Raw Being

Reporting from the field of a post-spiritual existence

Spirituality is the last vestige of identity. It is the ‘thorn that removes the thorn’ of belief in social narratives - of meaning, of morality, of norms and rituals - which form the scaffolding of individual identity. It is a necessary phase - and a precarious one. For when spirituality becomes co-opted by culture and institutions - it falls prey to the very mechanisms it is attempting to unveil.

Spirituality, in simplest terms, is a human’s attempt to come to terms with existence directly and on their own terms - without the filters of tribal interpretation. In its infancy, this may look like participation in communal rituals, practices and philosophies. Yet eventually, if it is to mature, it must move into solitude. The scaffolding of the community must fall away until the individual is exposed to reality raw and uncensored by ideology, by virtue, by hierarchy of expression. One must become like an animal in the woods - knowing nothing, believing nothing, relying upon nothing but one’s own instinct to traverse the path. For the path must truly become pathless. More wild than the wilderness. More unknown than the remotest parts of the earth.

What the individual’s life looks like on the surface is inconsequential. Whether they continue to live within the tribe or retreat into self-imposed isolation - matters not. The key feature is that the individual now plainly sees through the artifice of society - our language, our institutions, our ritual ways of relating to one another, our hierarchies of preferred thought, speech, and action - that appear driven by a desire for collective well-being but are really driven by a will to power. And the individual sees these sophistications of civilization for what they are - an elaborate network of adaptations. “Meaning” is how we resolve the inherent tension that arises between our instinctive nature and the social pressure to adapt to the culture of our times. Which is why as culture evolves, so does the meaning we make of our lives.

And further, the individual sees how the identity is a similar adaptation. A character designed to function within the parameters of the social narrative. “Individuality” is nothing more than a set of superficial and socially acceptable micro adjustments of self-expression - sub-narratives which may seem on first glance to divert from the social narrative, yet when aggregated cumulatively roll up seamlessly into the collective narrative. Conflict, and the striving it produces, does not subvert that narrative. It fuels it further.

The individual sees that “resolution of conflict” is in no one’s best interests - not ultimately - even though everyone may wish it. Certain conflicts may resolve giving rise to new ones. But for conflict to end entirely would deprive the narrative engine of its fuel and would stall it. Without the social narrative, there would be no context for meaning-making. Without meaning-making, identities would collapse. The individual sees that most people are not ready for that kind of catastrophic collapse - because it reveals something deeply disturbing to them:

That at the root they are driven by an impulse that cannot be comprehended.

It is not metaphysical, it is not merely biological either. It is prior to any model of understanding or meaning we can attribute to it. It is raw being. The animal nervous system, the mammalian socio-emotional brain, and the rational cortex - these are all layered adaptations that process the unintelligible information emerging from this raw source.

Existential angst is merely the system’s failure to process this information fully. When the nervous system is not able to regulate it - then the emotional brain floods the body with emotions to try and process it. When the emotional brain is unable to cope with it - the intellect attempts to build narratives that categorize it and fit it within the scope of predictable experience. We call it ‘depression’, we call it ‘the dark night of the soul’, we call it ‘disillusionment of the ego’, we call it ‘generalized anxiety disorder’.

Yet, at the core it is none of these things. It is like dark matter - the unseen force that shapes the universe. It is like the black hole that swallows time, space, light, matter, energy and meaning out of the universe - yet powers that same universe nonetheless.

The individual sees that identity, virtue, ambition, addiction, community, and spirituality - are just some of the adaptive (and maladaptive) ways humans unconsciously attempt to resolve the gnaw of raw being. A gnaw that the mind perceives as a “void” because it cannot explain why - despite its best efforts to fill it with meaning, relationship, and identity - its pang continues to persist.

Spirituality attempts to tame this raw being by building it into a deity worthy of worship. By attributing to it divine qualities. Or by building it into a system of precepts and enlightened virtues. It seeks to appease its untamed nature by conforming to these projected virtues. Compassion, benevolence, peacefulness, equanimity - these it projects upon this source as a form of wishful thinking. And it rationalizes darkness, misery, violence and decay - as the work of its opposite - “the devil”, “the shadow”, “the unconscious”, “ignorance”. It splits raw being into ‘light’ and ‘dark’, ‘awakened’ and ‘asleep’, ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘wise’ and ‘unwise’ - in order to cope with the indiscriminate gnawing of the void within.

The individual sees that spirituality is one’s final attempt to survive the inevitability of one’s own annihilation. Not an annihilation of the nervous system, the emotional brain, or even the rational mind - but an annihilation of the need to interpret this raw emergence. As the scaffolding of spirituality and materiality both fall apart, the very platform upon which the self-identity was built collapses beneath one’s feet.

“I pray God to rid me of God.” — Meister Eckhart

The individual, no longer an individual to oneself - but raw being expressing itself - continues to appear as an organism, continues to relate to others through learned patterns of emotion and empathy, continues to play a social persona of individuality within the societal narrative. For these learned adaptations persist through force of habit - language is not forgotten, manners are not forgotten, relating to others continues, empathy and decency continue. But these no longer operate upon a paradigm of meaning, identity, ideology, virtue, spiritual understanding, or wisdom.

There is no why, what, who, and how - to anything. There is no worldview. There is no framework of understanding. There is no model of reality maintained with any conviction.

There is just spontaneous emergence as whatever is happening in this moment. Without need for explanation, rationalization or justification.

Last night, the flimsy platform of my spiritual identity capitulated. There was no fear, no anticipation, no elation, no euphoria. It felt inevitable. Ordinary. Like crossing the threshold of a door that isn’t there.

Raw being prevails.