THE SPIRIT DIMENSION OF META

PART V

Your Being-ness — Your Spirituality There is doing, there is having, and there is being. The first two of these are easy to understand and experience. The third one is difficult. In fact, doing and having is where our minds, our consciousness normally and naturally go. Our brains go outward to the outside world to detect the environment, and to scan what’s happening around us. We notice the results we’re getting from what we are doing and the things which that allows us to have. And that’s how we determine if we’re succeeding or not, achieving our outcomes or not.

Being, that’s where the challenge comes. Being refers to existing with what is, and so implies first witnessing what is. That is, just observing and noticing what is and being with it without defending against it or seeking to escape it. Being with also implies acceptance. That is, just welcoming it into our awareness, our world, our life. Now acceptance is not resignation. It is not condoning. It is not permission. It is just acknowledgment of what is. Because this ends the internal fight, it takes a lot of ego-strength.

Ego-strength, the ability to witness and accept what is, what exists, without falling apart, without caving in, and without activating the defense and escape mechanisms to protect a fragile ego that would prefer to live in a world of wishful thinking, magical thinking, and childish thinking. Ego- strength is a sign of development, actually meta-development of one’s inner world, and enables us to face reality so that we can then deal with it and take effective action.

Being begins with witnessing and accepting, but does not end there. To truly enter into the meta- realm of being, we also have to use our meaning-making skills to appreciate, or to use Maslow’s terminology, to sacralize all of life. What does this mean? Sacralizing is the state of being where we can find value, wonder, awe, significance, meaning, and importance in anything, in everything. That is, to see things in the aspect of eternity and to give it rich significance so that we sense and feel its meaningfulness.

This is spirituality. When you can do this, you are no longer living in a meaningless universe, a secular world that has no more significance than doing and having. You have moved to a higher realm, a higher dimension of experience, a higher realm of being. And from this higher place, you are able to feel inspired (in-spirit-ed) in living.

Maslow described this realm as the realm of being that describes the “growth” motivation of self- actualization. He contrasted it with the realm of deficiency which describes life at the lower needs. In the higher or being-realm we experience the being-needs and so think and feeling using being-cognition. This contrasts with the deficiency-needs and deficiency-cognition of the lower needs.

The being-values also reflect what every major religion and most philosophies have argued for over thousands of years: truth, goodness, beauty, unity (wholeness), dichotomy transcendence, aliveness, uniqueness, perfection, necessity, order, simplicity, richness, effortlessness, playfulness, self-sufficiency, meaningfulness. This also is the place where we become more truly human.

Another contrast with being-ness is instrumentality. When we operate in an instrumental way, we are looking at the instruments (tools, processes, patterns, models, technology) that enables us to reach our end-goals. Instrumental goals are the steps and stages that enable us to get there. Instrumentality, we go to work, make money, pay our taxes, follow the rules about driving, etc. Generally we do these things not for the experience itself, but for the results we obtain.

Now thinking instrumentally and operating instrumentally is part and parcel of being successful, of achieving our objectives, of making things happen in our lives, and of being human. But being human involves so much more than instrumentality. The person who makes instrumentality the purpose of life becomes a “human doing,” rather than a human being. The person who does that then evaluates and judges life in terms of instrumental goals. That then becomes a very toxic thing. Then, if a person isn’t succeeding in terms of goals, one feels like a failure as a person.

Yet life is not only about instrumental goals. Yet at the lower need levels, at the level of our survival, safety, social, and self needs—we have to achieve certain things. If we are not effectively instrumental at that level we suffer physically, economically, and psychologically. So we need to be instrumental, yet life is also about being-needs. It is about learning how to be within ourselves and with others. When we move to this level, the “modal operators” change from necessity to possibility. This is part of spirituality as defined by almost every theology and philosophy. At being-ness we experience “peak” experiences that are typically characterized by a purpose-lessness, a pure being-ness.

The external context of these experiences hardly matter at all. We can have these peak experiences at any time and in any place. That’s because the quality of the experience is a being- experience. Inside, we transcend time and space, even self, others, environment, causality, etc. We enter into an eternal moment, a perfect moment and whatever the engagement—we are totally present. If it is holding a newborn baby, if it is enjoying a sunrise, if it is having a fierce conversation, it is walking on a beach, if it is playing tennis, if it is holding a loved one, if it is being quiet in the presence of another person. The event that we’re engaged in is not the key. The key is being there. It is being present—fully and completely present as we are being with the people and activities that we’re engaged with. Such makes life spiritually meaningful.