--- title: "Spiritual Rationality, part 10 of 10" canonical: "https://spiritual-rationality.org" pages: 25 --- # Spiritual Rationality, part 10 of 10 {#top} *Part 10 of 10, complete edition — “The Global Wayfinding Model” through “Whose Buddha?”. Previous: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms-full-9.txt. Whole edition in one file: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms-full.txt. Index: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms.txt* ## Notation {#notation} Source notation, not standard markdown: - `::gloss[…]` — definition of the heading above it. Invisible on the site; it is the hover card for links to that heading. Read as a definition. - `::gloss[…]{#id}` — defines a term holding its own anchor. `#id` is the link target; the block below is what it annotates. - `::nogloss` — heading deliberately has no definition. - `:::note[…]` / `:::info[…]` — callouts (MyST/Docusaurus admonitions). Footnotes are GFM. Heading anchors are GitHub-style slugs, written out as `{#id}` in the combined files. ## Contents {#contents} - [The Global Wayfinding Model](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model) - [The Depths of Insanity](#wayfinding-the-depths-of-insanity) - [Disruptions in Life and Practice](#wayfinding-wayfinding-disruptions-nonmonotonicities) - [My Takes on Wayfinding](#wayfinding-my-takes) - [Spiritual Truth](#spiritual-truth) - [Metaphysics re Phenomenology and Spiritual Practice](#spiritual-truth-metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality) - [Lopsided Masters](#spiritual-truth-lopsided-masters) - [Schools, Teachers, Pedagogy, and Transmission](#spiritual-truth-schools-teachers-transmission) - [Gnosis, Inference, Deference, & Confabulation](#spiritual-truth-gnosis-confabulation) - [Wrong Practice](#spiritual-truth-wrong-practice) - [Spiritual Truth](#spiritual-truth-truth) - [Rationality](#spiritual-truth-rationality) - [Goodness](#goodness) - [What is Axiology?](#goodness-what-is-axiology) - [Metaphysics and Axiology](#goodness-metaphysics-axiology) - [Harm](#goodness-harm) - [Metaphysical Harms](#goodness-metaphysical-harms) - [Sex](#goodness-sex) - [Conclusion](#conclusion) - [Spiritual Rationality](#conclusion-spiritual-rationality) - [Appendix](#appendix) - [Empiricism re Therapy Efficacy](#appendix-therapy-efficacy) - [The Garden Of Eden](#appendix-garden-of-eden) - [Specific Claims from Specific Traditions](#appendix-specific-claims) - [Whose Buddha?](#appendix-whose-buddha-historiography) --- # The Global Wayfinding Model {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/wayfinding/wayfinding-model — also at `/md/wayfinding/wayfinding-model.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `wayfinding-wayfinding-model--`.* This section discusses the most important parts of the global wayfinding model in more detail. *See [previous section](/md/wayfinding/introduction.md) for initial context*. ## Losslessness {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--losslessness} *Losslessness* is a concept from information theory, it describes a representation from which an original input can be reconstructed perfectly, that is, without any loss of information.[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--loss] In the context of global wayfinding, Mark often claims that the mind, (barring traumatic brain injury etc.) is basically lossless, variously with respect to memory, at least of formative events, but more importantly with respect to its volitions, affective conditioning, and values. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--loss]: Er, rather, that the encoding doesn't lose any information, if the encoding is lossless then indeed there is an inverse function blah blah blah. First off I have to note explicitly that I expect the strongest version of this claim must be false. I haven't discussed this with Mark, but etc. etc., the maximal version[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--any-sensory] would flatly contradict most of what I'm vaguely aware of about the literature on human memory. Even with claims outside of wayfinding of eg. recovering traumatic memories, I expect these are a mixed bag: some of these are definitely fabricated under suggestion from therapists, some I expect are straightforwardly real, some mixed, etc. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--any-sensory]: And Mark does seem to be making really extreme claims, so eg. [here](https://meditationbook.page/#body-self-trust-sensory-processing-meaning) "the mind is practically lossless (in that any distinguishable sensory memory can be ultimately recovered)" I'm less interested in the claim about memory per se, and more interested in the claim about values and emotions. The latter I see as a fundamental crux between wayfinding and certainly all traditional contemplative lineages I'm aware of,[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--well] as well as almost all modern therapy systems. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--well]: So the exception here is plausibly *some* theories of karma kind of end up equivalent to this claim. Mark actually uses the term 'karma' a lot to mean something like "tech debt + conditioning," this feels like an annoying misuse of the term and I don't think is close enough to the traditional models for it to be appropriate. Anyway, the crux here with traditional systems is really more about tech debt + losslessness rather than losslessness alone, but this flowed better. The basic claim here is that, as a general property of human minds, let's say "volitional-affective structures" basically cannot be squashed, erased, or ripped out, and that those structures persist after even *apparently* effective attempts to do so, but now something like "swept under the rug." (By volitional-affective structures I mean something very general, so inclusive of eg. triggers, attachment bonds, felt status and social posture, tribal/religious loyalty or devotion, "trauma" very broadly, also basic social/emotional "needs," sex drive, etc.) This is *not* to claim that these structures never "naturally" decay or change, my understanding of Mark's claim here in general is that minds have organic, "[integrated](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--integration)" conditions for relinquishing values and intentions, *as well as* conditions under which they will be suppressed and collect as conflicted, unintegrated cruft in the [body-mind](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md), which is a very common pattern of *technical debt*. I discuss this [more below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--buddha-nature), but the flipside of losslessness is what Mark calls "Buddha nature."[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--buddha-nature] The claim here is that, with the same caveats re eg. brain injury, the mind can't take "irrevocable" damage, and that ultimately all trauma, "patterning," etc. can be unwound. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--buddha-nature]: AFAICT this is not at all what Buddha-nature meant in any traditional Mahayana context, and I'm mostly sort of annoyed that Mark co-pts terminology like this. Similarly the way he uses 'karma' is a bit offensive to my sensibilities, though it's somewhat closer to traditional understandings. ## Technical debt {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--technical-debt} *Technical debt* (often *tech debt*) is a concept from software engineering, where it refers to, among other things, common patterns of cruft and fairy-dust-and-duct-tape style complexity which tend to accrue in software systems over time. In actual software, tech debt is most often incurred when features are quickly tacked on, without respect to the "structural integrity" of the program--metaphorically one could imagine a house with an extension built on stilts jutting through the roof of the original structure, and with holes in the floor covered up with carpet. The metaphor of *debt* here is that tech debt represents engineering work which has been postponed to the future, which both will eventually have to be "repaid," and which continually impedes ongoing engineering work, hence on which an organization "pays interest." Tech debt is basically pervasive in real world software, and Mark's claim is that the same is true in human minds. There are a bunch of claims here: - Ordinary life experiences often leave residue which something like "needs to be" [metabolized](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--metabolism) and [integrated](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--integration). Until metabolized they distort one's *own*, robust relationship to oneself, a domain of experience, an individual person, etc., and remain an encumbrance until thoroughly integrated. - Note that this is at least partially normative and partially descriptive, viz. descriptively there exists metabolism, and there exists something that looks like more "extensive" metabolism, which is what wayfinding consists of, but why this is desirable or correct is more nuanced and maybe underdetermined. See more on [my takes](#wayfinding-my-takes) on wayfinding, and on [this question very broadly](#spiritual-truth-truth). - Tech debt *compounds*, in particular, various kinds of debt can