Why I Do Not Believe In Pathology & How this Affects Happiness and Spiritual Awakening
There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with your life. Despite what I tell you, despite what advertisements tell you, despite the idea of enlightenment, despite all of the changes you want in your life, all of the products and services you would like to buy and skills you would like to have, even with all of the sadness and grief and anger and jealousy and uncertainty, even with sickness and aging and death, you do not need anything to be different from exactly the way it is.
This radical acceptance is not sheer deconstructive postmodernism because it includes accepting wanting to change things, and taking active steps to change them. It includes the natural unfolding of evolution. It includes honoring and respecting the experience of suffering even as we seek to remove all the barriers to the universal, neverending experience of unbounded love.
To Heck With Pathology—Or—Everything is Pathological
I recently said that I do not put much credence into pathology—I think the human self-system is so incredibly intelligent and self-organizing that even our harmful actions (those that cause us suffering) are serving a deeper, unconscious need.
Let me clarify my opinion—although pathology literally means the study of suffering, the word is usually used to mean a deviation from the healthy norm—so what I really mean to say is that I put little credence in the generally socially accepted norm of what is wrong and what is right, what is good for you and what is not, what is healthy and what is unhealthy.
This is not to say that right and wrong, healthy and unhealthy do not exist—but that it is worth a deeper inquiry into them, to gain more insight and more conscious choice into what these things are in each individual’s own experience and cultural context. For it is only through this inquiry and self-determination that we can truly develop into autonomy and beyond, transforming our current way of being into one that welcomes more life more fully and allows for greater expressions of love.
I am not so interested in removing the label of “pathology” as I am with removing the judgement of the current state of being. This includes the judgement of any current state you or someone else wants to change, in your own life or out in the world.
Either throw out the label or apply it universally to anything we want to change or avoid. I welcome the desire for change—the irony is that I think the most powerful and effective change happens when we first accept exactly what is, the way it is, and honor the value it gives us. Only then can we begin to let it go.