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Danie Hulett's avatar

Dear one Jordan: It is time-pausing when something, someone, lands directly into a space that has been waiting for words to cluster within me....... so that I could respond to not one, but several close friends, who have, just in the last few weeks, told me they wanted to find out more about "spirituality." I haven't known where to begin... given all the influences we are all part of during these times. Your words are both onramps and destinations....for both uninitiated and initiates, new hands and old hands, ones that upvote the wholeness of life...and+or.... the nothingness, the being .... and+or .... the doing, the stillness .... and+or .... the movement. Deep smile. (─‿─)*゚ ゜゚*☆

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Derrick Yoder's avatar

What I see being expressed here, Jordan, is an erotic spirituality, a spirituality expressing eros (the desire for ever greater wholeness) which is the flip side of thanatonic spirituality (thanatos - the silent death urge, completion, desire for nothingness, peace, letting go of needing to be anything, including anything more whole). The two are inseparable and joined at the hip, never not co-present. In bringing this to you attention I pick up on the precautionary principle in the first paragraph - there is more to behold in spirituality than I believe this piece latches onto.

There is a desire for death, for self-annihilation, for no-Self, inherent in spirituality, from which paradoxically arises a 'return' to wholeness and a freedom to desire greater wholeness. This isn't the only 'way' or sequence, but just a way of expressing what I feel these notes implicitly externalize. To seek not wholeness but rather to allow disintegration is a purification in the right context and paradoxical 'return' to wholeness; But it does not start with a desire, a seeking, of greater wholeness. It is interesting, as an aside, how so many evolutionary niches are fulfilled in this indirect way (called exaptation in the literature). This is another 'way' and 'why' of spirituality. If one "just sits" - in the aesthetic of Zen meditation - with a deep skepticism of any intent at all - including the intent to 'just sit', and of course the intent for wholeness - with a kind of desire for nothingness, a deep contemplation of felt nothingness (to 'be nobody,' including a more whole 'you'), it is no less spirituality. Spirituality can be thought of as a reformation of man from contemplating the ineffable images of God, and if God in one image is all that is (wholeness), God is also no particular thing (nothing) - there is always a dual image. To rest assured that spirituality is solely about ever greater wholeness is to subtly run from death, from unbecoming. And this will come back around if that is one's chosen way.

The point here is not to swing to the opposite, thanatonic spirituality, but to hold the paradox. Not polarity 'management' but inhabiting the true contradictions directly and letting them transform one's perception. When one sits in (the anti-image of) nothingness, one will paradoxically feel 'reformed' in the sense of a return to an original wholeness, a peace that passeth understanding, and a freedom to desire without contraction. It is a renewal, a deepening sense of aliveness, that emerges just as well. Of course you can approach from the other end as you are saying, from desiring desire, from the impulse to seek greater wholeness, and in doing so find oneself in a state of non-seeking (not 'not seeking,' but more like desiring without attachment and therefore desiring without friction i.e., desiring completely or, desiring in a way that is already complete - here we find the truth in the paradoxical relationship of thanatos and eros).

I think it is good to concede the influence of Forrest's metaphysics. While an incredible contribution, it is exactly in matters of spirit (and relationship) that I think the metaphysics can get us trapped in definitions that lead to local optima and cut off the search for deeper meaning. The metaphysics is largely written in systemic-functionalist language. It defines spirituality in terms of its function and in terms of its relationship to other functions within a broader system of art and philosophy (and in doing so, implies that there is a wholeness greater than the wholeness of spirit, which contradicts itself and your piece here). Spirituality must serve some function within the IM intellectual regime. But if we respect the history of spirituality, we see spirituality to be something of an anti-function. It is precisely in defining the function of spirit (in the case of this deepcode entry, as orienting to greater wholeness, becoming) that its opposite will emerge and antagonize. Case in point: my commenting on what this written piece is not accounting for.

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