This is an American invention, starting in the late 19th century and taking some inspiration from Transcendentalism (p.96). There have been many New Thought movements and churches, some Christian and some not. What all have in common is the belief that human thought
creates the circumstances of our lives and that people with positive thoughts have better and healthier lives. New Thought is the antecedent to most self-help movements. Those coming to Seekerdom from New Thought are most likely to enter onto the Path of +Self.
New Thought
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As much as Seekers like to point out the flaws in western culture, it can be a disci- pline that spawns many Seekers. Everyday life can be its own discipline when someone undertakes, seriously, to be the best child, parent, lover, friend or coworker one can be. In other words, taking the normal roles of everyday life and trying to fulfill them as well as one can is potentially as enlightening as any mystical, magical, religious or intellectual discipline. There are no austerities or rituals. Every work- day, every party, every friend who needs help moving, every quiet evening at home with one’s family gives a practitioner of this tradition the opportunity to try to be a better person. There are no lofty or extreme goals, such as being one with the universe or eliminating all worldly desires. Instead, the goal is balance: to be confident but not arrogant, assertive but not aggressive, kind but not self-sacrificing, skeptical but without losing faith, empathetic but able to retain one’s perspective and thoughtful without losing common sense. Achieving and maintaining this balance is a goal as difficult as those found in any other discipline. Most people are content with simply ‘good enough.’ Only a minority continually push themselves to be better, and only a tiny minority of those will be launched onto the path of Seekerdom. Even serious students of this discipline are often prevented from becoming Seekers because their commitments to their families friends and careers keep them anchored in one place. They are most likely to become Seekers when they have these commitments taken away from them, either by sudden tragedy or by the slow movement of the wheel of life. Take, for instance, a retired widow those children have all moved away. After decades spent being the best daughter, wife, mother and
employee she can be, she it no longer able to fulfill these roles and so decides to travel the world, using the skills that made her so valuable in her family, community and workplace, to help random strangers. As a discipline grounded in humility, rather than lofty cosmic goals, those from the tradition of Ordinary Life often end up on the Path of -Self. The emphasis on getting along with those around you also leads many to the Path of +Harmony.
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Ordinary Life
“You may be capable of great things, but life consists of small things.”
-Deng Ming-Dao
Gender
`Even gender can be a Tradition capable of launching people into Seekerdom when people look towards, and try to emulate, the highest ideas embodied in gender roles in their culture.
For instance, in the US, the idealized female is caring, nurturing, socially adept, empathetic (+Harmony) as well as passionate, in touch with her feelings (+Feeling). The idealized male is proud, self-confident, boastful, competitive (+Self), independent, self-sufficient, not caring what others think of him (-Harmony) and keeping tight control over his emotions (-Feeling). Of course, the traditions of female and male ideals are not limited solely to people whose biological anatomy corresponds to that gender. A person does not even have to be homosexual, transgendered or a cross-dresser to be able to explore the ideals of the gender opposite their biological one.
Along with positing what form of government will work best, political philosophies also describe how ideal political systems will produce better people and what kind of person is the best member of one of these hypothetical societies. Thus, political ideals can provide a model for self-improvement and from there can lead to the path of Seekerdom.
Liberal ideals lead a person to try to be empathetic, altruistic, understanding of other cultures, living in harmony with the environment and being constantly critical of traditional taboos and values. Thus liberal ideologies often lead to the Path of +Harmony and -Harmony.
Conservative ideology values respect for traditions, self-sufficiency, rationality, competitiveness and leadership, often leading to the Paths of +Self and -Feeling. Less mainstream philosophies can lead to the Path of -Harmony because they are so far from the mainstream (the same way being a persecuted religious minority can lead to -Harmony). The anti-consumerism in some forms of anarchism can lead to asceticism, which can lead to the Path of -Feeling. The focus in socialism on equality of all people and of removing the high status enjoyed by the wealthy, royalty and the clergy can lead to the Path of -Self.
Politics
“I’m shutting this commune down because I realized that the worst possible thing I could be doing is taking a bunch of bright young political radicals and sticking them together in the middle of nowhere. When you’re with people who believe the same things you do, your beliefs become shallow, prejudiced. You forget your own faults while developing an us-versus-them attitude towards everyone else. This place was too comfortable for all of us, and the last thing someone who wants to change the world should be is comfortable. Growing organic potatoes may feel like the right thing to do, but it isn’t going to save the world. If you want to save the world, move to a red state and rent a room with a conservative, evangelical family. You might both learn something.”
-Leftist Lenny
The discipline of psychology has two very different, yet constantly intermingling, branches. The first branch, scientific psy- chology is based on an understanding of the mind that can be supported through experi- mental and statistical evidence. It focuses on what we can be sure we know via the scientific method (see Science, p.91). The second branch, clinical psychology, is the practical discipline of working with pa- tients to help them with their mental dif- ficulties. Clinical psychology focuses on whatever model of the human mind seems to work best with actual people, regardless of whether there is a scientific (or even a ra- tional) basis for it. Despite the obvious dif- ferences, ideas are constantly being traded between these two branches of psychology.
