There is a physical journey from bed to bathroom and kitchen. You might then travel to work. Sometimes you will make a journey as part of a holiday which aims at being both interesting and relaxing.
An intellectual journey can be fictional or factual and more or less academic in tone. It promotes a shift in points of view and of world view. This can happen more or less spontaneously and it can be more or less radical (eg the class struggle before and after the two World Wars). And, while details vary, you can reflect on your journey from cradle to grave or from womb to tomb.
A spiritual journey can run in parallel with a secular journey or it can be independent of it. Two main metaphors describe different ways of understanding the move from secular to spiritual.
[ONE] from the self-conscious, rational HEAD to the non-egoic, unconscious, intuitive HEART;
Some people feel that being empirical, rational, scientific and ‘in your head’ prevents ‘true’ understanding. The alternative practice is to listen to the intuitive promptings of your heart. BUT – these intuitive promptings need not of necessity be ‘nice’.
The metaphor is that heart = the unconscious. And the unconscious is conditioned by nature, nurture and serendipity. Another metaphor is that the unconscious = a garden full of seeds. The spiritual journey involves watering the good seeds (the flowers) and not watering the bad seeds (weeds). Note that the ‘I’ that judges the seeds is also continuously conditioned by nature, nurture and serendipity – it has no abiding reality!
[TWO] from fast thinking on ‘automatic pilot’ to slow thinking and ‘being in control’
Daniel Kahneman’s 2011 bestselling ‘Thinking fast and slow’ is the main source of thoughts for the second metaphor. He does not deal explicitly with the spiritual journey but he does outline two main ways of thinking which he calls System 1 and 2.
System 1 kicks in automatically and generates fast reactions. It is full of biases and rules of thumb that appear as intuitions and therefore promote speedy reactions to objects in the environment. Note that many of these insights date back to the days of hunting and gathering. They may not be relevant anymore.
System 2 involves slow responding and is inclined to reflect on inputs through the sense organs and relevant ‘stories’ from memory. It promotes thoughtful responses to objects in the environment.
SO – in the first case - the journey calls for a move from rational head to emotional heart; and - in the second case - from intuitive heart to thoughtful head. The mindbrain is intimately involved.
I like to call it the mindbrain because “for every thought and feeling in mind there is a corresponding physical event in the brain”.
Note that the opposite is not true. Possibly 99% of what goes on in the unconscious parts of the brain is not available to the self-conscious – and, when available, it is usually after the fact.
But the situation is far from hopeless. Meditators often notice that the mind has a mind of its own. ‘I’ am not in control. But this is not a problem as ‘I’ do not exist in any physical and lasting way.
Having moved some way on your spiritual journey it will still be possible to conjure up world views to inform collective decision making. But the process has the feel of a good natured game. There is nonattachment to views.
Note that this conclusion can be reached as part of a secular journey on automatic pilot. This may be viewed as a good thing as far as it goes. But it involves knowing rather than experiencing. It is not spiritual.
Those who progress on their spiritual journey embrace mindfulness. They see through the ego-illusion and think, speak and act from a position of non-attachment. They have experience of the Taoist view that “the reality which can be described is not the real reality” and that “those who know do not speak”.
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