Love at a Reasonable Price

Basically:

There is a “True Good” (aka: Light, Pure Love, God, Buddha/True Nature, Way–we’re pointing with words towards what is prior to words, which means we will point towards it without mathematical precision, but not therefore necessarily inadequately/meaninglessly) that we can relate to meaningfully, but not literally/definitively.

The way forward is:

A spiritual path (spiritual = “No, but for real!! This isn’t just an opinion, a mood, or any other relative notion–this is how things actually are [without such a foundational insight, ideas and feelings–painfully aware of their relative nature–slide and lurch hopelessly about])

based not so much on acceptance of doctrine (although ideas are a necessary aspect of how we relate to human life and without solid beliefs, ideas and feelings slip slide confusedly about, so some minimum dogma [like the one we’re here sketching] is worth finding and adopting),

but on seeking more and more whole-being insight (whole being = ideas, feelings, and the Light within that alone Knows what is actually going on and how one should actually think/feel/live) into the Light within (ie: your ideas and feelings should organize themselves around and be led by the Light within).

So Basically:
We humans need some ideas about what is really going on and what should really be done, but those ideas are only valuable insofar as they help us connect to the Light within that is ultimately wiser than ideas and feelings; so both blowing off the spiritual path and interpreting spiritual matters too literally are counterproductive (ie: we need some dogmas orientating us meaningfully towards the Truth, but we misstep when we think our dogmas are literally/definitively True).

In Another Nutshell:
Keep first things first. If my ideas and feelings are not focused primarily on a whole-being engagement with the Light within (ideas and feelings relating meaningfully to themselves and the Light shining through each conscious moment), then I’m going in the wrong direction.
Refusing an adequate though imperfect intellectual sketch of the proper spiritual path causes us to misdirect our efforts (a sketch something like: “It matters what I say and do! I should treat myself and others with respect and kindness! I should think aware, honest, clear, accurate, compassionate, competent and joyful. I should seek to better and better understand and follow the Love within that alone knows what is best for me and everyone else. I’ll never get it perfect, so I need to stay humble and keep trying over and over again to improve: to live more and more in and through Love.”).
But confusing sketches of ideas and feelings about the Light with the Light Itself also puts our focus in the wrong place.
Therefore Something Deeperism advocates a middle way between the excesses of extreme skepticism and extreme dogmatism: Let’s not sacrifice possible real and worthwhile progress in our feeling/thought/action for the sake of daydreamed perfections (be they manias for definitive literal Knowledge or for complete freedom from unproven assumptions) that don’t even make sense to us humanthings anyway (what makes sense to us is finding a path that is actually worthwhile [like a meaningful whole-being relationship with the Truth could provide]; but also remembering that our feelings and ideas are fundamentally clueless and should therefore follow the Truth, not mistake themselves for the Truth).

Yeah, but is Something Deeperism and/or the minimal dogma you sketched above actually true??

Friends, you misunderstand us. We here at The WAP Institute for the Advancement of Something Deeperism are not writing essays to convince anyone of Something Deeperism’s “truth” or “Truth”. What we’re trying to do is point out that we are all already Something Deeperists, and our choice is not whether or not we adopt Something Deeperism as a general worldview; the choice we humans have is just this: “how thorough of a Something Deeperist will I be?”

We all already have ideas and feelings aware both of their necessity (for interacting with this world) and their limitations (as regards knowing what is really going on / what really matters / how one should really feel/think/act). And so we all already at least at some level understand both that we cannot avoid some dogmas (general principles for feeling/thinking/acting) and that dogmas are counterproductive when they (being only–at least as understood within a human mind–human ideas) mistake themselves for the “Truth”.

But do we humans all also know that we need to have some insight into the “Truth”? Yes. And we also know something of how the “Truth” must look when lived by a human being (if the “Truth” is to seem “True” to a human being / mean anything to a human being / be understandable, believable, followable, or interesting to a human being). Just calm down and hear us out!

Human thought knows that it cannot understand itself without spiritual insight. That is to say: without a nonrelative / Absolute insight, our ideas and feelings just keep debating and bickering and/or sliding into easy-believisms without ever really knowing what their talking about, or believing in it, or caring about it. Since, after all, they’re just dealing in opinions that are as far as they know ultimately meaningless.

And so in swoops Something Deeperism:
Yes! There is an ” Absolute Truth” and you can and should organize your ideas and feelings around it more and more meaningfully (so you can leave the infinite limbo of the relative).
But, of course, your ideas and feelings won’t ever have Absolute insight into this “Truth”, since ideas and feelings about the “Truth” are not the same as the “Truth”.
So putting it all together: it goes too far to say you have no sense of “Truth” and “Goodness”, but it also goes too far to say you have literal/definitive/insight into them. And so we must all keep searching for more and more wisdom.

How do we know how successful we’re being?
Guardrails of awareness, etc.

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A Bit More On The Danger Of Confusing Ideas About The “Truth” with The “Truth”

Since the way forward involves relating ideas (aka: stories-about) and feelings (aka: reactions-to) to the Light within (aka: what is actually going on / what should actually be done), we’ll never get it perfect: there will always be some estimation/fudging in the translation process (from what is prior to ideas and feelings into ideas and feelings) and therefore always some errors and some obsoletions (obsoletions because a dogma that interacts well with one human moment will not necessarily interact as well with another human moment). For this reason, the way forward involves constant reassessment and recalibration. (We rewind back to shhhh!, drop everything, let go, and then in slowly steady honest love, we push out from within.)

