trying to live from the virtues seen in that experience. Growing out of this personal glimpse, there is a “felt sense of rightness” as to how to act in the world of time that goes beyond rules and prescriptions. Both types are acting morally, but the source of their morality is different.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the morality of the first comes through the filter of culture, while the second comes from a direct personal experience of the ground from which values arise. (Having a direct experience does not prevent mistakes, however, for both types of morality must be implemented in the world by the ego, and the ego can always make mistakes in its interpretation of what the higher self glimpsed in an out-of-time moment.)
Skeptico: Aren’t both types of morality based on a feeling, a feeling of what is right or what one should do? So what is the difference in the tow types of morality?
Wisdom Seeker: Good question, which goes back to the difference between the common ways we use the word feeling versus what I am trying to capture with “felt sense of rightness.” I might feel I am in love with someone I recently met, but that love is usually not coming from the core of my being, and can quickly change. The next day that person might do something that offends me and I fall just as quickly out of love. Quick love is a strong feeling, but it often comes from meeting someone that fulfills a fantasy. If that person then does something to break the projection, the “love” can just as quickly fall away.
This is very different from feeling that one wants to make a commitment to love someone over the long term; having a feeling that one is willing to work hard to fulfill such a commitment, even if the relationship goes through difficult times. Think of making a commitment to love a partner, then going through many struggles, illnesses, or separation. Or think of the commitment involved in loving a child who has many problems or difficulties. Much of this kind of love happens at the cultural character level, when a person has been raised to believe that loving parents, spouse’ or children no matter what is a high value, and so many people try to do this as best they can, even through difficult circumstances.
At a completely different level, consider someone who has worked long and hard to free herself from cultural conditioning, and has mostly done so, but then makes a commitment from a “felt sense of rightness” to sacrifice time and energy, or even her life, for a person or a group of people she has chosen to love. This is enlightened character. Many of the saints of history fall into this category. Their sacrifices for others did not seem to be just from cultural conditioning, but from a profound commitment made from a place of deep understanding.
This is much less common in the political arena, but I think this is exactly the reason Abraham Lincoln has been such a powerful figure in American history. Lincoln suffered major periods of depression throughout his life, almost succumbing to it numerous times. During all this he became more and more conscious of what he was choosing in light of that depression, and finally made choice to use whatever time and energy he had left to do something worthwhile. Out of that “felt sense of rightness” came his ability to overcome the enormous trials of the civil war without sacrificing his ideals or his humanity, and to keep his eye on the ideals for which he believed the war was being fought.
Making a moral commitment to fully love another person, fight for a cause, or serve others can be done at either the cultural or the enlightened level, but there is a difference. When at the cultural level, one is overriding and keeping unconscious all the currents within that want to go in different directions. Such a one can be highly moral, but the morality only comes through great effort, and there is inevitable inner turmoil. And sometimes-conflicting emotions will break out and cause such a person to do unexpected and not very moral things. When one has reached the place of enlightened morality, however, one’s actions flow naturally from a deep center, so that the feeling one has is: “this is who I am at the core of my being.” One is then in harmony within oneself through and through, as well as in harmony with the ground of being.
Confucius said it well. He believed that to live morally was to be in harmony with the Way of Heaven, but that in one’s younger years it took great effort to do so. He reported, though that as he moved into maturity, the began to know more and more clearly “the biddings of heaven.” And after reaching the age of 70, he finally reached a place where he “could follow the dictates of my own heart, for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.” In other words, his whole being was fully aligned with the biddings of heaven. This is enlightened morality. Character helps us do the right thing until we can do it from a place of being fully aligned with the underlying harmony.
Skeptico: You said earlier that I should accept the feelings that come up in me, whatever they are. Doesn’t that mean I will still be spending a lot of time with anger, fear, jealousy, greed, depression, and the rest?
Wisdom Seeker: This is what happens: If you consciously choose to focus on healthy patterns and encourage those patterns with practice, the feelings and thoughts arising in you begin to change. Unhealthy things still arise, but less frequently than before. As you create new patterns and work to strengthen them, these patterns become more and more central to who you are. For example, someone growing up in a culture focused on dog fighting would naturally become interested in it (betting on it, raising dogs to fight). Many thoughts and feelings would likely arise around dog fighting. Imagine, however, that such a person had a favorite dog that was seriously injured in a fight, and began to question the assumptions that led to the world of dog fighting.
