spiritualizing anarchism

Spiritualizing Anarchism, Making Spiritual Practices Anarchistic – () – by mark losoncz via 31 page kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mark-losoncz-spiritua-anarchism]

[https://philpeople.org/profiles/mark-losoncz]: areas of interest: philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, ontology

notes/quotes:

3

Abstract

This article not only mentions spiritual anarchism nominally, as do so many previous articles, but tries to define it as precisely as possible. The definition assumes that the self itself can be a source of unjustifiable authority and a limitation to freedom, and that spiritual anarchism is nothing more than being open to that which transegoically transcends our narrow perspective. The article critically revisits previous overviews of spiritual anarchism, and itself proposes to take into account traditions that have been neglected. Finally, the article reverses the approach; that is, it considers how some of our spiritual practices can be made more anarchistic, including meditation, the psychedelic experience and the mystical experience.

aka: need global detox

need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)

Keywords:

anarchism; spiritual anarchism; spirituality; authority; religion; meditation; psychedelic experience; mystical experience

1. Introduction

The paper starts with an overlooked Eastern European anarchist tradition in order to emphasize a point that will be important throughout the paper: that for spiritual anarchism, the individual is not an absolute secure basis from which all else is questionable, but is itself inherently authoritarian, and its narrowness and limitation per se are not worthy of anarchism’s claims to freedom. *The starting point of spiritual anarchism must therefore be self-liberation, the transformation and self-transcendence of what Darren Allen calls the “mental-emotional ego”. This article aims to maintain this focus throughout. It will be suggested that this can be done by relying on transcendence, but also in a secular way. Examples will be given of how not only anarchists can have spiritual thoughts and tendencies, but spiritual authors often also express themselves in a quasi-anarchistic way—there is therefore the possibility of a fruitful dialogue. At the same time, it will be also emphasized that an alternative reading of the past can be liberating, i.e., discovering that certain authors and activists have said things that may be illuminating for spiritual anarchism today. It will be considered, using the examples of Malatesta and Landauer, how flexible the concept of spiritual anarchism might be, especially when contrasted with that of religious anarchism. In the later part of this paper, three authors who have dealt with spiritual anarchism in the most depth and with the greatest claim to completeness will be critically reviewed (Hakim Bey (also known as Peter Lamborn Wilson), Anthony Fiscella, Simon Critchley), and while paying close attention to what they consider affirmable from the past, in a digression, authors will be listed who have been neglected in previous articles on spiritual anarchism. In the concluding part of this article, the focus will not be on the spiritual interpretation of anarchism, but on the contrary, on the inherent anarchist potential in existing spiritual practices (such as meditation, psychedelic experience, mystical experience). This analysis will be consistent with **the main argument of the paper, that spirituality is a paradoxical self-transcendence of the self.

*to me.. this is saying.. global detox.. need to get the whales (aka: all of us) out of sea world.. hari rat park law et al

*uncovering our missing pieces

2. Transcending the Self, Transforming the World

“Inside there is a world of pain, / outside is only explanation. / the world’s your scab, the outer stain, / your soul’s the fever-inflammation. / Jailed by your heart’s own insurrection, / you’re only free when you refrain, / nor build so fine a habitation, / the landlord takes it back again.”

(Attila József: Consciousness; transl. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner)

4

This motto serves to *focus the attention of anarchist theory not on some external institution, but on self itself..t It is from the Hungarian proletarian poet Attila József, who was a pronounced anarchist at an important time in his life and a member of the Union Anarchiste-Communiste while in Paris, and he also moved in anarchist circles in Vienna (see [1]). As well as being anti-state and anti-capitalist, his anarchism had a strong spiritual dimension, inspired primarily by the Christian Gnostic anarchist teachings of Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (Schmitt Jenő Henrik), centered on the Rebel Christ and the anarchistic spirituality of love.

*huge.. via self-talk as data et al..

need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)

via dil green reply to tweet [https://twitter.com/dilgreen/status/1691888525661069580?s=20]: Practicing anarchism means developing a personal ethics – which must be continually reevaluated in the social context. Work. It is thus that we avoid enthroning an anarchist public morality (will institutionalise and build tyranny anew). Personal ethics work = spiritual?

ethics: moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity

work: activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.. a task or tasks to be undertaken; something a person or thing has to do.

to me.. those are red flags ness.. that’s not trusting ness.. it’s telling other people what to do ness.. to me.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p

he replied: Think this is a words issue. Personal ethics for me means trusting the person heart. Not supposed to, but ‘who am I’?

me: i like that

The quote is very instructive because it has a message that does not pit the supposedly by itself sovereign and autonomous individual against external domination or authority (as in “everybody is the ruler of their own temple”), but rather asserts that the Master (the “landlord”) becomes internal, gradually interiorized. It is also suggested that although the primary source of suffering is external, rebellion must begin with self-liberation; that is, the self is the starting point of the struggle for change. (The line may also remind one of the classic lines of Freud, whose psychoanalysis was well known to Attila József, who himself had been psychoanalyzed: “The ego is not master in its own house”).

This means a subtle change in focus. As is well known, anarchism has frequently been very much anti-religious throughout its history, especially in the ideologically aufklärer and scientifically positivist era, obsessed with atheism or anti-theism. In other words, anarchism has often rejected any subordination to what might undermine supposed human sovereignty and self-determination, as, for example, Brian Morris has written: “to worship or revere any being, natural or supernatural, will always be a form of self-subjugation and servitude that will give rise to social domination. As [Bookchin] writes: ‘The moment that human beings fall on their knees before anything that is ‘higher’ than themselves, hierarchy will have made its first triumph over freedom.’”

to me.. that’s any form of m\a\p

Spiritual anarchism, by comparison, could have a deeper message that may be even stronger than Attila József’s. *According to it, the self as an individual is by their very nature prone to subject themselves to unquestioned authorities in the course of their personality development (since they are forced to rely on others in the course of their socialization), to become a prisoner of dogmas (since the habitual representation of certain views can sometimes make it easier to find their way in the world). Furthermore, the self is prone to be conformist to social customs and norms in the name of adaptation, to take on roles and even masks that are alien to them while adjusting to the environment, to develop a super-ego within themselves which stifles their need for freedom, to develop an arbitrary ideal self to which they can become subject, etc. That is, it might be that precisely the **self as a quasi-monolithic, compulsively stabilized self-projection (the one held to account by the state administration and capitalist businesses),.. t which, according to many, is to be seen as sovereign at all costs, or, at the other extreme, on the contrary, they see it as a mere victim of determinism, that can become both the stimulator and the limiting wheel-lock of freedom. It is now more than the internalized exterior, such as the State Within, or the Stirnerian individualistic “working forth of me out of the established”: these are indicative of authoritarian and dominant tendencies of a type whose dangers are inherent in the development of the self itself as a mental construct and in the process of the differentiation between the internal and the external.

