LIVING WELL IN TWO DIMENSIONS

LIVING WELL IN TWO DIMENSIONS


Where is God? Is there a God? Does it matter?
Do I have a soul? What is “soul?” What difference does it make?
What am I supposed to do with this life? Is there any “supposed to” to begin with? How can anyone know?
Am I having fun yet? Is there any other reason to be here? Why bother if it hurts too much?

For those of us who are no longer comforted with the certitudes of creeds and doctrines and authoritative traditions these are hard questions that may be unanswerable, but at least for some of us are too big to be ignored.

Long ago I gave up being a believer. I promised myself then that the only authority I would ever trust again regarding the deep issues of life was my own experience. I think I have found a way to keep that promise and at the same time find some personally satisfying answers for these fundamental questions.

The most basic thing I’ve noticed is that we all live our lives in two distinct dimensions, each with its own particular perspective, values, purposes and corollaries. For me, horizontal and vertical best describe them. The dimension most familiar to us is the horizontal. It is the stage upon which we act out our lives. It is here that we struggle for survival and control. In this dimension we are embedded in temporality. Past and future constantly absorb our attention. Through regret, remorse, grief and sweet recollection we are tugged at by the past. And then the future pulls on us through the agency of our hopes, fears and intended goals.

In this temporal existence, driven as we are by the ongoing struggle to gratify our needs and desires, our lives are filled with striving and drama rather than the flowing freedom of the spontaneous dance we celebrate in young children.

The vertical dimension is quite different. On the horizontal plane we are rooted in time and continually seeking to keep events and ourselves under control. In the vertical neither time nor control are relevant. The vertical is pure existence that can only be in the present moment. Preoccupation with past and future, a hallmark of the horizontal dimension, is an excursion into mental constructs or virtual realities rather than actual, present experiences. The vertical is the timeless domain of the eternal now. It is known only in the moment of immediate experience.

On the stage of the horizontal I am preoccupied with myself as the main actor in the drama in which I am entangled, ever hoping for a successful outcome or despairing because it seems unreachable.

In the flow of the vertical I lose myself as I become absorbed in the delight or pathos of simple, undiluted connection. There is no main actor. There is no drama. I am simply caught up in my experience. In this dimension, awareness, emotion and sensation are the leading energies and thought is their servant. Plotting a strategy to increase one’s wealth would be a clear-cut example of horizontal life. Making love whole-heartedly with tender abandon would be living in the vertical at high level.

A meditation a client shared with me offers a beautiful, evocative expression of the experience of the vertical dimension and its spiritual significance. This was her experience:

I’m climbing down a tunnel holding onto vines and clusters of grapes. As I climb down I’m eating the grapes. They are really large black grapes with a wonderful smell and taste. At the bottom there is rich, soft grass, a bench, a table and trees all around. On the table is a beautiful glass urn with a silver top and a spout. It contains an extraordinary wine made from the grapes. My senses are really heightened. Everything is quite intense. I can smell the trees, grasses and flowers. It’s almost a sacred thing, so special.

I’m thinking of the New Testament story about the wine Jesus made from water at the wedding feast at Canaan. This is something especially created for me. It’s a celebration and a sacred event. I feel very touched. It has a strong emotional impact. I am walking, goblet in hand, to the top of a hill overlooking a beautiful valley. There is a sense of drinking in my life. I am rejoining or joining to my life. The thought of marriage is with me. I turn and see an arbor. I see myself in a wedding party. There are people all around me. They are very happy. We are celebrating a marriage with my spirit, with my depth. My bridegroom doesn’t really have a form. This is something very powerful. I am surrendering to my divinity. I am accepting it again and holding it close to myself. My wish is to be genuinely happy in my life, rooted in this wedding to the divine - this infinite source of my spirit. All my yearnings are rooted in that. It’s what I’m always trying to come back and find.

I’m back in the arbor with these joyful beings. It’s a very happy celebration. I’m drinking the wine now, feeling it going down my throat into my body. Something feels different. My body reacts to it. It wants to meld with it, soak it up. It’s a loving energy that moves through me like a liquid. It has a rich and very sensuous sense to it. By drinking the wine I am interacting with the divine. It is a sweet wine. Drinking this sacred liquid has a significant impact on my consciousness. The message here is not complicated. I hear, “Be with me. Find a way to be with me every day. I can bring you peace and help you let go of a lot of things that burden you unnecessarily.”

Notice the sensuous quality of the experience. Connecting with the divine comes through the body and the senses. Pleasure and beauty drew her in and connected her so that the light of the divine could shine through her.

