The Incredible Shrinking Ego: Trading Spiritual Suicide for a Structural Software Update
The gurus repeatedly uses the language of death. Death of ambition. Death of gratification, of desire, of the self. But notice that after all these deaths, something remains. What remain are perception, curiosity, language, conversation, recording podcasts, writing books, earning money. That suggests these "deaths" are of course metaphors rather than literal eliminations. What dies is not the capacity but a certain interpretation of the capacity. For example, ambition may cease to mean "I must become somebody." But it can continue as "I want to understand." Those are psychologically very different.
This is one reason Baruch Spinoza offers a more biologically plausible picture than contemplative religions. For Spinoza, striving itself is not the enemy. Every living thing strives. That is its nature. The question is whether striving is guided by confused ideas or adequate understanding. Nothing has to die. It has to become more intelligible.
Also the slogan to stand with open arms and take what life brings is just a slogan that has no real application in practical life. You care very much what arrives. You prefer reality rather than comforting illusion. You look for better explanations rather than worse ones. You want to understand the mechanisms of life rather than narratives. That are still a preferences. It is still a form of striving. The difference is that it is not striving for psychological completion but for greater contact with reality. That is a healthier and more realistic ideal.
The deepest transformation is not saying, "Whatever comes, comes but "Whatever comes, let me see it more clearly." We want our lives to be easier, not indifferent That does not require the death of your wolf, your survival force, your curiosity, or your work. It only asks that they become less attached to fantasy and more responsive to what is actually there. Instead of "the death of ambition," acept "the gradual loss of confidence that ambition can permanently solve the human condition." That is a much smaller death. But it may also be the only one that is psychologically possible.