*oi.. killer.. maté trump law.. brown belonging law.. undisturbed ecosystem.. no train.. et al

‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows

findings:

1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen

2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b legit free people

**aka: whales

huge.. need global detox/re\set first /most

so.. need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

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*How could we eliminate self-denial, self-coercion, etc.?..t How should we govern ourselves by distancing from ourselves? As Jiddu Krishnamurti (who is regarded by some anarchists as a non-authoritarian thinker [3]) puts it: “there is the immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority, the authority of our own particular little experiences and accumulated opinions, knowledge, ideas and ideals. You had an **experience yesterday which taught you something and what it taught you becomes a new authority—and that authority of yesterday is as destructive as the authority of a thousand years.” [4] (p. 13). Obviously, only a self can achieve this who has transcended their self-limitation, their narrowness—an extended self who surrenders themselves to that which is greater than themselves, namely, an inexhaustible infinity. This means that you are your own enemy (as Rudá Iandê formulates it in his article on spiritual anarchism, “[t]he challenge is much more subtle since the enemy is installed ***inside of our heads”), but also your own ****most promising savior,..t beyond but still somehow within yourself. That is, we cannot ignore the paradoxical nature of the self-transcendence of the self: it is performed by the self, yet it points beyond the self.

*hari rat park law.. gershenfeld something else law.. et al.. has to be everyone and has to be sans any form of m\a\p

krishnamurti for anarchy.. krishnamurti on each heart law.. krishnamurti responsibility law.. krishnamurti reaction as perpetuation law.. krishnamurti freedom from known law.. krishnamurti sorrow law.. krishnamurti how law.. krishnamurti organization law.. krishnamurti free will law.. krishnamurti relationship law.. krishnamurti measure law.. and ..

krishnamurti partial law.. et al

**find the bravery to change your mind ness

***socrates supposed to law

****krishnamurti on each heart law.. on each heart.. listen/org for that.. ie: listen to itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect/detox us (ai as nonjudgmental expo labeling)

It is worth briefly mentioning that it is not only spiritual anarchists who are paying attention to these problems and challenges, but also spiritual authors themselves, even those who otherwise have no connection with anarchist movements or other elements of anarchist thought. For example, *Eckhart Tolle, considered the most popular spiritual author in the United States, talks about the need to free oneself from the mind, and claims in his cult book The Power of Now to show the reader “how to free yourself from enslavement to the mind”. Let me note at this point that the references to slavery are part of the long tradition of anarchism (and libertarian communism); they refer to the ancient ideal of liberty as non-domination, and they have an explicitly important role in the republican tradition of anarchism. This kind of discourse is in fact an inversion of what we are used to in the “classical”, dominantly aufklärer–materialist–atheist discourse, as **Emma Goldman’s words illustrate: “organized churchism … has turned religion into a nightmare that oppresses the human soul and holds the mind in bondage”. Another motif appears in the school of Gurdjieff, the first truly independent spiritual teacher of the modern West: the prison. See, for example: “You are in prison. … It is necessary to tunnel under a wall. One man can do nothing. … Furthermore, no one can escape from prison without help of those who have escaped before. … An organization is necessary. Nothing can be achieved without an organization”. Or the same for the many false selves who lack real freedom in the midst of everyday automatisms: “Free will is the function of the real I, of him whom we call the Master. He who has a Master has will. He who has not has no will”. According to the teachings of this school, ***the everyday personal self is clearly the prison, and the true spiritual higher self is the embodiment of freedom. The metaphor of prison also appears in contemporary spiritual teachings, such as the hugely popular film Samadhi:

*begin being

**emma on sea world et al

***need global detox via oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space

“The mind can be likened to a trap for consciousness, a labyrinth or a prison. It is not that you are in prison, you are the prison. …t Your self-structure is made up of many little conditioned sub-programs or bosses. … The ego is violence; it requires a barrier, a boundary from the other in order to be … Your divine self has become enslaved, identified with the limited self-structure”

hari rat park law

and huge to why we can’t just each do it on our own (imagine a turtle).. need a simultaneous jump start.. a global re\set

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Another example could also illustrate the directions in which the need for spiritual liberation can take certain authors. Henri Corbin, perhaps the most important mediator of Muslim (above all, Shia) mysticism to the West in the 20th century, faced these challenges himself. Thomas Cheetham, Corbin’s monographer, not coincidentally refers to Corbin’s *“suspicion of human masters” and his dilemma of “inner Guide versus human Master”. “Gurus” may be rendered superfluous by the fact that everyone’s path is perfectly unique and individual (as Sufism says, “there are as many paths leading to God as there are sons of Adam”, but also by the fact that an external human “guru” would obscure God’s role as guide. But if the individual needs the “guru” like the patient needs the doctor (who Bakunin would have regarded as the authority of the specialist)? One possible way of resolving this challenge is what Corbin writes: “It goes without saying that **the form in which each of us receives the master’s thought conforms to his ‘inner heaven’; that is the very principle of the theophanism of Ibn ‘Arabi, who for that reason can only guide each mean individually to what he alone is capable of seeing, and not bring him to any collective pre-established dogma”. Corbin also sketches the figure of Khidr, who is none other than the teacher who mediates as an invisible guide, and contrasts this with authority. ***According to him, everyone has to make an existential decision in this regard, which “announces either that each human being is oriented toward a quest for his personal invisible guide, or that he entrusts himself to the collective, magisterial authority as the intermediary between himself and Revelation”. In the same work, Corbin speaks of how “the spiritually inaugurated by Khidr is free from the servitude of the literal religion”.

*any form of people telling other people what to do.. any form of m\a\p

**already on each heart ness.. need global detox.. then need to just trust that/us.. unconditionally

***decision making is unmooring us law.. just need to listen deep enough.. quiet enough to see ness.. for that.. again.. need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

Perhaps needless to say, since many traditions claim the soteriological goal of self-liberation, it logically follows that *the as-yet unfree state is described as an extreme limitation, a deficiency. However, as far as the possible answers and solutions offered are concerned, these considerations would raise critical questions in any anarchist who is truly sensitive to the problem of unquestioned authority, domination, and commandment about the exact status of God as a guide, the invisible angelic mediator or the external teacher who is suited to the “inner heaven”. What is certain from these brief examples is that the issues of domination and authority are not necessarily unknown to non-anarchist spiritual authors themselves. In fact, a certain quasi-anarchistic discourse is a common façon de parler in spiritual circles and teachings, and for deep reasons. And this could be the starting point for a common dialogue.