Additionally, one can make real progress only to the degree one admits where one is, and letting ideas and feelings about Meaning (and/or meaninglessness) convince one that they are identical with Meaning (ie: that they themselves deserve the faith which alone the Light deserves)–as they are so so so wont to do!–amounts to deceiving oneself about where one is within one’s conscious moment, from which confused un-self-aware thinking seeps out more conscious engagement and slips in more confusion, causing less and less conscious engagement with one’s own conscious moment.

In consideration of the necessity of translation between ideas, feels, and Reality/Knowledge, and recognizing that ideas and feelings about “what is what” are not identical with “what is what” but love to pretend they are, we reason that the way forward involves humility, caution with oneself and others, constant reassessment, reevaluation, and reworking of one’s approach.

[OK, maybe enlightenment is possible and so people can remove all distance from their ideas and feelings and the Light within and thus flow perfectly off of Perfect Necessity into feeling/thinking/acting; but even supposing some fortunate few attain such heights, that shouldn’t keep the rest of us from remembering that the first step to any progress is being honest about where one finds oneself, and for almost all of us, translation is necessary, mistakes happen, the work of reworking one’s feeling/thinking/acting is never done, we must keep pedaling. Also: No matter how enlightened a person is, their explanation of the Light still faces both the limitations of language and, if they’re are speaking to or writing for another person, the shortcomings of other people’s ability to understand the Truth. So even if my chosen spiritual founder(s) knew and lived the Truth perfectly, my ability to understand their insights and relate them to my day-to-day, is not going to be perfect, and will indeed only be good to the degree I also relate meaningfully with the Light, and since that requires internal honesty, it behooves me to always keep in mind the limitations of both human language and my own wisdom.]

——-

A plausible sketch of the Path:

Notice how feelings are wider, deeper, and vaguer than ideas; and ideas are likewise not perfectly commensurate with words; but we can still think and talk meaningfully (both with ourselves and with others) about feelings. Note further that the more aware, clear, honest, compassionate, respectful, accurate and competent our self-examination, the deeper our ideas and feelings can explore each other, and the more fully, meaningfully and accurately we are able to talk about our feelings (both with ourselves and others–of course, communication with another person is meaningful to the degree you also widen the scope of your awareness, respect and compassion, and they return the favor).

Analogously, ideas and feelings can relate meaningfully to the Light within to the degree they are aware … competent. However, whereas ideas and feelings are both ultimately clueless (ie: they don’t really know what is going on and what should be done), the Light is simultaneously Reality and Knowledge and is therefore incapable of any inaccuracy, error, or doubt. Accordingly, insofar as we understand and follow that Light, we also are free of delusions and all other foolishnesses.

Of course, we cannot understand and follow the Light perfectly, but imperfection is not always identical with inadequacy. Hence the counsel of Something Deeperism: Take the only path with any hope of real progress: Yes, there is a Light/Truth within and we can relate meaningfully to It (without a grounding in such an Absolute Standard, ideas and feelings–who know they don’t really know what’s going on and what’s best–will just keep flitting about, bickering with one another, pretending to be the Absolute Standard, and otherwise making a mess of things); So we should accept basic dogmas like a belief in the existence, preeminence, and universality of Truth and Goodness (because we need ideas to relate meaningfully to this human life, and without any principles our thought wiggles crazily about and/or marshmallow-melts); but we also need to be wary of understanding our own dogmas too literally/definitively/exclusively (since they are not the “Truth” and cannot perfectly capture the “Truth”, and if we clutch ideas about why our lives are meaningful too tightly, we shift our focus onto that desperate, mindless grab and away from the conscious engagement within our own moment and centered around the Light within that alone knows how we can really be our best selves; to the degree we lose conscious engagement with our full conscious moment, we are not truly present within our own feeling/thinking/acting, and to that degree capricious ideas and feelings will push our thought about here and there, allowing for the possibility of grave spiritual, moral, intellectual, and etc errors).

——-

More details about the path: How can we know whether or not the path we’ve here sketched is any good. Also: assuming this rough sketch is worthwhile, how can we know how well we’re following it?

——-

Political Something Deeperism?

What about groups? What kind of political systems follow from Something Deeperism? Also: Are there general principles we’ve discovered from our consideration of Something Deeperism that can provide a workable framework for political discourse and decision making? I’m looking here for a set of principles that would be broad enough to attract people from all metaphysical persuasions–even if they don’t have much interest in bringing more Something Deeperism into their daily life.

Something Deeperism–the worldview that there is a True Good and humans can relate meaningfully, but not literally/definitively/exclusively to It–is all about keeping the main thing the main thing.

What is the main thing? The skeptic believes she should avoid error. Why? The monotheist believes she should follow God’s will. Why? The atheist thinks she’s right not to believe in God. Why? The hedonist supposes her best bet’s to do whatever she likes. Why? What do all these people have in common? They all have an inner sense towards “accuracy” and “preferable” (not those words, but that to which they imperfectly but not therefore meaninglessly point) that they are invoke when deciding how to think and act.

