Idealist No More
While I have spent most of my life as an idealist, I do not seem to be able to continue such a world view any longer.
Idealism: The property of having high ideals that are usually unrealizable or at odds with practical life.
Central to the idealist view is seeing the world not so much as it is, but as one would like it to be. Due to all humans’ inevitably anthropocentric view of existence, my “as one would like it to be” part was always solidly in the framework of a world most ideal for humans.
My recent inquiries into the ideas of non-dualism have begun to shatter these anthropocentric views on existence to the point that the very notion of a world that is ideal for humans now appears to be the very root of the unsustainable moment of madness our world currently reflects. Humanity, so concerned with the self-perceived majesty of its deluded powers of observation, now seems to me a truly flawed evolutionary experiment. Our evolutionary path towards dominance through brain-centered intelligence has imbued us with such a large set of intractable discontinuities and paradoxes that conflict and suffering are at the very foundation of our species’ existence.
But perhaps evolution itself is a process of perpetually flawed experiments. Forever interacting with a shifting landscape of reality over time, there could never be a life-form that perfectly responds to and accommodates the dizzying array of inputs that the harsh physics of both reality and the surrounding life-forms responding to reality output in a near infinite play.
I say no life-form as this is a classification which humanity and all other species and evolutionary experiments are intractably subordinate to. But life itself… it is something beyond classification. Life, in its totality. Life as the complement to the part of reality that is non-living, and even beyond that, the whole system that is life and non-life in perpetual balance with each other - here may be an idealism that actually exists. But it is not a point to be reached, a state to strive for, or an accomplishment to laud. No, this ideal state is forever and perfectly in process in every moment. For while there is no life-form that evolution has ever birthed to reality in perfect, perpetual balance with the world, there is also no perceivable time or place in which the game of life is not ever-present, nor ever out of balance. It is only in our perception of the details of life, the fractured moments of limited perception that our mind holds so dear, that humanity is doomed to see the need for suffering, for desire and for change. When the truth is there is never any need to bring about change, for change is forever. Change is perfect. Change is the face of the ever-present balance that our brain perceives in multiplicity and our soul accepts as one.
I do not call myself an idealist anymore because I no longer strive to be at odds with “practical life.” Practical life - that which is already occurring and is forever is where I now choose to exist. For even though this practical life is all that is, it is humanity’s unique distinction that allows us to choose to think otherwise. For it is only the mind that is capable of creating that which is not, while existence is simply that which is.
, by John Wheeler. After reading a physics article (that I can’t find now) calling him a “poet physicist,” I began a search for books by theoretical physicist and Einstein collaborator, John Archibald Wheeler at Amazon. Instead, You Were Never Born by a totally different John Wheeler came up. It wasn’t what I was lookin for, but it had all 5-star customer reviews, and the first one, titled, “Probably the purest teaching I’ve come across,” intrigued me. It talked of a technique of spiritual teaching using “pointers” as a method to allow one to see one’s true nature. It is a recent book from a field known as Non-dualism whose principles were familiar to me, but whose name was not. On reflection, my very nickname, Y2, is a kind of non-dualist question/statement. Why two? Since of course, there is only one. This is the central precept of non-dualism in reaching its purpose, self-knowledge.