A Wrench of a Vision

On a spiritual experience and its consequences

I had a spiritual experience, a vision, years ago.¹ In it, I was given the gift of feeling and knowing² two facts:

1. Love coheres reality.

2. Love—unconditional, infinite—is available to everyone, regardless of their station.

The comatose and the criminal are as loved as the saint and the steward. They need only to feel and know it.

This vision was like a wrench thrown in the gears of my morality.³ Since the experience, and I say this with no sense of hyperbole, I have struggled every day to live in a way that embraces those facts.

Even if granted a temporary stay in one's head and heart, such facts present many difficulties. We can outline these difficulties with questions: If love coheres reality, is it physical in the sense that the strong gravitational force is physical? Is this love a force, an act, or a field? Is it the product of a mind and will? Is it knowable in its details, or does it defy such part-or-whole thinking? If this love is available to all, why work to be better than others? Why judge or attempt to discern moral differences? Why act at all?

I lack answers to these questions. Any argument I could produce in response feels paltry and comical when compared to the power of the vision.⁴ The experience was just that: it was primarily an experience—not an idea, not an ideology. Despite my attempts to put the vision in a neat little box (such as a religious sect, or a physical practice), it seems to refuse to fit. The vision resists ordering, logic, subordination. It stands self-sufficient in its testimony.

But even though it is hard to "make sense" of the spiritual experience, it does not resist practicality. In fact, living with its facts has proven useful. And, in one light, life-saving.

I had this vision—which, if you wanted to be profane or mechanical, you could call a half-dream of chemical confluence—when I was in the throes of disease. Depression is an illness, and sometimes a fatal one. It is a cascade of physical symptoms, with traceable etiologies, and for which ameliorating medicines and therapies have been devised. But I also believe that depression is a soulful response to a loveless world. Civilization is neither explicitly nor effectively organized for the benefit of all, nor even many. Most people on Earth are barred from producing the conditions in which they would thrive. So depression is an irrational malady, yes—a numb and nihilistic madness, a corruption of perception and attention—but it is also a sympathetic, if not reasonable, response to a careless and broken world.

I experienced the vision while attempting to recover from the most dangerous depression of my life. In this state, beyond its message, two qualities of the vision felt shocking: the vision was incredibly clear, i.e. its meaning was plain, steady, and solid (rather than confusing, wavering, and hollow); and the vision was incredibly intense, i.e. I felt something (rather than nothing), and even an unprecedented pleasure, calm, and lightness. The vision reminded me that I could feel pleasure, that permanent numbness and hopelessness was not my fate, and that I could form and hold distinct ideas in my mind—three messages depression had censored for months. The vision was a proof of a future, of my future. It helped me wake each day. It helped me choose and work to live.

Outside the existential arena of illness, the vision has helped me feel sane and capable in a culture wherein broadcasting and judging powerless people's misdeeds is both a hobby and a catalyst for addiction. Social media's reductive and reactionary modes of communication bleed into life lived away from screens. But the vision and its two facts have encouraged⁵ me to practice being nonjudgmental, or, to decline invitations to form moral opinions.

What this practice has shown me is that when you less often form opinions about things, you less often want to form opinions about things—because it quickly becomes evident that forming opinions about things is not needed to live a good life.

We suffer today from a surfeit of judgment. Like any material produced too much and hastily, most judgments are at best useless and at worst poisonous. Practicing nonjudgment does not imply ceasing to think critically, but it stays the hand which wants always to wrap itself around a gavel. Or, more simply: a profound spiritual vision of infinite love helped me stop posting.

In an age in which many of us are inadequately stimulated, chronically diseased, and brainwashed to fight amongst ourselves, declining the invitation to judge allows you to save energy and time. With this energy and time, you can form ideas and opinions about subjects that actually matter.⁶ In our historical context, some of those subjects are: what one can actually change in one's life and environment; how to survive; how to improve your life and the lives of those about whom you care; who has power; what powerful people want; what powerful people are planning to do; and what powerful people already are doing.⁷ As you can tell, I believe that the most formidable obstacle to most people on Earth consistently enjoying their lives is neither material scarcity, nor environmental catastrophes, nor plain bad luck. Power is more potent and destructive than ever before, thus powerful people, considered collectively, are that obstacle.

This problem invites us to respond with sincerity, intelligence, and rigor. To improve our lot, we can't just stumble along. We must use our limited resources wisely. I’ve found it helpful to decline the invitation to judge all entities, and the affairs between those entities, who are not the few thousand heads of state, bankers, billionaires, and businesspeople dictating the use and fate of this planet. Such focus will help you feel sane, strengthen your ability to understand and work with others, and make you seem pleasingly and attractively relaxed at parties.

I enjoy the symbol of the wrench. It implies a human sabotaging a machine that destroys as it turns. To add my private color to this analogy: If the loveless gears of this world turn for the fuel of wasted lives, then let the machine halt upon the metal of generous love.

1. The language used to name and describe such phenomena is terribly inadequate. Take for example this construction: “I had an experience.” This is so bland! And even the word “vision” centers physical sight in a way that neglects the intuitive and internal qualities of these phenomena. The full truth and force of such a thing seems impossible to convey. Perhaps that is what signals its importance. Though unlike the fascists (who also love ambiguity), writers must try to be precise.

2. The same kind of verb, in this context. Simultaneous; inseparable.

3. Which was at that time an anarchist-flavored version of us vs. them. It probably still is, despite my frequent efforts.

4. Trust me: with many unpublishable words, I have tried.

5. More precisely: required.

6. Not an exhaustive list, of course.

7. This is not an exhaustive list. For instance, I’ve excluded aesthetic matters, but both bread and roses contribute to a good life.