build on existing strata, and more complex or entrenched patterns of tech debt both make new debt harder to pay off, and more likely to accrue in general. - Sufficiently snarled or compounded tech debt can make all integration impossible, manifesting in eg. meditation practice becoming stuck, or rigidity and stuckness in affect/perception/behavior in general. - (Mark is pretty extensive about this claim, eg. he thinks that cognitive decline associated with age is substantially about accrued debt.) - Some kinds of metabolism occur organically, but compounded debt is often intractable to default metabolic processes or at least to a person's existing skills. - Many kinds of debt get paid off (that is, resolved, "healed," processed, etc.) in normal life and with normal levels of introspective/meditative skill, eg. during sleep, stolen moments of reflection, sharing with others, etc. However, many patterns of debt are too complex or too intense, and so they will usually fester indefinitely. - Thorough integration is often hyper-idiosyncratic, fractal, and irrevocably *particular* to a person's specific shapes of tech debt, and skipping this particularity blocks future progress. - Eg. Mark [uses language like](https://meditationbook.page/#ordering-matters-order-matters) "million-moves long, ten thousand hour combination lock" to describe practice in his system. - Most adults have substantial outstanding technical debt. - [Awakenings](/md/practice/mysticism-awakening.md#awakening) can be, and in practice often are, *rolled in with* pre-existing structures of debt. Furthermore, many apparent awakenings are entirely *contingent* on particular patterns of debt, often specifically inculcated by a given lineage. - In any case, depending on how one construes the goal of spiritual practice, in wayfinding, "complete" or "correct" practice eventually requires unwinding all debt. [See more later](#spiritual-truth-truth) on this. - Similarly, there are some kinds of apparent healing and integration possible which are built on and entrench existing technical debt, even if they have a similar contour and result to "correct" practice. Also similarly, in the wayfinding model, these proximal or incomplete kinds of integration eventually need to be unwound as well. Some broad categories of debt, not necessarily exhaustive: 1. [Content](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--psychological-content) at the surface - This would be more like straightforward grief, horror, fear, anger etc., along with associated thoughts/imagery/etc. - (So re the stylized depiction of content in the link above, here by "content" I mean more like the "gunk" that's excised and uh "emoted" out, rather than more ingrained patterns of belief, perception etc.) - Often content [comes to the surface](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--metabolism) as a more complex structure of debt is unwound, so this ordered list here is sort of in reverse order of how [practice](/md/practice/spiritual-practice.md#transformative-practice) commonly progresses. 2. Encysted unmetabolized content, usually with downstream behaviors and perceptions - Central here will be examples I discussed in the sections on [trauma](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/trauma.md#models-reports-and-anecdata) and [trauma smells](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/trauma-smells.md#smells-in-particular-not-exhaustive). - (Note that strictly speaking behavior itself is not debt, but generally speaking trauma-smelly behavior/perception is generated by some debt etc.) 3. Gross and subtle layering ([see below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--layering)) - Briefly: compensatory or occlusive structures, often added on top of types #1 and #2 above. - (Note that trauma smells are often specifically layering) 4. Complex tangles ([see below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--complex-tangles)) - Knotted, overlapping, impacted, or snarled structures of volition, intention, affect, and perception. This list of course in great part overlaps with other models, and anyway these models are all at least substantially describing the same territory of healing and transformative practice. Tech debt and losslessness, as concepts together, are then partially analytical distinctions, but also theoretical ones which bear on what the structural constraints are ([see more below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--structure-preserving-transformations)), and what techniques we expect to work. In particular, many practice frameworks look at some "problematic" set of behaviors etc. in a practitioner, and prescribe practices which implicitly view the generators as simple or flat, whereas for the same cases, wayfinding will often predict that the generators are complex and snarled, with a lot of debt to be unwound before getting to the heart of the issue. Debt *often* has unmetabolized gross content at the root, but not always, or in some cases at least not in a way which ever becomes distinctly available. Some kinds of debt are purely perceptual, cognitive, or somatic tangles without much valence or emotion. Again, see the sections below. ### Layering {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--layering} ::gloss[*Layering* refers to structural contortion, dislocation, and suppression used to achieve a specific configuration of psychology and behavior, at the expense of integration.] *Layering* refers to structural contortion, dislocation, and suppression, used to achieve a specific configuration of psychology and behavior, generally at the expense of integration. (Unfortunately 'layer' evokes discrete strata *occluding* others, which was ish how it was meant in [the model Mark originally](https://meditationstuff.wordpress.com/2019/08/03/david-deida-shell-layer-theory/) took the term from, but it's meant more loosely and broadly in Mark's usage.) These kinds of "contortions" can be spatial, and very often specifically [somatic](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md), with common patterns in their presentation and in [their resolution](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--releases-and-openings). However, both layering and debt in general are not just somatic, and Mark is often insistent that meaning, being, and perception are all interwoven, with debt sometimes worked all the way down to the visual quality of space, the boundary of the body, object permanence, etc. Gesturally, some examples: - [Dissociation](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#dissociation), generally "active dissociation" (see link) - Resisting specific beliefs - Eg. affirmations, secondarily practices like CBT, etc., also often more stereotypically neurotic or "rigid" patterns of pushing down thoughts/beliefs - [Blockages](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#blockage) - Internal demands for positive affect, productivity, presentable-ness, etc. - (Though, not all such are exactly layering.) - Often, spiritual practices of "cultivation," especially often those framed as "cultivation of virtue" The claim here, at least implicitly, and claims which rhyme with this are often made by hippies as well, is that "by default" (oy) there are flows of information through a person's psyche which are afforded by attention, emotion, energy, thought, belief, expression, etc., and that layering structurally disrupts some or many of those flows. Then, often both "traumatic content" and just *information* are not able to come to the surface, and are stymied in participating in "the conscious mind." Moreover the claim is that layering is always adding a *compensatory* structure, and that occluded or obscured generators are still structurally and causally present, even if apparently introspectively absent, or only present at the fringes. Sometimes generators may be very quietly *existentially present*, in a way which only becomes salient once they are resolved, so their absence makes the previously baseline presence much more stark. Note this is subtly mixing both descriptive and normative claims, about the structure of human minds, *and* about what configurations are desirable, "original," *correct*, or inevitable. Again I'll [return to](#spiritual-truth-truth) these questions later. This is obviously besides big questions I discuss later re [introspective epistemology](#spiritual-truth-gnosis-confabulation). Again I want to stress the point that layering by no means mostly operates at the level of "belief" or "thought," rather Mark claims it operates on ~all features of phenomenology. On belief in particular, often there are layering structures which occlude the *existential impression* of some experience, which otherwise would have had a diffuse influence on perception, [verbal claims](/md/practice/introspection.md#introspection-thought-self-models-and-the-unconscious), or introspectively superficial "beliefs." These structures again very commonly centrally revolve around somatic patterns which occlude the [somatic instantiation of felt meaning](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#meaning-and-resonance). Some reports involve finding layering structures which are exclusively somatic, with no apparent "content," imagery, memory, etc.; on the other hand there are many reports of