We all have notions, but only The God knows.

A true philosophy is a philosophy that is accessible to humans and that, when understood and followed reasonably well, leads to an active insight into the Truth.

We wear philosophies like clothes. When they fit well, philosophies relate the various aspects of our conscious experience (feelings, ideas, and wider vistas [i.e. experiences that are prior to ideas and feelings]) to each other within a workable system for feeling, thinking, speaking, and acting.

Something Deeperism is a true philosophy, and it goes something like this:

A person’s feeling, thinking, speaking, and doing only makes sense to them to the degree that they abide by the universal values (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, joyfully sharing), follow the standard spiritual practices (prayer, meditation, study, reflection, fellowship; practicing loving kindness, service, and humility), and most fundamentally organize their whole conscious moment around the spiritual Love that chooses and is enough for everyone and never abandons or gives up on anyone.

[Why do we know everyone is fundamentally the same? It’s another thing the truth of which we must discover if our lives are to be meaningful to ourselves. For one, otherwise life is too lonely and boring. For two, we learn by interacting with others — via empathy (my father stubs his toe, and I map his expression onto my own mind-map and so gain insight into what all those words and gestures mean); and so we cannot make sense of everything we’ve ever learned or thought unless we assume that our inner sense that all humans are all essentially the same is essentially correct.]

And so we start from the hypothesis that the mystics are on to something.

Just because we need the mystics to be right and to gain insight into that and in what way they are right; it does not necessarily follow that the mystics are right, or that we can gain insights similar to the ones they seem to have.

However, if the only way to be meaningful to oneself is to discover that and in what way it is True to say that we are all children of the Living God, bound in and through an eternal, infinite Love; then what choice have we but to seek wisdom?

But what is wisdom?

It isn’t literal knowledge of the Truth. The “Truth” would have to be absolute, unlimited, perfect; and our ideas and feelings are limited and imperfect; and confusing our own notions for the “Truth” (either ideas about or emotions that we somehow trick ourselves into feeling as if they were the “Truth”) makes us foolish, not wise.

No, wisdom cannot be a literal, definitive, 1:1, or exclusive knowledge about the Absolute. Human wisdom could only be an organization of one’s feeling and thinking around the Reality = Love that we posit shines through everything, including each conscious moment.

Human wisdom would have to be a meaningful and fruitful relationship between the Absolute Reality (nothing else is solid enough to serve as a foundation for knowledge that we can truly believe in, or even care about) and our mundane oh-so-human faculties. As such, human wisdom would have to be an ongoing organization of the mundane around the Absolute — an ongoing, evolving, self-observing/-critiquing/-adjusting poetic (meaningfully pointing-towards, rather than decisively grasping, defining, or otherwise capturing) translation of spiritual Love into human life.

And so we can imagine an experiential proof of the existence of a spiritual Reality overflowing with Love, the experience of which could inform our use of the universal values, the standard spiritual practices, and our own ongoing organization around and poetic interpretation of God’s Love.

And we can see that such a proof would have to be a never-ending work-in-progress, and that forcing feelings of certainty onto dogmas that we don’t even really understand is not at all the same as growing in wisdom.

We are all Something Deeperists.

We all know that without an Absolute Standard, our ideas and feelings slip and slide in relative conjectures that we can’t even take seriously. And we all also know that unless the Absolute is 100% Loving and for everyone, we can’t relate meaningfully to It.

But we all also know that our ideas and feelings about the Absolute Reality are not identical with the Absolute Reality, and that confusing our own notions for great Truths (whether we use words like, “Truth”, and “God”, or whether we just feelingly blur our own notions into feeling like “Truth”) is a good way to grow in folly.

And we all also know that our own ideas and feelings only make sense to us to the degree we abide by the universal values.

And we all feel a push towards the standard spiritual practices and the universal values, as pre-established aspects of the spiritual path, concomitant with our push towards God’s Love — a spiritual Love within which we are all equal children of the Light.

And so we all know that the only way forward is to pursue wisdom as an ongoing, self-adjusting organization of our limited faculties around the unlimited Love shining through all things, as aided and guardrailed by the universal values, standard spiritual practices, and the inner sense that we are all God’s children and so should all be treated well.

What does this shared understanding of human nature say about politics? It says we already have the shared philosophy necessary to share meaning, power, and responsibility. It says we can work together to serve as a final check on madness and corruption in our shared government. It says liberal (meaning protections for individual rights, like the freedom to speak without fearing retribution) representative (as in grounded in regular, fair, safe ballots) governments are spiritual goods. Because such governments allow us to maintain an environment where people can search for wisdom in ways that are meaningful to them, and where people can tell the truth and be virtuous in their private and public lives without having to risk the wealth, safety, and reputation of themselves and their family. And because such governments encourage us to work together to select for the universal values (which we all need to follow in order for our own philosophies to be meaningful to us). Separation of church and state is itself a spiritual good because combining them tempts people to lie to themselves and others about the most sacred things, and to worship appearances, rather than to work together on the nuts and bolts of freedom, equality, and justice for all.

Come on, USA!
Stand up!
Tell yourself the truth.
It is evil to undermine liberal representative government.
What will you replace it with?
Lies, corruption, might-makes-right, cheating bullying and murdering as accepted government policies, pretending to agree so as to avoid losing your place in line, and other sins against God and man.
Come on!

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson