My friends often joke that I am a predictable, spiritual stereotype. They joke that they can predict my answers and ideas based on the punchlines of comedians who mock the religious… They aren’t wrong.

The Meaning Crisis

I am one of those people the meaning crisis beat into the darkness from which I thought I would never return. Over my life I became increasingly disconnected from my family, my friends, my faith and my life. My family tend to judge me without care or compassion for my own mental or physical health. I am an avatar for their wishes, dreams, and expectations and not a person in and of myself. Friends are physically so far away, because I have lived all over the country, my friends live all over the country and it is hard to keep in touch with them, especially as it has become harder for me to travel. The church abandoned God for the Republican Party. My body keeps me from doing so many of the things I want to do as my chronic ailments have gotten worse over time.

The results of all of this is I am left drowning in the same sea of disconnection and loneliness as everyone. I’ve been able to keep my head above water, but it is so tempting sometimes to just let myself go under. While I know or at least see a path to the shore, riptides keep pulling me back out to sea.

Current events don’t help. Every time I watch the news, my faith in the social contract, progress, and our ability to correct errors is shaken and cracked. I know historically, the ideological pendulum swings back and forth. It is hard to live through this prolonged swing to the right especially when as the mechanics of the state have been twisted to cover up and prevent the pendulum from swinging back the other way.

I know I am not the only one feeling all this, but I don’t see enough spiritual teachers being honest about it.

The Light in the Darkness

At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to became a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.

- Emma Goldman, Living My Life

We are not at our best when we are serious and solemn, entirely focused on the Cause, whatever the “Cause” might be. We are at our best when we are really and truly alive and bringing that vitality to our causes.

Anarchism is simply the rejection of unjust hierarchies and working through right relationship in accordance with the sovereignty of ourselves and others to build an equitable world. I want to build and live in a just, equitable, and compassionate world. That goal is the light on the path out of the meaning crisis for me. That is why I share it to the best of my ability.

Science and reason are great, but they have nothing to offer to the search of meaning, purpose, or fulfillment. We can study those things all we want, but their is no way to objectively measure happiness, fulfillment, meaning, purpose, and connection. We need a different technology for those things, and we have three: religion, spirituality, and magic. The problem is they have been used to control, dominate, and suppress people. Any technology can be misused, that doesn’t mean we throw it out. We have to reclaim it for its proper and good use.

How do we find meaning?

These are like diagnostic questions you can ask about in order to (sort of) measure how much meaning in life you have.

What do you want to exist even if you don’t?

Second, how real is it? Is it really real?

Third, how much of a difference do you make to it now?

If you can answer all three of those you have meaning in life. If one of them is missing, it’s reduced. If they’re all missing, you’re in trouble.

John Vervaeke, Metaphysics of Mattering

These are the diagnostic questions to discover how much meaning we have in our lives:

* What do we want to exist even if it doesn’t?

* How real is what we want to exist?

* How much of a difference do we make to building it now?

The better we can answer those questions, the more meaning we have in our lives. I want to live in a world without unjust hierarchies, where everyone has access to meaning. I want to be a part of a movement where everyone can and does dance when they want. That is why I am a practitioner of Creation Spirituality.

Creation Spirituality and the Meaning Crisis

Creation Spirituality offers a clear and simple pattern to find meaning for ourselves individually and as a collective. That tool is the Four Paths, which is one of the most powerful spiritual technologies I have ever found to build and rebuild meaning and never forget to dance.

Path One: The Way of Awe (Via Positiva)

The first path begins with Awe, reminding us that we are born in Original Blessing in a world that is good (ki tov), that grace is always available to us and we exist as conduits for that grace to enter the world. How does the first path answer these questions?

What do we want to exist on the first path even if it doesn’t?

We want to experience the jaw-dropping awe of the cosmos, savoring it with all our hearts. We use those experiences to build communities of hospitality where we, like Earth, are welcoming to all.

We want to experience joy in our daily life, where we work from the desires of our hearts to build a better world for each other and the world to come.

This exists on a small scale in our personal lives, but we desire to see this joy, awe, and enjoyment of life be available to all.

How real is what we want to exist?

This world is available to all, but is kept from most of our grasp by the greedy and the power hungry. We make enough food to feed everyone on Earth and have enough housing for a roof over everyone’s head. It is only greed and the need of a few to dominate others that we are not living in that reality now.

How much of a difference do we make to building it now?

The more we work to help everyone savor the joys of life, the closer we get to it being a reality for all. Through mutual aid, collective bargaining, community organizing, and deep friendships, we grow ever closer to bringing this reality to all.

That might not seem true, but that is because there are too many people striving to keep power, wealth, healthcare, food, and shelter under the control of a greedy and fearful elite. The more of us who are working for the liberation of all, the fewer there are taking food, safety, and life from those who are deprived of their birthrights.

Path Two: The Way of Mystery (Via Negativa)

What do we want to exist on the second path even if it doesn’t?

In path two, we let go of the delusional certainty that we know everything and we reject the lie that we must ignore suffering and those who are in pain. What we want is the space to acknowledge our wounds so they might be tended and healed. We want the room to speak the truth to power that power fears. We want the mindfulness to sit with our pain, acknowledge it, and reveal the depth of harm existing in the current system.

How real is what we want to exist?

Some of us have a mindfulness practice and have built support groups and healing circles. We see the hope and healing they bring into our lives. With a little effort and collective will, we can open space to air the issues we have and are enduring, because there can be no reconciliation without the truth coming out first.

How much of a difference do we make to building it now?

The work we are currently doing helps so many people, but through the circumstances imposed on us by the systems that exist now, so many others fall through the cracks. We need to continue to offer the help we are now and build a world where the resources exist to make these resources available to everyone.

Path Three: The Way of Creativity (Via Creativa)

On the third path, we trust our voices, our hands, and our bodies to bring the wonder we found in path one and the maturity and strength we found in path two into the world through creative conversation, organizing, cooking, poetry, writing, art, and countless other means. We channel the compassion and wisdom we generate in the first two paths into modes of sharing that compassion and wisdom to others.

What do we want to exist on the third path even if it doesn’t?

While our culture does not embrace the importance of art in all its varied forms, some of us embrace it and offer the fruits of our labor to the world. Our work is very real, which is why the powerful and the greedy work so hard to commodify it and control it by the whims of the rich and powerful.

How real is what we want to exist?

Even through the efforts of the powerful to co-opt and control creativity and our imaginations, so many continue to