patterns which initially present """cognitively""" or behaviorally, which are [found to be](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--releases-and-openings) tightly woven in with blockages or other somatic layering structures. Different forms of dissociation are together probably the most common form of layering, in my anecdotes. Very commonly layering structures block or hide some channel or slice of meaning, and so a swath of emotions becomes unavailable or invisible, eg. grief or anger becoming apparently absent, among other adjacent flavors of [trauma smells](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/trauma-smells.md#smells-in-particular-not-exhaustive). Often layering is partial or incompletely effective, my sense here is that eg. some shapes of sexual fetishism, and paraphilias otherwise, come from partially layered sexuality twisting itself to fit around some layering, and spilling out the sides. Similarly, IIRC I've seen reports of anger which is blocked from its *direct* expression, which finds expression and influence indirectly, eg. in self harm or (sometimes simulated) sexual violence, but also eg. tilting thought and expression, and constricting or distorting the expression of positive regard, affection, etc. #### Layering, shadow, and losslessness {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--layering-shadow-and-losslessness} Sexuality in particular is a theme I've kept returning to, and is central (though often tacit) in Mark's writing. Sexuality is really the [taboo](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/culture.md) par [excellence](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--robust-relationship-with-taboo), and turns up again and again in reports from practitioners in modern Western therapy/adult development/alternative spirituality cultures. Sexuality is no less salient in "traditional" cultures, and I'm not aware of a religious tradition which doesn't involve a substantial system of taboos and rituals surrounding sex and gender. A very common take here[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--wayfinding-taboo] is that some structures of taboo around sexuality lead people to layer over it in general, or from some associated energies or aspects of its expression. Again these come up often in healing/transformative practice reports as a stuck energy or calcified blockage which at some point unravels in the course of practice. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--wayfinding-taboo]: Having nothing to do with wayfinding, but in its terms. I think it's instructive to look at the relationship with sexuality in renunciative or uh "semi-renunciative" traditions. This of course means celibate monastic traditions, but I also think of much of Islam or socially conservative forms of Christianity and Judaism, which may be variously pro-sex within marriage, but strongly proscribe any sex outside of marriage, and generally all masturbation or erotic fantasy. In many cases they explicitly teach this as a persistent struggle and temptation, especially for men, that must be fought vigorously and faithfully. *Layering, right there!* The distinction here is that they *don't* (mostly) teach that desire for proscribed sexual expression will usually wither and cease with appropriate devotion, or that it can be cleanly excised; I claim this is a straightforward instance of losslessness. There's a concept which Eliezer[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--terminal-values] calls a *terminal value* (there's a variety of other names in other discourses), which refers to inexorable, atomic values of an agent. Sexuality is in some respects a mixed case here, partly because of menopause/low testosterone/etc., but also because of asexuality. [I'll discuss](#goodness-sex) sexuality, including asexuality, in more detail later, but the point is still easy enough here that the overwhelming majority of humans continue to desire and usually pursue sex regardless of their culture's beliefs about its propriety, or their meanwhile doggedly trying to subdue or erase it. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--terminal-values]: Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2007. [*Terminal Values and Instrumental Values*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5ucT5ZbPdhfGNLtP/terminal-values-and-instrumental-values) In some respects this is begging the question, if you're unconvinced re sex then feel free to consider this case only evocative. Again, the claim here (agnostic necessarily of sexuality in particular) is that some structures and patterns of affect/perception/behavior are *something like* "inherent," such that attempts to remove them arbitrarily will fail because [the system](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#bodymind-and-the-system) *treats them* as inviolable. A slight generalization of this point also applies for what are called *instrumental values*. These are goals or values which are, indeed, *instrumental* with respect to other values, presumably forming some chain or network which grounds out in terminal values, for whose sake the instrumental ones were adopted. Any given example might be contentious or nuanced, and these examples are obviously contrived, but gesturally: - Desire for money - As instrumental for status, or power, or ease - "Finally have that conversation with Josh" - Perhaps grounding out in some combination of need for connection, integrity, self-esteem, or love - Not crying in front of one's parents - *Perhaps* ultimately instrumental for love and safety - Craving a specific taboo sex act - *Perhaps* intermediately involving structures around shame, and perhaps ultimately resting on need for connection and grounding, and presumably desire for sex. - (Again [see more](#goodness-sex) in the section on sex.) (There's more I could say about regarding these proposed corresponding terminal goals as prototypical, but won't here.) So, the more general claim is that instrumental values in general persist in the system, *except for* specific conditions under which they can collapse, unify, or "resolve." I'll discuss this [more below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--refactoring), but briefly the claim here is that instrumental goals will specifically decay if their fundamental goals are *handled*, accounted for, or, ugh, "integrated." The obvious other exception here is decay: naively, presumably, there are decades-old intentions and fantasies which one has forgotten about, and *surely* many old grudges which really no longer hold any meaning. I'm not clear quite how far he goes, but Mark is pretty maximalist about the claim that old content in general persists. Indeed, there are many reports from practitioners of, in the course of practice, dredging up childhood vows or teenage anxieties and shames, which were otherwise completely absent from their day-to-day experience, but which were discovered still at the root of many behaviors and psychological knots. This broad shape, of persistent generators, occluded or stymied but still tilting behavior and experience, is a decent, if nonstandard, angle on what's usually meant by *shadow*: tabooed realms of one's psyche, whether idiosyncratic or societal-level taboos, which continue to show their influence. Part of the trouble here is that shadow and taboo are *functional*, and often vital for relatively peaceable community. Eg., taboos against the use of violence, especially lethal force by civilians, *surely, presumably*, do actually contribute to society being more stable and more functional. So, to return to sexuality, one objection to this perspective, or a steelman of a class of objections, might be that taboos and restrictions on sexuality are functional and necessary, "the sexual revolution failed," etc. The general form here would be "x taboo is a safeguard against real harm, and tearing it down exposes practitioners and society to risk." In principle I'm sympathetic to this kind of argument, and in particular ambivalent, but distinctly the claim re layering is *structural* re human minds, and *mostly* values-agnostic. In my view wayfinding is not fundamentally antinomian, but it is, I'm so sorry, basically *tantric*[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--tantra]. Again [see more below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--refactoring). [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--tantra]: I'm using 'tantric' here in a slightly abused sense, to mean something like "using taboo-breaking as a gateway to transformation, mysticism, and the sacred." Note I don't mean New-Age sex practices, see [this footnote](/md/practice/mysticism-awakening.md#fn-neo-tantra) for a discussion of Western Neo-Tantra.
More context on shadow Context here which might be missing for some people: one of the spiritual/therapy frames *du jour* is what's known as "shadow work." This gets variously distorted in different contexts, but centrally this means "unraveling blindspots and idiosyncratic conniptions by turning towards and working with things that are untouchable, disgusting, unspeakable, rude, etc." Shadow work in the yoga bourgeoisie sense above is substantially older, but one of the most influential books in that space at the moment is still *Existential Kink* by Carolyn Elliot.
