Stepping Stones
We arrive at all progress via stepping stones.
As societies, we had the reality of mental illness long before it dawned on us, the crucial necessity for practicing Mental Health. It took us a long time to evolve in our own understanding, as individuals and as a society, towards appreciation and due respect towards Mental Health problems and related remedies.
We did not all arrive at the requisite understanding of how pervasive and universal the implications of poor mental health, at the same time. For centuries, we took people of poor mental health, and incarcerated them, and among the primary treatments were starvation and cold exposure. Since then a range of interventions and treatments we would find primitive and cruel today, were celebrated and lauded by the ‘experts’ of that time.
Even now, we are still getting there. There are countries on earth today where mental health is seen as an excuse for lack of character. There are places in our ‘first world’ countries, where we easily overlook the byproducts of poor mental health. We easily relegate various symptoms and conditions of poor mental health as a lack of character or culture.
We are gradually coming around to the idea that anxiety and depression are ‘legitimate’ mental health conditions, but other forms of social dysfunction we like to think of again as a lack of character: political zealotry, homelessness, substance abuse, drug addiction, addictions of any kind, domestic violence, gender or body dysmorphia - we somehow don’t see these also as issues which are directly caused, or indirectly exacerbated by, poor mental health. To loosely paraphrase Johann Hari, the opposite of Depression is not happiness, it is Vitality. The opposite of Addiction is not sobriety, it is Connection with Belonging and Meaning.
The opposite of Depression is not happiness - it is Vitality.
The opposite of Addiction is not sobriety - it is Connection with Belonging and Meaning.
We are doing ourselves a great service as a society, in the taking of these first necessary steps. We just need to chart, and take, another step now, beyond the comparatively low horizon of the project of mental health…
Another Step Towards Better
The ‘invitation’ of this article, is to point to a deeper pervasive issue, that of Spiritual Health.
That said, ‘spirituality’ is a concept that has been distorted by misuse. It is true, always, that we do not arrive at our mistrusts dishonestly. Sometimes the way we are dismissive of anything ‘spiritual’ is arrived at fairly because of the way we have seen it expressed and practiced. The diet of spiritual junk-food we find on offer online, in podcasts and Instagram is, on the whole, troublingly immature. Many ‘healers’ and ‘leaders’, those speaking into this field are not necessarily disingenuous, sometimes they are just not particularly mature or sophisticated. This creates two problems, the first being that the industry or domain is not taken seriously because all the good are lumped in with the bad. The profound is painted with the same brush as as the banal, and no common ways of discerning or qualifying mature from immature, more worthy from less worthy are available. The second problem which shares a cause with the first, is that the entire domain of ‘spirituality’ is unregulated. Bad-faith actors, charlatans, well meaning fools and serious practitioners all share the same label in search directories.
There is so much confusion around what Spirituality is and does, and it often shows up as an infantilized hero-worship of some ancient tribal customs and wisdom, or a completely undiscerning patchwork of loosely cobbled ideas and practices that have been leeched of their connection with source by the loss context and the absence of proper instruction and guidance symptomatic of cross-cultural transmission.
The words ‘sacred’, ‘mystical’ and ‘soul’, tend to get a similar treatment.
To be clear, ‘Sacred’, does not need to have anything to do with shared ideas about god, or religion, or spiritual whimsy. It is simply the answered wish to find something deep, foundational and beautiful about this world, and the very private sense of gratitude and belonging we get from that discovery.
To be clear, ‘Sacred’, does not need to have anything to do with shared ideas about god, or religion, or spiritual whimsy. It is simply the answered wish to find something deep, foundational and beautiful about this world, and the very private sense of gratitude and belonging we get from that discovery.
We are starved for meaning.
Religion saw fit to drive many intelligent discerning people into the waiting arms of a burgeoning atheist movement. Remember, we do not arrive at our mistrusts dishonestly. Poor practice, poor incentives, and the farcical pretending that it held that totality of all answers was precisely what drove people away from Religion. Religion’s biggest mistake was to try and do to spirituality what Academia does to learning: dogma, control, gatekeeping and profiteering.