Even the most dogmatically undogmatic skeptic is following a sense of “should” and “correct”. I myself can recall years spent supposing that I couldn’t really know anything for sure, hence I couldn’t really know I didn’t know anything for sure, which meant: what? And so then I’d get all nihilistic and sit around bars, cafes, and dorms tragic-heroically (having given up all hope for any meaning I could understand) drinking and smoking. Or then again I’d get all romantic and sit around bars, cafes, and dorms triumphant-heroically (having through some faith and/or by virtue of the absurd magically pulled grand meaning out of utter meaninglessness) drinking and smoking. Granted: a little liver and lung damage is well worth that much steady heroism; yet at the same time: what good did I accomplish?, and wasn’t I all the time, just like everyone else, clutching at “shoulds” and “trues” and “makes senses”? In the end, my personal philosophy’s refusal to ratify “I actually Truly Should” didn’t keep my desire for “actually preferable” from ruling my thought–it just made my instinctual push for accuracy and preferable lurch about confusedly, grabbing chaotically at momentary “shoulds”, “trues” and “meaningfuls”. People, I’m here to tell you: it can’t be done! You can’t suspend belief in metaphysics: no matter how you twist your thoughts and feelings, you cannot help but attach an inner sense of “No, but for real!” to ideas and feelings about how you should live and think. It is human nature. You can do it as an exercise, and no doubt as an exercise it is a salutary meditation; but what makes you decide to stop, start, and continue such exercises? Isn’t it your old friend “this is what I should actually do” (again, we mean to point with these words toward an inner sense of things that words can only imperfectly, though not therefore necessarily meaninglessly, point towards)? Since suspending all judgement is not so much an option as a pretend option, and we cannot help but seek out “truer” and “better”, which we cannot really make sense of unless we undergird them with a sense of and preference for “actually True” and “actually Good”, we have only one option: seek the “True Good” (what else can adequately answer all our various longings for accuracy and preferability?). Our choice is reduced then to this: Will we seek the True Good carefully, deliberately, coherently, and completely; or will we half-ass the job?

But what is the “True Good”? Who knows? I mean: we poetically (not literally/definitively/exclusively, but not therefore necessarily meaninglessly) point towards the goal of all our inner sense towards more and more accurate and preferable with phrases like the “True Good” and “God’s Will” and “The Way”, but we know that with such poetry, if we’re saying anything at all, we’re pointing past ideas (aka: stories-about) and feelings (aka: reactions-to) towards “what is really going on” (as opposed to ideas and feelings attempting to relate meaningfully to “what is really going on”), and we further understand that we cannot hope to explain the “True Good” in any kind of literal or definitive way.

So that’s our situation: our own thought is only meaningful to us to the degree it relates meaningfully to the “True Good” (ie: that within which knows what is “actually preferable”); but our thought deceives itself to the degree it imagines it possesses literal knowledge of the “True Good”. Skepticism about notions like the existence, preeminence, and meaningfulness of “Truth” and “Goodness” is self-defeating: if you doubt your inner pushes towards “Truth” and “Goodness”, then you are doubting your thought as you cannot help but understand it, and so you are turning your thought into a confused mush. However, blind faith in “Truth” and “Goodness” or anything else is self-defeating because the point was never to force feelings of certainty onto xyz concepts: the point is to relate meaningfully to what is prior to ideas and feelings, which means that ideas and feelings must not lose sight of the relative nature of their relationship to the Absolute. It goes too far to say we have no sense of “True” and “Good”; it also goes too far to say our ideas and feelings about the “True Good” are eternally valid. It is a mistake to give up on meaningful engagement with the “True Good” because we cannot relate with perfect clarity and accuracy to the “True Good”; it is also a mistake to put more focus in our ideas and feelings about the “True Good” than in our whole-being (ideas, feelings, and whatever else is within the conscious moment) engagement with the “True Good” (which I generally imagine as shining through everything, including each conscious moment).

Something Deeperism does not go so far as to tell skeptics or believers that they are mistaken. Indeed, since the Way is more a balance of ideas and feelings around the Light within than any given intellectual and/or emotional system, there will be plenty cohorts of self-declared skeptics and believers with parallel wisdom-levels (cohort 1: A few completely foolish skeptics and believer; cohort 2: A bunch of pretty foolish skeptics and believers; cohort 3: A bunch of fairly wise skeptics and believers; cohort 3: A very few wise skeptics and believers). What Something Deeperism says to everyone is simply: let’s agree to keep the main thing the main thing: There’s no point to any of this if our inner sense towards Truth, Goodness, and aware clear honest accurate competent kind appreciative joyful generous creativity is not really really onto something; so let’s not blow off that loving joy / But it is also self-defeating to focus more on ideas and feelings about why life is (or isn’t) Meaningful than on that Light within that alone understands that and how life is truly Meaningful; so let’s not also fight against excessive dogmatism.

What about to societies of human beings? What does Something Deeperism say to them? Same thing: let’s keep first things first. We won’t agree on all the details, but if we let that keep us from working together for an aware, thoughtful, clear, honest, open, accurate, competent, loving group-decision-making process, then we are undermining our own priorities: we’re sinning against what is sacred to us for the sake of ideas and feelings–things that, while necessary tools for interacting with the human reality, we ultimately don’t really understand, believe in, or care about: we’re putting tools that are only meaningful to the degree they help us understand, follow, live and become one with the Light ahead of the process of that fundamental task. Madness! Pure folly!

