Awakening from the Meaning Crisis¹

4 Ways of Knowing

9-dot Problem (insight)

Initiation (Trust) Rituals -> Exaptation -> Shamanism (frame shifting for insight)

Flow State

Metaphor

Psychotechnologies

Fluency

Axial Age

2nd order thinking

Self-transcendence

Myth = Symbolic stories of perennial patterns

2 Worlds mythology – vs. – Continuous Cosmos (cycles)

God of Open Future

Humans participate in shaping the future

Faith = on course, Sin = off course

Ontology = study of being

Ontological = use reason to get at underlying structure of reality

Natural Philosophy = Truth without Relevance

Sophistry = Relevance (salience) without truth

Sacred = inexhaustible fountain of insight

Logos = structural-functional organization

Temporal Discounting

Reciprocal Opening = reduce inner conflict (Man/Lion/Monster)

“centers of psyche”

Evolution = Dynamical Systems Theory (non-circular explanation for living things)

Golden Mean: (cowardly -> courage <- foolhardy)

Logos = fit for purpose

Virtual Governor = selective restraints reduce options

Virtual Generator = enabling variations increase options

Virtual Engine = Governor + Generator

Nomological Order: worldview attunement

Agent-Arena coidentification

Existential Modes:

Having mode = indulgence and denial

Being mode = connected in right way (middle way, golden mean)

Siddhartha leaves the Palace, becomes Buddha

Mindfulness and proper attention

Coordinate senses around a shared goal

Attention flows constantly:

• In and Out (transparency-opacity)
• Up and Down (features-gestalt)

Meditation = move toward center (agent)

Contemplation = move toward divine (arena)

Non-Duality transcends both meditation and contemplation

Mystical experience feels more real than this world

High novelty situations require consciousness

Relevance Realization

Optimal Grip -> Affordances

Child::Adult::Sage

Disruptive Strategies alter consciousness

Mind wandering helps to break framing

Fluency -> Insight -> Flow ->

Mystical Experience -> Transformative Experience

The Solomon Effect (3rd person)

Self as Glue (integrate self -> integrate the world)

Generalization – vs. – Overfitting the data

Plausability = Convergence (explains) + Elegance (predicts)

Purpose of beliefs = help you reinact enlightenment

4 Noble Truths (Buddhism)

Parasitic Processing (reciprocal narrowing -> spiral down)

Anagoge (reciprocal opening -> spiral up)

Epicureans (Age of Anxiety) face domicide after Alexander’s Conquest

Cynics (Guilt vs. Shame): set yourself on Nature

Stoics: free yourself from all attachment

Realize what is in/out of your control

Fear of mortality vs. Fear of fatality

Heaven is NOT immortality

Heaven = help you accept death

Jesus = Kairos and Logos

Love

• Eros (consumptive)
• Philia (coorperative)
• Agape (self-giving)

Agape alters salience landscape (you are not central)

God = Agape (the process made you and flows through you)

Metanoia: born again (Saul -> Paul)

War with Agape = thinking we are self-made

Because Paul was conflicted, he saw God as conflicted

• Justice – vs. – Agape
• Jesus’ sacrifice satisfying God’s demand for justice

Long Paul quote … “greatest of these is love.”

We carry the grammar of God, but no longer believe what we say with it

Viability and Existential Inertia:

• should you have a child?
• choose a career?

Ritual and Serious Play = Enactive Analogy

• get a puppy to “play” as a parent

Dark side of Gnosticism = suffering and the Demiurge

Plato’s Cave and The Matrix = Gnostic Mythology

“The One” = ultimate integration

More integrated = more real

Paul Tillich and Carl Jung – influenced by Gnosticism

Triad (each connecting to the other two):

• Christianity
• Gnosticism
• Neoplatonism

St. Augustine brings everything together:

• Science/Coherence (nomological)
• Neoplatonism/Significance (normative)
• Christianity/Purpose (narrative)

1054 split (Catholic – vs. – East Orthodox)

• West = Less Plato, More Aristotle
• Reading Changes: from Lectio Divina to internal coherence

Thomas Aquinas and Salvaging 2-world mythology:

• Everyday world is now real (natural)
• “Real World” is now “More Real” (super-natural)