Month: October 2020

The Essential American Character

Posted on by japineda

The historian Warren Susman discusses the changing views of character in Culture As History. He argues that the transformation we are witnessing in today’s culture is one from a culture of character to a culture of personality. We might note the prominence and value of character in presidential elections prior to 2016. Then, character became less important and personality more central when Donald Trump ran for president. The evidence suggests such transformation is happening throughout society. I would argue, however, that whatever is happening is not changing the essential nature of the American character, only obscuring it.

Character is a complex and multidimensional attribute that it is difficult to define and discuss. It is something we are strong in, or good at, or have a great deal of it. Most adults aspire for “excellent character,” but our current culture rarely emphasizes it beyond our childhood and adolescent years. We tend to confuse character with personality. Yet, these are distinct concepts. Character reflects deep-seated identification with truthfulness, idealism, morality, and orientation towards life. Personality, on the other hand, defines responsiveness to external events, such as how we respond to others because of how they view us. We might, for example, consider ourselves fortunate because people admire that we are rich.

As someone born outside the U.S. and integrated into American society, I have a unique perspective that may differ from native-born citizens. As an adolescent, I grew up with the idea that the U.S. was the land of Oz, with emerald cities paved with gold, and opportunities around every corner. As an adult, I became more cynical about these things, yet could not ignore my journey, which has been mostly positive. What I realized is there exists an essential core in the American spirit that is strong. This despite the winds of apathy, ignorance, and radicalism that are making a culture of character into a culture of personality.

What is at the core of this spirit? It begins with an openness that many around the world find unique and endearing. Americans are seen as transparent and friendly. They smile all the time, say visitors, and even say hello as they pass you by on the street. It is a remarkable openness characterized by warmth, friendliness, and humor.  It is one of the first things that strikes anyone coming from another culture or who has been overseas for a long time. This openness combines with a generosity of spirit that is the expected response of a sincere heart. How much and how often individuals give to charities and to those in need illustrates this big-heartedness. There is also a level of American volunteerism that has few parallels in the world. In the society, an infrastructure has evolved to help others that echoes this generosity. Aside from charitable and non-governmental organizations and innumerable private foundations, there are the governmental treasures such as the National Institute of Health. Government grants have been an invisible driver of American ingenuity, technology, and free enterprise.

In all the endeavors I have engaged in since coming to this country, getting an education, becoming a scientist and an entrepreneur, and starting a creative writing career, I have always found a wealth of support and encouragement. This has taken the form of scholarships, grants, advice, and guidance that comprise the helpful culture that surrounds me. This leads to the other characteristics I find unique in the American spirit.  One is an adventuresome quality thatengenders entrepreneurial and give-it-a-go attitudes at once child-like and infectious. Adventuresome behavior is combined with a steely confidence of success, one that says, “I can do this.” Finally, there is an almost preternatural forward-thinking mentality that has given rise to new technologies like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and a thousand other ventures that have revolutionized the future of humankind.

We need to encourage such inimitable character. If we do not cultivate it as an important aspect of our identity, we are in danger of losing its meaning and significance. Fortunately, the essence of this character is in the ambience of the culture. While obscured by personality and social craziness, it is the default attitude children learn. It is up to us to become vigilant and identify those things that obscure this essential treasure. Then, we just need to get out of the way and let it express itself.

Thanks for reading. I am open to criticism so please respond if you don’t agree or have additional ideas about essential qualities of the American spirit with which you identify. I would like to compile a more thorough list.

The Dawning of Intimacy: Pathway to A Unity Experience

Posted on by japineda

Whether we call it nondual awareness, unity, oceanic feeling, or universal love, we have inadvertently placed such an experience out of reach and available only to mystics, saints, and special others. However, as I have written previously, we are born with this unique sense of being only to apparently forget it as our ego and individuality develop. The dark curtain covering our oceanic feeling, or okeoagnosia (from the Gr. okeanos or ocean and agnosia), is, however, overcome through meditation, prayer, inquiry, falling in love, paying attention, or with drugs. It is remarkably recoverable.

