Life is a saga worth savoring, so are these heady existential essay’s. Thanks for being here.
Last essay I dove into how being authentic (our most true self) is actually just being our whole self—which includes our unlikable, neurotic qualities as much as our savvy, desirable ones. Being authentic is not holding an ideal image of ourselves in our mind that we must strive for, rather, it is noticing who we are being *right now* and curiously and lovingly staking claim in it. Once we do this (or get used to doing this) we can get choosy if that is who we want to be *right now* and adjust as necessary. I recently heard on a podcast1 that “being” is the state of our current feelings and thoughts, which brought a clarity to the word and what it represents. I think where some of us get confused (or perhaps conned) into thinking we want to be other than who we are, is really we just want to think and feel differently than how we often do. Fortunately, this is actually very much in our power to play with. And I do say play because it can be quite fun.
I want to make clear, I do my best not to park at the camp that believes we must think positive and feel good all of the time, although it is tempting. I want to encourage myself and others to not manipulate ourselves out of how we are currently feeling and thinking even if it’s uncomfortable or “bad” or “negative”. I’ve heard it be said that emotions/feelings are not to be labeled as “good” or “bad”, rather as information regarding our current experience. I don’t find there to be a moral failing or fatal character flaw in experiencing anxiousness, depression, envy, jealousy, and/or even nihilism. I have gleaned much wisdom from these human domains of which I have off and on again dwelled. I am, however, spreading like warm butter over hot bread to the reality that bringing my loving awareness to my current thoughts and feelings, which are by nature temporary (cyclical) and symbolic, is how I can go about choosing (shaping) thoughts and feelings—or at least how I will relate to and frame them—that are more supportive to my well being, and thus the person I’d like to become in this lifetime.
^^^On this note, I’d like to make a quick interjection: being housed, employed with good pay, able to afford healthcare, having access to nutritious food as well as a supportive community also contributes to shaping who I want and am able to be(come). It takes a vital village to become our most integrated, supported/supportive selves. Which is why the isolated individual cutting themselves off or being cut off from other human connection is a detriment to our species.
There is a wide variety to choose from when it comes to ways of being. Each already structured into my genetic code, waiting, not for me to be chosen, but for me to choose which way I’ll be. It turns out I am not anymore solid than an ice cube left in a cup to melt. This truth, that I am forever malleable is at once liberating and heart breaking to face. And yet, this truth allows for the work of the artist who is making art of their life: the continual return of giving and sharing one’s precious, loving attention with themself and with the world, paired with constructing meaning from their lived experiences. Being artists is an inherent capacity in sapiens, just behind survival. Life is at once the creator, the craft and the materials that comprise it. Shaping, manipulating, setting to dry, scrapping and starting over, destroying, rebuilding, caressing, holding. Setting on display for others to critique. Never letting anyone see at all. Wanting and desiring. Loathing and condemning. Oscillating between questioning their own being and never wanting to cease. Each is a small choice made by the creator—Us. And life itself, the animating force of which we all share, does this to us in return.
This means life and I, though I have the special feature of being able to view it as apart from myself, are one. We are bound, a two headed twin of sorts. When I view myself as a co-creator with life, things like deservedness and entitlement begin to cease, at least they’re beginning to. I didn’t always think of life as a gift, I thought of it more as a curse—something I was often trying to escape, outrun or fend off. But then I read a bunch of wise authors who lived through some shit, and I learned about some biology—the uncanny and brilliant world of cells and their development—and I realized I am not held captive here. Rather the Universe conspired through generations upon generations of life and rebirth for me to be conceived. (And this goes for everyone and everything in existence.) Once, long, long ago, two simple bacteria, in a leap of survival, half cannibalized each other paving the way for organelles. Meaning, that fateful, uncomfortable leap led to you reading these words and me typing them. This genuinely brings me a sense of gratitude and privilege over one of victimization and dread. I am not owed and I do not owe life. I am a part of life because life allowed me to be here. What an opportunity. Life rolled its cosmic dice and there I was—here I am. What I do with my time here is my perpetual craft in being.
In the most fundamental sense, we are all chosen, selected, necessary. We are all special, unique, rare. And because we are each of these fundamentally, none of us are (in the atomical sense) more or less them. In my opinion, no one deserves a truer life, we each have a true life *right now* to shape. But I also don’t believe anyone deserves anything, not really. To deserve is to do something or be worthy of reward or punishment—both of which I find much too shallow for the depths of what is to be alive. I am not certain of the origins of deservedness, but I imagine they are rooted from the reality of scarcity and the illusion and misuse of power dynamics2. Perhaps our most recent burst of civilization which began some 12,000 years ago, with its language and agriculture, and then its have and have nots, and its vengeful God’s—there came this idea that some of us must perform qualities of worth in order to be saved while some of us were already entitled to them. This is perhaps the original sin, not Eve eating the fruit. And we still cherish it to this day.
