Spiritual Profiling: The Beast Lives

Nothing that can be said to be spiritual can be inanimate or dead. The beast lives. And just as spirit may not be limited to any form, still, for us to feel "spirit" or "spiritual" there must be some touch, some tangibility, and therefore some form. To that end, it can be helpful to share some common assumptions. Also to that end, it helps to not see any of us as limited to those assumptions. Not only, then, does my understanding of the process need to move forward, but the dialogue must as well. Just as those who saw the Great Depression moved beyond the Great Depression, we will move our dialogue beyond those basic assumptions and yet remain somewhat shaped by those assumptions.

This is very important. If we include the expectation of change right from the very beginning, then it may turn out that the followers are actually leading and vice versa. It may be that we'll find that a beloved basic assumption becomes the greatest obstacle to further progress. In other words, everything is up for grabs. When that is the sort of situation we face, how can we know we aren't just flapping around like a fish out of water? How do we know we aren't flopping further and further from our stream the harder we try?

When there is no way to be sure that up isn't down and left isn't right, when quantities may turn out to be the opposites of what they first seemed, we might still be able to rely on qualities. I may not know where I'm going, but I might know if I'm moving fast. I may not know if I'm fast or slow, but I can say whether it feels right. This is a different way of seeing things and making decisions. It can seem so complicated as to be impossible or so vague as to be ineffectual. In other words, it still needs a foundation, or we could say a vehicle. So I'll give a comparison or two.

The guru traditions basically send the message that you must give up everything you used to know (the sky is blue, grass is green) so that the divine wisdom of the guru can set you straight (the sky is you, the grass is grass). In other words, we give up our normal way of knowing things and simply replace it with someone else's. Wouldn't that be nice? But until Jesus obviously returns, I still havent' found that enlightened of a guru. Or maybe I'm just a skeptic. Other "expert"-type paradigms abound. "Listen to the physicist who knows physics more than you, follow your President, eat your peas", etc. All of these sorts of approaches are of one paradigm: something outside of you knows better--at least for now--than you do.

I'm willing to admit that physics experts know more than me, but most physics experts--while they may be somewhat arrogant about their intelligence and learning--don't claim that I should give up all of my worldly possessions and follow them because they are my moral superior (so they're different from gurus, better in a way). I appreciate that about anyone who does not equate power with betterness. More power means more potential for damage or corruption, so rather than looking at quantities as my reference point (more/less), I tend to look at the qualities of application. If you use your small amount of power well, I congratulate you. If you use a large amount of power poorly, I won't resent you--I'll criticize. Now, it has been somewhat unpopular under the aegis of white guilt and post-colonial relativism to NOT criticize those with little power. I am either part of a backlash against that sort of spineless apologetics or a step in a better direction. Personally, I don't care whether you like my position. Between emotional adults, positions should not be addressed the way teenagers talk about someone else's clothes or tastes in music. So I also don't care if you like my position. Both of those opinions are worthless to me. But if you go a step further with your opinions (or, let's say that you have a position, and I have to do better than simply say "cool" or "sucks"), you bring detail. You tell me something I don't already know about my position, you point out what I can't see ("Yes, your ass does look fat in that, Todd.")

My response will not be: you shouldn't pick on me because I don't have much social power. My response is simple, usual for me. "So what?" Only, this is not a rhetorical "so what?". I mean it. Why do you say what you say? What are you looking for? How do you want that to affect me? Most of us, when we speak, we speak because we feel an internal impulse more than because we say something that we think will have certain affects on those we speak to. I cheer, "Go Eagles!" because I want to feel excited and support my football team, not as a measured way of convincing Cowboy fans to convert. (I have another sort of message for Cowboys and their fans.) That type of communication is appropriate at the stadium, and much beyond that was normal at Veteran's Stadium. It just doesn't do much more than show us whether we're on the same side or not, whether we're headed for the same party or not--after the game or after school.

I wonder whether your comment is higher quality than mine. And I'll be honest; I want to be the best. But the best what? I don't want to be the loudest asshole. And being the loudest doesn't seem to fit with being expert. Einstein wasn't great because he could shout, but in the stadium, noise matters. I want to yell so loud that Tony Romo can't even be heard by the center right in front of him. I want the Cowboys to go down...in flames, if possible. But Einstein in that crowd is just one more person either yelling or not.

It goes without saying that I'm no Einstein. I'm not being modest. The folks who know me well know I'm not modest. But that's how it is. Einstein was no quantum mechanist, either, but he did all right for himself. Probably no one else is going to care as much as I do about my purpose. Probably. (I'll save that caveat for later.) But I'd like to work it out. If I can be happiest as an Eagles fan, then maybe that is what I want to stick to. Maybe that is where I want to deploy as much of my attention as possible. But maybe there's more. Maybe I can be an Eagles fan AND something else besides. I don't know if Einstein had a favorite team, but tons of people are sports fans and more. Do you love the game? Is the noise you make moved by that love, by passion? Besides expertise, passion counts. Passion makes qualities tangible. If I can't feel an interest in, say, psychology more than the 700-level fans feel for Donovan McNabb (our quarterback), their passion may say something my intellectual expertise does not. For me, if I am a passionate football fan and only care in a half-assed way about psychology, then I may be a great fan and a mediocre (if fairly intelligent) psychologist. Most of the folks in my stadium section would tell me that they wouldn't want to see me as a therapist if I didn't care about them.

Sorry for the sports analogy, but sometimes it helps to talk about meatheads. I still care almost as much about my high school football practices as I do about getting a master's degree. I'd like to think that I care more about the future of our planet than I do about whether I played with honor, but that's not always the case. "So what?" It almost always a relevant question. If Einstein told me about relativity before it became a big thing, I'd have asked him that question. And maybe he'd have clued me in. Is my point starting to come across? An expert who's an asshole isn't less of an asshole for being an expert? And, he's no less of an expert for being an asshole. On both counts, quality matters. We just usually make exceptions. If you can find a good mechanic, that's where you take your car, even if he's an asshole--as long as he doesn't overcharge.

I've got a couple of points coming together here. Because we're all connected to some extent, you may put up with an honest, expert mechanic who's an asshole. It's just business, and good business if his prices are reasonable. But you might invite a deacon you like to your Christmas party and leave your mechanic uninvited, alone on Christmas Eve--except for his good friends Johnny and Bud. Quality means different things in different situations. You become a lower-quality host at your party if you invite too many assholes (or too many deacons, probably).

So the fact that qualities change in different situations doesn't faze us in the least. You don't want some nice deacon with the best of intentions checking your car--you want an expert mechanic who isn't trying to pull the wool over your eyes. You don't want some honest asshole at your parties, you want decent people who want to have fun. Quantities pretty much are what they are, but the importance of qualities changes depending on where we are. We are so used to dealing with this that we often don't even notice. My basic point is that assholes can loosen up or straighten out and party animals who always show up straight-laced on Sunday mornings may be more fun than rock stars. Everything changes, but many, many of us get stuck as caulking--as if we don't want change to happen. Because the world is what it is, we can't fear the wrong types of change; we have to be the right kinds of change. And in order to work on what the "right types of change" are, we have to find some way to get together on it that doesn't take away how you bring something different--sometimes better, sometimes worse--than what I bring. Every form changes, but there is something beyond and within form.