A Spiritual Being Having Human Experience
On Waking Up and Loving the Dream
Happy Sunday everyone,
This week, I want to share a little bit more about spirituality, an elephant in the room topic in most of my writing here.
First is some context about this “S” word. Like many other Millennials, I didn’t like the label of “spiritual” or “atheist” at all and for a while wanted to reject all labels.
To my later dismay, even that could still be labeled as “non-conformist”. There is no way to escape labeling, so I may as well see it for what it is: a name that helps people make sense of life. Yet whatever the label is, my interest has been about the deeper nature of our experience, especially in the simple day-to-day. Which brings me to this week’s topic..
(a famous scene in the Japanese anime, Spirited Away, where the dragon-horse is a spiritual being who eventually takes the form of a handsome man)
This week’s inquiry begins with a quote that has struck me since the very first time I encountered it as a 20-year-old seeker.
"We are not a human being having spiritual experience. We are a spiritual being having a human experience". Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
For some, this makes no sense. For others, this may mean the world. Let me explain.
A common phrase in some spiritual circles I hang out with is "waking up". For the "spiritual" folks, it is waking up from the dream that we think is this life with all its personal stories and dramas. It is waking up to a larger reality beyond our own head.
As cool as it may sound, an experience of awakening is necessarily disorienting, especially if you just had a deep sleep.
You know this if you have gone through a breakup. The morning after, the empty house, the faint reminiscence of what once was, it is as if everything has changed AND nothing has changed.
Another way to describe the experience of waking up is when everything you thought you knew to be important no longer seemed so. It's both a terrifying and liberating experience.
I remember a phase a few years ago where I lost interest in practically everything. From knowledge to the power of words to physical exercises and even social connections, all the things that once seemed so essential to my former sense of self no longer mattered.
It took a while to realize the gift in this confusion. Something definitely was happening under the hood of what I call my "self". Things that were deemed unimportant, even deplorable, had a chance to become a thing. Like being quiet. Or wasting time not doing or consuming anything.
It was a radical stepping back from my current life situation to see a larger perspective: in the end, nothing matters.
Oftentimes, you have to wander into this negative space of life to grasp what is often right in front of us. As the saying goes, "I don't know who discovered water, but I'm sure as hell it's not a fish". Once you see differently, you live differently.
Indeed, one purpose of waking up is to realize that the whole experience that our ordinary awareness calls "life" is a dream. Seeing that, we don't take it seriously. Not everything has to make sense. Not everything we do has to matter.
Yet a common mistake, especially for the thoughtful type of people, is to get a bit too serious about this whole waking up thing. I made this mistake myself, and I hesitate to say "there is no such thing as a mistake; it all happens for a reason" because it is too cheap of a cop out.
Underneath that seriousness is a kind of restlessness in the search for what is true, an obsession so blinding that you miss what's right on the surface: this is always it. There is no more, nothing else to seek.
This brings us to another purpose of waking up that we often miss: _to appreciate the dream even more. To deeply immerse in it precisely because it is a dream.
Don't you stand up in the middle of a cinema and scream to the audience "Hey guys this whole thing is a hoax. All these people are fakers"? You are aware of that, and you appreciate how good the acting is. Heck, you might be inspired to act more boldly next times.
Acting for what? You ask.
Let me try to answer with a little personal anecdote. This is especially for those who are feeling lost, demotivated and looking for meaning in life: there is no better time to open your eyes, put aside any need to find any meaning whatsoever and PLAY.
In one of those existential evenings of my younger self, one particular incident has woken me up to the beauty of this dreamlike life.
A college friend of mine was a charming and talented young lady. She was known and liked by many people and unsurprisingly many guys. I liked her too.
One late evening when she was studying in the lounge, I was bored and asked her: "You are very attractive to many guys, even though you know you don't have the most actress face. How did you do that?"
Somewhat surprised by the question, she looked at me and asked "You really want to know?" I looked at her, genuinely interested in an answer. "Yes". I nodded.
What happened next felt to me like a slo-mo movie clip.
She flicked her hair.
DARNNN. Like a good joke, it hit me instantly and irreversibly. I was totally under the spell for that brief moment.
Now when I look at any woman, I would notice how she sometimes consciously or unconsciously flick and play with her hair. I can't unsee it!
The most surprising insight from this anecdote is that knowing the tricks made me MORE, not less appreciative of the whole show.
My friend pointed me to something I didn't consciously register but still was impacted by. In many ways, she initiated me into a whole new world, for which I am eternally grateful.
For some people like me, the gradual waking up to this dream-like nature of everything felt like a slow coming of wisdom.
To experience life more vividly means we may encounter more painful moments. Yet it also comes with so much appreciation, like a spiritual being finally getting to taste what it is like to be a human. As a teacher once said to me: "You will never know this little again. Cherish it". Falling in love more and more with our human form, the spirit isn’t afraid to fall asleep.
While hard to remember at difficult times, it’s still worth reminding ourselves that this very fallibility makes the human experience so much more colorful. While we are not striving to be perfect, we can aspire to see more, feel more and be okay with more of our fallible humanness.
Which brings me to the enzyme for thought this week: If you could see how what we think of as normal life is a dream, sometimes nightmarish and other times so sweet, how would you live?
Khuyen
Reading
A beautiful post on the beauty of using your hands. A good reminder for those who type a lot like me - even the act of typing is a highly manual act.
" Grandma how do you deal with pain?"
" With your hands, dear. When you do it with your mind, the pain hardens even more."
“With your hands, grandma?"
" Yes, yes. Our hands are the antennas of our soul. When you move them by sewing, cooking, painting, touching the earth or sinking it into the earth, they send signals of caring to the deepest part of you and your soul calms down.
This way she doesn't have to send pain anymore to show it." Are hands really that important?"
" Yes my girl. Thinking of babies: they get to know the world thanks to their touches. When you look at the hands of older people, they tell more about their lives than any other part of the body. Everything that is made by hand, so is said, is made with the heart because it really is like this: hands and heart are connected. Masseuses know this: When they touch another person's body with their hands, they create a deep connection. Thinking of lovers: When their hands touch, they love each other in the most sublime way."
" My hands grandma... how long haven't I used them like that!"
" Move them my girl, start creating with them and everything in you will move. The pain will not pass away. But it will be the best masterpiece. And it won't hurt anymore. Because you managed to embroider your essence."
~ Elena Barnabé
Quick Write & Craft Announcement
Since the first Write & Craft session last month, this popped up invention that has transformed my lonely writerly life into something a lot more beautiful.
So far we have had ~50 sessions with ~50 people showing up. In addition to creating decent output, it has been a sheer joy for me to meet with friends, 40% of whom are new!
This will continue to happen for at least 3 more months until I birth this book (estimate 9 months 10 days like a REAL BABY 😂) So come join me sometimes and use this as an "excuse" for you to get the most resistance-inducing work done. Feel free forward with friends too.
Here is the full intro Write & Craft and here is the calendar to find a time. 😀
Looking forwards to seeing you,
Khuyen
thank you so much for this beautiful piece of writing, your stories just made my day ❣️😊