*aka: shell less turtle.. whales.. et al

At this point, once the dialogue between spirituality and anarchism has been brought closer, let us return to the definition of what spiritual anarchism is. *In his essay Anarchism and the World, Darren Allen, after listing the six “dominants” (the (autocratic) monarchy, the (socialist–democratic) state, the (totalitarian–capitalist) corporation, the (mass) majority, the (professional–religious) institution and the (technocratic) system) that must be gotten rid of in order to create an anarchist society, adds a seventh: the (mental–emotional) ego. As I wrote earlier, the ego, by its characteristics and development, can function as a source of dominance and unquestioned authority, above all for the ego itself. Spiritual writers sometimes speak of the enslavement by the mind, as we saw with Tolle, or the closure of the “skin-encapsulated ego” (Alan Watts). Here, it might be that our consciousness is often a **prisoner of the mind’s automatisms, prejudices and dogmas. Furthermore, it might be that they cannot develop their deeper and more authentic autonomy because of ***accidental attachments and cravings (or unquestioned aversions), that they are clinging to elements of the objectual–phenomenal world, that they are at the mercy of passions, that their binding to the world is full of testimonies of their vulnerabilities, etc. Or, from another point of view, that they can repress desires for allegedly higher “self-interest”, or become a suppressor of the emotional–creative side of consciousness for the sake of instrumental–calculative rationality. From a spiritual anarchist perspective, we might already be shackled by the fact that, confined within our psycho-physical coordinates, we cannot open ourselves to the conscious infinite, whether immanently conceived or in a transcendent way. In the former case, the infinite is not a mere private extension of our familiar interior, and in the latter case, it is not an alien exterior necessarily separated from us. Spiritual traditions all have different ways of framing the question of transcending the ego and different answers. Sometimes they speak of becoming nobody and self-abandonment in a nemocentric way, hoping for the total extinction of the ego, sometimes of the sanctification or divinization of (wo)man; that is, raising them to Godhood. Sometimes spiritual traditions aim at the non-dualistic dissolution of the distinction between self and not-self, subject and object. In certain cases transpersonal spheres is the goal in which the ego’s self-transcendence is realized, but at the same time, the earlier phases of the ego’s development are integrated; in other words, there is a kind of dialogical partnership between the self and the so-called Higher Self… To sum up, from this point of view, ****the ego is a limitation to the freedom of the infinity of consciousness, a narrow perspective, a control mechanism limited by “self-interest”, an imposition of mental schemas, finitude. It may not be necessary to destroy it, but it must be transcended anyway so that we no longer imprison ourselves.

*any form of m\a\p

**any form of m\a\p.. any supposed to’s ness.. as spiritual violence.. and why imagine a turtle ness

***maté trump law.. khan filling the gaps law.. from missing pieces

****socrates supposed to law.. so deep.. can only move on if we move out (of sea world).. hari rat park law et al..

we now have the means for a legit global detox/re\set.. (ie: ai as nonjudgmental expo labeling).. and we’re missing it

for (blank)’s sake

7

*This part of my article serves precisely to free us from an automatism, a naïve dichotomy: to believe that **spiritual anarchism consists of merely confronting dominant and authoritarian institutions with something simply and purely sovereign and autonomous, above all with ourselves. The meaning of “spiritual anarchism” is not at all self-evident, and this article should contribute to further exploration of its potential. ***One of the greatest potentials of spiritual anarchism is to go even deeper than this, not only to challenge the dominant and authoritarian traits within us, but to challenge ourselves, our very being. Defining spirituality is notoriously challenging. In this context, it can be defined as an experience that undoubtedly has a subjective dimension and can enable personal growth and transformation, yet its distinctive feature is precisely that it transcends our psycho-physical limitations in a transpersonal–transegoic way. The change serves to no longer view the world through a narrow keyhole, not bound by the constraints of “somebody-training” (Ram Dass) and the limitations of somebodiness. That is, it is intended to shift our attention to a conceptual third-person perspective beyond the merely pre-conceptual first- and second-person perspective, to a fourth-person perspective vision logic, and to the additional fifth-, sixth- and … ***nth-person perspectives. In other words, in “becoming the world”, the register extends by far beyond the particularity of the narrow self, creating a potentially planetary community of self-transcenders. There is something about the nominally private perspective that is actually deeply aperspectival. ****As Miri Albahari writes, it is as if someone has been raised in a windowless room from childhood, and once they finally leave the room, they will never again identify reality with the rectangular confined space, that is, as intrinsically square-shaped. Perhaps, finally, through the universal perspective, *****they see themselves as an integral part of the whole universe, not wishing to conquer, subjugate, exploit, or dominate any other part of it. Meanwhile, infinity is incomparably greater than the mere sum of its partial perspectives. All necessary changes having been made, historically, this is not far removed from Proudhon, who wrote different things about the God hypothesis in System of Economic Contradictions, but also, among other things, that “God is nothing more than collective instinct or universal reason”.

*graeber unpredictability/surprise law.. fromm spontaneous law.. et al.. humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..

**huge.. via gershenfeld something else law

***via bachelard oikos law.. and tech/ai as nonjudgmental expo labeling to try self-talk as data/detox

***idiosyncratic jargon ness.. the it is me ness.. for infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness

****not sure what this means.. but.. need global detox to get back to not yet scrambled ness.. 1 yr to be 5 et al.. art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)

*****thurman interconnectedness law.. and the dance (of an undisturbed ecosystem)

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In the “culture of narcissism” (Christopher Lasch) and ego-fixation, this transformation is in itself subversive since it is iconoclastic, self-deconditioning and self-deconstruction, and also as the creative reconditioning of basic patterns. For some spiritual people, it is very important that the entity opening up through the new perspectives is a transcendent Other and sacral in nature, while others, for example, perhaps within a secular spiritual perspective, would describe it as an internally, immanently opening dimension. These two perspectives are not as far apart as they seem. What the two positions have in common is that spirituality is directed towards something greater than our personal ego, that is, self-transcendence. On the other hand, what makes certain types of spirituality anarchistic is their conscious attention to freedom, *illegitimate authority, injustice and inequality, dominance, unjustified hierarchy and commodification. And surrendering egoistic self-direction is obviously an integral part of solidarity and mutuality, and it can also easily pave the way for property-lessness. As Critchley writes, in the context of mystical anarchism, in a Lacanian manner: “to love is to give what one does not have and to receive that over which one has no power”. Finally, let us add that spirituality conceived in this way, by its very nature, has a special relationship with authority. As Steven Lukes says, authoritarian relations can only be thematized perspectivistically, either from the perspective of actor A, who has authority, or from the perspective of actor B, who is subject to actor B’s authority. Spiritual anarchism does not simply focus attention on the specific situation of actor B, but seeks third- and n-th-person perspectives that are beyond the limitations of both actors. The alternative to the illegitimate authority of actor A is not the authority of actor B, but openness, the complementarity and cohesion of perspectives, possibly their merger. As Mary Wollstonecraft observed, **asymmetrical power relations corrupt both parties, so something new is needed. Yes, the self can certainly internalize the state, but the state can also be seen, conversely, as an externalization of the limited self. Openness means not only flexibility towards the perspectives of others, but also the creation of new, broader perspectives. These aspects, according to which an explicitly non-individualist interpretation of spiritual anarchism is possible, may be crucial because, especially since Murray Bookchin’s Mystical and Irrationalist Anarchism, there has been a one-sided tendency to see “mystical anarchy” as necessarily opposed to social anarchism.

*oi.. what would be legit authority and justifiable hierarchy?