Left over deliberation

Human thought will always contain some faith and some doubting. You cannot doubt everything, and when you do doubt, you also always have at least a little doubt in the doubt, and so some faiths are inevitable. On the other hand, you cannot quite 100% believe in any idea or feeling (you don’t even intellectually or emotionally fully grasp anything, so to some degree you are just staring in confusion at xyz idea or feeling), and so no faith is completely free of doubt.

It has now become clear that we are both, like the systems betwixt us, completely miserable. Which vexation begs the questions: what are we doing wrong? how can we do things right?
I’m so lonely all the time. It’s like a sledgehammer pounding me through the chipping cement. I think it’s because I’m deep in the corrupt and broad with the mad.
What is corruption? What is madness? Where is it in me? In you? In the systems where we live and die?
Corruption and madness are both, like all human things, things of degrees. The more corrupt an individual or group is, the more that person or organization lets injustice rather than wisdom rule. The more insane an individual or group is, the more that person or organization is overrun by chaos rather than wisdom. The problems are interrelated: more corruption degrades the internal system for choosing one thought-/action-path over another, which permits more madness as well as more corruption into that process; more insanity likewise degrades the decision-making process and so allows more corruption and madness into the system. Rot encourages more rot. It is often impossible to locate exactly where one ends and the other begins: “How much am I really crazy versus how much am I courting confusion in order to open up a path for my lusts/fears to take control??”
What does corruption look like? It looks like what it is: evil preferred over good. And madness? It too looks like itself: random notions chosen over wise/clear/bright feeling, thinking and acting.
The more corrupt a human conscious moment, human group, or government is, the easier evil impulses (dishonesty, folly, cruelty, vanity, confusion, meanness, greed, pettyiness, egotism: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) wins out in the constant inner leadership struggle (within an individual, group, and/or government/political-entity). With each evil victory, evil pushes the whole (individual, … government/political-entity) more towards its foolish, self-defeating ends (self-defeating because corruption = wisdom is not steering = the Light within that is our most essential self and that alone knows what is actually worthwhile is not in charge = that within which deserves to rule our thoughts and actions is losing control) . Conversely, the less corrupt xyz human-entity is, the easier it is for good impulses (honesty, wisdom, clarity, kindness, selflessness, win-win, shared joy, Love: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to take control within xyz human moment. And each goodness victory allows goodness to push the whole more towards good, decent, coherent — towards more internally-meaningful and spiritually / emotionally / intellectually / actionably acceptable.
Insanity has the same basic effect as corruption: making evil win and goodness lose; but whereas corruption seeks confusion in order to mask its evil intentions and ruthlessly selfish and pathetically boring/limited/unimaginative worldview; madness (whether wholly organic or to some appreciable degree caused by corruption’s self-undermining of a human-entity) starts primarily with chaos and flails about less purposely, perhaps even being on occasion nudged in a better direction by a better impulse, though ultimately — lacking adequate levels of clear self-aware conscious engagement and thus invariably courting corruption — tends like corruption to the worse and worse and worse worse worse (actually, you know, corruption can also accidentally occasionally lurch toward better and away from worse; though on the whole it’s direction, like madness, is decisively worse, worse, …).
But what are we asking of ourselves and others? What does preferring wisdom/goodness over folly/evil amount to? I’m afraid that we’re trying to agree to not cheat. But how’s that gonna work?
Is there anything so hard as actually believing in the existence and preeminence of goodness and wisdom? Fashion may dictate that we applaud one or the other or throw one or both triumphantly under the bus in the name of God and/or Reason (or “Living Fully!”, etc); but we people generally find a way to keep them in the same place: Kindof Land.
No matter what we think we understand, believe, and care about; we always kind of understand, believe in, and care about goodness and wisdom — we always kind of understand, believe in, and care about “Truly Should” and “The Way Forward” (not so much these words or even the concepts they point towards, but rather that to which those words and concepts imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately point). But what we are now suggesting we should do is work as individuals, groups, and political entities to move our faith in goodness and wisdom out of Kindof Land — where they are so suspiciously obliging to our hopes, fears, and group-thinks — and into “Yes! Let’s Do This! Let Us Overcome Selfishness In Order To Serve The Universal Good!!”
Can’t be done.
How could it be done?
Everybody just scratches their side while applauding their side.
Can’t we all agree that any worldview meaningful to human hearts and minds demands that we pursue wisdom and goodness, and that we do so with awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, competence, kindness, and shared joy? Can’t we all together agree on these universal spiritual values (“spiritual” = !For Real! — as opposed to ‘maybe, just a thought, well on the other hand, and then again, of course maybe nothing matters anyway and there’s no ultimate difference between hitlering and lovingkindnessing …’)?
Sure we can say we can.
But: Problem: Everyone nods good-naturedly and then with inflamed eyelids, foaming teeth, and jabbing pointers — and/or politely complimenting the truly exceptional cheesecake — accuses the other side of completely botching wisdom/goodness while their side is flawed but ultimately OK.
No, it’s scarier than that: Because some really are more lost to unhelpful momentums than others. And calling it all an even-confusion is one of the confusions unwisdom exploits.
mmm what to do what to do what to do ? ? ?
What a world we live in.
What a time crushes us — living off, seeding in, putrifying and expanding with the fraying lurchy leers inside and barfing through our private and shared visions.

