Am I spiritual?

What does it mean to be spiritual?

I've been sharing a few things over the last week or two that I see when I look at the current terrain in the spiritual landscape, starting with my own  current outlook.

The question I opened with is one that comes up from time to time and is good for taking stock of where you are.

The short answer is that spirituality is recognizing the desire for  connection and integration that is part of our human nature.

Here's a longer and deeper elaboration of what that means.

The aforementioned "recognition" is connected to a larger pattern  found in nature that is characterized by sophisticated communication, it's related meta-domain of encoding (which in humans gives rise to symbolic thinking/the social landscape), and integration in larger, more complex structures.

The processes of information flow, regulation, transformation, and storage that we know as life, forms imperfectly self-replicating loops embodied as structures composed of materials such as organic molecules.

Smaller loops come together and are integrated into simple organisms. New loops are added or expanded and existing loops are integrated to form more complex organisms. This eventually includes us.

These loops of information flow, these eddies and vortexes (or vortices) of information streams, possess qualities which promote novel pathways and interconnections as well as those which reinforce existing pathways and interconnections/resist novelty.

The tension tension between these two tendencies makes life adaptable and is involved in growth, healing, and evolution. It is easier for the tendency for novelty to express itself by expanding into new spaces. On some level though it still benefits from at least some stability from its opposing tendency, which acts as a platform for such expansion.

A disruption -- such as a gap -- in the streams and loops triggers both tendencies. New threads spring from old loops to fill in or work around the disruption. This can lead to new types or levels of organization -- so that the tendency for novelty becomes a creative tendency or impulse.

As the living loops become more complex and woven into larger structures and patterns, this creative impulse becomes more limited in some ways (the more fundamental underlying patterns become fixed) but much more powerful in others, given the larger and more diverse networks of connections upon which it can draw.

At the level where this process subsumes human beings, what we call spirituality emerges. More next time. I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments.

More on the value of the absurd in belief

Post Surreal Configuration, oil on canvas, 1939 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Originally posted on two months ago as a comment at Real Life with Ryuei (for full context visit the link).

I am wary of any “hardwired” argument for highly complex and interactive sets of behavior given the discovery of the extensiveness of neuroplasticity and the hierarchical nature of developmental regulation. Highly reproducible and even impelled complex behavior to a limited degree within the proper genetic, hormonal, anatomical, ecological and social contexts? Perhaps. Indeed, it appears that indeed some experiences which are essential for compassion, such as empathy, are either enabled, encouraged, or generated by evolved neural architecture that allow and direct us to read the body language and vocalizations of others and mimic their projected feelings. But the hard problem of consciousness remains. Does the brain generate consciousness and its attributes or focus it in an ephemeral localized expression? For all of our metaphysical and scientific investigations, a definitive answer in analytical, reductive terms remains elusive.

Yet whatever the answer to hard problem, there is also the question of why it should be that nature would produce creatures with conscious awareness or why consciousness should exist at all. In neither case do I refer to structural or adaptive arguments about origin or persistence of a trait (“consciousness is the result of the confluence of the following neurological processes which became interconnected when…” or “consciousness has the following functions that enhance inclusive fitness…”). There are even arguments that consciousness is just a sloppy shorthand for an apparent coherence to brain function that doesn’t really exist and is instead a mirage. But I am thinking here of why consciousness, whatever it is or isn’t, should exist at all in the realm of possibility.
The problem with popular depictions of mysticism is that it is often associated with a “left-brained” literalism applied to the poetic/metaphoric nature of supernatural and religious imagery, which are intended to point to that which is beyond the capacity of the rational mind grasp except in a distorted and partial glimpse. The mystical becomes tied up with buffoonish characterizations of magical thinking and the kind of dreadful superstition born of flat imagination and a desire to control the unknown and the unknowable.

It strikes me that a more genuine and useful mysticism would, in fact, be rooted in forms of consciousness which do not limit themselves to such a piecemeal approach but facilitate what is sometimes referred to as a more unitive state. This need not be assumed to be either a superior or inferior form of awareness, but perhaps simply a different way to process information and engender perception. That is, whether deep meditation merely takes us to the root of the neural processes generating conscious awareness and our most rudimentary perceptions/distinctions/valuations or whether it is pointing to a non-localized consciousness that precedes material existence, it is still taking us to the ground of being or the root of “form” (where “form” is phenomenological prior to an ontological theory of its nature or origin).

