Something Deeperism is a general intellectual position along the lines of:

“I can and should follow my own inner-pushes towards accuracy, honesty, Truth, Goodness, and Pure Love–guard-railing that seeking with my inner-sense that other people are essentially the same as I am, and that respect, kindness, self- and other-compassion, and open-minded/-hearted communal joy are Correct. In this way, I can make progress in life’s meaning: I can gain more and more active insight into what is really going on, what really matters, and how I should really live.

“What would make life worth living and justify choosing any action over another is one thing alone: the Joyful Sharing Love at the heart of the conscious moment. Therefore, I cannot perfectly translate what-is-most-important into ideas and feelings, as what-is-most-important is prior to ideas and feelings. However, imperfect is not the same as inadequate and I can neither relate to this human life without using ideas and feelings, nor can I understand, care about or believe in my thoughts and actions without adequate spiritual insight; therefore, I must find a way to show my whole self (ideas, feelings, inner senses, and the Light within that alone knows what is actually truly preferable: all those elements working together) not only that these principles (ie: every assumption I’m here making) are True, but also how they are True.

“And so the only way forward is to organize my ideas and feelings better and better around the Light within, keeping in mind that I must constantly fight against the human tendency to confuse ideas and feelings about the Light for the Light: I must never stop pushing for more awareness, honesty, joy, Love, kindness, shared joy: for more and more open-hearted/-minded seeking and sharing.”

Much of that mantra is poetic: it points past ideas and feelings towards what is prior to them. However, all worldviews have a poetic base. What actually matters to people are notions–spoken or unspoken, admitted or denied–about what is really going on, what actually matters, and how one should actually live. Whether we form the thought, and even if we form contradictory thoughts, we cannot help but base our lives on attempts to answer those questions. The only choice we have is whether we pull those questions out in the open, thus giving ourselves a chance to think and act coherently, or we hide from the questions by pretending we’ve already got them all figured out. We evade those fundamental questions by focussing on ideas and feelings about what we should believe and do (even the self-aware or -unaware choice of pursuing a blithe thoughtfulness is actually also an assumption about what one should believe and do) so much that we lose sight of the whole-being insight into the Truth/Light/PureLove/TrueGood/God/BuddhaNature (all these concepts point imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately towards what we’re trying to get at here).

Human wisdom is a thing of degrees. We must keep working to see more clearly and act better.

That is the general attitude of Something Deeperism: To the degree I lack whole-being insight into that and how Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Justice, Respectful Helping Kindly Shared Joy are True, I cannot care about understand, believe in, or even care about my own thoughts and actions. So the only choice is to seek wisdom, and if that sense within towards clarity, honesty, accuracy and kindness of thought is not the way towards wisdom, I have no path towards wisdom that I can understand, believe in, or even care about. So the only choice is to accept the spiritual calling, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and strength and mind, and your neighbor–who is just like you and thus also belongs to God–as yourself. The only possible way forward is to get serious about awareness, honesty, kindness.

What about for groups? Well, we all have different ideas about what is True and what Matters, and what doctrines one requires to adequately align oneself with what’s knowable and preferable, but can we not all agree that we are all in this together and that all of our philosophies and religions are only valuable to the degree they ratify and provide a structure for living those values without which none of us can stand life? Can we not all agree on accuracy, honesty, compassion, respect, kindness, rule of law as nourished by a free people freely seeking the Law? Can we not all agree that forcing beliefs onto people is corrupting because it tempts people to lie to themselves and others about their experiences of what is most sacred to them? But can we also not all agree that we still all must and in fact do share some fundamental spiritual values: “It matters what I say and do”, “Aware, clear, honest, accurate thought is the way forward”, “kindness is right”, “we are all in this together and so should be respectful of and kind towards one another and we should appreciate each other and share community and enjoy each other’s company”. Things like that. Things without which we have nothing: let’s accept them and admit we don’t perfectly understand them and that it is a stupid and cruel distortion to pretend like our fellows do not have the same basic rights and duties imprinted within their hearts-of-hearts.

Author: Spelunker Stewart
Copyright: AMW