The problem really is that only very few of us are able to derive a real sense of comfort and meaning within the arms of pure reductionism and clinical atheist logic. For the vast majority of us, we need to know that it there is meaning to this world, and on some level meaning to suffering. We need to know there is something greater than us, even if it is a disembodied abstract intentionality in this world that wants us here and is steering the design, on some level.
It is clear that we cannot and should should resign ourselves to the models of organised religion again. That project has well and truly failed. No sane mature person can argue that to return to the fold of the church and trying to interpret wisdom and moral guidance from an iron-age superstitious cult is the way to spiritual health and universal welfare for all living beings.
A beginning of an argument against Religion.
Four billion of the nearly Eight billion people on the planet in 2023 identify as Christian, Muslim or Jewish in their faith.
Usually when someone says they do not believe in god, what they mean is they do not believe in the Christian ‘fan fiction’ depiction. This is wholly understandable. The claims made in the Christian canon and its close cousins Judaism and Islam, for a start, agree only in part, completely contradict each other in part, repeatedly contradict themselves, and moreover say nothing about the nature of the seeming infinite complexity of the Universe in a way that survives even the most basic encounter with modern reality.
To make matters worse, the Christian church is more schism than solidarity. They might band together under one banner when debating atheists, but in every other matter they have their dozens of private sacred hills they will proudly and angrily die on. There are more than 45,000 denominations of Christianity. Islam and Judaism trail behind with comparative rookie numbers, Judaism having something like fifteen denominations, depending on who is doing the counting. Each denomination having their core distinguishing belief and articles of faith, which define the boundaries separating them indelibly from their fellows. Islam comes in last of the Abrahamic religions, having just two major denominations, but still ultimately eight recognised schools and branches in total.
Not only each of those three main religions, but similarly each of the sects and schools hold some supposedly essential claim or assertion about how they uniquely are right, and why everyone else is wrong, and why that matters.
The best counterargument in religion's favour, is that science does not initially seem to have all the answers, and more importantly give any credence to the questions, that appear to matter to a human being over the course of our lives. Coupled with that argument is the defensible notion that not every part of their scriptures were meant to be taken so literally. This is also understandable to a point for a few primary reasons. The first is tied to the scale and granularity of the universe we are trying to define. On the one hand we keep discovering an ever greater scale of dimension and time we need to factor in when trying to understand the Universe. In tandem with the problems and befuddlement that greets us at the macrocosm end of the many horned dilemma, is the opposite and equally confounding and seemingly infinite complexity of granularity and forces, that adhere to relationships of causes and effects we are struggling to make sense of at the microcosmic level.
The Placeholder
The second reason is that there is a sort of placeholder we have a sense of. It is that, even if we try and blame the holding of this placeholder and sense of which, the word veneration does not really adequately capture, on the phenomenon of cultural psychological framing and priming, the truth is that when we say the word ‘god’, when we consider what we are searching for, even in the context of the search for meaning, there is an unrequited longing which we did not put there ourselves, which feels like what we imagine belonging and perhaps triumph might feel like if it were taken away. When someone comes along with a description of something that seems to touch the edges of where that missing placeholder ought to be, we can be forgiven, just as we forgive our fellow humans, for wanting to believe.
“When we think of the divine and whether we are theologically inclined to think of that as God or not, whatever context or horizon we feel is beyond us and that is beckoning us, is in an essence our spiritual invitation in the world. And it is amazing how narrow the language is by which we hold our conversation with that horizon.”
David Whyte
We all have have this ‘placeholder’ for Meaning and Belonging. In some of us it manifests like an itch that is not easy to scratch in the bounds and framing of a ‘normal’ mundane life. There are of course some people who are completely untroubled by all this and I thank my good fortune every day, I am not one of them.
For most of us though, we recognise ‘sacred’ when we encounter it. On some level, we all have a way of facing the world that has less to do with our sense of reason and logic description, or our mental health, and more about this ‘something else’ we long to touch and be touched by, to witness and to be witnessed by.
