What is traditionally referred to as purposelessness and motivelessness, and sometimes as indifference, but more accurately understood as the transcendence of purpose and motive, is not something to try to emulate. One cannot say that there is no such thing as purpose and motivation, and that it is therefore fine to live a haphazard and meaningless life. That attitude would abrogate one’s human nature, for as long as one still lives in the cognitive sphere one’s life requires purpose and meaning. Purpose, motive, and meaning are necessary for human beings, because they are emissaries of the timeless truths of nonconceptual Reality, before they are recognized for what they are. Only when we have integrated the nonconceptual can we say we do not need meaning, purpose, or motive. Otherwise, we will be stuck in the meaninglessness and purposelessness that are the opposite of meaning and purpose. Here there is no transcendence, only disconnection.

For ennea type Six, when Holy Faith is lost, there is no faith, knowledge, or certainty that our inner nature, that of others, and of the universe, is an essence that is a true, perfect, and intrinsically good existence. This lack of faith is not exactly the absence of belief in God, which is what many people think, since you can be an atheist and still believe in the intrinsic goodness of humanity. The absence of Holy Faith is reflected more in the absence of faith in human nature or in the nature of the universe. This means that one does not believe in and trust human nature, including one’s own. This manifests in believing that how people are and act is purely electro-chemical in origin, that we are only physical entities, and that there is no intrinsic, intelligent essential nature that can be present and can operate. It also manifests in believing that whatever goodness human beings manifest is only the result of an adaptation to ensure survival. While it may be adaptive, believing that that is the origin of goodness reflects the lack of Holy Faith. This lack can manifest on three levels: You could believe that there is no such thing as Essence; you might believe that while some goodness might exist, it is definitely not your nature or human nature since man is basically corrupt, and goodness or Essence exists in some god-like entity somewhere else; or you might believe that while Essence is your inner nature, it comes and goes randomly. So just as there are three facets of faith—that Essence exists, that it is your inner nature, and that it is dependable—there are three varieties of the lack of it. Facets of Unity, pg. 239

Doubting and Questioning of Oneself

Ultimately, this lack of faith is based upon the belief that human beings do not have an inner reality that is true, good, loving, and perfect, and so are inherently selfish, self-centered, and self-seeking. If you don’t have Holy Faith, you have this other kind of faith: the conviction that human beings are entirely made up of ego. Life then becomes a fight for survival, and if any goodness is shown to another, it is purely out of self-interest. This cynicism is the specific delusion of ennea-type Six. The dictionary defines a cynic as someone who believes that all people are entirely motivated in all their actions by selfishness, and a cynical attitude reflects a contemptuous disbelief in human goodness and sincerity. So the absence of faith manifests as cynicism, whether it is related to human beings or to the cosmos. It manifests as a doubting and a questioning of oneself, one’s nature, human nature, Essence, truth, God, or the universe in general. It is a suspiciousness that reflects the underlying cynical attitude, the absence of Holy Faith, and the consequent hopelessness, despair, and frustration. Doubting one’s own or others’ motivations may be implicit or explicit: Are they being loving because they are expressing an inner goodness, or is there some ulterior motive? Such constant questioning indicates the lack of faith in human nature. You don’t believe that it is possible for someone to do something out of the goodness of her heart, or for the universe to present you with something nice—you don’t believe in grace. If something nice happens, the cynic in us wonders, “Is this a test? What’s going to happen if I enjoy it? Am I going to be tricked?” 

When the individuality of ego develops harmoniously and without much distortion, it has a personal sense to it. One is not only a self, but feels oneself as an individual, a person. The man of the world experiences this sense of being a person as a sign of and an expression of his humanity. So he quite naturally considers impersonality to be a nonhuman quality. He is not willing to give up personhood to embrace the universal impersonality of Being, because he believes this would involve losing his humanness. He is confounded when spiritual teachers and gurus speak of a supposedly desirable enlightened state as impersonal. He feels insulted, not considered, when he is not treated as a person. He takes it as a sign of lack of respect. He expects, and feels it is his right, to be treated by others as a person in his own right. An adult human being considers it an expression of mature human love that he relates to others as persons, and sees this capacity as an expression of his human nature. He enjoys, values and loves the personal element in him. To be personal means to him to be a human being, capable of enjoying intimate personal contact. It means respecting oneself and the other, loving oneself and the other, and valuing oneself and the other. The personal element is actually considered the essence of what it is to be a human being. It is what differentiates a human being from machines, inanimate objects, impersonal forces, and other forms of life.