### Complex tangles {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--complex-tangles} ::nogloss Very often structures of tech debt can become impacted, with various countervailing partially overlapping strata of content and layering. Some debt might be almost completely chronically [blended](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/structure-trauma.md#blending-with-the-view), and often in multi-level contention with other [parts](/md/practice/introspection.md#partswork-briefly), with multiple pieces snagged and pulled taut. Anecdotally this seems to be the *modal case* for adults when they come to practice. This is distinctly contrary to eg. the 2010's era Hollywood depiction of therapy, where perhaps some curmudgeonly guarded person finally comes to therapy, holds out for a while, and then spills their guts and is healed. This sort of never seems to be the case in (my analysis of) my anecdotes, and afaict is [contrary to the data](#appendix-therapy-efficacy). This shape of impaction and congestion is also contrary to almost all of the usual advertising materials for therapy. Repeating a bit, this is a very common shape, and speculative etiology, which certain kinds of practitioners report finding: 1. Some persistent clump of [content](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--psychological-content) which is intense or intolerable 2. Layering, obfuscating or dissociating from 1. 3. Imbalance, or emotional/relational "absenses," due to both 1. and 2. 4. Further compensatory structures, eg. trying to perform the absent emotion/behavior/etc., or to route around it 5. ...Further somatic tangles from many competing energies and blockages in all of the above This kind of pattern might present at the beginning of someone's practice as nebulous difficulty and dissatisfaction with some aspect of relationships, or often only in terms of visible second-order effects of *that*, etc., and then several of these clusters interacting, etc. etc. To be fair this is a bit exaggerated, but I've definitely seen reports of tangles just like this. The above is just one specific common shape, and "complex tangles" comprise a broad category of high-dimensional Chinese finger traps: the apparent direction "out" of some quagmire, apparently directly pointed towards "resolution," ease, etc., pulls the snag tighter--but then the snag is being yanked in half a dozen more directions, and balled up inside more netting, etc. Well, this is starting to sound like a proper crazy person. The claim here is that people often have these kinds of tangles very much under the surface, not available to introspection for some time, while meanwhile muddlng through well enough. This is in some sense the flipside of the claim re mediocre outcomes for therapy and intensive meditation progress: wayfinding says that most people are in illegible quagmires, and that without dredging up the contents, all the way to the bottom, progress will either be modest, and more a matter of adding cope and "adjustment," *or* will only get someone caught worse in the tangle. Furthermore wayfinding claims that intensive practice which doesn't address the hairball will stall and founder. Where various shapes of [blockages](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#blockage) or [dissociation](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#dissociation) obscure swaths of meaning, feeling, and volition, wayfinding claims that healing or awakening will be incomplete, and that provisional progress will entrench existing distortions, and exaggerate imbalances. For example: - Often the part/parts which initiate or motivate [practice](/md/practice/spiritual-practice.md#transformative-practice) are fueled by desperation, perhaps with the person's circumstances, or with the uncooperativeness and dysfunction of [the system](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#bodymind-and-the-system) as a whole. Under these circumstances, practice often raises the hackles of various "protector"[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--protector] parts, and in response the initiating parts will double down with greater discipline or finesse, often with an internally performative veneer of "compassion." - Often these represent bizarre contradictions, a surprising common shape I've seen is of people with parts fueled by self-hatred, wielding "self love" to try to beat themselves into some desired shape. - Attempts at [embodiment](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#embodiment) which route around existing blockages, often further sealing off the [unintegrated](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--integration) regions, perhaps because the current configuration of embodiment is too fragile or shallow to be able to integrate them. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--protector]: The term here in IFS jargon, the claim here is that many people have an arrangement involving a traumatized vulnerable part, and a separate protector which tries to prevent the first from being triggered, etc. Some kinds of tangles are almost purely *solipsistic* and internal. There are many reports of formations of [energy](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#energy) in deadlock, with apparently no content underneath; sometimes these are reported as being felt to literally spatially/geometrically "unwind," among other variations. Often these are very subtle, or at least apparently sensationally extremely subtle, until they suddenly begin to move. Some shapes of complexity rely on some "[cursed](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/memetics.md#cursed)" cluster of feeling and belief. Often these buttress a snarl such that it is specifically held in place and can't be extracted or resolved; this is the distinguishing feature of *cursed* material. Gesturally: - Needing to be put together, OK, or not needing help, in order to feel accepted or safe; or vice versa, sometimes needing to be suffering in order for people to relate to you, or that one can't be happy if others are suffering, etc.[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--forcibly-ok-not-ok] - Various shapes with masculinity in particular[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--masculinity] (in at least some cultural contexts) requiring eg. performance of bravado, pain tolerance, non-vulnerability, etc., and making *entertaining* vulnerability even internally unacceptable. - Many kinds of political ideologies, sometimes religions, construct questioning the ideology as evidence of moral failure, degeneracy etc. - There's some adjacent or looser sense with sexual ethics in some religions, eg. reports from people who nominally no longer believe in some religion still experiencing a lot of shame or anxiety, and finding them un able to extricate themselves from the views of their old religion. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--forcibly-ok-not-ok]: Stolen directly from the wayfinding book, [here](https://meditationbook.page/#being-forcibly-ok-tangles) and [here](https://meditationbook.page/#being-not-ok-tangles). [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--masculinity]: Obviously this has all changed, especially over the last century, lots I could say here, etc. I do feel like the shapes for femininity are not fully symmetric, I don't feel like I understand this, definitely... ## Refactoring {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--refactoring} *See also the sections on [healing](/md/practice/healing.md) in other models.* *Refactoring*, also from software jargon, refers to the process of restructuring a piece of software, *resolving* or *paying off* technical debt, by coordinating large-scale and local architectures in order to account elegantly for the current requirements and functionality. There are a variety of disanalogies with refactoring in the software sense, to "refactoring" in the context of wayfinding; you should regard the term as more like an arbitrary piece of jargon, but it's still a term that Mark uses, and a useful handle.[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--mark-refactoring] [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--mark-refactoring]: So I mean, he doesn't actually use it *that* often, but it's the most convenient way to talk about this process given the way I'm explaining everything here. Refactoring in wayfinding again overlaps substantially with therapy and healing models, but including quite a lot largely absent from those. Descriptions in Mark's book also venture deep into the territory of reports from weirder contemplative practitioners, esoteric bodywork, etc., and bleeding into [awakening](/md/practice/mysticism-awakening.md), variously antinomian mystical systems, etc. A big part of Mark's claim here, which I discuss [more below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--wayfinding-and-awakening), is that the domain of awakening is contiguous with that of ordinary experience, and that the processes which lead to awakening are largely the same as those of refactoring "mundane" psychological material. Where wayfinding's understanding of refactoring intersects with the domain of variously conventional therapy models, much of the sense of "content," and many of the *motions* are largely the same as those I described in the sections on [healing](/md/practice/healing.md) and [introspection](/md/practice/introspection.md)--broadly: finding exposed surfaces of the [bodymind](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#bodymind-and-the-system), turning the crank on [metabolism](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--metabolism), and arriving at more robust equilibria. What distinguishes wayfinding here is how it regards dependencies, complexity, and gridlock. These considerations are not unique to wayfinding, but its posture is uniquely maximalist about something like "spiritual globality." While some movement or change may be possible *locally*, it can further entrench tech debt elsewhere, and where some practice or "mental motion" is not working, it's often because there is a tangle of confounded material in the way of whatever nubbin of content you're *trying* to work with. More generally wayfinding claims that structure *across* the mind is much more entangled than almost any practice systems account for, and especially so of debt, in most people. This naturally goes beyond "healing" practices