Imagine further that, after reflection, that person made a decision to focus instead on training dogs to be companions for people. Gradually, as this change was implemented, the thoughts and feelings that came up would begin to change. Over time such a person might occasionally remember the excitement of a dogfight and want to experience it again. Then, however, without denying or condemning the feeling, she reminds herself of why she changed her focus and begins to direct her thoughts toward the positive experiences she has had with the dogs and their new owners encountered in her new career.
It is like this with all feelings, and thoughts as well. If we can develop sufficient consciousness to begin to see which are leading in a positive direction, and which are not, we can begin to make the choice to gently direct our attention in chosen ways. Then, gradually, when a thought or feeling arises that does not seem to be useful or leading in a fulfilling direction, we can shift our attention more and more rapidly. As this ability to shift becomes a deep habit, it happens closer and closer to the moment that fear or anger or despair arise, sometimes without our even having to think about doing it. Eventually, some Buddhist traditions say, we will come to sense that when an arising begins, what is there is just pure energy, with no judgment attached. And if we are practiced enough, we can experience it as pure energy that is available to be turned in the direction we have chosen to focus. An example is given of the Dalai Lama, who was told sad news, and onlookers saw a moment of sadness cross his face, but which was quickly replaced by his radiant good cheer.
Skeptico: I can see how to do that with things that are not very strong in me, but I can’t see how to do it with fear or anger; they just come and take me over. I can’t control that.
Wisdom Seeker: It requires a lot of work, but there is reason to believe it can be done with just about everything we feel. For instance, it has long been thought that the startle response (when we hear a loud noise close by and jump or yell), is automatic, the hardest reaction to affect, and that it is beyond the power of consciousness to affect. But in a study involving a meditator of forty years, Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, One researcher, Paul Ekman, reported that when a sound as loud as a gunshot was generated very close by Ricard’s head as he was deep in meditation, the researcher did not see any response. (Apparently there was a very slight response detected by instruments.)[6]
Imagine, though, being able to almost completely stay in the state you are in, hardly reacting to a gunshot close to your head. If we humans are capable of that, it seems quite possible that we can learn to work with and change our reactions to most anything that arises, either within ourselves or in the world.
Doing the Work
Skeptico: OK, I see the advantage of working with the things that come up in me, rather than just reacting to them. Give me a simple version of how I do it.
Wisdom Seeker: The advice of the wisdom figures of history is: Develop character, cultivate a set of virtues, adopt a moral code and practice it. Even after a direct experience of what is really important, there are many currents that will pull you back into identification with ego stories and concepts, so follow Rumi’s advice:
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell. Don’t go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where
the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep!
Skeptico: Rumi always seems pretty obscure to me. What does he mean?
Wisdom Seeker: I think he is saying that falling back into identification with the ego is to go back to sleep, that there is an opening to a broader consciousness that is always there, always available, but you must make an effort to stay awake to continue to experience it.
Skeptico: What about, “You must ask for what you really want?”
Wisdom Seeker: The clearer you can become about wanting to stay in higher stages of consciousness, the more likely it becomes that you will be able to do so. Many teachers have said that if you ask for realization fervently enough, it will be yours. An Indian sage had a pupil who asked for enlightenment. The teacher took him to the river, suddenly seized him and caste his head under water. As he held them there for what seemed like an eternity, the student began to struggle desperately, trying to raise his head and get air into his lungs. When, with all his strength he finally broke free and gasped a breath of air, the teacher said calmly: “When you want realization as much as you wanted that breath, it shall be yours.” Another famous teacher put it this way: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”[7]
Skeptico: In fact, I experienced a unitive state once, but you are exactly right: I soon fell back into identification with my ego stories. And I don’t have the drive for realization the teacher in the story above was looking for. So what do I do?
Wisdom Seeker: Pay attention. Observe what is happening as you begin to fall back. The ego has several primary stories and will try to get you to identify with one of them. If you refuse, it will try another. If you can remain attentive, however, you will be able to watch each story as it comes up, and you can then decide whether you want to engage or not. Many urges and desires will parade through your psyche, vying for attention, pulling and pushing at you. Focus on them, make them conscious, and you will be able to see how the many conflicts between various ego stories, and between the many different urges and desires. The more you see this, the more you will be able to choose which currents are important for your life, and which not so important—or even destructive.