The dominant power structures and religions of any given time have historically (and currently) abused faith in the mystery (among many other things) as a means for dominion and control. Let’s take for instance, the 16th century Calvinist doctrine, which pushed predestination in such a way that God already marked who is saved and who is damned at birth. There was no way to know which one you were and even if you could, there was nothing that could be done to change it3. Of course, no one wanted to be damned, so many lived their lives like a saved person would, just in case, obedient and docile. And it’s not just the Christian religions who enforced this idea of acting in such a way in the hopes you would be saved, even in the Eastern philosophies and religions, there is the notion of karma.
Karma, at least nowadays in the West, is the essence of “what goes around comes around”. If you do good deeds, good deeds will come back to you. If you have a good life, you are a good person, and if you have a bad life, you are a bad person who deserves it. But then I look around, cock my head and scrunch my face, and utter a humble “hmmph.”—something seems amiss. If such things are true, how then are some of the most odious people on the planet rewarded with power and the utmost resources? How are innocent people bombed in droves?—what makes someone innocent and someone not? How are so many struggling to feed themselves and their children while others fly to space for the afternoon?—can we really relay this to some people being “more good”, more deserving, more owed than others? Do we really think some of the most power hungry, domineering, filthy rich and utmost privileged of folks were saintly in past lives? Do we really think a child growing up homeless is just burning off their bad karma? It’s important to grapple instead of merely accepting these story arch’s about reality, even seemingly modern ones.
In fact I find this modern, topical notion of karma, plucked from its roots in Eastern philosophy, has been re-rooted in a purity doctrine, the same as many religions but especially Christianity, which has been a predominant religion in the West. And I cannot let this be true in my body, it won’t allow it! I have my own maddening relationship with the whole notion of purity and deserving—of wanting to be good—of doing good just to get good back. Things I find myself doing, even though I want to detest them. And what I’m coming to understand is that still to this day, even in the secular West (especially in wellness culture), we are still being told and sold to act some kind of way in order to be saved. If it’s not by God, then it’s by societal standards of desirability. If it’s not for an afterlife, it’s for a life so ideal and endlessly within reach, we can hardly enjoy the one we have now. Many of us buy into our own entrapment of spirit and thought. We feed the very machine starving us. We do so willingly and with gusto. That’s how well the indoctrination of being saved/being good works.
I have a (very rough) draft written in here dedicated to my critique of karma’s flaws. But I realize now it’s not the concept of karma itself that is the problem, it’s how it becomes manipulated by the dominant, power obsessed culture—which is true of God as well. It’s the popular overarch of any narrative I’m growing wary of. Lately I’m taking my time to understand things beyond their surface level of what I’ve been told to believe about them; I want to get my hands soiled at the roots of the myths I was given from birth. I’m looking around with a different set of eyes, slow and wide, high and low. I’m now beginning to understand what the origins of the (karmic) metaphor were attempting—what the Ancients of the East were pointing to in their philosophies.
What I’m beginning to grasp, as far as grasping a myth/concept can go, is that karma is not subject to and was not meant for the individual the way we’ve manipulated it to be. It is not if I am “good”, “good” will happen to me; which is a watered down, kale smoothied, Western wellness take on the subject. The ancients were pointing to something much bigger and beautiful than us (homo sapiens) alone. Karma is connected to the whole damn web. In the Eastern traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism, the web is referred to as Samsara ie. a beginning-less cycle of birth, life, and rebirth and it includes everything in existence (at least in this world). Karma is threaded within the whole tree of life, deep-soiled roots to sun-thirsting leaves. It is about our actions and the intentions behind them and the outcomes that arise from them. Karma is the cosmic law of cause and effect; of consequence. But not necessarily in some negative or moral sense. It’s not about being good to get good back, rather it is whether we poison or nourish the well from which we all drink, we will be affected accordingly. It’s about belonging to a world so deeply and dearly, to harm it is to harm yourself and vice versa. It’s about planting trees we’ll never see the shade of (or perhaps won’t for another lifetime).
Much of this broader existence of anthropomorphic world is lacking in the little I know about various dominant religions. Many of them promise an afterlife, that this little material world is just a stepping stone to the grand finale in the eternal heavens. I wonder if this has shaped us out of our belonging to this world as much as we inherently do. I have had to become very quiet and still with myself for repeated years to remember that this is a lie in my body, but that’s just me. I do not feel owed an afterlife, therefore I don’t feel the need to act out as if there is one. It is this life I was gifted. It is this life that is precious and sacred and vital. I do not know what comes after, nor do I pretend to, or believe in books that tell me what does. What I know is dim compared to the broader mystery of which I belong to, and it is faith in this mystery over what I know that compels me. That brings me to my knees in prayer even though I am not religious and I am most certainly not God fearing.
What God (who I’ve renamed gob) and karma are being realized as for me—is that what we do, individually and as a species, does not go anywhere else; that there is no away; all of the Universe is now and all of it is recycled—even we are the animated ash of once burning stars. There is no escape. Not of our errors and not of who we are being, other than to be who we actually desire to be—which if we’d just be compassionate and patient with ourselves and others for one gob damned minute… is maybe who we already are. The reality, whatever we want to name it, is that we all leave a trace, the same as sediment does in million year old rocks. It’s the fact that everything is here—now, and it doesn’t disappear, it just transmutes. Nothing is lost, only changed.
