Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

inevitability of our mortality with equanimity. We can live with grace and dignity. We can die with the knowledge of a life lived well. We can be at peace with ourselves and with others. We can find home in the connections with body, nature and cosmos. All of this, I’d suggest, is within our grasp and is worthwhile. All of this must be done through narrative. We’ve seen in this work that even our most cherished viewpoint of our own consciousness is a contested space! There might be no ‘true self’ — no authenticity. So this, if you like, is a fourth paradox — we think we see the world as it really is, but actually we only live in stories that we embody. Everything else is abstraction.

The Mountaintop Experience

There are a great many ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ experiences reported by people of all faiths and none. There is something — perhaps a brain-state, or perhaps something genuinely spiritual — that is often called the mountaintop experience. It is a trance-like state, where the world is experienced as One — a harmonious and joyful condition of interbeing. The person having this experience loses, for a time, any sense of self — feels as if they are part of everything — feels out of time — feels they are seeing the universe from the perspective of eternity. A God’s eye view. The mountaintop experience has been described as: ‘Heightened awareness, positive affective states (including a sense of elation or serenity, and lack of fear and anxiety and a sense of appreciation) and a sense of connection (towards other people, nature, or the world in general).’ There are sometimes visions of symmetrical shapes that contrast with

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