We are reaching for a connection with the great secret, the great meaning, and a Belonging that cannot be lost or taken away. We are perhaps searching for the same again that can be found if lost, and can be restored by means within our means, if taken away. This last part is just as key, because it means the recovery of the lost secret is possible, and that therefore, there is hope.
And so, we have made of our gods, that which we believe gives us Hope.
And the nature of what we are seeking to belong to, is defined only by the limits of our conditioning and our imaginations.
Spiritual Health
We have made ourselves unwell with the way we have shaped our lifestyles and our tools. In an earlier article titled Invitation, I offered the definition of 'soul' as an innate, essential aspect of our existence, which has been overlooked in the face of societal and technological progression. This spiritual neglect has resulted in a sense of disconnection, isolation, and depletion within individuals and society. The 'soul' is the reservoir of spiritual health and the source of deeper meaning, symbolic understanding, and a sense of real connection to the broader universe.
We have made ourselves unwell, and we spend so much of our life energy, time and attention pursuing answers and remedies to our mental health. If we simply open the door to the primacy of Spiritual Health, and work on that, the mental health will take care of itself.
If we can reconnect with our sense of orientation in our lives and in the world, including our ancestors, recent and distant, as well as the ones yet to open their eyes to the world who will see us as their ancestors, if we can do that, we orientate to a deeper sense of real meaning. It is not only the children that we are going to have, it is the legacy of the work we are contributing deliberately for things bigger that ourselves. It is the ark of reason we can preserve in every conversation, every relationship. It is the sense of stewardship, not only of our own ‘soul’, but of the Soul of the World. These are all tied: broader perspective, deeper meaning, sense of purpose etc.
For too long we were tricked by our unwellness and the narrative on offer that the project was to become redeemed, to fix ourselves, to pursue happiness. This is a doomed project.
We do not need redemption, we need purpose.
We are not broken, we are adrift and rudderless.
We are not served by pursuing happiness, but rather by pursuing how we can be of service to the world, and to our loved ones, in ways that matter. A life spent doing this, taking all the healing, nourishment, support and guidance we can, in the service of enabling us to be of service, IS Spiritual Wellness. It’s ways are many.
There is much wisdom around. But equally there is much to be discovered yet about the unfolding truth of life, consciousness and this world. There is a deeper relationship we are being invited into with the creative principle of this Universe.
The project of mental health is necessary, but comparatively small. The invitation by way of Spiritual Wellness is so much deeper and vaster. We are so much deeper and vaster than we imagine. We are so incredibly empowered right now. We are standing on the threshold of Tomorrow.
In our rush to be accepted and to belong and to be ‘good’, we are taught to ignore our own voice of caution and of invitation, and so we are robbed of our discernment and our trust. This leaves the world seeming to be capricious, threatening and uncaring.
Safety and Freedom have to be brokered, often via great courage, and some risk, with the people and the world around us, but peace, real peace is a war needs fought and won, within.
Invitation
We arrive at all progress via stepping stones.
As a society, we had the reality of mental illness long before it dawned on us, the crucial necessity for practicing Mental Health. We have been living with the reality of spiritual illness long before it dawned on us as a species, the crucial and long overdue necessity to prioritise and practice Spiritual Health.
I am inviting you on a journey of self-discovery to determine those mature set of insights and practices might look like and how you can integrate that into your life:
- A life of great meaning and purpose.
“It is no sign of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
If you would like to find out how you can participate, joining this substack is a good place to start, and all announcements will be reflected here.
I will be formalising the invitation and the way people can find their way to follow the way through this work, but in the meantime you can express your interest via info@eyeswideopenlife.org
I look forward to hearing from you, and until next time, take care,
Rocco
“We do not need redemption we need purpose. We are not broken we are adrift and rudderless.”
WOW, this hit home with me so much! What a beautiful way to start my morning. Thank you for this, and thank you for everything my man your like the anchors I clip into as I climb my mountain.
Beautiful. I look forward to more and appreciate this.