If this jumping into the abyss is easy, one’s transformation tends to happen easily. But if this letting go of past identities is difficult—very painful or excessively fraught with fear—one will tend to hold on to the old, staying aligned with one’s ego. What makes the difference is the presence of a certain kind of trust that we call basic trust. It is an unspoken, implicit trust that what is optimal will happen, the sense that whatever happens will ultimately be fine. It is the confidence that reality is ultimately good; that nature, the universe, and all that exists are of their very nature good and trustworthy; that what happens is the best that can happen. Basic trust is a nonconceptual confidence in the goodness of the universe, an unquestioned implicit trust that there is something about the universe and human nature and life that is inherently and fundamentally good, loving, and wishing us the best. This innate and unformulated trust in life and reality manifests as a willingness to take that plunge into the abyss. When this trust is deep, it manifests in how you live your life, not necessarily in what you feel or what you think. Basic trust is experienced as an unquestioned sense of safety and security that is intrinsic to the way you act and live. When deeply present, this trust is so much a part of the fabric of your soul that it is not something you think about—it is preconceptual, preverbal, pre-differentiation. Furthermore, it is so basic that events and circumstances in your life cannot disrupt it.

In this book, our interest is to understand the nature of the human being in a comprehensive way, a way that makes sense of the normal experience of most individuals while retaining the deepest insights into human nature, as seen in the most profound spiritual discoveries of mankind. We will introduce an understanding about human nature by contrasting the view of the man of the world, the usual perspective of most people who take the person and the personal life to be the center of human nature and concern, with the view of the man of spirit, the spiritual perspective of most religions that man’s nature is ultimately spiritual, and human life must be governed by selflessness and egolessness. The most extreme position of this latter perspective is that self and individuality do not have an ultimate or real existence. This extreme position, although not shared by many spiritual groups, nevertheless remains a common and central contention for the most advanced teachings of most spiritual traditions, especially the mystical ones. More specifically, we will contrast the experience of most people that they are separate individuals, entities in their own right, with the contention of many spiritual traditions that the ultimate reality is a state of oneness of being and unity of existence, and explore the relationship between the two.

We must understand that developmental psychology has not been concerned with whether human beings have a more real nature, a nature beyond the mind. The spiritual teachings, on the other hand, are concerned with human nature beyond ideas, images or concepts in the mind. For them, a mental construct such as the self-image is fundamentally nonexistent, is illusory. For them, the fact that the mind contains a concept of a person does not mean that there is truly a person, any more than the concept of an apple is an apple. If we take the mental construct away, there is no separate individual; these teachings say that when the mind is still, then we see that there is no such thing as a separate individual. Enlightenment does not involve simply the perception that the person is only a concept. It means that all conceptualization is ended, all images and representations in the mind, whether conscious, preconscious or unconscious, are eliminated, or at least not identified with. When this profound stillness of the mind is achieved, it is asserted, true reality is perceived, not by an entity which is a separate individual. The experience is one of unqualified Being, wordless existence, infinite and eternal. 

What ultimately needs to happen is for each of us to develop faith in ourselves, which means having faith in human nature. When we have that, we can’t help but have faith in all human beings. This does not mean blind trust. It means that you know for sure that every human being has an essential nature, even though it might be buried and a person might be acting out of ignorance or cynicism. It means that you give the other person a chance, that you allow the possibility that she can be kind and selfless, even though she doesn’t always act that way. It means that you know that such a quality exists in her and in you. The real battle is not with other people but within yourself. You don’t need to trust other people as much as you need to trust yourself. The meaning of faith is the certainty that your innate nature is good and supportive—it does not imply trusting other people or even trusting yourself all the time. It means that you know that there is a quality within yourself that is fundamentally trustworthy. That faith will help you persevere in the Work so as to make that quality more available and more permanent.

Reality has to become completely vulnerable, all the way to the utmost possibility of vulnerability. And when that happens at the very tip of development, at the ultimate apogee of evolution, you experience yourself at the utmost vulnerability, and you see you are everything, you are the nature of everything. So, if you go through total meekness, total weakness, total susceptibility and total vulnerability, leaving yourself at the mercy of everything, and if you allow yourself to be completely, totally at the mercy of reality, you realize you are the reality. The fact and the awareness of our vulnerability are part of what pushes us to realize that we are the reality. Because we are aware of our vulnerabilities, we don’t rest; we want to find complete security. We want to feel that we’re not vulnerable. We want complete invulnerability. And if you really look and find complete invulnerability, it is the supreme reality. You can find the supreme reality only through your human nature; you cannot find it through resisting your human nature. If you resist the vulnerability of your human nature, you’ll go backward in your evolution, becoming more like a rock or a crocodile. If you allow yourself to become vulnerable to your vulnerability, if you become more human, more transparent, more permeable, then you move forward in your humanity and become more human. And as we’ve seen, only the human being can move to the state of unity, because only the human can be completely vulnerable.

But interestingly, the students are rarely disappointed by where they eventually end up. This is not because the teacher is intent on bringing the students to some satisfying resolution of their questions. Quite the contrary. The teacher has no investment in any particular outcome of the inquiries and often encourages the exploration of some state or feeling that moves into more dissatisfaction or hurt or simply stays with discomfort. And, in fact, the students’ questions and issues are not always resolved. However, the outcome is satisfying because each student feels more in touch with the reality of his experience as a result of the inquiry. One of the fundamental truths of human nature seems to be that the soul relaxes and quietly rejoices whenever it moves closer to the truth of its nature, regardless of the content of that truth.