Hooray for nonsense and apathy

Have you ever noticed the portion of something you don't need, but it comes with the part you wanted? Perhaps you came to realize it was necessary after all? For example, in a basic biology course when you come to the section on population genetics everyone learns about Hardy-Weinberg. It's based on the binomial equation you may have learned if you took a course in algebra. The gist of it is this - it tells you what the allele and genotype frequencies (the genetic composition) of a population should look like if the population is "standing still" in terms of mutation, selection, genetic drift, etc. A question that students often ask is: If we are studying population change why focus on an equation that assumes a lack of change? It is because it gives us something to compare a population to - a yardstick to see just how far from stasis a population really is. It turns out that understanding lack of change is important even for those who presume that constant change is the rule (and more importantly the reality). This kind of illumination by contrast is an ancient topic, often spawning debates asking whether good can exist without evil, light without darkness? Are opposites better defined as degree of presence or absence? Can their be pleasure without pain? And on it goes.

So what do nonsense and apathy get us?

In the analysis of information and communication, we see that to allow for a adaptive "language", we need to have some kind of consistency in structure as well as flexibility. Human language, for example, is not confined by a permanent one to one relationship between a specific sound and a specific meaning. Moreover, the identity and order of sounds can convey additional layers of meaning to a specific sound or word. Yet within a given language the correlation of sounds to meanings in the singular form are consistent for long enough periods of time to permit shared understanding, while the flexible context of combining multiple sounds/words together allows for originality. We can discuss things past, present, and future, distant and local, even real and non-real. That which makes sense and that which is complete gibberish. Hence nonsense in our conceptions as well as in our communications is the cost of being in the sweet spot between a totally closed system with a limited or fixed capacity for conveying meaning and a totally open system where nothing at all is stable enough to allow meaning to cool and take shape. Like a malleable piece of wax - you don't want to become too stiff but you don't want to melt. That is, nonsense is a reflection of the degree of randomness needed for creativity intelligence.

In a similar way, so too is apathy the byproduct or co-requisite of the will, of agency, of conscious choice. This is distinct from simply resting or other similar (lack of) activities found in many mammals in addition to humans. Boredom, likewise, is an acute lack of interest in our surroundings - a lack of sufficient stimulation for the sense of quality or value. Nonsense, apathy, and boredom are not objective states but are part of a perceptual array for detecting and measuring differences. In fact, without these things as a null reference we might lack the ability to perceive meaning, choice, or value. Biologists do not need believe that a genuine population level genetic stasis is literally possible for a particular locus in a specific biological population in order to use Hardy-Weinberg. Similarly, just because we experience nonsense, apathy, and boredom it does not follow that the universe must be similarly pointless, listless and bland. In fact, if we are good at detecting/experiencing meaning, choice, and value, then they are likely important aspects of our universe.

Cheers!

Faith and Imagination - Being Open to the Possibilities

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
- Albert Einstein

Faith is crumpling and throwing away everything, proposition by proposition, until nothing is left, and then writing a new proposition, your very own, to throw in the teeth of despair.

-Mary Jean Irion, in Yes, World: A Mosaic of Meditation

Or to put it another way:

Faith is having an Open Heart,
Imagination is having an Open Mind.

Both states are Creative in the most fundamental and genuine since of that word. Open refers to our capacity to go beyond our typical ways of thinking and of being receptive to that which we might normally dismiss or uncritically pass judgement. That is, faith and imagination are different aspects of the same disposition. This is why wooden faith, the kind which is mocked by many atheists as well as quite a few theists, is so transparently counterfeit and also why it is so dangerous. To put that another way...

Faith is having an Open Heart,
Imagination is having an Open Mind.
Sainthood is the condition of Possession, (...of these things these as attributes)
Enlightenment is the acutalization of Being. (...or of recognizing these qualities as the foundation and truth of one's existence)