into awakening and more, which I discuss [further below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--wayfinding-and-awakening). Again very broadly, the claim here is that awakening amounts to a deep refactor, *but* that various kinds of awakening can occur under a "twist" in the system, which leave things out and eventually have to be undone. ### Dependencies, gridlock, and independence {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--dependencies-gridlock-and-independence} There are a variety of different kinds of dependencies for different aspects of practice. Loosely I want to distinguish at least four types, this is not Mark's schema but is helpful here: 1. Specific patterns of debt 2. Skill and fluency with the domain 3. Refactoring progress and relative integration 4. Meta-progress ##### Specific debt {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--specific-debt} Many traditions, as well as modern practice communities, insist that some aspect of practice, or specific practices, have a strict dependency on a particular relationship with oneself, a pattern of belief, some threshold of discipline, some spiritual posture, etc. "Debt" here is a little presumptive, indeed I claim that most of these kinds of dependencies are generally tech debt, but the distinction works fine agnostic of any of my or wayfinding's claims. Sometimes schools insist on these as dependencies in effectively those terms, however often they are functional but tacit requirements, or function as filters for participation in a community or for engagement with some set of practices. As with the other kinds of dependencies, often this looks like, as people shop around for practices, they will try out some move and find that it doesn't work, doesn't [resonate](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#resonance), or that some part of [their system](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#bodymind-and-the-system) rejects it quickly. In terms of being filtered *in*, often this looks like a practitioner finding a tradition which has either a very similar, or else an interlocking, shape of debt to them. Eg., evocatively, a practitioner might double down on a large cluster around emotional repression, in a tradition which either teaches repression or *assumes* an orientation of repression. I talk about this type of pattern [more later](#spiritual-truth-schools-teachers-transmission). ##### Skill {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--skill} In isolation, "skill" evokes top-down manipulation, where in the context of wayfinding it means something bottom-up, spontaneous, and variously integrated. I discuss this [more later](#spiritual-truth-metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality--practice-and-control), but to say a bit more here: a lot of practice instructions popular in Western meditation contexts incline towards, or directly prescribe, cultivating some sort of "distance" between the meditating self and the rest of experience, where the former explicitly tries to finely shape or *control* the contents of experience, often explicitly in contradiction with its [generators](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--psychological-content). In wayfinding the relevant notion of skill is more like fluency, sensitivity, and coordination. Eg., you are presumably skilled, in an ordinary sense, at walking, in a way that you had to learn and which babies and toddlers are learning. You have to coordinate sensory information from different modalities, proactively attend to certain features when things might get more dodgy, (relatively) gracefully orchestrate many muscle groups etc. etc. Regardless of wayfinding, the practices taught in a variety of schools often have dependencies on a degree of fluency and sensitivity, and in more endebted schools indeed on top-down control, before they are able to work sufficiently. ##### Refactoring progress {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--refactoring-progress} In the long term, refactoring is at least *meant to* lead to greater integration; this will mean greater fluency, spaciousness, ease, and communication across different parts of the system. People will of course start practice with different degrees of integration, and importantly, integration is highly nonlinear. Relative integration *progress* often means things get worse locally, as in, more dysregulated, more dysfunctional, etc. This can happen over short and long timescales, eg. an afternoon deep in the muck, up to *sometimes* months or years of one's mind being deeply broken (see [more](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--independence-and-globality) and [more](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--nonmonotonicity), below). Dependencies on integration, whether explicit or tacit in a given school, might require relative degrees of global integration, or often in other cases requiring *specific* things to be relatively integrated, while allowing or even assuming other kinds of debt. ##### Meta-progress {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--meta-progress} Mark doesn't have a specific term for this, and this distinction is AFAIK largely unique to wayfinding. The notion here is that practice often involves inadvertently going down wrong paths which incur more debt, but which were sort of "unavoidable" from one's starting position, and which are informative about the shape of the space. Mark's claim is that doing wayfinding, one will take many wrong paths that have to be meticulously backed out of, often pursuing some long thread of integration or purification while a big chunk of experience or intention is *left out*, and that in the process of those pieces getting reintegrated, much of the earlier work has to be unwound. The distinction here is that this fixing-but-oh-it's-still-broken-actually is in general just integral to wayfinding, and that one might make an enormous amount of "meta-progress," without on net actually fixing any concrete problems. Once again, particular moves or practices can have dependencies on meta-progress, so not just on relative apparent integration, but on something like "how far along someone is in their particular process of winding and unwinding." #### Illegible dependencies {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--illegible-dependencies} Especially where a dependency is tacit in a tradition, it can often be *illegible*, both to students and to teachers. A given teacher might then address a flailing student in various ways, some traditions might weakly track these kinds of dependencies but attribute them to "karma"; some might attribute stuck progress to simple personal failure, lack of effort, etc. Some traditions track dependencies more implicitly, and this may be more or less obscured under their understanding of [gradualism vs suddenism](/md/practice/paths.md#gradualism-and-suddenism). Often the way this is understood is that in the course of practice the system does a lot of gradual but opaque work, and that dependencies (most often not conceived of in comparable terms) are satisfied through lots of work "behind the scenes," that is, outside of the direct focus of attention and intention, in a given practice. Still, this is a domain with rampant [Works On My Machine™](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-works-on-my-machine-certification-program/) and [one-weird-trick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbox)-ism. This pattern seems to be particularly common among individual practitioners teaching outside of a lineage, which I [discuss more later](#spiritual-truth-schools-teachers-transmission--illegible-dependencies). While *doing* wayfinding, one isn't necessarily explicitly tracking dependencies, the distinction here is that the model says that lots of practices, content, etc. are gated on relative integration and on meta-progress, *and* that not tracking them can lead to wasting tons of time or working oneself into cul-de-sacs. (I'll note here that Mark severely underweights skill as a *dependency*, at least in his explanations. He discusses it in general as a major aspect of wayfinding progress but much more often refers to debt as the cause of strict blockers, rather than skill. I suspect this is more particular to him, that at a given point in his practice he was almost always overloaded on skill rather than integration.) #### Gridlock {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--gridlock} The depiction of complex tangles [above](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--complex-tangles) is basically a stereotypical presentation of gridlock in the system. Often people come to practice in configurations with enough contention that there is no *apparent* affordance for anything to move, and every salient move encounters resistance, or with overwhelming resistance to the suggestion of something like spiritual practice altogether. Sometimes this kind of resistance is loud and uncomfortable, but often it's subtle or basically invisible--many people quietly bounce off of a given practice, or of practice altogether. Despite the image I evoked above, a person whose system is in gridlock isn't necessarily apparently distraut, rigid, etc. Not seldom, people have (superficially) relatively normal behavior and affect, but with a configuration with very little play or flexibility. Some traditions lean into resistance: the expectation, and explicit instruction, is that practice will continually have to push against ingrained "habits" of the mind, and will involve some amount of discomfort and resistance for quite a long time. Indeed, often in traditional contemplative contexts, the practice of a novice is mostly that of obedience and devotion. Generally these traditions don't meaningfully model either appropriate matching (*sometimes* modern teachers might throw in "well, these practices aren't for everyone"), or the structure of dependencies, at least not explicitly. When a practice "doesn't work," or when it gets stuck, often both practitioners and lineages take one of two tacks: either using more force, or more finesse. In Mark's view both of these options are *debt-accruing*: because of lossleessness, given some structure present in the mind, routing around it *can't* resolve the underlying generators, which will in general adapt to the pressure being applied against them. More specifically, for example, where some structure