I want so desperately to be able to make a case for anti-corruption that is adequately true, meaningful, and shareable.
But I keep coming up short.
I think I’m right that to the degree a worldview is meaningful to a human being that worldview supports awareness and other spiritual values that we can to some degree collectively agree on and whose fruits we can to some degree collectively recognize (fruits like calm, careful, gentle, decent, self-transcending competent kindness); and that we therefore have a collective duty to use those shareable standards responsibly.
But is anyone even arguing this?
My point is a Socratic one: We (even those of us who write desperate essay after heartsick essay affirming the general Something Deeperism worldview) must not really believe in these uncontested positions; because if we did, we would not be so inclined to see only the folly of others. And we’d be kinder and wiser, and ripple like light across the morning sea. [Editor’s Note: Socrates often suggested that people want to do what is best and so the fact that we often don’t do what is best must be due to our lack of insight into what is best. Likewise, the arguer here argues that if we were really so sure that awareness … shared joy were really The Way, we’d behave better. Therefore, we must not be very sincere: we must mostly just like saying we believe in and care about awareness … shared joy.]
What I’ve longed to do is find an essay that everyone could agree with and that would serve as a foundation for meaningful dialogues — conversations grounded in and guided by aware, clear, honest, competent, accurate, compassionate, kind, respectful, joyfully-sharing thought and action. But I guess I’ve not the requisite powers.
What should I, abject failure, Tumbling Icarus, then do?
I don’t know.
Sit back and let the nation right itself or devolve into a place where journalists, dissidents, and random people who inadvertently crossed the wrong politico disappear, never to reappear, and about whose whereabouts “sensible people” ask no questions?
Maybe getting everyone to agree about and together discuss the need for awareness … shared joy would be enough to gently shift the thought-process of our politics more towards clear kind calm helpful resolve? Maybe enough so that we could all grow together in active wisdom and shared joy??
Hmmm
Dr. I Dunnough, former Plantagenant
Sometime 2017 or 18
Soliloquizing all alone while running through the tall sharp stinging grasses thwacking bare legs and arms churning desperately forward.
The arms and legs thought they were churning forward.

Original Version was Aug 9, 2018
This updated version is from “First Loves”, a collection of essays published February 2, 2020

copyright: AMW

Note to editorial team:
You need to explain the error of blind faith and blind skepticism and how Something Deeperism avoids both errors (though not all self-supposed Something Deeperists do Something Deeperism as well as some self-supposed Non-Something Deeperists), and then you need to relate those errors and that solution to groups, governments, and etc.
There’s probably other things you need to do to make this essay useful.

[Editors’ Note: OK, another longish essay on Something Deeperism. So we’ve taken the bottom and put it at the top, giving readers the option of satisfying themselves on less detailed outline:]

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the individual? Even without all our above [now below] sketches, they are this simple rule to which any philosopher or believer can readily assent: The only hope for human beings is to put a constant full-being (ideas, feelings, and whatever else is within the conscious moment all working meaningfully together) engagement with the joy within which alone knows that and how human life truly Matters ahead of all our ideas and feelings about life’s meaning: The only hope is to put such an engagement ahead of our ideas and feelings about what Matters, or how nothing Matters, or how we don’t know if anything Matters or Not. Because only through that engagement can we humans find a path that is meaningful/interesting/followable/believable/standable to us.

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the group?
OK!
I can answer that.
We won’t get everyone to agree that Something Deeperism is an awesome rule of thumb for thought and action–a nice sketch of a workable worldview, which of course will never be perfect and which only has meaning to the degree it points us towards fully knowing and living the gentle joy that passes but does not completely blow off human understanding. Different people have different notions, and we get super attached to them sometimes, and whatever.
But we should be able to eke out this minimal concession:
Any philosophy or religion will only be meaningful/livable to human beings to the degree that philosophy or religion respects, encourages, and fosters the following:

1) Awareness, clarity, honesty in thought (to the degree one fails in these goals, one’s thought confuses and/or mistrusts itself: you dissolve into a fog of equally-believable, and thus equally-meaningless possibilities; and within this fog the old hopes and fears clamor to the forefront, take over the ship and sink it like a pack of wild ultimately-directionless drives would have to).

2) A belief that other human beings are all fundamentally like we are, and that we can communicate meaningfully to ourselves and with other human beings, and that what we say and do actually matters; that is to say: we are all in this together and must treat ourselves and everyone else with respect and kindness (to the degree one fails to think, feel, and act in accordance with the sense-of-things here sketched [again: imperfectly, but not therefore necessarily inadequately], one’s focus turns away from one’s own conscious moment (which has become meaningless/boring/hopeless to it); and again into the chaos arising from this lack of meaningful conscious engagement, slip the demondogs of push-away/pull-towards, and the ship is again overrun by ultimate-directionlessness and sunk [maybe not irretrievably: indeed, the sooner you see water crashing in all around, the better!]).

3) A commitment to working to improve honesty, efficiency, decency/justice/kindness (all smushed together to highlight how decency requires justice and neither work for anyone unless everything is undergirded by kindness: not “decency” as in “burn sinner burn!” and not “justice” as in “revenge”, but “decency” as “fostering a place where we are given the space to explore in life with open-hearts and -minds” and “justice” as in “equal treatment under the law within a constant push for policies and procedures that help everyone find and live the Light in a way that is meaningful to them and helpful to all”) in private and public groups (including government). Just as an individual’s thought is more meaningful to that individual’s ideas and feelings and her thought-as-a-whole to the degree he thinks aware, clear … kind, a group’s thought is more meaningful to the individuals within the group and the group-as-a-whole to the degree that group demands, pursues, and improves honesty, efficiency, and the kind of fair play that allows everyone to participate in building a more open, caring, wise, helpful, uncorrupt government. Both mindless flag-waving and pouty-quitting go too far: they cause us to look away from what our government is up to and prevent us from doing our fundamental duty as citizens: working together to act as a final check on corruption and madness in government.