**change world w/o taking power.. (but book didn’t get it.. need means sans any form of m\a\p)

need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)

*The aim is to surpass rigid boundaries, narrow perspectives, artificial divisions, limiting contexts—towards “the most complete community”, in which me and you, mine and yours, my community and your community, man and nature, humanity and cosmos, the inner and the outer are not so separated as to be unaware of what they have in common..t From this point of view, “inward colonization” might show that “our most individual is our ever most common”. As Franziska Hoppen writes in relation to the spiritual anarchist Gustav Landauer, whom I quoted in the previous sentences: “An anarchist is someone who … becomes a nobody in the terms of society, **moving beyond all names, race, colour, country or nation and who yet becomes a somebody in the highest, spiritual sense of the term by reconnecting to true community. The specific quality of the anarchist’s ‘world-I’ is that it has no quality”. When all labels are dropped,..t the self is not robotically interested in its own motives or attached to a particular viewpoint anymore. It could mean stepping outside of ourselves, that is, experiencing ecstasy both in its etymological and spiritual sense. ***Or, from another perspective, it could serve as delving into the depth of our own inner endlessness, that is, ultimately, knowing better and more creatively what it is to belong authentically together,..t beyond hegemonic separation and division, i.e., not closed in on ourselves, to contemplate, to act, to rejoice and to love in the “alliance of plenty” (Landauer). ***(Self-)transformation and (self-)transcendence can help to be truly present with others, to truly share the experience with them, rather than to be absent in the relationship. Landauer himself speaks of the rejection of the self, of the anarchist mystics’ need to kill themselves. While there are various moments of ego-dissolution (for example, in deep meditation, ecstatic love or psychedelic experience) when the ego as a personal self-system disappears for a time, I am closer to Ken Wilber’s integral theory, which holds that spiritual development requires that we *****patiently process our shadows and that one can be transpersonal ******if one is already fulfilled in some way as a person. So, I would prefer to talk about transcending the self. The emphasis is thus shifted from (self-)destruction to integration and creation.

*via gershenfeld something else law.. has to be everyone and has to be sans any form of m\a\p

thurman interconnectedness law: when you understand interconnectedness it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying – Robert Thurman 

**marsh label law.. naming the colour.. et al.. imagine if our only label(s) were our daily curiosities.. via nonjudgmental expo labeling

***need this first.. (1st thing everyday ness).. to get at legit/innate unpredictability ness.. otherwise.. maté trump law et al.. aka: no dance

****be you for us ness.. in order for the dance to dance

brown belonging law.. soul mate ness.. et al

*****cancerous distraction

******but none of us is

9

3. Exploring the Past in Order to Change the Future

In sum, proponents of the name ”spiritual anarchism” have to fight for legitimacy for their particular perspective. The best conceptual strategy to do this seems to be to place the emphasis on the self-transcendence of the self, either completely independently of religious traditions or in dialogue with them, depending on the orientation.

this goes against whole premise of trusting us sans any form of m\a\p.. this is naming the colour ness.. oi..

11

Accordingly, he seeks to draw attention to the overlooked movements that might be considered spiritual anarchist at least in a certain way (Earth First!, Womanism, MOVE, Auroville, Twelve-Step programs/Alcoholics Anonymous, etc.), indigenous peoples (especially Native Americans) and non-Western contributions (such as Krishnamurti’s or Sri Aurobindo’s). Fiscella also draws attention to Western actors who are directly relevant to spiritual anarchism, yet have not been the focus of attention in this sense (W. E. B. Du Bois, Noam Chomsky, William James).

auroville.. noam chomsky..

12

In my opinion, the main problem is the lack of a truly spiritual *insight into the need for transpersonal self-transcendence.. Thus, he wrote, among other things, “As man sees his individuality as merely finite, the connection that binds everything together is the secret of his own essence, for he is the consciousness of the universe, for his life is necessarily not a finite life, but the infinite life of the universe, which he does not see, however, *because he is still a child and the rough consciousness of his own dignity has not yet awakened, he is not free” .. As we can see, Schmitt has all the aspects that can be the defining features of the identity of a clear, self-conscious spiritual anarchism: thinking in terms of the **infinity of spirit rather than the enclosure of the ego, the cosmic community that transcends individual perspectives rather than isolation, the close connection between self-liberation and communal liberation. It seems that a ***clear understanding of this may be precisely what is missing in contemporary discourses.

to me.. *this is not yet scrambled ness vs ***naming the colour ness.. oi..

**this is getting at the infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness.. just not letting go enough to se that.. ie: * and **.. like thinking we need to discuss/define/name.. et al

13

In another digression, I would like to add only briefly, because it is relevant to the dialogues of anarchism, that libertarian Marxists/communists can also be inclined to spirituality; see, for example, what Jacques Camatte writes in This World We Must Leave:

the revolutionary movement is the revolution of nature, accession to thought, and mastery of being with the possibility of using the prefrontal centers of the brain, which are thought to relate to the imagination. Revolution has a biological and therefore cosmic dimension, considering our universe limited (to the solar system); cosmic also in the meaning of the ancient philosophers and mystics.

might be means to get back/to not yet scrambled ness.. or perhaps just quit thinking we have to think/define/name .. use the brain.. et al.. and just trust us.. spend energies on conditions (sans any form of m\a\p) for people to (finally) be legit free

By the way, in the earlier history of libertarian Marxism/communism, there are also those with whom spiritual anarchism could have a meaningful dialogue, such as Ernst Bloch or Walter Benjamin, who had both Marxist and anarchist ties.

walter on art et al

Critchley mentions the examples of *“redemptive, cleansing violence”, the Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades. Aside from the fact that the examples are not from the history of anarchism (and that they are tendentious), Critchley’s article was published in 2009, when he had at his disposal **Peter Gelderloos’s seminal 2007 anarchist book How Nonviolence Protects the State [40], which argues that nonviolence is ineffective, racist, statist, patriarchal, tactically and strategically inferior and deluded.

*oh my

**pretty sure i read this.. but can’t find notes if i did

last sent on page 13.. about spark.. rather imagine if we.. thenall end of soame p starting top 14

This is unworthy of the historically complex, nuanced and careful theological reflections of theosis, sometimes also called perfectio, and *misses the significance of finding the divine spark (scintilla animae) within us, ..This rigid hostility to self-deification is also curious because Critchley, moreover, speaks a few lines later of “the immortal dimension of the subject”, although he claims that the “only testimony” to this is love. Throughout the article, love is given a prominent role, and is even the focus of the “Conclusion—the politics of love” section. It seems that love is treated here in a too individualistic or inter-individualistic way, that Critchley **does not take enough account of the communal–social dimensions of love (an excellent contemporary example of a critical discussion of this is Alva Gotby’s They Call It Love. The Politics of Emotional Life). Unfortunately, Critchley also falls somewhat prey to ego-death jargon when he writes that love is “the daring that attempts to extend beyond oneself by annihilating oneself”. On the contrary, ***I think that love is truly valuable when it is dialectically both self-transcendence and self-preservation, when we can surrender ourselves to others and to the community, but when we can also remain ourselves..t Nevertheless, Critchley’s writings are an important contribution to the tradition of spiritual anarchism.