What we are exploring today is the quality of that life. What is the quality of interaction, the quality of existence, the quality of relationship, the quality of contact and experience, the quality of communication in your family, at your job, with your friends? That is what matters here for us. That is where this Work is useful. In this Work, our development is not a matter of going away from this life, nor of transcending it to depart for some spiritual domain. It is a teaching of how to live this life in a genuine way. The more we realize the true, essential elements of our inherent human nature, the more we can see and understand what there can be in life, how we can live, and how we can be, as human beings. Until then, we only know what we have heard or what we have seen, we do not know for ourselves. Neither is the Work here a matter of working on yourself simply to see through psychological issues so that you can realize certain states. That is not the point. The point is living. The point is manifesting your understanding and capacities in your life. If you are learning about love, and every session you go to you are experiencing all this wonderful love, yet you leave the room and your relationships with people are full of anger and resentment, your work has no fruition. It is a lie. If you come here and learn about peace, and then go home and live chaotically, your life will be full of agitation regardless of what you learn about peace. You are missing the point; what are you learning it for, then? It is not entertainment. This is not like going to a movie and going back home to resume the usual. A person’s development, or level of refinement, will manifest in the way he lives his life, and the way he relates to others.

This is why human beings can become embodiments of evil and destructiveness, even as they have the potential to be saintly, pure, and totally spiritual and selfless. To borrow the traditional terminology, the human soul has the potential of being either an angel or a devil. Most of us are somewhere between these extremes, with occasional excursions to one or the other. The struggle to balance the angelic side of our souls with the animal side lies at the heart of human nature. Much of our literature and art depicts this struggle as the quintessential human drama, the dilemma without which we are not human. This struggle goes on because human society as a whole has not found an effective way to harmonize these two dimensions of the soul. Actually, the presence of both the angelic and animal potentials is what gives human beings the possibility of developing heart. What we mean here by heart is the possibility of the transparency of the soul to her essential potential. We have heart when we have integrated our essential qualities to an extent where they affect our attitudes and actions. We are then able to be kind and loving, able to appreciate beauty and generosity, and are capable of creativity and selfless action. These reflections of our true nature are what we think of when we perceive someone as human. The wisdom traditions have recognized that a human being is mature and complete—that is, fully human—when the soul has integrated her essential nature fully and harmonized it with her animal potential. In other words, the struggle between the angelic and animal is characteristic of half-grown human beings, of incomplete human beings. This happens to be the station of the vast majority of humanity, but the complete human being, the being who is fully human, is one who has fully realized and integrated the two sides of the soul’s potential. 

We are interested in discovering how to live life in a way that is more human, more humane. We are seeking more value, more depth, more refinement in our lives, and this means becoming more human. It is in the very nature of human beings to be loving and gentle, and to have the capacity to enjoy and appreciate. So this Work is really a matter of uncovering or revealing these parts of us: our human capacities. These are not capacities you are going to be given or that you are just going to get. They are part of you. The Work is a process of revealing your human nature to yourself, so you can live increasingly in accordance with your essential nature. As you understand and realize the essential human values, your life will come to have a different meaning, as will your work, your relationships, and your family. You will be living your life, then, from a perspective completely different from the conventional one, although the external appearance of your life might be the same. The task is to live an ordinary life and be truly human at the same time. To be human obviously means more than just surviving, because if we just needed to survive, there would be no need for all this evolution. We could have stayed at the level of crocodiles, and survived pretty well. If you think your life is just about survival, you are missing the point of your whole life on earth. Survival is not a big issue for most people in our culture, although it still is in some parts of the world. To be human means to be able to participate in existence in a way that is not available to other creatures. Our evolution has a lot to do with refinement—refinement of our senses, refinement of our minds, refinement of our capacities. So if you come to this Work in order to find a job or acquire a boyfriend or a girlfriend or have children, you are missing the point. The majority of humankind already does these things; they do not need a work school like this to do them. I am not saying that these things are not important; they are the content of a human life, and as such, they are important and necessary. 

So my understanding is that being meek means being vulnerable. The meek are vulnerable. The meek are the truly human. People think of meek as weak, but we have seen here that what meek really means is being permeable, vulnerable, feeling, knowing, sensing, being truly human. You’re so vulnerable that not only can you block your vulnerability and eliminate your very human nature, but that same human vulnerability allows you to experience things that are more than human, beyond the human. This human vulnerability makes you permeable to the deepest nature of reality, to what is divine. And if you look at what we do most of the time about this vulnerability, this characteristically human quality, you’ll see that we’re constantly saying “no” to it. We’re constantly saying, “No, I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be that open, I don’t want to be that vulnerable—it’s scary, it’s dangerous, it’s threatening. I might be hurt, I might die, I might lose who I am.” One of the greatest fears about vulnerability is that if I’m vulnerable, I’m going to lose my sense of who I am. I’ll be so open to being influenced that I won’t know who I am. I’ll lose myself in the other person, or in nature, or in whatever. This is because vulnerability involves the awareness of no separation, the awareness of oneness.