The argument I want to make today is that the news is even better than that. If we think of recovery from okeagnosia as a path, then such a path starts from the awareness that we already have a unity experience. We have it moment-by-moment since it is intrinsic to our human nature. What is needed is to “increase” that sense of being. One can do this by focusing on particular aspects of it, such as enhancing our emotional presence (heart) and unifying it with our intellectual presence (mind) (An Enhanced Sensory Experience). In the end, we gauge progress by the regained sense of joy, love, wonder and curiosity.

The following describes a path of recognition, realization, and appreciation that may be cultivated:

  • Attend to how you see, hear, feel, and think of the external world. Whether you see it as full of independent things with which you interact in a distant, objective, cold, or analytic way or as close, intimate, and loving entities.
  • Realize that your experience of the world (objects, feelings) is the result of your brain’s activity. You are a co-creator of that world and partly responsible for what you experience.
  • Realize that you see the world as individual parts but also holistically.
  • Recognize your care for this external, holistic world because what happens out there affects you inside in small and big ways, especially what other people do. Begin to see this common ground.
  • Recognize that caring can extend not only to others like yourself, but to animals, plants and everything in between. See the common ground in all.
  • Realize that the feelings of caring for all of life takes on a sense of intimacy and closeness. The coldness gives way to love and compassion.
  • Recognize that unity reflects an intrinsic sense you have but forgotten.
  • Recognize that this experience of unity is possible in others as in yourself (Trusting Stillness).
  • Recognize that it reflects a non-separation, compassion, and love knowingness (Unencumbered Original Mind).
  • Realize that you experience unity when you participate in some activity in which you lose track of things, of time, of yourself, etc.
  • Appreciate that you experience unity when in love or during focused attention where your ego disappears in the presence of someone special (lover, wife, husband, children) or something that interests you to the exclusion of everything else.
  • Appreciate that as you move down this path of recognition and realization, life becomes more joyous, your curiosity increases, as does love and compassion toward others.
  • Appreciate that as you move down this path, you begin to feel a greater connection, less distance and more intimacy between you and the world.
  • Appreciate that outside and inside are the same. What appears to be outside is also inside. Figure and ground are just different aspects of the same thing. They define each other but are the same. No greater intimacy than this.

In the rest of the blog, I only want to address the first and most important assumption: That we already have a unity experience. Many will undoubtedly balk and argue that it is not so and are not convinced. This is because we all have different notions of what unity means. We may not agree but let’s start by trying to define a common starting point. At the most basic level, a unity experience means that our perception of the world isn’t a jumble mess of sights, sounds, and emotions, scrambled in such a way that what we experience does not make sense.

In his 1890 volume Principles of Psychology, William James, the founder of American psychology characterized a baby’s experience as such: “The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.” Yet, developmental psychologists now know that James was decidedly wrong. Even at an early age, as we close and open our eyes, what we experience is not a scrambled set of sensations but a unified world that we understand and that makes sense.

Such an integrated, unified world has orderly physical laws that make prediction of events possible compared to a chaotic or random system. Because we live and are part of such a unified, orderly world, humans have evolved unique prediction algorithms to anticipate outcomes, understand the meaning of actions of others, etc. (Reducing Uncertainty in a Chaotic World and Our Predictive Brain).

Unified implies an experience of closeness, intimacy, and love. Each one of us comes into environments varying in love and acceptance. This can either extend our intrinsic unity experience or cause the dark curtain of okeagnosia to descend quickly. How thick that curtain is distorts and destroys our sense of unity. And it affects how we feel toward others and our environment. We become distant, cold, unemotional, fearful.

Now that you know, are you ready to step into the path of regaining the greatest gift you were born with, the jewel at the center of your being? Start by asking yourself, which sense did I display as a baby? What sense do I display now? How do I get from here to there?