In the vertical dimension the qualities that drive the dramas of the horizontal are worse than irrelevant. Seeking success, status, power, recognition or wealth only distracts a person from the richness of the moment. If I put too much energy into seeking to be master of my universe, I risk losing the only world that is alive and real, the world of my heart, the world right in front of me which is always inviting me to bond with it through empathic connection.

In contrast to the stage, which is my symbol of the horizontal, my symbol for the vertical is light. It is the light that shines in our lives and in our eyes when we are embedded in the sensuous embrace of pleasurable and beautiful experience such as my client was in her meditation. In my mind it is a surging, complex, multicolored light full of beauty and warmth. This is not a reflected light emanating from an external source, but a glowing presence that wells up from the depth of everything that is real. The more complex and evolved the reality is, the brighter and more alluring its light becomes. Fantasies, memories and anticipated futures can only reflect the light. Their power to warm and illumine is far less than any immediate, real experience that I am willing to fully embrace.

It would not be accurate to say that the light or the vertical dimension has a function. Function implies purpose and goal setting, which are in the domain of the horizontal. The vertical is simply the “real” and the “real” is just what is. Nevertheless it is far from inconsequential.

We are conditioned to assume that the attainment of our goals is what matters most. It isn’t. When you stop and think about it, what matters most is that whatever it is you may have achieved be meaningful or satisfying. Obviously there is always some satisfaction in getting what I want, but what truly matters is that I enjoy it. It is here that the horizontal must give way to the vertical. I may win my lover’s hand in marriage, but what is really important is that we enjoy each other’s company in the reality of our day-to-day interactions. If it is to have any point, I must be able to delight in the light and warmth I experience flowing out of the other in every moment we encounter each other. What’s the use of anything unless I am impacted at the experiential level by its beauty, goodness or truth?

Another word for the light is “being,” or existence. Philosophers have long taught that the principal attributes of being are oneness, beauty, goodness and truth. Primitive theologies think of God as one thing among many. Bigger, better, more powerful, but still a distinct other. Tillich, Aquinas, and all the most sophisticated teachings of the great eastern spiritual traditions acknowledge that God is “being” itself. If this is true, what it means is that the question whether God exists or not is a moot point since the answer is both yes and no and so what. “So what” because it is of small consequence merely to know that God is the single reality of being and that being (or the light, or the vertical dimension) is where one encounters beauty, goodness and truth. If one is living primarily on the horizontal plane invested in control and drama and largely disconnected from immediate experience then being (i.e. the real) or God are mere concepts and bring nothing significant to such a person’s life.

From my point of view it is entirely appropriate to say that God does not exist. After all, existence itself cannot be another thing that exists. The qualities of goodness and beauty that emerge as we embrace our present moment experiences are obviously inherent in ourselves and the things with which we connect. God as existence is known in the embrace of beings. Connection, touching and being touched by life, is a powerful path to Ultimate Reality.

The final and most profound path to God lies in the expansion of awareness so that my consciousness and universal consciousness merge. This is taking the verticle dimension to its greatest depth and will be discussed in upcoming posts, Why Bother Meditating, and What is Enlightenment?

The fundamental question of dogmatic religion is, “Do you believe?” As I see it that is hardly relevant. Far more important is the question, “How deeply do you drink of life?” Experiencing the vertical dimension is about celebration and passion. It’s about immersion in being with a keen appreciation for the limits of our mental constructs. It is a sensual embrace of existence, of God, unencumbered by any need to espouse right beliefs or practices.

A long time ago I was taught that my purpose in life was to please God in this world and be happy with Him in the next. Most spiritual traditions espouse some version of that value. What this assumption does is that it turns God into a major player in my personal drama and thereby makes the horizontal domain the only relevant dimension of human existence. Its primary orientation is toward a nebulous future in a fantasized world, a construct that is about as disconnected from present experience of here and now as one could imagine. Getting to that other world demands right behavior and belief, the primary ingredients in the process of God pleasing. These are mediated through external authorities and achieved by rigid self-control. I can hardly imagine a better formula for radical disconnection. Through teachings such as these the spiritual impulse becomes a vehicle for entrapment, locking the seeker into the relatively empty virtual reality of the horizontal dimension. I’ve been there and did that, and I grieve for myself and all the countless others whose very search for God made access to the vertical dimension or Spirit and light so much harder than it needed to be. The very things that connect us, our passions, appetites, pleasures, emotion and curiosity were considered distractions at best and more likely sinful in the traditions that support the concept of God as other.