There are hundreds of models for ex- plaining how the mind works, but most fall into one of the following basic cat- egories:
•Psychodynamic models say that the human mind is made up of opposing forces, each of which want different things. People are typically unaware of the actions and interplay of those forces.
•Behavioral models say that human behavior is the product of learning, that we do that which we have learned will give us rewards and avoid that which we have learned will result in punishment.
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•Gestalt models say that our thoughts, feelings and behaviors can only be understood as a result of our experiences, choices, beliefs and desires creating something more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts. •Cognitive models view the human mind as a set of algorithms, like programs on a computer, that we learn to use to solve problems. •Biological models focus on the anatomical and chemical basis of thoughts, feelings and behavior. One part of the brain might be im- plicated in recognizing faces, one chemical might cause depression when it is underactive. Each bio- logical feature is considered for the evolutionary advantage it would have given our ancestors.
•Social models concern themselves with how we perceive the hows and whys of other people’s behaviors and how those perceptions alter our own thoughts, feelings and beliefs.
Study of self-concept and self-esteem can lead to the Paths of +Self and -Self. Those on the +Self Path are more likely to have come from clinical psychology, where building up self-confidence is considered a key to success and happiness. -Self Seekers are more likely to have come from experimental psychology, where studies have shown that people’s ideas about self are either inaccurate of are self-fulfilling prophecies.
The Path of +Thought is most often the first Path of cognitive scientists, who see the mind as a toolbox of problem- solving techniques. -Thought is more often the domain of psychodynamicists, who believe that the knowledge that our rational, conscious selves are aware of is dwarfed by the knowledge in our subconscious minds.
Entering onto the Path of -Feeling is often the result of experimental studies showing how emotions and desires influence peoples rational minds, causing them to come to incorrect or illogical conclusions even when they think they are behaving quite rationally. +Feeling is often the result of styles and sub- disciplines of clinical psychology and gestalt psychology where it is believed that being conscious of and voicing one’s feelings is the key to health and happiness.
Evolutionary psychology can also lead to the Path of +Feeling because of the emphasis on emotions as useful biological features that help humans survive and prosper, both for our ancestors and for us today.
The studies of obedience in social psychology, designed to explain why people can be convinced so easily to do horrible things, lead some psychologists to the Path of -Harmony. Seekers who come first to the Path of +Harmony are often couples, family, organizational, or social skills therapists, who specialize in helping people get along with others. Another way Psychology might lead to Seekerdom is through the study of extraordinary people. Most of psychology deals with the study of either “average” people or of people with psychological deficits. Yet a small number of psychologists are trying to study people who surpass normalcy: great leaders, heroes, prodigies, great athletes, people who speak out against immorality even when nobody else is, etc. This study may lead psychologists to discover those who have found a reliable means of becoming extraordinary: Seekers.
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At its deepest and most philosophical, science is about avoiding error. The scientific method is one designed to dispassionately and accurately test hypotheses and reject those hypotheses there is no evidence for. As a personal discipline, science is about not letting oneself believe ideas, even ideas that “seem” true or are supported by anecdotal evidence without critical investigation. Just as an ascetic might think people’s lives need structure, rules and discipline, a scientist thinks that people’s beliefs need structures, rules and discipline.
The process of science and the body of knowledge gained from that process are two
different things. Science leads to beliefs about the universe, but it also leads one to be ready to discard those beliefs if contradictory evidence is provided. The beliefs of a typical scientist are that all of the universe operates by natural laws, that these laws are stable, and that any phenomenon can be explained as the result of the operation of these laws. Scientists who become Seekers tend strongly to the Path of +Thought. The Paths of -Self, -Feeling and -Harmony also appeal to scientists’ natural skepticism of the things people feel and believe.
Science
Criticisms of Science Many Seekers who do not come from a science-
based tradition have serious criticisms of the scientific method as a means of discovering truth, wisdom and power:
•Science does not deal well with complex systems. The standard means of finding out anything in science, the experiment, involves changing one condition and looking for one consistent result. In complex systems, however, one change will not have consistent results, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have understandable effects.
•Science tries to separate a subject from its environment. An experiment attempts to take a subject and isolate him, her or it from the environment as much as possible, so that only one condition is known to have changed. E.g. experimenting on a mouse that is living in a little plastic box by itself. Yet this can’t reflect the true nature of any being. Beings are constantly affecting and being affected by their environments, and are not the same beings once removed from that environment. •Science discounts that which it cannot understand. Science recognizes no means for believing things other than science, which makes science blind to that which it has not
yet discovered scientifically, even if it is something other cultures have known for millennia.