To help in this effort, the wisdom traditions have offered valuable guidance; practices that will help you develop grooves to carry you along in the right direction. Every tradition suggests things to do and things not to do that can help. The problem is, this guidance can harden into rules that become suffocating; rules that become harsh and brittle in the hands of unenlightened guides who mistake signposts for the final reality. The rules are not the thing, but can be useful if tempered by wisdom. If applied with a firm but gentle hand, they can help you avoid mistakes and mitigate the harm you might otherwise visit upon yourself and others.
Thus honoring the guidelines of a tradition with regard to food, drink, sex, honesty, humility, courage, service and the rest can be valuable in keeping you from getting lost in your trek up the mountain of salvation or awakening. The guidelines of the traditions are maps, drawn by explorers who went before to help you avoid unproductive trails. Furthermore, all the maps suggest that practice is necessary, and all the great wisdom figures of history set examples by undertaking intense periods of practice themselves. Emphasizing the importance of practice, Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do.” His advice, therefore, for creating a fulfilled life was to practice the virtues until that practice brought what you sought. Confucius emphasized that developing character was a life-long undertaking, the only way to a fulfilled life. In his view, all people have pretty much the same opportunity for fulfillment, are “born pretty much alike.” It was just practice that led to different outcomes between those who were successful in the game of life and those who were not. John Dryden put it this way: “We first pick our habits, and then our habits pick us.”
Skeptico: But I gave up on all the traditions long ago; the ones I knew seemed warped and unhealthy. So what do I do now?
Wisdom Seeker: Do the work yourself. Develop character and practice virtue as best you can. Avoid easy answers and discourage self-indulgence. Choose to be honest with yourself. All these are central to the work the traditions give us, and anyone can undertake them, whether in a tradition or not. All the traditions insist that adopting values and developing practices is necessary for a fulfilled life. Aristotle and Confucius emphasized the importance of developing virtue, the Buddha gave the precepts and the eight-fold path, the Jewish tradition taught the Ten Commandments, and Jesus emphasized two things: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart … and thy neighbour as thyself.” Any set of these practices will help you escape the gravity field of your ego. All provide paths leading toward expanded awareness and away from the narrow and narcissistic self.
These templates vary considerably, of course, but there are many overlaps between them, so if you do not wish to enter a particular tradition, adopt some of the more common suggestions: practice kindness; admit mistakes; be considerate with others; be of service; develop awareness; work to change your relationship with destructive emotions; cultivate respect and gratitude for the mystery that lies beyond the ego. Perhaps it is not so important to find “the right” set of practices as it is to commit to “a” set that challenges you, and recognizing that your practices will change as you grow and develop.
The Ego’s Beneficent Contribution
The fascinating paradox is that developing character; to live according to a set of virtues is ego work. The ego develops stories about the kind of person one wants to be and encourages movement toward their fulfillment.
Skeptico: But you said I get in touch with higher values mostly when I am in an out-of-time, egoless state. So what does my ego have to do with it?
Wisdom Seeker: When you are in a state of expanded awareness, your stories are irrelevant, for you are in touch with currents that transcend ego stories. But when you fall back into ego identity, a commitment to being a good person is the only protection you have from misunderstanding and possibly abusing what you experienced. The downfall of many teachers is a belief that they have gone beyond the need to cultivate character. In many cases, after a state of expanded awareness has ended, these teachers act to fulfill personal desires, sometimes without even consciously acknowledging to themselves what they are doing. (Or they do not think they need to control their desires because they have become so “special”).
An additional benefit of practicing virtue and developing character is that much of the good in human life has come from people undertaking these efforts. Those filled with love or compassion often spontaneously act to help others, but the rest of the time, we humans do good out of an ego image of who we want to be. Spiritual journeys are often inspired by a transcendent experience, but after such an experience comes the hard work—living toward fulfillment even as the ego tries to get what it wants and shadow voices demand to be fulfilled. There is no way through this jungle except a commitment to values and practices that overcome unconscious drives and gain the ego’s cooperation in going beyond itself. The ego can learn to outflank the shadow, and then gradually learn to bring all its energy into the living of a fulfilling life.
If you make a commitment to live by a set of values or virtues, the next step is to decide which ones. After that comes the difficult task of implementing them in the day-to-day world, to develop practices that carry your intentions toward fruition. And this is especially difficult because the practices that cultivate character and develop the virtues do not help us feel good in the moment, at least most of the time. On the contrary, they often make us feel as if we are being denied what we want, often leading to a feeling of deprivation, sadness, or anger. So it is that trying to live by a set of values can easily generate negative feelings and internal resistance.
