21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

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particularly well because the two ‘sides’ of the duality are so fiercely contested.

The West has been unfortunate (I think) in that spirituality has been associated with an abstract god, who in turn seems to be completely divorced from the created, manifest world. Perhaps this is why all talk of mystery can so often be rejected out of hand, as it seems to be so easily associated with this abstract faith. By contrast, I want to suggest that mystery is our constant companion — whether someone claims to be an atheist, an agnostic or a believer. To believe in mystery usually still means to acknowledge some kind of spiritual life. But at the moment there is a serious disassociation between the ideas of what makes for a spiritual life on the one hand and how our lives are lived in the world on the other hand. It is a very different thing to pay lip service to the notion of all things being spiritual and actually to live our lives as if this is the case. But I think the reason for this is that the kinds of spirituality on offer are often not ones that acknowledge mystery at their heart. I think that if truth, goodness and beauty were seen as all residing in mystery then there is a place for everyone to have faith. It is a faith that is lived out by trying to make truth goodness and beauty manifest in the world. I see that as genuine spiritual practice.

Past, present and future are likewise just convenient ways of carving up reality. In a sense, time does not exist. We divide ourselves up by thinking about what we would like to be in the future, or things that we would like to achieve. Again, whilst this is helpful in terms of

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