There are some basic ground rules for entering the vertical dimension. They are quite different from the “God” rules of religion. In the first place no supreme authority has dictated them. Nor does the divine punish or reward based upon whether they are followed or not. If they are followed, life becomes rich and meaningful. If not it becomes a charade, well intended and sincere perhaps, but nonetheless a drama constructed by my ego with a large supporting cast of other egos. Together they all try to persuade themselves that they will find meaning and happiness if they can just get their stories to come out right.

The rules for attaining the vertical are simple and almost self-explanatory once you let yourself think about it.

First, you must be open to becoming a bit of a hedonist. Remember Bagwhan Shree Rajneesh, a guru who was active in this country during the 80s and finally was banned from returning to the US. Apparently he scammed many of his followers due to his fondness for Rolls Royces and the like, and, even worse, forgot to appease the IRS god. As I recall, he preached a gospel of sensual connection and pleasure and drew a considerable following of intelligent people who felt he had something significant to say. Sadly, it seems he really didn’t get it. Greed, one of the leading hallmarks of horizontal living, did him in. An even more telling complaint against him, however, is that he was a lousy lover. In other words he apparently did not appreciate what it takes to be a fully present, embodied, sensually connected person. In the movie, Second Sight, Mira Sorvino tells her blind lover why he was so different from the other men she had known intimately. She said that when he touched her she could tell that it was not because he wanted something from her, but because he wanted to know her more deeply and this opened her heart to him.

A good hedonist is not about making conquests or accumulating points or stuff or even pleasures. All of that is a distraction from coming to know in depth whatever is in your hand in the moment. The greatest pleasure is found in setting aside my illusion of otherness and allowing myself to become immersed in my immediate experience. There is nothing more pleasing or meaningful than such timeless moments. If the other with which I am connecting is a person who welcomes my presence, the potential for communion and immersion in pure experience is greater than in almost any other context.

The light emanating from a peach or a cookie is quite wondrous. The longer I savor it, the longer I get to abide in the vertical domain. Questions about meaning never come to mind when I am giving my full attention to a tender, crunchy bite of oatmeal, raisin cookie. This is so much more the case when I am with another person. When I encounter another human being in a spirit of respect, empathy and compassion, the light that flows out of both of us and merges in our connection is orders of magnitude more intense and complex than in any other connection aside from the immediate experience of Being itself.

To enter the vertical dimension seek first joy and meaning and let your appetites, senses and emotions be major tools in this search. This demands that you do all in your power to stay as alert and aware as possible. Always remember that life giving, fulfilling awareness arises out of merging with the other. This merger cannot happen unless I approach the other with respect and an open heart free of any desire to dominate or harm. Once I move into a control oriented frame of mind I am back in the horizontal dimension. This may be necessary, but joy will not blossom there.

As in the world of horizontal religion, moral behavior is a requirement for anyone who would live in the vertical domain. The motives and standards however are completely different. In horizontal religion standards are imposed by an ultimate authority that must be pleased for the sake of eventual reward. Moral choice inspired by the perspective of vertical consciousness is driven by a willingness to identify with the other with whom I am interacting. By expanding my sense of self to include the other, the other’s welfare becomes a principal concern. The choices I make consequently tend to be altruistic and generous. There is no ultimate purpose or reward driving these choices. The joy of connecting and giving are quite enough reward. In the vertical, awareness and compassion drive morality, not preset rules or laws.

Ordinary religion is very concerned about saving the “soul.” This is a major motivation for moral behavior. Usually the soul is thought of as our essence and envisioned as a kind of ethereal substance or spirit that inhabits the body and goes on to a final reward or cleansing or even punishment after death. Seen through the eyes of a vertically oriented approach to life, soul in the religious sense is meaningless. My essential truth is that I am not a discrete entity designed to observe life and act on the world. I am an integral part of the greater whole. I am most fully myself and most fully alive when I acknowledge that reality experientially. Whether there is a thing called a soul that is some component of my overall being doesn’t matter very much. That I live soulfully, that is: kindly, intensely, with an open heart and a lusty embrace of life, is all that counts. This, which is the essence of living in the vertical dimension, is by far the best way that I as an embodied human being have for living out my true nature. Any belief that leads to a disembodied or disconnected vision of life is a soulless betrayal of the gift of existence.

My search for true spiritual depth and fulfillment, for a joyful, spirit filled, meaningful life is well served by enthusiastically embracing my body. This body with its senses, appetites, and emotions is an excellent instrument for connecting with life and existence. The light will shine only when I am plugged in!