was "*[trying to](/md/practice/introspection.md#partswork-briefly)*" [function as a buttress](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#blockage), attempts to remove it arbitrarily will lead it to dig in its heels or muster more resources to be able to hold its ground. The claim which Mark makes along with this, is that the system can never enter a perfect deadlock, that the "ultimate" structure of the mind is inclined towards healing, wholeness, truth, etc. ([See more below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--buddha-nature).) Note also that real gridlocks in city streets are also never perfect deadlocks, and that ultimately there exists slack somewhere at the periphery, and the system eventually unclogs. Besides force and finesse, sometimes people can variously *budge* the system, and many practices consist of more like targeted and sustained budging. This is also not robustly effective, nor even trying to *resolve* generators, though often these sorts of practices use the language of "healing" anyway. These are usually ultimately ineffective for similar reasons, because you're pushing against an *elastic* structure, not a *plastic* one, that is, a structure which bends back into its original shape once force is removed, rather than one which stays put once molded. More succinctly, Mark's claim is that one can't unwind complexity by forcing, cutting, or routing around material, *but* that the system always has enough slack to be eventually unwound. In general in wayfinding, much of the time is spent understanding the contours of the system, and searching for these labile surfaces where the slack is. (To some extent here I'm conflating between elasticity/losslessness in general, with gridlock in particular, but these have a lot in common and are both illustrative about wayfinding as whole.) ##### Dissociation, grounding, equanimity, and complexity {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--dissociation-grounding-equanimity-and-complexity} *See the previous sections on [embodiment](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#embodiment) and [dissociation](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#dissociation).* Often dissociation, and both [grounding](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#grounding) and embodiment along with it, are explained as though they are relatively linear virtues or capacities which can be straightforwardly cultivated augmented over time. In practice it's still often understood that progress in embodiment is usually gated on integration, and that progress is often spiky; nonetheless I think the default depictions of grounding are pretty bad, and I want to contrast them with the distinctions that wayfinding makes. The wayfinding take goes something like this: 1. Dissocation is *structured*, contentful, and usually part of a larger network of debt 2. Robust grounding is a consequence of [integration](/md/practice/healing.md#practice-healing--integration) 3. Local grounding can be achieved with *more debt*, but usually takes energy to sustain, or is likely to collapse or regress quickly One common shape of complexity comes from trying to gain more access to various [energies](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#energy), or energetic or sensational centers, without yet being able to integrate the content stuck there. Sometimes this can look like gridlock, sometimes like a lopsided or else an artificial expression of a given energy, and sometimes this results in a practitioner being overwhelmed and blown open, when they were otherwise not ready. I discuss variations of this [more below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--nonmonotonicity). The same point applies also re equanimity: in general where that term is used, 'equanimity' is understood as a largely generic capacity which can be developed regardless of the structure of some material, sensation, etc. Again Mark's claim here is that each given discomfort, resistance, suffering, etc. is *structured* and *specific*, and that equanimity comes as a consequence of robust integration, and that generic equanimity is in general debt-accruing. #### Independence and globality {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--independence-and-globality} Much of this rests on a claim about the *independence*[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--independence] of various structures across the mind, both at the level of substrate, and at the level of content and debt. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--independence]: My term, Mark doesn't have a specific term here. Better but less legible would be "factorizability." Again in comparison with other theories and with established traditions, wayfinding is on the extreme, in this case in how entangled various structures are understood to be. In particular, wayfinding claims that a. all structures across the [bodymind](/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md#bodymind-and-the-system) are connected or in some sense "contiguous," b. ~any structures are *potentially* tied up in a given cluster of debt, and c. that in practice for most people coming to spiritual practice, debt is rolled into the great majority of generators of the contents of experience. I use the word 'independence' here to mean that two structures can be "worked on" flexibly *independently* of one another; restated then, wayfinding claims that at least *in situ*, structures are seldom independent. Reports here again often look like, "I had some clump of material which was largely intractable, I did many other apparently unrelated practices and worked with very different material, and then the clump opened up and became tractable, to my surprise." Often intractable material might have had some degree of play, or might have undergone apparent "transformations" several times, but in each case eventually regressed, or reassembled itself into a more pernicious form. There are two metaphors here which I like, neither is an exact fit but they're both striking, in the direction of this shape: ##### Knotted yarn {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--knotted-yarn} If you're unknotting a tangled ball of yarn[^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--yarn-wayfinding], often you will pull all of the currently available slack into one area, or one loop, thinking that that section can be fully unwound, and then find that you have to pull the slack all the way back because the real constraint is elsewhere. [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--yarn-wayfinding]: [Pretty directly from Mark](https://meditationbook.page/#ball-of-string-analogy-and-more-on-posture-and-feed), though he makes the point a bit differently. Anyway, one of my favorite sections in the book. > So, to summarize, if you're somewhere tugging some loop open, creating slack, then maybe be careful, as best you can, that you're not pulling something else too tight, elsewhere--you sort of metaphorically want to still be able to get your fingers in there, you don't want loops elsewhere to get too small. What you do in one place affects other places, and so one ideally wants to order things with respect to globality versus possibly doing things to exhaustion in any one place. ##### Rubik's cube {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--rubiks-cube} This one isn't as familiar to everyone:
A cube can end up in a state which looks very nearly solved, but which requires visibly scrambling most of the cube to get to solved. I won't go into the dissimilarities with some exact details of Mark's claims, but this is evocatively much closer to his understanding of what "correct" practice means and looks like, except that the possibilities of configurations of a human bodymind is much much larger, and that often much of the state is obscured "from the camera," so to speak. In fact with an actual Rubik's cube, there's some flexibility, and there are many similarly efficient paths to the goal, and a given move only touches 40% of the cube. In general though, most of the blocks quickly become entangled in the cube's current state, and so any sequence of moves attempting to resolve a "twist" (like the twisted corners above) needs to be concerned with *global* coherence after that sequence. *** Hence *global wayfinding*. And again, Mark's claim is that *most* of the state is deeply entangled, and in fact in a less flexible way than a cube, in particular that there is a relatively narrow path towards global coherence, which is overwhelmingly unique and particular to a given person. One point I want to clarify here: this sort of might sound like one would end up fretting about messing things up and scrambling things further. As I'll describe more below, Mark's claim here is that some perfect sequence is both unknown and unavailable from ~any starting position, and that it's basically expected that much of a practitioner's time is unavoidably spent a. exploring, and b. backtracking. ### "Structure-preserving transformations" {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--structure-preserving-transformations} ::nogloss ["fractal particularity"] spring steel puzzles, pick up sticks #### Refactoring and trauma smells {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--refactoring-and-trauma-smells} ### Nonmonotonicity {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--nonmonotonicity} ### Wacky phenomenology {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--wacky-phenomenology} *** >And, in fact, while puzzle-solving, to make more room, sometimes we will need to unnest already nested tetraminoes to find new configurations that save even more space. Sometimes we’ll need to unnest vast numbers of them, over and over again, to figure out a different, more elegant global solution, as tetraminoes keep coming in. https://meditationbook.page/#karma-losslessness-developmental-stage-models-viole [what about weirdos? how common is this? how do I make these concepts more accessible?] [indeed I think this kind of "layered with unresolved compensated generators" is very common] ## Complexity and losslessness {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--complexity-and-losslessness} The fundamental claims of wayfinding are:
  1. The mind is [lossless](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--losslessness) with respect to volition, affect, and [phenomenal structure](/md/practice.md).