Addendum: What is corruption? What is madness? They’re both, like all human things, things of degrees.

The more corrupt a human conscious moment, group of humans, or government is, the easier it is for evil (dishonesty, cruelty, vanity, meanness, greed, pettyiness, egotism: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within an individual, group, and/or government/political-entity) to rule, which victory allows evil to thus push the whole (individual, … government/political-entity) towards its foolish, self-defeating (because corruption = wisdom is not steering = that within which deserves to rule our thoughts and actions is losing control) ends; the less corrupt xyz human-entity is, the easier it is for goodness (honesty, kindness, selflessness, win-win, shared joy, Love: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within xyz human-entity) to rule, which victory allows goodness to push the whole towards better, more coherent, internally-meaningful and spiritually/emotionally/intellectually/actionably acceptable.

Insanity has the same basic effect: making evil win and goodness lose; but whereas corruption seeks confusion in order to mask its evil intentions and ruthlessly selfish and pathetically boring/limited/unimaginative worldview; madness (whether organic or to some appreciable degree caused by corruption’s self-undermining of a human-entity) more starts with chaos and flails about less purposely, perhaps even being on occasion nudged in a better direction by a better impulse, though ultimately–being without adequate levels of clear self-aware conscious engagement–tends like corruption to the worse and worse and worse worse worse.

The above writing was found painstakingkly etched into the glossy marine-gray paint job of a well-kept toilet stall’s door by an earnest citizen, who duly reported the finding to the proper authorities at WAP’s Department of Unexpected Spiritual Reflections. The above transcript was created by Bartleby Willard and Andy Watson, in cooperation with the reigning WAP archivist, Buddy McBusy Boddy.

Original Text begins here:

Too long has humankind, blinded by dreams of safest landings and grand victories, allowed itself to fracture and spin, cutting itself like a mad dog attacking itself: now viciously gnawing off its own legs; now frantically ramming its own eye onto a spike; now desperately bashing and scraping its own head into sharp coral, now finding a piece of broken glass along which to run its very own wolfy hide.

Too long.

The mistakes are many, but they reduce to one basic error: a crisis of identity. We think we are distinct from one another, that our wishlists conflict, that some humans are allies and others are enemies. This is not the path of wisdom. It is not the way forward. We’ve gotten away with it until now, blundering along, with our left eye taking advantage of our right, our pinky extracting a terrible revenge on our index finger: with Tribal Association A slaughtering Tribal Association B, until, after a great deal of burning blood and lonely boredom, the two associations merge into Tribal Association C, which in turn pats itself on its broad back and soon settles upon Tribal Association D to punish for crimes real and/or imagined. The crimes will be x degree real and x degree imagined, but the associations are always imagined. There is only one soul and we are all children of that one Light. To the degree we fail to Know (be “hip to”) and move in accordance with (be “cool”) that Light, we hurt ourself, we waste waste our time, we miss out on wonderful opportunities to explore, play, and dance as Light reflected through mind/matter.

I’ve been here now on this lonely overlooking outcrop a long lonely time. I’ve watched our armies rally, stand, fall, scatter, form again. I’ve felt the heart clench, open, quibble, falter, move, die, rise again.

I’m turning now to go back home. There’s a little pool beneath a tall thin waterfall and surrounded by trees, grasses, grey stones. I can go there, slip into the cool shadowy waters, and emerge on the other side of the waterfall. What I’ll find there, only The God knows, but that I must head there now, I’ve always known.

In purpling evening light, dark sky descending on soft blue clarity, a gentle coolness takes the air.

But, people, yes, people. People and their structures of mind and matter. People. What do I say to people?

Something Deeperism is nothing new, nor is it complicated, esoteric, only for the enlightened few.

Something Deeperism is simply the notion that:

1. YES!, there is a Reality that we can and should follow, and YES, the way to follow that Reality is by following our inborn rules for thinking and acting in a way that is meaningful to us: aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, decent, kind, selfless; with open-heart and -mind seeking to better and better Know that and in what way it really is True that loving kindness is the Way–that and in what way it is True to say we are all in this together.

&

2. NO!, our feelings, ideas, words, and deeds cannot understand/follow/believe-in that Reality in a literal, 1:1, definitive, or otherwise perfect way.

Something Deeperism’s goal is adequate poetic insight into the Light within that alone knows how we should truly think, feel, act, live.

Think of a poem about a walk along the creek on a carefree youthful afternoon.
Does the poem perfectly recreate the author’s experience and sense-of-the-moment within even the most attentive reader? No. But is it therefore fair to say that no communication of the gist of conscious moment A experienced by human-being M is meaningfully reexamined by A in M in the poem, and then, via the reading of the poem by conscious moment B in human-being N, meaningfully communicated to B in N? No. Indeed, a good poem read by a sympathetic and attentive reader can in many cases communicate conscious experiences meaningfully both within the author and between the author and her reader.