*huge.. but nothing catching that significance to date.. perhaps imagine if we ness

**thurman interconnectedness law: when you understand interconnectedness it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying – Robert Thurman and pearson unconditional law.. et al

***sounds like he’s getting at brown belonging law et al.. be you for us ness

14

4. Making Spiritual Practices More Anarchistic

“Spiritual zombies no longer hear their inner guide. (Alice Walker)

need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

“In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque cooperative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man’s Final End, the unitive knowledge of the immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle—*the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: ‘How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man’s Final End?”

(Aldous Huxley: Foreword to the Brave New World, second edition)

oi.. *that won’t get us to the dance.. of an undisturbed ecosystem

*The spiritual path is full of difficulties. When people decide to take up the struggle against their spiritual poverty, they are exposed to a number of external and internal dangers. One of the main difficulties of spiritual self-transformation is also one of its most attractive: that one who embarks on this path no longer relies on mere faith but on experience, that is, one may become pragmatically and non-authoritarianly skeptical of pre-established answers. If indeed one is not guided by unconditional respect for authority, one may reject privileged access to anything infinitely greater than the personal ego (whether one speaks of the clerical class or of others). **The infinity of consciousness, whether conceived immanently, transcendently or a combination of both, cannot be privatized or monopolized. It is more than mere introspection or exclusive access to an external entity—it is an opening of consciousness, a transcending of perspectives in an otherwise pathologically closed society. One could agree with integral theory that spiritual experience by its very nature should not remain a keyhole-like isolated experience or a privileged, incommunicable perspective of a single individual: ***there must be injunction, by virtue of which others can learn how to gain spiritual experience; there must be apprehension, that is, the self-perception of what the injunction has brought us to; communal confirmation, by virtue of which we can check our experience with others who have used the same or similar injunction. This triple criterion works against privilege. Accordingly, “the Way” or “the Ways” are in principle accessible to all, direct experience and communal feedback can serve to ensure that spirituality, and, in line with this, spiritual anarchism, is neither one-sidedly individualistic nor stiflingly collectivist.

*warning ness et al

**the infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness of gershenfeld something else law

***oi.. cancerous distraction heavy.. maté trump law et al

15

This attitude should not be confronted with diametrically opposed views, but with a holistic approach that accepts the relative validity of non-spiritual aspects and can even enter into dialogue with them, integrating them. 

still cancerous distraction.. need to let go of any form of m\a\p

What is more, I think that contemporary spiritual anarchism should be in close dialogue with neuroscience, and should *know as much as possible about the bodily-neural correlations of the functioning of consciousness. In this respect, I find Scott Emerson’s article on the anarchistic nature of consciousness itself and how, although **the brain may at first appear to be a dictatorship, it is in fact organized in a decentralized way, and very promising. Here I note that the contemporary French philosopher who is one of the most enthusiastic promoters of thinking about neuroplasticity, Catherine Malabou, is also one of the most important contemporary continental anarchist thinkers. Beyond this, of course, spiritual anarchism can point to experiences that have escaped the view of science because of naturalistic hegemony. This does not make it ***anti-scientific; it merely points out the limitations of certain scientific views and practices. After all, science itself can also become an unquestioned belief, dogma or authority, and therefore, some “epistemological anarchism” (Paul Feyerabend) is needed as a remedy.

*still cancerous distraction

**cool.. but for the dance to dance.. focus on that is a distractions.. we grok it when not yet scrambled.. et al

***oi.. science scientifically et al

16

In a sense, our whole modern life needs an anarchistic re-spiritualization. This already applies to birth itself. In many countries, it now seems natural for women to be taken out of their homes and to give birth to their children under alienated state control, distorting the natural process of childbirth, at the risk of abuse. The event thus lacks the joy of a new life, the deep spiritual meaning of attachment, the peak experience of the consciousness-altering process of childbirth (on this, see, for example, in the context of orgasmic birth. Something similar applies to the end of life, death. Death is mostly tabooed in our modern societies, and the dying are very often cut off from their homes and loved ones. Although the proliferation of returns from death, of near-death experiences, is largely due to the medicalization of death, in alienated-state contexts, there is little opportunity for a full experience of a farewell to life and death as a self-transcending spiritual experience (for a comprehensive overview, see. Of course, it is also true of birth and death that if it takes place in a for-profit business rather than in a state context, there is little room, besides the focus on the “success” of the process, for the intrinsic spiritual value of the experience.

thurman interconnectedness law.. bj miller.. palliative care.. gabor on childhood trauma.. et al

17

Rather than going into all of them, three practices will be analyzed here that are commonly regarded as excellent ways of having a self-transcending spiritual experience: meditation, psychedelic experience and mystical experience. There is an inherent anarchistic potential in all of these experiences, just the practice of people engaged in them can gradually become more and more anarchistic.

4.1. Meditation

it is *by no means easy to bring them all together. 

huge red flag.. takes a lot of work.. means not trusting us (the dance)

Meditation thus involves the altering of consciousness, but never in its original form as an end in itself, but in the midst of ethical self-cultivation, with the aim of a higher soteriological state, and with an ontological insight into the nature of reality.

oi

To what extent can meditation be anarchistic in any sense? It is no accident that the term self-liberation is often used in the context of meditation. While it may have many communal dimensions, it is ultimately a first-person perspective practice, *at least in regard to the starting point, that “frees the mind from external demands and also from internal themes of unfinished business that pressure for planning and problem-solving”. Meditation reworks internal and external stimulus information by **de-linking sensations and the tendency to respond, thereby increasing the space for freedom of maneuver and creating the possibility of volitional self-regulation. To this extent, there is reason to speak of a transcendence of the usual separate-self sense and a deconstruction of the self, since the observing self or absorbed pure consciousness, developed during meditation, disidentifies from many self-representations, which gradually increases the degree of self-detachment. The state of consciousness thus created gets rid of automatisms (for example, bare attention or open monitoring can let mental contents be free by letting them come and go), restrains the censorship of the mind, creates relative independence from the contents of awareness, etc. Also important for spiritual anarchism is that meditation can help to ***dispel the illusion of compactness, i.e., seeing things in their processuality and broader context, in their fragility and transience, deconstructs the stability of existing entities, and this might also be relevant for seemingly compact institutions and mechanisms of domination and authority. In sum, there are strong reasons to agree with Jack Engler’s and Daniel Brown’s findings that in some ways, meditation strengthens the ego (as it becomes more organized, pays attention easier, more easily exerts voluntary control over impulses and behavior, etc.), but at the same time, through self-transcendence, it evokes a state of consciousness that views the ego from a more integrated, broader and deeper perspective. Finally, it should be added that, through deconditioning and reconditioning, meditation replaces the usual automatic and unquestioned interpretations with a more thorough reality testing—and this too can be an extension of, or a precondition for, anarchistic practices and critical thinking, but also cultivating compassion.