  2. There are conditions under which *some* features will simplify and unify, or separately "release," and sometimes "turn inside out." ("refactoring", [more below](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--refactoring))
  3. Modification of these structures under any other conditions adds [more cruft or twistiness](#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--technical-debt) ("tech debt") around them, but *cannot* collapse or destroy them.
  4. [Awakening](/md/practice/mysticism-awakening.md) amounts to a deep refactor of many features of the mind.
  5. Proximal reconfigurations are possible which achieve some or many features of awakening, but which are *rolled in with* or even entrench tech debt.
And then, as a normative claim:
  1. *Complete* and flawless refactoring is "correct" in a robust sense, and a "truer" expression of human value than endebted forms of awakening.
Perhaps that stands on its own but I'll talk about these some more. and so this is the basic crux of wayfinding with (most) therapy systems, with basically all? traditional spiritual systems, again sometimes those have some of this in part though often they really really don't, they very explicitly contradict this and some have this partially, or have it strongly but not *fractally*, or have it strongly but leave out a bunch of swaths of weirdness, like weird somatic stuff, weird body-world-map stuff, etc. [and then yes, under what conditions does it collapse, what are the rules of transformation, what produces debt or not, so so "structure preserving transformations". note that not all debt is due to adding cruft, there's "simple" debt] [check if I actually communicated that in the debt section] [and then refactoring, again see just below] and then well, if this is true, [obviously you can't [obviate] complexity, the propensity to complexity, and the extant complexity, *inheres* in the substrate. ] [a bit more about "true", probably be like, "very briefly here's mark's schtick here, but I discuss this here and here] [and then lead into structure preserving transformations and spend more time on that.] *** ## Wayfinding and awakening {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--wayfinding-and-awakening} [something like, and then awakening pops out for free? etc] ### "Buddha-nature" {#wayfinding-wayfinding-model--buddha-nature} [^wayfinding-wayfinding-model--buddha-nature] *** --- # The Depths of Insanity {#wayfinding-the-depths-of-insanity} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/wayfinding/the-depths-of-insanity — also at `/md/wayfinding/the-depths-of-insanity.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `wayfinding-the-depths-of-insanity--`.* --- # Disruptions in Life and Practice {#wayfinding-wayfinding-disruptions-nonmonotonicities} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/wayfinding/wayfinding-disruptions-nonmonotonicities — also at `/md/wayfinding/wayfinding-disruptions-nonmonotonicities.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `wayfinding-wayfinding-disruptions-nonmonotonicities--`.* ## Nonmonotonicities {#wayfinding-wayfinding-disruptions-nonmonotonicities--nonmonotonicities} ::gloss[😠😠😠???!? cmon mark, are you just trying to be illegible here] 😠😠😠???!? cmon mark, are you just trying to be illegible here --- # My Takes on Wayfinding {#wayfinding-my-takes} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/wayfinding/my-takes — also at `/md/wayfinding/my-takes.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `wayfinding-my-takes--`.* --- # Spiritual Truth {#spiritual-truth} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/spiritual-truth — also at `/md/spiritual-truth.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `spiritual-truth--`.* *In this chapter:* - [🔨 Metaphysics re Phenomenology and Spiritual Practice](#spiritual-truth-metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality) - [🔨 Lopsided Masters](#spiritual-truth-lopsided-masters) - [🔨 Schools, Teachers, Pedagogy, and Transmission](#spiritual-truth-schools-teachers-transmission) - [🔨 Gnosis, Inference, Deference, & Confabulation](#spiritual-truth-gnosis-confabulation) - [🔨 Wrong Practice](#spiritual-truth-wrong-practice) - [🔨 Spiritual Truth](#spiritual-truth-truth) - [🔨 Rationality](#spiritual-truth-rationality) --- # Metaphysics re Phenomenology and Spiritual Practice {#spiritual-truth-metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality — also at `/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `spiritual-truth-metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality--`.* ## Practice instructions, fake models, and views {#spiritual-truth-metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality--practice-instructions-fake-models-and-views} ::nogloss ## Practice and *control* {#spiritual-truth-metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality--practice-and-control} ::nogloss --- # Lopsided Masters {#spiritual-truth-lopsided-masters} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/spiritual-truth/lopsided-masters — also at `/md/spiritual-truth/lopsided-masters.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `spiritual-truth-lopsided-masters--`.* --- # Schools, Teachers, Pedagogy, and Transmission {#spiritual-truth-schools-teachers-transmission} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/spiritual-truth/schools-teachers-transmission — also at `/md/spiritual-truth/schools-teachers-transmission.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `spiritual-truth-schools-teachers-transmission--`.* ## Illegible dependencies {#spiritual-truth-schools-teachers-transmission--illegible-dependencies} ::gloss[*Illegible* dependencies are those which are opaque or muddied for a given practitioner or lineage, such that they can't distinguish them clearly as dependencies, nor when a student has them unsatisfied.] Works On My Machine™ and one-weird-trick-ism --- # Gnosis, Inference, Deference, & Confabulation {#spiritual-truth-gnosis-confabulation} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation — also at `/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `spiritual-truth-gnosis-confabulation--`.* --- # Wrong Practice {#spiritual-truth-wrong-practice} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/spiritual-truth/wrong-practice — also at `/md/spiritual-truth/wrong-practice.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `spiritual-truth-wrong-practice--`.* ## Thou shalt not disfigure the soul {#spiritual-truth-wrong-practice--thou-shalt-not-disfigure-the-soul} --- # Spiritual Truth {#spiritual-truth-truth} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/spiritual-truth/truth — also at `/md/spiritual-truth/truth.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `spiritual-truth-truth--`.* > *Na hi verena verāni,*
> *sammantīdha kudācanaṁ;*
> *Averena ca sammanti,*
> *esa dhammo sanantano.*[^spiritual-truth-truth--dhp] [^spiritual-truth-truth--dhp]: [DhP 5](https://suttacentral.net/dhp1-20/pli/ms?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none¬es=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin) >*Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world.*
>*By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased.*