Think of thinking about feelings in terms of ideas.
Feelings are in a sense wider, deeper, and vaguer than ideas. But with awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, competence, and an open heart and mind, a human being can meaningfully think about her feelings in terms of ideas, and can even speak meaningfully of her feelings with other human beings.

Recall quickly the problem plaguing human ideas and feelings: they can always be wrong. Philosophers have long noted that if all we have are ideas and feelings, we can have no firm foundation for knowledge: ideas/feelings cannot stand outside of their interplay and assess themselves against some irrefutable standard of Truth. Even if God seized your heart and told you that xyz dogmas is True so forcefully and clearly that you Knew it to be True and were not wrong and Knew you were not wrong–still, in the next moment there would be the matter of interpreting that dogma in terms of your human ideas and feelings, which would still be liable to both general error (fundamentally misunderstanding how they relate to Reality) and specific errors (getting the gist of Reality and their relationship to It correct, but still biffing xyz specific interpretation of what Reality in xyz specific moment bids them to do). There’s always this gap between ideas (ie: stories-about) and feelings (ie: reactions-to) and that which they are thinking and feeling about; and if what they are considering is Reality (what is really going on, as opposed to ideas and feelings about what is really going on), for all they know a miss is as good as a mile. Not only that, but we all know first hand the conniving treachery of our own ideas and feelings: how willfully they confuse their own little hopes and fears, lusts and lurches for !THE TRUTH!

Now consider the following hypothetical scenario:
Shining through everything, and thus shining through each human conscious moment is a Light (aka: Truth, God, etc: we’re pointing imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately towards what is prior to language; ie: we’re speaking poetically, but not therefore necessarily in a way that cannot fit meaningfully into an intellectual conversation) that is simultaneously True Knowledge and Absolute Reality, and thus has no gap wherein It might mistake Itself, and therefore no chance of error nor room for self-doubt.
As a human’s ideas and feelings take place inside the same conscious space as that Light, they can relate to It meaningfully. The Light is wider and deeper than they are; and It does not share their capability for error or penchant for self-deception; therefore, ideas and feelings will not be able literally/definitively/1:1 understand/follow/believe the Light, and to the degree they pretend they can, what they actually do is mislabel themselves for the Light, which of course causes no end of trouble. However, note, while we’re here anyway, that while mislabeling the Light causes all kinds of horrible oversteps, pretending that there is no Light and it doesn’t matter how one feels and thinks or what one does, also amounts to a grave and oft extremely destructive mislabeling of the true situation. Assuming, as we currently are, that there really is a Light and that It alone has the Goodness and Wisdom to adequately guide our ideas, feelings, words, and deeds.
We know how well we are following the Light by Its fruits, which are also Its path: aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent thinking and feeling centered around the push to better understand and live the Light (not so much that idea as the inner sense of things to which it imperfectly though not therefore necessarily inadequately points), with this seeking and living guardrailed by our inner knowledge that if we are not respectful, kind, and deeply aware of other human beings–if we do not love the Light (aka: God / the Truth / Buddha Nature / etc: again: this is prior to our ideas and feelings: they will not reach It literally/definitively) with all our heart and soul and mind and our neighbors as ourselves, then we are full of shit, and we need to stop, drop all our nonsense egotripping, and start over again, pushing out from within, pushing for the Light within ourselves and within every other living creature.

You see? It could work. And if that above scenario is not True, nothing can work. Because if there’s no Truth or we cannot relate meaningfully to It or we don’t, then our ideas and feelings are free to twist and turn self-servingly, and, despite heroic speeches to the contrary, they will and they do. And also because if the Truth is supposed to be literally/definitively grasped by human beings, the most fundamental Should of our lives is incomprehensible to our ideas and feelings, which we must rely on to relate meaningfully to our lives.

[Note that you don’t have to believe in the Truth to follow It adequately; and that believing in It does not necessarily mean you will follow It adequately. We are pointing with language towards what is prior to language, so a reader might disagree with our poetry but still jive with the underlying poem. The point of this essay is not to demand uniformity of belief, but just to point towards a gist where we can meet and meaningfully grow together: Loving Kindness is the Way (to attempt a broader, less theophilosophical poetry).]

If the above sketch is correct, the way forward is constant spiritual, emotional, intellectual, moral and existential seeking, attempting, reexamining, reevaluating, refining–always in the spirit of selfless joy and humble diligence. You are never 100% right or 100% wrong, but can be much more heading towards right or much more heading towards wrong, and the task is to keep working to head in the right direction–a task which has as a fundamental component both constant spiritual effort and constant awareness of the tendency of ideas and feelings to trick one into taking them more seriously than the Light within which they are supposed to be translating as best they can, but which they can never perfectly translate.

If the Truth is either nonexistent or completely unknown, there is no way forward. Thinkers can build all the fancy theories about creating meaning out of meaningfulness that they want to: such theories don’t really make sense to human hearts and minds and are therefore not livable philosophies. I mean, sure, since most people don’t really pay all that much attention to their own stated philosophies and religious convictions, one might very well put together a workable life based on such a philosophy. But the point of this essay is to point us towards a more accurate understanding of how human thought/feeling works, what it needs to be meaningful to itself (and thus able to follow its own thinking/feeling to its own conclusions), and how it could realistically hope to find and progress in that meaningfulness. Human goodness and wisdom are always things of degrees: we’ll never get them perfect, but a more careful description of where we find ourselves (ie: how our thought works, what motivates us, what possibilities we find within ourselves) is helpful in the same way stopping and looking around you is a good tool for getting less lost. That’s what this essay is for. Not to get all huffy about how you have to think and feel. But to think and feel with you, with all of us–we band of brothers, we happy sisters, we lucky genderless, raceless, nationless, teamless soul-flow.

