How did I end up being "spiritual", with such a past journey of "pure rationalism"?

A rant of nature rebelling to be heard

This is a call of nature and uses provocative language. It is meant to be an emotional ride. I hope you enjoy the story 🙂

Rationalisation is a counterfeit of true Reason

Rationalism is not what it seems. Reason was meant to uncover the truth about the world. It was a divine gift and a way to reality. However in our society today, Reason seems to have taken on a new face, the polar opposite, and presents itself most often as rationalisation, that which protects oneself from the truth. Rationalisations make us believe what is comfortable rather than what is right. What other people believe rather than what is true for us. In other words: rationalisation is compromising ourselves. We compromise the truth of our feelings, our perceptions, our sensations and intuitions for the sake of externally-built models that are supposedly "the Truth". We have forgotten this one core truth: we are all unique and models don't apply to us unique selves. This truth is truly reasonable.

I come from a very scientific-oriented background. Many people around me do or if they don't, they come from a very business-oriented one. Both those worlds rely heavily on objectivity and rationalism. So when I share some of my more spiritual or esoteric thoughts, I can be faced with shock, anger, contempt, even depression. And a lot of arguing. More often than not, they are also quite intrigued.

Because don’t get me wrong! I’m not saying that rational thinking is all wrong. I still believe in right thinking. What I’m criticising is the weaponisation of it and the ideology behind many of our rationalisations. Rationalisation is an edifice meant to protect ideology when true Reason seeks to uncover ideology.

So I was led to wonder why people react so much when some others don't and I had this hypothesis that the more people react negatively, the more they have repressed the part of them that believes in what you say. There is this saying "if you react, it's because you know it's true". I would add: "you know it deep down, but you have learnt to believe it was not, for the sake of your security and belonging, and it's normal, you should thank this survival and attachment strategy". And "I hope you can learn to see that you're doing it to yourself and you don't need to: you are safe, and you are worthy, just as you are. You don't need to adopt beliefs that are not your own. Fitting in will never deliver on its promise. You will only belong when you accept who you are. Life can actually be meaningful".

I got emotional the first day I glimpsed this part of a friend who was eager to believe in the world being much more than all our rational ideas. I saw a bubbly sun of joy. And then I saw how rationalism was drenching its brightness under deep and dark waters, tarnishing her smiles and hopes.

I wish we didn't do that to ourselves. I wish we would let ourselves believe in the magic of the world again. I wish we would see its preciousness and our so very unique preciousness as humans. “We are the world in ecstasy” says Bayo Akomolafe. I wish I had understood sooner. I wish I had started on the path to my integrity sooner. I would have avoided so much pain, unconsciously done to myself and others.

But in a way, life teaches us lessons all the time, our role is in a way simply to understand them quickly.

I was so arguing with myself, so intent on believing what other people said was true, that I got depressed, anxious, and forgot my own truth. And so of course I was arguing with everyone because they should also believe what I believed even though it made me feel bad. "It's the way it is, they should know about it!" "Get rid of your illusions!" "The world is not a miracle." "It is the box we say it is." "Tell me I'm not wrong. Tell me all my efforts to believe in all this were not in vain." What I was actually screaming was: “can someone tell me I actually matter?”.

I did. And you do. Life needs you.

The truth: my true self was hiding behind all these walls of rationalisation, scared of rejection, scared of making mistakes. And I was wrong. It was vain. It was all a clever protection from my authenticity.

And one day, the whole edifice of my rationalisations crumbled.

The crumbling

Apart from the collective crumbling that we see everywhere, if I try to trace the origin of my path of spirituality, I could trace it to the first major bad events of my life.

I had been trying so hard to be the hard-nosed rationalist that I was. I had gained so much success in life from that. At school, at work. I was really good at it. I was a real pain in the ass. For me, for others. I was really smart. Wow. Actually, I was always the smartest because, you know, I was always right, in my mind, huh? 🤔

The thing is, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy and at some point my mind started blanking out. And my body started collapsing.

The mind’s break down

My mind blanked out when it started to realise that nothing could ever be so sure. With the increasing complexity of the topics I was managing at work, in relationships, in my political views, I started to realise that the good old stories I believed in were mere children stories. In reality, nothing is so simple. If you think it’s simple, you’re either in a very boxed, linear, minor topic, or you’re blind. Usually, you’re blind. And it’s for your best interest because the light is pretty damn intense when you open your eyes.

So I started seeing that with every fact, you can build up a story of your own. With the same data sets, people from different opinions would argue the exact opposite. I was in data analysis so you know, I saw that in my day-to-day. And I saw that in the news, in debates. I started to realise that reality was ideological rather than objective, despite everything that everyone says. I started realising that even science is grounded in ideology and that the most advanced science blocked on one key issue: the observer influences the observed. Boom. The subject and the object are not actually separate. Boom 2. Maybe we’re not separate at all. Boom 3.

All of that is pretty well documented and known in systemic thinking, complexity theories, or advanced science. By the way, most advanced scientists end up facing these challenges because at the root of every advanced problem lies the same issue: our boxed paradigms crumble and we don’t know what to do with it but create an open-endedness in the thinking and invite the unknown. It can be God, it can be something else, but it most definitely redefines your way of thinking and leads you on an adventurous path of discovery, new vistas, solitude and ecstasy. Actually quite the tasty drink!

So that was my mind break.

The body’s break down

But my body had been breaking for much longer than that, I just didn’t care to notice or think that was actually an important signal.