*huge to maté trump law and imagine if we‘s 1st thing ness..

**aka: detox.. but needs to be all of us for the dance to dance

***antifragile ness.. the it is me ness.. and pearson unconditional law.. et al

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Further accusations are that meditation *does not help to change the world, but conformistically leaves it as it is, and furthermore, it is linked to practices that are ethically highly problematic, in addition to the fact that Western practitioners divorce meditation from its ethical framework, contrary to important traditions. However, it depends on the context and the intentions of the practitioner as to what the inherent self-liberating potentials of meditation are used for, and these objections do not affect the very essence of meditation. Fortunately, there are now writings available that answer these objections in detail, deconstruct the myth of McMindfulness and outline critical, **socially aware and engaged forms of mindfulness. It is worth quoting here Michael W. Taft’s The Anarchist’s Guide to Mindfulness:

*nothing will until it’s all of us.. till we all get out of sea world .. for (blank)’s sake

**not sure if we want that

“In a world that is constantly vying for your attention, becoming selective with that attention is an act of rebellion. … To sit, to really sit, is an act of rebellion. It requires you tune out the stimuli demanding your attention. It requires you upend the traditional values of modern western culture and stop. *It requires you submit your desires to an intention. It is the opposite of what they want and it flies in the face of all of the ways they’ve conditioned you. … It provides both individuation and communion. It’s also one of the most radical things you can do”.

all good.. but *not this.. this is a a raised eyebrow.. a cancerous distraction

cummings art\ist law.. olivier wrong about you law.. et al

Rather than reviewing these debates, let us focus on a topic of particular relevance to spiritual anarchism and inherent to the practice of meditation. It is about the relationship between the teacher who teaches meditation, who transmits its traditions, and the disciple. It is well known how much abuse there is of teachers teaching meditation, sexual abuse, financial abuse, abuse of power, etc. Fortunately, we have a publication, Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad’s Guru Papers. Masks of Authoritarian Power, which systematically reviews the problems. For spiritual anarchism, the question here is whether this relationship is inherently unacceptable, or whether it is possible to have a practice that refutes the possible objections of anarchists.

oi.. ignoring the deeper issue and focus on teacher of meditation.. oi oi oi

19

Anarchists have always been cautious and careful about different forms of authority. For example, in the Anarchist FAQ written by Iain McKay and others, in their article Why are anarchists against authority and hierarchy?, they argue, drawing on Bakunin, Erich Fromm and others, that authority has two meanings, one rational and the other irrational. The former is based on the abilities of competence, i.e., *socially acknowledged expertise and performance; helps the person who relies on it and they are supposed to accept the authority of their own free will; authority is subject to constant scrutiny and criticism; it is in principle temporary. The latter, on the other hand, often institutionalized, is based on power, on a hierarchy of rather asymmetrical inequality; it is usually fixed; and it exercises dominance over or outright exploits the subject subjected to it. Perhaps needless to say, from this point of view, many “gurus” or teachers should be unacceptable to a spiritual anarchist, since many of them have merely a fixed position in an institutional hierarchy, sometimes not freely chosen by the individuals, the aura or mere spectacle around the teacher is often the deciding factor, rather than actual competence. Furthermore, the teacher’s teaching is often not questioned in any way and their status is generally not revocable, and it is **common to exploit rather than help students. But ***is it possible to imagine a teacher–disciple relationship that would be acceptable from the viewpoint of spiritual anarchism?

*oi.. a raised eyebrow.. a cancerous distraction

**oi.. rather.. always.. any from of people telling other people what to do et al.. until we’re all out of sea world

***so no.. not letting go enough .. hari rat park law et al.. for (blank)’s sake

On this point, one can draw on John Welwood’s On Spiritual Authority to argue that spiritual anarchism can conceive of an alternative model. Welwood himself, almost anarchistically but certainly questioning illegitimate authority, distinguishes between a bondage-creating spiritual teacher and one who promotes liberation. He argues that the connection with the liberating teacher is interrelational, characterized by mutual influence, a kind of partnership. Such a teacher is responsive, but does not impose herself of himself on anyone. *The disciple expects to recognize something in the teacher that they could learn from them, at a stage when the learners are not yet able to find their inner master—and in this sense is drawn to **someone who has done the work and can thus be of help. ***Instead of a preprogrammed agenda, the right teacher flexibly follows the progress and wellbeing of the learner, a kind of mutual adjustment takes place, reinforced by a system of mutual and continuous feedback—the learner is not subject to the one-sided instructions of the teacher. In fact, it is a dialectical process whereby the teacher’s authority serves to enable the disciple, through self-transcendence, to naturally recognize the authentic authority inherent within them. As Welwood puts it, in the name of the master:

*already a raised eyebrow.. so.. such a cancerous distraction.. until we’re all out of sea world

**double oi

***still same song.. because et al.. a raised eyebrow

“Granting me this authority can be a step toward recognizing their own authority— that they are indeed the authors of their own experience, rather than passive victims of circumstance. In a parallel, though far more profound way, a genuine spiritual master’s presence may serve as a mirror that reflects back to students qualities of their awakened being: openness, generosity, discernment, humor, gentleness, acceptance, compassion, straightforwardness, strength, and courage”.

need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs.. then who knows.. may need no master ness.. at least won’t need to talk about it.. to arrange/serve it..

Welwood further reinforces the aforementioned binarity by distinguishing between mindful surrender and mindless submission, stressing that the former, unlike the latter, is an opening to a deeper dimension of truth, that true surrender is not enslavement, not giving oneself up for the sake of an idealized or blindly revered other for the sake of some gain, not a regressive retreat from maturity. *The liberating teachers are happy to reveal their resources and their own experiences, even to talk honestly about their own weaknesses and failures. They do not ascribe privileged status to others or to initiated disciples, insofar as they consider the teaching in principle **accessible to all, and do not promote heard behavior within the group. Such a teacher–disciple relationship does not hermetically seal their relationship, but rather transcends the two of them and is defined by an openness to the common being in both of them, transcending keyhole perspectives and egocentricity. As Welwood writes:

*makes not diff if still in sea world (aka: intoxicated.. wilde not-us law et al).. and if still thinking we need to have teacher ness.. any form of people telling other people what to do

**sounding good.. but none can happen till all out of sea world (aka: detoxed).. huge red flag if we’re still aware/talking about the dance (like here).. instead of just trusting the dance/us.. and dancing.. oi.. all else.. any form of m\a\p.. cancerous distraction

20

Surrender does not have a finite object; one does not give oneself to something limited and bounded. If one does, then it is most likely submission—to the teacher’s personality, or the ‘Cause.’ … *The authentic teacher-student relationship leads beyond narcissism by showing students how to devote themselves to a greater power that lies within, yet beyond themselves. … Genuine teachers encourage self-respect as the basis for self-transcendence.