>*This is a law[^spiritual-truth-truth--dhamma] eternal.*[^spiritual-truth-truth--rakkhita] [^spiritual-truth-truth--rakkhita]: [DhP 5](https://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.01.budd.html), trans. Buddharakkhita 1996 [^spiritual-truth-truth--dhamma]: This is maybe neither here nor there but I just want to point out that *dhamma* (skt. *dharma*) is problematic even in the original. IIRC *dhamma* means variously a. law (inviolable property of the universe), b. teaching, c. phenomenon (subjective arising), and d. *thing* (!!). Anyway some translators choose "teaching" here. (Also several more, eg. *duty*, in some Hindu contexts.) What would that mean? What does [true](/md/metaphysics/real.md#real-and-true) mean, in general, or in this context? ## Culture and spiritual truth {#spiritual-truth-truth--culture-and-spiritual-truth} ::nogloss --- # Rationality {#spiritual-truth-rationality} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/spiritual-truth/rationality — also at `/md/spiritual-truth/rationality.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `spiritual-truth-rationality--`.* --- # Goodness {#goodness} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/goodness — also at `/md/goodness.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `goodness--`.* *In this chapter:* - [🔨 What is Axiology?](#goodness-what-is-axiology) - [🔨 Metaphysics and Axiology](#goodness-metaphysics-axiology) - [🔨 Harm](#goodness-harm) - [🔨 Metaphysical Harms](#goodness-metaphysical-harms) - [🔨 Sex](#goodness-sex) --- # What is Axiology? {#goodness-what-is-axiology} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/goodness/what-is-axiology — also at `/md/goodness/what-is-axiology.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `goodness-what-is-axiology--`.* --- # Metaphysics and Axiology {#goodness-metaphysics-axiology} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/goodness/metaphysics-axiology — also at `/md/goodness/metaphysics-axiology.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `goodness-metaphysics-axiology--`.* --- # Harm {#goodness-harm} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/goodness/harm — also at `/md/goodness/harm.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `goodness-harm--`.* --- # Metaphysical Harms {#goodness-metaphysical-harms} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/goodness/metaphysical-harms — also at `/md/goodness/metaphysical-harms.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `goodness-metaphysical-harms--`.* --- # Sex {#goodness-sex} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/goodness/sex — also at `/md/goodness/sex.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `goodness-sex--`.* --- # Conclusion {#conclusion} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/conclusion — also at `/md/conclusion.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `conclusion--`.* This chapter reiterates and elaborates on the main thesis of the book. *In this chapter:* - [🔨 Spiritual Rationality](#conclusion-spiritual-rationality) --- # Spiritual Rationality {#conclusion-spiritual-rationality} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/conclusion/spiritual-rationality — also at `/md/conclusion/spiritual-rationality.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `conclusion-spiritual-rationality--`.* *Spiritual rationality*, in my view, is composed of three main considerations. I want a spirituality which satisfies all of them, and I believe you should too. It should be: **Sane**: truthful, accurate, not mistaken or false about the world or the contents of our minds, and furthemore conducive to sane communities and sane societies. **Effective**: able to achieve the goals it advertises, and both calibrated and honest about how successfully it can do that. **True** (perhaps, **right**, perhaps also just **good**): true to ourselves and to our values, both not denying our values or trying to "transcend" them, but also able to discard chaff, confusion, and ignorance about the nature of experience and value. Moreso, deeply beautiful and aligned with goodness, as best as we yet understand it. This list is not necessarily comprehensive, and I'm not quite happy with any of these words, but they'll do for now. Once again, as I've said over and over, see also [nebulosity](/md/metaphysics/eternalism-nihilism.md#nebulosity). *** --- # Appendix {#appendix} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/appendix — also at `/md/appendix.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `appendix--`.* This chapter has supplementary essays on specific topics which didn't fit in the main body of the book. - [🔨 Empiricism re Therapy Efficacy](#appendix-therapy-efficacy) - [🔨 The Garden Of Eden](#appendix-garden-of-eden) - [🔨 Specific Claims from Specific Traditions](#appendix-specific-claims) - [🔨 Whose Buddha?](#appendix-whose-buddha-historiography) --- # Empiricism re Therapy Efficacy {#appendix-therapy-efficacy} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/appendix/therapy-efficacy — also at `/md/appendix/therapy-efficacy.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `appendix-therapy-efficacy--`.* Oy vey. 2026-08-04 briefly: I did some cursory reading last year and both effect sizes and clinical significance were larger than I was expecting but still much more modest than the advertising. I would like to do at least a small literature review here but am not prioritizing it. --- # The Garden Of Eden {#appendix-garden-of-eden} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/appendix/garden-of-eden — also at `/md/appendix/garden-of-eden.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `appendix-garden-of-eden--`.* There are a variety of theories, stories, and fantasies which I'll refer to as stories of the *Garden of Eden*. These stories revolve around a reconstructed past which was vastly more spiritually wealthy: more peaceful, wholesome, trusting, integrated with the earth, healthy in diet, etc. As fantasies or [imaginal](/md/practice/practices.md#imaginal-practice) background, I have no real objection, but as actual depictions of the past, I believe these are broadly false. Furthermore, insofar as we're concerned with actually trying to understand our own species, and especially what ought to be possible for the future, we should not be using stories like these to guide us. I have a few claims here: 1. The lives of most humans who have ever lived have been uncomfortable, difficult, vulnerable, and often brutal, much more than we in the 21st century West usually imagine. 2. The kinds of stories about the history of our species which circulate in pop discourses, especially in hippy circles, are very often based on a combination of sparse anecdotes and fantasy or imaginative elaboration from anthropological and archaeological evidence. 3. While "traditional societies" are well adapted to their contexts in many ways, many features of their cultures look more like a random hodgepodge--some of them delightful or curious, and many dysfunctional or harmful, but mostly just not particularly well optimized for *anything*. Beyond these, my claim is that from my (sparse) reading of anthropology, I haven't seen evidence of societies[^appendix-garden-of-eden--contact] which display overwhelming spiritual integrity, righteousness, or robustness. In general, ethnographies feel like they're describing the inheritors of a lineage of adaptation, trauma, dysfunction, ignorance, and authentic human spirit, muddling through with what they have at hand. [^appendix-garden-of-eden--contact]: Mostly I mean before contact with the West, but largely the same after also. ## How bad was it? {#appendix-garden-of-eden--how-bad-was-it} ## Pop-spiritual pseudoanthropology {#appendix-garden-of-eden--pop-spiritual-pseudoanthropology} ## Adaptation and optimization {#appendix-garden-of-eden--adaptation-and-optimization} ## It is our birthright to adapt and be joyful {#appendix-garden-of-eden--it-is-our-birthright-to-adapt-and-be-joyful} --- # Specific Claims from Specific Traditions {#appendix-specific-claims} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/appendix/specific-claims — also at `/md/appendix/specific-claims.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `appendix-specific-claims--`.* --- # Whose Buddha? {#appendix-whose-buddha-historiography} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/appendix/whose-buddha-historiography — also at `/md/appendix/whose-buddha-historiography.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `appendix-whose-buddha-historiography--`.*