All of this feels truer and less maddening in my body, even though it still offers no solid answers or lasting reprieve from the existential angst of it all the way thinking I can be saved does.
How can we begin to surrender this notion of deservedness that is so deeply wound in our human roots? That even the East and West, and probably the North and South as well, told us if we just act a certain way we will be rewarded with certain things and if we don’t act certain ways, we will be punished just the same.
We must dig deeper. Deeper than our actions and deeper than our beliefs. There is a truth that no one can change about anyone else, and it’s that the Universe allowed each of us to be here equally, and it will absorb us back just the same. Deservedness sells us short of the truth that it is a mystical, mysterious miracle that any of us are here at all. And that no one deserves better than anyone else, not because they worked harder and not because they’re smarter or hotter or more cunning. This extinguishes the concept of deservedness at its flame. It reveals it as a myth rooted in purity and a misrepresented hierarchy as a faint, dispersing smoke.
And of course—it can be true that some people are smarter and hotter and more cunning than others, at least relatively. It’s true that they may live more fruitful lives because of this. There is nothing wrong with this, I am not suggesting that we all will (or even should) have exact equal pay and opportunities, or that all of us would thrive the same even if we did. I am not opposed to roles even, and that some people are better suited than others for particular ones. My issue is not with difference, it’s with deservedness. That there are people who actually believe they are somehow better than or more worthy of life and its bounty than someone else, even worse if they wield this belief to keep resources and opportunities away from them. I’m not sure if karma has been used to do this, but I sure know God has, which is such an ungodly thing.
Good things happen to people who play bad actors and horrible things happen to loving, heart-rooted people everyday, right now, in this time and all times. Loving, heart-rooted people are also not solely loving, heart-rooted people, nor are bad actors solely bad actors—they are simuletanesouly human animals who are capable of vengeance, love and self-protection. We all are. There is no level of “goodness” that can protect us from the sorrows and horrors of life. There is no “good” behavior that can outwit or deny our inherited necessity of survival and hunger, and our primal animal roots. There is no “good” absolutely. The same is true of “bad”. We are an evolving, shape-shifting mammal with opposable thumbs and big brains who can tell stories, build entire civilizations, and burn them down just the same. We are not the center and it cannot hold, anyway.
To be authentic, to be rooted in karma and with gob—with our very own life, to be our whole self; at once the limited, insecure little human and the infinite manifestation of the cosmos expressing itself for a moment, is to stop doing things in order to get things, and to instead own our unique being in the unfolding process, in its entire relentless mystery, with dignity, forgiveness and grace. It is to abandon notions of deservedness and instead extend this truth to each and every being. It is to not pity others for their lot, whether better or worse off, and it is to learn to discern true injustice from our myriad mortal discomforts and grievances. It is to root into the presence of the creative matrix that we all share, and choose who we will be, over and over, regardless of circumstances. And, of course, circumstances will still shape us and manipulate us, the same as we will them, and we must still choose who we are. Over and over.
Karma and God, for heaven’s sake, does not ask of us to be good, but to be aware. Of who we are being and who we could be. Of what is happening to and upon this holy orb. They ask of us to learn about our deepest fears and wounds and to face them with compassion and care. They ask of us to learn our deepest desires and to nourish them like we would a beloved flower in our garden. They ask of us to be here now, as the late Ram Dass would say.
If it isn’t a paradox, it isn’t true… I read or heard someone say somewhere. All of my working conclusions seem to arrive here—at paradox. Its truth felt, much too big for knowing alone. And not just knowing alone, but anything alone. It’s all together, can’t we see? There is no such thing as extraction. There is no such thing as loss, gain, ends, beginnings, cost or growth. Those are mere perspectives. It’s all here now. And we are just bits of the here now. And we can shape our very selves into and out of it. Not because we deserve to—but because we are the cosmic artists. We are manifested within a communion of matter. We belong because we are. There is no arrival to attain, we’re already here!
Now is not the time to believe in how the world works. Now is a time to trust the rebirth. The world is at once crumbling and in labor. She’s wailing. The head is crowning. There will be blood and pain and tears and orgasm and joy. Now is the time to deeply give and share our attention and instead of looking for ourselves—out there, in stuff, in others—it is time to feel for ourselves within our own bodies, within our own hearts, within the booming, flowering bloom of which we have found ourselves a part.
Scarcity is real just as abundance is real. There have been famines, droughts, and extinction. I don’t think it’s helpful to claim scarcity as unreal, but I do think it’s wise to investigate when it’s actually real or a story being served to the masses to keep them scared. We are most certainly facing real existential threats if we do not take a hard long look at how we are treating the planet which feeds and houses us, and adjust accordingly. Good news is, as we inch closer to the potential demise of our species (or perhaps just civilization as we know it) we will likely work harder under that pressure to course correct—which I think is already happening, at least in some regards. Although I must say, I think working harder isn’t the answer so much as slowing down and peeling back.
I am referencing this from a book I just finished called God Human Animal Machine by Meghan O'Gieblyn.
amazing! thank you