*to me.. this is already a red flag that we’re not trusting what’s already on each heart.. and too.. there’s not yet scrambled ness.. oi

..The whole movie thus embodies a paradox: Kumaré tries to prove to people that they do not need a guru as an external authority, but he does so largely through the use of classical spiritual techniques, i.e., the discovery of inner depth; truth and freedom are in this case also realized dialectically, that is, with external help. The film is a spectacular critique of illegitimate spiritual authority and, at the same time, in fact, a praise of the teacher–disciple relationship based on help and partnership.

yeah.. we need a temp jump start.. ie: imagine a turtle .. but we now have means for global detox leap.. so nothing like what is described here

21

4.2. Psychedelics

From the point of view of spiritual anarchism, the absurdity of state restriction and illegitimate authority is fatal, since it is an experience that, with a responsible attitude, and with due regard for the set and setting, psychedelics can be an innocent part of recreational activity, or can even become the source of psychological development and spiritual self-liberation. It might be argued that spiritual anarchism must be critical of the three options suggested as “emancipatory”: mere decriminalization certainly does not solve the problem of psychedelic experience being marginalized as a “suspect activity”, laissez-faire liberalization raises serious questions of responsibility and legalization is problematic because of the state’s arbitrariness and narrow vision. This is why I think that spiritual anarchism should consider a fourth option, the regulation of psychedelics within self-organizing communities where there is a wealth of accumulated experience, where authority is plural and questionable in principle, and where the sharing of knowledge does not lead to the domination or the proliferation of privileges for anyone. Such is the case of the “Daath Hungarian Psychedelic Community”, which it is no exaggeration to say operates in an anarchistic manner, since it is independent of the state and capitalist mechanisms, has no leader, only a coordinator, and above all—to use the Marxian expression favored by libertarian–autonomist Italian communists—it is governed by the wisdom of the general intellect.

22

Why could the psychedelic experience be so important for spiritual anarchism? *Precisely because it can help self-transcendence. Psychedelics facilitate the mechanisms of neuroplasticity at the molecular level, allowing neurobiological modulation of Default Mode and Salience networks. **This means that they contribute to the loosening of rigidly entrenched neural pathways and the reconditioning of self-modeling, which may also lead to a rethinking of social norms and rules. This is why it is so often suggested that unbinding the self-model may also have system-critical consequences. Transient network disintegration and resetting beliefs, the re-wiring of elementary subjective mechanisms, can also occur in a way that leads to total ego-dissolution, and also in a way that the ordinary sense of self is significantly altered and becomes embedded in something larger, such as the surrounding nature or an infinite consciousness, in the sense of self-transcendence.

*may be an aid.. ?.. but to me.. if we want global detox leap (and it does have to be everyone for the dance to dance) we need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)

getting at all/deeper.. need ai/tech as as nonjudgmental expo labeling

**which is super/great.. how to change.. carhart-harris entropy law.. et al.. but since we not only need detox.. we need global detox.. so we need a means for 8b people to leap

humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..

It is important to note that although the psychedelic experience has inherent anarchistic potential, it does not necessarily follow that psychedelic communities are necessarily anarchistic or anarchist. Alan Piper’s research has clearly shown that the psychedelic experience can be instrumentalized by fascist and far-right communities. In short, it is true here too, *as in the case of meditation, that the psychedelic experience is not independent of the surrounding socio-ethical community, the set and setting, the psycho-spiritual dimensions of the relationship to it. An excellent positive example of how a psychedelic experiencer can become open to anarchism is Terence McKenna, who is widely regarded as the “psychedelic guru of the 90s” and who has expounded that psychedelic use could pave the way for the withering away of the state and anarchy, also mentioned green anarchy, talked about “anarchy being the ideal” and envisioned **creative democratic communities without leaders. Overall, we can say that ***psychedelia can contribute to rethinking and expanding the modal space of experience. ..the psychedelic experience lived through the prism of spiritual anarchism can also contribute to the questioning of dominant ontologies. This would mean leaving our comfort zone within the consensus reality, a more participative and egalitarian ontology, more plural approaches to reality.

*hari rat park law.. psychedels/meditation.. not enough

**any form of democratic admin.. any form of people telling other people what to do.. any form of m\a\p.. are cancerous distractions

***perhaps as temp during leap.. but unconditional.. trust.. of whatever is already on/in each heart has to be the focus.. not teachers/psychedels/tech.. otherwise.. same song

this.. to why we need detox leap/hasten ness

23

4.3. Mystical Experience

We should be very careful about the term “mystical experience”, since it is a modern category that can only have a retrospective meaning. The people of premodern times did not strive to have a mystical experience for its own sake, but engaged in a complex ethical-soteriological activity of seeking to know reality, for which we, as ex-post interpreters, use the term “mystical experience”. *It refers to an experience which is not accessible to our sensory perception, which is guided by our mental concepts, and which thus reveals the true or deeper side of reality. According to William James’ classic definition, mystical experience has noetic qualities, ineffability, paradoxicality, transiency and passivity. However, since the late 19th century, our thinking about mystical experience has become more nuanced

*thinking this is backwards.. rather.. need to get back/to not yet scrambled ness

The mystical experience has also been repeatedly accused of being individualistic, i.e., devoid of community, like meditation and psychedelic experience. This accusation is inherently problematic because the mystical experience tends to eliminate or relativize the distinction between the inner and the outer, and indeed, Dorothee Soelle in her book The Silent Cry. Mysticism and Resistance seeks even “to erase the distinction between a mystical internal and a political external”. According to Soelle, “mysticism can be regarded as the anti-authoritarian religion per se”, since preestablished dogma, unquestioned institutions and privileged classes cannot be accepted by it. As a professor of theology and an activist in the peace and ecological movements, Soelle frames mystical experience as a resistance to contemporary destructive forces, from consumerism to economic inequalities. She illustrates with a series of examples, from Müntzer to the Quakers, that *“contemplative activism” is very possible, and can be transformative on a global scale through the power of imagination and direct experience. The guiding moral–practical principles she proposes, which follow from mystical experience, are ego-lessness, property-lessness and nonviolence. In other words, mysticism can be the foundation of a new kind of relationality and fusion, since there is no structure that can stand between it and direct experience. Although Soelle does not explicitly declare herself an anarchist, she always uses the term “anarchist” in a positive context (for instance, she claims that mystics speak an “anarchistic language” and refers to several anarchists in her work—her unadulterated anti-authoritarian spirit places her in the tradition of spiritual anarchism. Soelle is thus part of a tendency which stresses the “inherent politics in all mysticism”.

*huge toward need for global leap/reset – imagine if we

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothee_S%C3%B6lle]: Dorothee Steffensky-Sölle (née Nipperdey, 1929–2003), known as Dorothee Sölle, was a German liberation theologian who coined the term “Christofascism”. She was born in Cologne and died at a conference in Göppingen from cardiac arrest.. She became active in politics, speaking out against the Vietnam War, the arms race of the Cold War, and injustices in the developing world. Notably, from 1968 to 1972 she organized the Politisches Nachtgebet [de] (political night-prayers) in the Antoniterkirche (Cologne). Between 1975 and 1987, she spent six months a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she was a professor of systematic theology. .She wrote a large number of books, including Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God (1968), The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (1997), and her autobiography Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian (1999). In Beyond Mere Obedience: Reflections on a Christian Ethic for the Future she coined the term Christofascist to describe fundamentalists. Perhaps her best-known work in English was Suffering, which offers a critique of “Christian masochism” and “Christian sadism”. Sölle’s critique is against the assumption that God is all-powerful and the cause of suffering; humans thus suffer for some greater purpose. Instead, God suffers and is powerless alongside us. Humans are to struggle together against oppression, sexism, antisemitism, and other forms of authoritarianis

left off last p 23.. look him up too?