•Science does not recognize subjective experience. In fact, science takes special steps to eliminate the subjective from data collection, searching for the most objective criteria possible, because it fears scientists prejudicing results from their beliefs. What this means, though, is that the vast realm of subjective experiences cannot be penetrated by scientific inquiry.
•Science can say how to achieve goals, but not what the right goals are. For instance, psychologists can take a group of behaviors that tend to be found together and use science to discover what conditions are correlated to the development of those behaviors, and what drugs, surgeries and therapies are most likely to reduce these behaviors. Yet science can’t tell people whether these behaviors are a disease that should be eliminated, or a normal variation that society should get used to. The former was, until recently, science’s position on homosexuality.
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The world of self-help is made up of stealing the best-sounding elements of psychology, medicine, philosophy and religion and putting them together into a package to sell books, tapes, seminars, etc. Sales correlate to promises made and so self-help usually promises as much as it can get away with: confidence, success in every aspect of life, physical health and overcoming all bad habits and emotional problems.
Most Seekers consider the self-help movement to be fluff: a collection of techniques that require neither real sacrifices nor give real revelations about the nature of the universe. Self-help techniques that do anything at all are
generally considered “sorcery” as defined on p.66: rote learning of Seeker-like techniques without learning how or why they work. Yet among the fluff it is possible to find valuable lessons which, if taken seriously and adhered to diligently, can launch people on to the path of Seekerdom. Some of these lessons are about health (especially when self-help overlaps with Alternative Medicine) and about emotions (especially when it overlaps with psychotherapy). Yet most of the useful lessons of self-help are about how self-confidence can be created and can help a person deal with personal and interpersonal problems. Thus most who come to Seekerdom from self-help disciplines start on the Path of +Self.
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Self Help
For some people, getting and enjoying sex is important enough that it becomes its own discipline. Some make it a discipline to try to perfect the mainstream sexual experience: meeting a person, falling in love and lust with them, seducing them and sharing an intensely pleasurable, enjoyable and fulfilling physical experience with them. The diligent pursuit of their craft often launches “lovers” onto the Path of +Feeling.
Others who turn sex into a discipline are fetishists. They try to go outside the mainstream, to explore means of achieving sexual pleasure and gratification beyond what is generally considered sexual. These fetishists tend to believe that there is no one ‘right’ or ‘healthy’ way to have sex and that humans are naturally heir to a wide range and variation of sexual preferences, and are able to enjoy many different kinds of things. When these fetishists become Seekers they usually start out on the Path of -Harmony.
Sex
This is a tradition (often inaccurately called a religion) that was independently invented all over the world. Whether in the arctic or a tropical island, shamanistic be- liefs and practices are remarkably similar. The original word ‘shaman’ comes from a word from the Siberian Tungus tribe, but is now applied to people throughout the world. Once, before the advent of orga- nized religion, shamanism was the world’s default belief system. Today all ‘modern’ religions are still rife with practices that can be traced back to shamanism
A shaman is the person a tribe sends to deal with the supernatural world, yet a shaman belongs to no organization, follows no person’s rules. A shaman’s authority comes from his or her own personal power and relationships with the supernatural. A shaman is to a priest what a vigilante is to a police officer.
The core beliefs of shamanic cultures are that the world is filled with invisible spirits, that they can affect the lives of humans and visa versa and that these spirits can be helpful or harmful depending on how they are dealt
Shamanism
with. It is believed that humans have souls (there are usually different types of souls in a single person, each causing different types of phenomena) and that under the right circumstances human souls can travel to other worlds.
The beliefs of shamanism are not written down or otherwise codified. There is no such thing as an orthodox shaman. The beliefs shamans hold are unique to the individual and are open to change. Far more important than beliefs are techniques: those used to create shamans and those used by shamans to do their work.
Since there is no church, no organization that holds and can grant sacred authority, one can only achieve power over and relationships with the supernatural world via personal trials. Most of the trials that give shamans their power are things that induce altered sates of consciousness: sweating, fasting, self-tor- ture, use of deliriants and hallucinogens, long periods of isolation from other people, exhaustive multi-day dances, etc. The physical and psychological difficul- ty of these tasks help build willpower and self-confi- dence, which are useful in a shaman’s dealings with both humans and supernatural entities. The alternate states of consciousness these practices induce make it possible for shamans to access visions.
Those undergoing visions see, hear or feel the supernatural world. The most powerful form of visions are those where the shaman experiences leaving his or her body and traveling through this world and into other worlds as a spirit. Visions are important because they allow shamans to make alliances with powerful spirits. The spirits typically give power in exchange for offerings and prayers. In “shamanic death,” the shaman’s spirit journeys to another world and is killed and resurrected there. Sometimes the shaman is physically put in a grave