THE JOY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE


Buddha said: “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders, but after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of all, then accept it and live up to it.”
St. Paul said: “If anyone, whether man or angel, teaches you other than I have taught, do not listen.”

I prefer the Buddha.

We humans seem to have enormous appetites for things that are only good for us in moderation: salt, sweets, fat, dependence on rationality, becoming couch potatoes, grasping for certainties, letting authorities dictate the course of our personal and spiritual lives, and becoming true believers.

Clearly there is some small benefit in many of these propensities, but the cost of every one of them can be enormous. What they all share in common is the capacity to diminish self awareness when overindulged.

Whether a person is high on drugs, zoned out on sweets or simply unaware of the way his or her life style is diminishing body or spirit, the outcome is the same. The capacity to be fully awake, open to experience and living an authentic, effective life is undercut.

Generally, we have at least enough awareness to be ashamed of our involvement in most of these self destructive inclinations. A sad irony is that the two that could well be the worst of the bunch are proposed time and again to be the answer to life.

GOD SAID IT. I BELIEVE IT. END OF DISCUSSION!

You’ve seen the bumper sticker. You know the mentality. Perhaps you’ve been there yourself. I have -- Sort of. I once was a Catholic priest. The Catholic Church is infamous for its intricate web of doctrines and presumptions of divinely sanctioned authority. Like so many spiritual seekers I believed that the institution and the sacred texts were the way. I may have interpreted them a bit broadly, but I accepted that the book and the traditions and the divinely appointed authorities contained the essence of the truth I was seeking. I tried hard to conform, but couldn’t do it. Trying to make myself believe six impossible things before breakfast gave me indigestion. The church was always kind to me and some of my fellow priests were truly heroic men, but I couldn’t fit in. My mind refused to yield, and my heart longed for a companion. I had to go.

The implicit longing behind the bumper sticker and my own unconscious need that kept me wedded to the church is that I would not accept ambiguity. I preferred the comfort of certainty over the disruptive potential of applying my critical faculties to fundamental questions. I lost a whole way of life when I finally did.

I had relinquished my birthright, the unfolding of my own unique identity, for the sake of future reward, professional status and acceptance. As with so many others I refused to see things as they are so that I might live undisturbed in my serene fantasy.

Implicit in this stance and my critique are two very different visions of ultimate reality. When God is envisioned as an “other” who is “all” everything (good, knowing, powerful, etc.) and who stands apart from the created universe, then the foundation is laid for the mind numbing, spirit breaking distortion of most religion.

When creation is seen as the place where God is not; and when the human psyche is experienced as an alienated emptiness unless infused with a divine spark mediated through ecclesiastical channels then the siren song of true belief becomes persuasive.

BUT IF NOT THIS? THEN WHAT?

Most people seem to possess a hunger for purpose, meaning and transcendence. Those who ignore it often feel their lives are pointless. Many who listen to the hunger end up crippling their minds in order to feed their souls.

Is there another way? What would a spiritual path be like that honors critical thinking; personal autonomy; the rejection of absolutes and certitudes; the celebration of earth, senses and the body; and seeks the sacred within the experience of creation and oneself?

It would be a quest for truth unhindered by doctrines and unburdened by sacred texts. It would be an act of surrender to an unfathomable depth. It would be a commitment to the unfolding of Self and a life that is essentially unpredictable. It would be a journey taken for its own sake, not for some presumed outcome. It would be grounded in experience rather than authority. It would be sensual, natural, embodied, ecstatic. It would be a path in which body, mind, heart and soul are celebrated as integral aspects of the unfolding self.

This is not where I ended up when I stepped away from the Church. I did feel a powerful sense of exhilaration as I reveled in the internal permission to think whatever I pleased. But in stepping away from the ecclesiastical trap, I didn’t realize that my horizon was encircled with a much more subtle and powerful trap. Reason, the trusted friend who liberated me from Catholic Christianity, was also my warden imprisoning me in my mind. It’s objectivity, genuine regard for truth and enlightened approach to the human condition were deeply comforting to me and persuasive. I genuilely liked being a rational- humanist for a while.

Have you ever noticed that the general unspoken consensus of sophisticated, literate folks seems to be that any experience or awareness that can not be presented in either a mathematical or verbal/rational fashion isn’t real or at least isn’t worthy of much attention.

I stepped squarely into this mindset and was lost there for quite a few years. Finally, with a little help from my family, friends, clients and folks like Alan Watts I saw that this too was illusion.

Family made clear in short order that real life was much bigger than any set of rational presumptions. Friends obviously wanted more from me than a head trip. Clients’ inner demons were singularly unimpressed by rational observations and reasonable options. Eastern wisdom, especially Taoism, Buddhism, and the mystical teachings of all the great traditions pointed me toward a transpersonal domain that, although not irrational, went far beyond the reach of reason.

Our verbal models, hypotheses, and theoretical assumptions are like grids that we lay on top of reality. They fragment the fundamental oneness of things and if taken too seriously distort our perceptions. Our inordinate celebration of reason extracts a very personal cost. The most important things human beings do have more to do with spirit and heart than with reason. If reason is given supremacy, these are proportionately diminished. Falling in love, raising children, nurturing friendships, feeling that life is worthwhile, touching ecstasy, the experience of empathy, compassion and mystical union are all beyond the reach of reason.

The prerequisite of a path that leads to the full expression of your human potential is that you be a nonbeliever who foregoes the easy comfort of dogmas and right/wrong, good/bad dichotomies and who gives precedence to experience over rational constructs. Progress on the journey demands a commitment to doing whatever is necessary to broaden and deepen awareness.

All the things that matter most are mystery. The significant choices in anyone’s life are motivated by such a complex interweaving of motives, history and unacknowledged assumptions that any understanding can only be partial. The emergence of who I am at my most profound and authentic level is invariably a surprise, albeit a delightful one. Mystics of all ages repeat the same message. Their encounters with the founding principal of the universe leaves them speechless. There are no words for it. It has been called the pregnant nothingness and the pleroma, the fullness of Being.

The point is, taking ego constructed, mental maps too seriously obscures your vision of the territory. “The map is not the territory.” The models are not reality. The doctrines are not the truth. All of these things, maps, models, and teachings, can be helpful until we set them in stone at which point our own hearts become hardened and our dance with the Great Mystery becomes leaden.

The hallmark of one who knows is a spirit of “not know” mind. One who knows is at ease with the clash of ideas and the realization that his varied models don’t fit together all that well and will never encompass deep reality. One who knows is grateful for cognitive dissonance. The noise of mental models grinding up against one another keeps her awake and aware that what is, is only truly known through direct experience. True knowing arises out of the discipline and practices necessary for minimally distorted experience of oneself, the other, creation and ultimate reality.

Like the perpetrators of all other scams, the proponents of “right belief” or “right thinking” promise an enormous return for a very limited investment. “Think” or “believe as we tell you and you will know the true nature of things.” The truth is, if you take the hard path of discipline and commit yourself to an ever expanding awareness, you will never again be certain of anything except that life is wonderful beyond words and that the universe seems to be in love with you.

If your journey is a profound one for every mile you travel on the path the destination is two miles further away. And would you really want it any other way? Think about it. The more you know, the more there is to know. By your very knowing, you help create more knowing. The knowing gets richer, more fascinating, for as long as you live. The more you create, the more you can create. The more you love, the more you can love.” So long as you can relinquish the claim to have “gotten it” your journey will lead to an unlimited horizon.