It is worth drawing attention to *Philip Wexler’s Mystical Society: An Emerging Social Vision, in which he argues that a new spiritual social model is emerging, one that pits integration against alienation, and in which holistic relationality, conceived as “re-cosmicization”, takes precedence over functional specialization, the search for the transcendental over spiritual emptiness. Taking Weberian theory further, he argues that it is a kind of innerwordly mysticism that does not turn away from the world in an escapist manner, but is characterized by a tendency to resacralize it, yet there is a constant “reselfing”, a systematic and comprehensive re-inhabitation of the self that also defies the separation between social life and the individual. From Wexler’s point of view, this can be seen as a mystical phenomenon because it is characterized by ***de-mediation, i.e., the desire for the immediacy and revitalization of being rather instead of the existing socio-cultural infrastructures. Wexler also takes into account that already at the end of the 20th century, what we might call the democratization of mystical experience took place. Forty-three percent of all American and forty-eight percent of all British people have had one or more mystical experiences. The number has since increased (a 2009 survey found that 49 percent of Americans claim to have had a mystical experience, a figure that is particularly striking when compared with 22 percent in 1962). Something is undoubtedly happening and changing; however, the ****question arises as to what exactly.

*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Wexler]: Philip Wexler (1943-2023) was a Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was first appointed in 2002 as Professor of Sociology of Education and then Unterberg Chair in Jewish Social and Educational History. Since retirement, he has been Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Wuppertal, Germany.. The mystical society : an emerging social vision Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 2000

**imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)

***de – any form of m\a\p ness

****doesn’t really matter.. not enough.. still part\ial ness.. for (blank)’s sake

24

From the point of view of spiritual anarchism, this tendency is absolutely welcome, insofar as the increase in sensitivity to spiritual experience is accompanied by the need to significantly reform society. Mystical experience may be attractive to anarchism because, although the experience is not entirely self-authenticating, as it can be truly empowered by communal confirmation, its starting point and primary medium is the direct experience of self-transcendence, for which institutions of unquestioned authority, domination, etc., are unnecessary and even disturbing. The mystical experience is in fact the most difficult of all for the spiritual anarchist to grasp, since it can in some way permeate most spiritual experiences, including the meditation already mentioned and the psychedelic experience. Meanwhile, spiritual anarchism cannot lose sight that mystical experience is also in danger of being inflated, that instead of genuine self-transcending, transformative, transpersonal experiences, merely pre-rational ideas flood the public discourse, as a false remedy for the mechanisms that seek to rationalize everything according to the triadic structure of of state–capital–labor.

5. Conclusions

The starting point for this article was the premise that instead of a simplistic juxtaposition of the autonomous self and coercive institutions, *spiritual anarchism needs to make a critical revision of the self itself, insofar as the inherent development of the personality might entail the acceptance of unquestioned authority, the becoming prisoner of dogmas, the repression of the self, etc. It has been demonstrated that, not coincidentally, spiritual writers completely unconnected with the anarchist movement often speak “anarchistic” language—the demand for self-liberation is a general feature of authentic spirituality. Taking up Anthony Fiscella’s observation that previous texts on spiritual anarchism have not attempted to define spirituality, a definition was proposed: spirituality is the self-transcending, transpersonal transformation of the ego’s narrow key-hole, the ego’s limitedness. This modifies the existing literature insofar as it sees spiritual anarchism as more than an institutionless counterpart to religious anarchism, but as having an inner essence to which it can adhere. And insofar as spiritual anarchism transcends narrow perspectives, it also has an inherently social significance—that is, contrary to the accusations, in spirituality, individual and community are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It was left open whether this infinity refers to the inner depth, either in a secular way, or to some transcendent, external being. Alongside Fiscella, Wilson’s and Critchley’s views on spiritual or mystical anarchism were briefly reviewed. In addition to drawing attention to the caution required in dealing with the past of spiritual anarchism, I have also mentioned three authors who may be relevant to this history (Schmitt, Gross, Novatore). **A different interpretation of the past could certainly open up avenues for the future. Finally, in countering the accusation that ***some spiritual practices can only be individualistic, it was demonstrated that they in fact have a number of communal dimensions, all of which raise specific questions for spiritual anarchism. In this spirit were meditation, psychedelic experience and mystical experience thematized.

*need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

**dawn of everything (book) et al

***has to be (be about) all of us.. thurman interconnectedness law et al..

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Given that certain spiritual practices are clearly on the rise (the psychedelic renaissance, the explosion of meditation/mindfulness, the proliferation of mystical experiences, the transformation of the relationship to the life cycles, etc.), it is certain that the social embeddedness, the high intensity and transformative potential of these practices will trigger the need for a non-authoritarian interpretation of some of their dimensions (such as the guru–disciple relationship). *The spiritual activity of self-transcendence, self-liberation and the multiplication of perspectives as a whole is an extraordinary opportunity for anarchism, not only because of the anarchist ethos (solidarity, mutuality, property-lessness, etc.) but primarily because of the “mental-emotional ego” (Darren Allen) as a source of unquestioned authority and domination. It is not difficult to predict that if the spiritual dimension of anarchism is strengthened even more (as the proliferation of the term “spiritual anarchism” demonstrates), or if a movement that defines itself as, among other things, spiritual anarchism, will be given a special place, the ecological dimension, the concern for the Earth and the wider cosmic horizon will have a particular role. In addition, **spiritual anarchism would not be bound by the dogmatic and institutional constraints that would hinder dialogue between the spiritual traditions of the globe. Furthermore, when internal personal change is intertwined with external social change, spiritual anarchism can come up with a nuanced critique of civilization, with its own particular aspects, hardly naively nostalgic for the past as anarcho-primitivism is, but rather with a ***special attention to the subtle layers of the past that can still be integrated into the present. What is certain, however, is that if spiritual anarchism is ever to become a significant factor, its primary ****opponent will be consumerist pseudo-spirituality, against which it must reclaim authentic, genuinely self-transcending spirituality that defies ego fixation. As Kirsten Brydum put it, *****“much work is still to be done”.

*on each heart ness et al

**need something (a means) sans any form of m\a\p

***for legit diff.. need to let go of the past.. (all in sea world.. et al)

****need a means sans opponent ness.. (all anti ness as cancerous distractions.. et al)

*****nah.. takes a lot of work ness as red flag.. as cancerous distraction.. we just need to let go enough.. to see.. the dance we can dance if we just let go enough (any form of m\a\p)

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