Then, it is especially hard to persevere as the realization sinks in that developing virtues is a function of the ego and thus will not lead, in and of itself, to pleasurable experiences. Nor will this ego work necessarily bring an experience of expanded awareness.
Skeptico: Then why should I do it?
Wisdom Seeker: All the wisdom traditions say that practices and ego work are a necessary preparation for fulfillment, though not sufficient for its achievement.
Skeptico: It seems to me that I have to make an act of faith that there is a dimension beyond the ego and beyond the superego that has been welded on my shoulders before it makes any sense to undertake developing character through practices.
Wisdom Seeker: That is basically true.
Skeptico: So tell me again the evidence for why I should do that.
Wisdom Seeker: The strongest evidence involves the stories that come down to us about the wisdom figures of history; how they seem to have found fulfillment and meaning, and the affect they had on the people around them.
Skeptico: But how can I know these stories are true? What is the proof?
Wisdom Seeker: Each of us must make a decision about what we will assume to be true and then try to base our lives upon that. Doing this will always be a gamble, and will always involve an act of faith. Even the most reductionist position requires an act of faith. Occasionally a person reaches a place of great certainty, but this certainty can only come from a profound personal experience, or from deep within.
Skeptico: If I am trying to accept that there is something beyond the ego, how do I go about it?
Wisdom Seeker: Here are a few poems that have helped me in my reflections on that question. From the Chinese poet Li Bai:
The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
This poem captures an experience I have sometimes had that is powerful and profound. And it resonates with other poems and images from all over the globe, such as this one by 13th century Christian mystic Hadewijch II:
You who want knowledge,
seek the Oneness within.
There you will find
the clear mirror
already waiting.
The German Catholic priest and physician Angelus Silesius says much the same thing this way:
God, whose love and joy
are present everywhere,
can’t come to visit you
unless you aren’t there.
And one of my favorites is by Wei Wu Wei, an English nobleman, scholar, and student of Asian religions, who captured a feeling I have sometimes had in this poem in Ask The Awakened:
Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself—
And there isn’t one.
Skeptico: Has all this reflection led you to an answer?
Wisdom Seeker: As I try to understand who I am, these poems and many others from different times and different traditions feel true at a deep level within me. Further, many wisdom teachers have said that making the effort to reach this place of awareness, unity, oneness, or salvation—whether achieving the final end in this life or not—is the most worthy task a life can have. I have found no other goal that seems as compelling, or is as likely to be true, so I will follow the thread of this vision.
Skeptico: But our modern age is so unfriendly to such a life.
Wisdom Seeker: T. S. Eliot describes that feeling, and an answer for it in East Coker in The Four Quartets:
And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
The wisdom that has been found has been lost again and again, and it is simply our task to rediscover it for ourselves, although the conditions for doing so might not be favorable (or to use Eliot’s perfect word, propitious). But an encouraging fact is that many of the saints and sages of human history found their way to fulfillment in the most difficult of times. Worldly difficulties are not an insurmountable barrier. In fact, difficulties can be a spur to help us move on toward fulfillment.
Another comforting realization is that a goodly number of ordinary folks through the ages have reported finding their way to fulfillment, many during tumultuous times. Nor has gaining this prize always required actions that seem dramatic to an outside observer. It has always required work, by some have done their work over stretches of time while tending gardens, caring for neighbors in distress, walking in nature, raising families, or listening to music; all the time patiently doing their inner work with sincerity and resolve.
Thus with the remaining minutes of my days I will make the bet that there is a greater harmony, beyond the ego, in which I can participate. I will use my best efforts to open into a full experience of That. In making this choice, I find comfort in the fact that many wise figures in history made the same choice, and a number have reported that they found an abundance of Love, Wisdom, Peace, and Joy.
[1] For a discussion of this issue, see Chapter 11, Whose Values in my book On Being Human.
[1] Psalms 37:8 New International Version
[2] Dhammapada 5??
[3] Matthew 5:44
[4] John C. Eccles, The Wonder of Being Human: Our Brain and Our Mind???
[5] Knows as the Grant Study, the article by Brooks about it was published in the New York Times on May 11, 2009
[6] Meditation and the startle response: a case study, Emotion. 2012 June; 12(3):650-8. doi: 10.1037/a0027472. Epub 2012 Apr 16. Levenson RW, Ekman P, Ricard M. Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA. boblev@socates.berkeley.edu
[7] Matthew 7:7-8