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the individual? Even without all our above sketches, they are this simple rule to which any philosopher or believer can readily assent: The only hope for human beings is to put a constant full-being (ideas, feelings, and whatever else is within the conscious moment all working meaningfully together) engagement with the joy within which alone knows that and how human life truly Matters ahead of all our ideas and feelings: The only hope is to put such an engagement ahead of our ideas and feelings about what Matters, or how nothing Matters, or how we don’t know if anything Matters or Not. Because only through that engagement can we humans find a path that is meaningful/interesting/followable/believable/standable to us.

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the group?
OK!
I can answer that.
We won’t get everyone to agree that Something Deeperism is an awesome rule of thumb for thought and action–a nice sketch of a workable worldview, which of course will never be perfect and which only has meaning to the degree it points us towards fully knowing and living the gentle joy that passes but does not completely blow off human understanding. Different people have different notions, and we get super attached to them sometimes, and whatever.
But we should be able to eke out this minimal concession:
Any philosophy or religion will only be meaningful/livable to human beings to the degree that philosophy or religion respects, encourages, and fosters the following:

1) Awareness, clarity, honesty in thought (to the degree one fails in these goals, one’s thought confuses and/or mistrusts itself: you dissolve into a fog of equally-believable, and thus equally-meaningless possibilities; and within this fog the old hopes and fears clamor to the forefront, take over the ship and sink it like a pack of wild ultimately-directionless drives would have to).

2) A belief that other human beings are all fundamentally like we are, and that we can communicate meaningfully to ourselves and with other human beings, and that what we say and do actually matters; that is to say: we are all in this together and must treat ourselves and everyone else with respect and kindness (to the degree one fails to think, feel, and act in accordance with the sense-of-things here sketched [again: imperfectly, but not therefore necessarily inadequately], one’s focus turns away from one’s own conscious moment (which has become meaningless/boring/hopeless to it); and again into the chaos arising from this lack of meaningful conscious engagement, slip the demondogs of push-away/pull-towards, and the ship is again overrun by ultimate-directionlessness and sunk [maybe not irretrievably: indeed, the sooner you see water crashing in all around, the better!]).

3) A commitment to working to improve honesty, efficiency, decency/justice/kindness (all smushed together to highlight how decency requires justice and neither work for anyone unless everything is undergirded by kindness: not “decency” as in “burn sinner burn!” and not “justice” as in “revenge”, but “decency” as “fostering a place where we are given the space to explore in life with open-hearts and -minds” and “justice” as in “equal treatment under the law within a constant push for policies and procedures that help everyone find and live the Light in a way that is meaningful to them and helpful to all”) in private and public groups (including government). Just as an individual’s thought is more meaningful to that individual’s ideas and feelings and her thought-as-a-whole to the degree he thinks aware, clear … kind, a group’s thought is more meaningful to the individuals within the group and the group-as-a-whole to the degree that group demands, pursues, and improves honesty, efficiency, and the kind of fair play that allows everyone to participate in building a more open, caring, wise, helpful, uncorrupt government. Both mindless flag-waving and pouty-quitting go too far: they cause us to look away from what our government is up to and prevent us from doing our fundamental duty as citizens: working together to act as a final check on corruption and madness in government.

Addendum: What is corruption? What is madness? They’re both, like all human things, things of degrees.

The more corrupt a human conscious moment, group of humans, or government is, the easier it is for evil (dishonesty, cruelty, vanity, meanness, greed, pettyiness, egotism: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within an individual, group, and/or government/political-entity) to rule, which victory allows evil to thus push the whole (individual, … government/political-entity) towards its foolish, self-defeating (because corruption = wisdom is not steering = that within which deserves to rule our thoughts and actions is losing control) ends; the less corrupt xyz human-entity is, the easier it is for goodness (honesty, kindness, selflessness, win-win, shared joy, Love: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within xyz human-entity) to rule, which victory allows goodness to push the whole towards better, more coherent, internally-meaningful and spiritually/emotionally/intellectually/actionably acceptable.

Insanity has the same basic effect: making evil win and goodness lose; but whereas corruption seeks confusion in order to mask its evil intentions and ruthlessly selfish and pathetically boring/limited/unimaginative worldview; madness (whether organic or to some appreciable degree caused by corruption’s self-undermining of a human-entity) more starts with chaos and flails about less purposely, perhaps even being on occasion nudged in a better direction by a better impulse, though ultimately–being without adequate levels of clear self-aware conscious engagement–tends like corruption to the worse and worse and worse worse worse.

The above writing was found painstakingkly etched into the glossy marine-gray paint job of a well-kept toilet stall’s door by an earnest citizen, who duly reported the finding to the proper authorities at WAP’s Department of Unexpected Spiritual Reflections. The above transcript was created by Bartleby Willard and Andy Watson, in cooperation with the reigning WAP archivist, Buddy McBusy Boddy.