I’d had panic attacks, weeks of anguish, and years of anxiety with strong somatisation since I was 18. Mostly on the outside, I was a pretty calm guy. I was pretty adventurous, fun, bold... But I had phases where all that would crumble.

Often, it appeared in relation with situations I couldn’t understand or control. My reality would collapse, and I would end up a little scared animal not able to properly operate in the world. Or barely surviving, with a weirdly-beating heart, and rushes of panic in the face of the most banal emotions.

One day, it led me to read the book: The Power of Now. I was 24. I was shaking and barely existing in this period, and this was the only thing that helped me ground myself, find comfort, calm my body and mind. Relax. This was my first encounter with a “spiritual” text. I had planted the seeds of mindfulness.

It’s interesting because I didn’t water that seed for quite a while. The biggest rush of panic gone, which by the way had to do with a love affair, which seems to be my Achilles heel (you know: complex, vulnerable, lack of control, fear of dissolution, passionate emotions…), I just went on deciding with my mind how my life should look like and what I should prioritise. My body was a second-order citizen. Maybe even less than that... So work was a priority, being a good boyfriend was a priority. Being successful was a priority. In other’s definition of success, unfortunately. And this, doesn’t work so well.

So I continued the fight against my own internal reality so I could succeed in my external reality. I kept on paying the price of my integrity and well-being to reap benefits on the outside: status, money, relationships. It worked pretty well! It worked really well.

The thing is, I started to realise that I wasn’t fulfilled. I was constantly fighting to feel truly heard in my work or relationships, I felt like I didn’t belong, I was compromising on my values and I started to realise that it might be the cause of why I was tired, anxious, unfulfilled… There was an enormous hole deep, deep inside.

I needed a break.

A break from myself.

A break from structures.

A break from tyranny and stupidity.

And I needed a new bond. I needed to find someone.

This someone was ME, who had always been there, deep down, screaming to be heard, but who I didn’t care to listen to.

The way home

And I needed a new bond. I needed to find someone. And this someone was me

To hear him again I needed space, silence, because his voice was muffled by all my conditioning and all the voices that were not mine. All those pretty arguments I had served him all his life to justify violating his needs, over and over. All these internalised tyrants. You know, those I was mentioning in the very beginning of this writing: those thoughts people serve you all the time, parroting the violence they are doing to themselves all the time. You can hear that, when you have recognised it in yourself. It hurts.

The thing is, how do you find this voice? This silence? This utter stillness? This thin thread of truth? The good news is people have thought about that for quite a long time, as it’s not so much a new problem: it’s THE problem. So traditions around the world have been researching and practicing that for thousands of years, and you can learn from that.

This is when the spiritual texts, tradition and world comes in. It comes to the rescue of your poor soul begging to be reclaimed. It comes to your aid when you face the existential crisis of “who am I?” and “how can I bear being this I in this world that doesn’t care a thing about that?”.

So here the journey inward begins. The journey of the soul. The wandering and exploration of a whole new realm. Because yes, there is still plenty to explore. And that was such a GREAT NEWS. The exterior world seems to be stuck, with not much left to explore. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The external world is simply stuck because it reflects the aridity of our internal world. When collectively we’ll have understood that, the world will be much, much different. The only thing is that the current one needs to collapse for that to happen, because it’s the only way people realise this truth: you’ve got to go inside and make a heaven there, then the earth can become that, again. Maybe, just maybe, it only needs to collapse inside of us, and not so tragically and majestically outside of us. Maybe if we realise the pain inside, some pain can be avoided outside.

And so for that journey inwards you need maps, and fortunately you have plenty of them, and of many tastes, at your disposal. You have more structured analytical esoteric systems, you have holy texts, you have myths, you have shamanism, you have mindfulness. They are all doors to the same reality and the recommendation is to find what is right for you but it will for sure deliver this one big nugget: reality is not what it seems, and there is much, much more to uncover; life can be ecstatic, and you don’t have the slightest idea how much more than what you live right now. Isn’t that a great promise?

What’s interesting is that now psychology starts to catch up on those promises, and even some of science. So you don’t even have to believe it. Anyway, you don’t have to believe anything because you’ll see that things happen and you just start trusting your experience, not what someone else says. Go there with that intention: experiment and see for yourself. This is the base spiritual truth: God can only be lived. You don’t have to believe in anything. Read that again. It’s actually deeper than it seems.

“Did I believe in God back then? Oh yes I did.
Do I believe in God now? Ha! Difficult to answer (ironic smile)
I know. I don’t need to believe. I know” - Carl G. Jung

So you know, once the world is not what it seems, you look for what it is.

And you have your mind as an asset, and your body. The mind looks for the systems, the explanations, the stories. It will be stuck in them because that’s what it does, and truly big thanks for the security provided. It will find ways to understand reality differently and tell the story to other people, making bridges. And then the body will go through experiences, states some of which very non-ordinary, which will make it experience directly a reality that is utterly beyond words and will literally blow your mind from time to time. Don’t blow it too much, because you will freak out. But that’s part of the journey, just be cautious and don’t try to shortcut too much.

Ecstatic states are many and they are being documented even in science, researching transes etc but you can expect merging with reality, synchronistic events, intuitions, guidance, clairvoyance… These are only some of those I’ve experienced. Every person experiences different flavours of it. And you shouldn’t even look for that, because they are just states along the path and the path is one of detachment from ego, so it’s not really the point to try to be a magician.

Even if, and I know it’s shocking, it’s actually possible.

Have a great day my friends 🏡