We all live with some degree of self-deception, but that deception pales into insignificance when compared with the many selves we present publicly. This multitude of voices constitutes our public persona and varies greatly between social groups. More importantly, these public selves are all different from our “self-voice”, the voice we speak to ourselves in.
Now I want to be clear, I’m not saying that talking with different people in different ways is in and of itself dishonest or lacking in integrity. It’s human and has important social utility. My question, however, is this: Isn’t it strange that we rarely (if ever) talk to ANY other human being using our self-voice? Particularly when those moments when we get closest to doing so are often the most intimate moments we share with one another?
We can attempt to rectify this non-ritualistically by simply trying to be more open and honest in our day-to-day relationships and to allow our words to flow from our core, which as Thanatists, we have no reason to be ashamed of. This is useful, but it can only take us so far. Putting that commitment to the ultimate test on a regular basis, however, ensures that we have the opportunity to see just how guarded we typically are. The ritual to ensure this level of honesty is what I call “free flow”.
Free flow is a ritual between two or more people where each person agrees to use the same voice that we typically use only with ourselves for a set period of time. This may sound easy, but I assure you it is not. Even distinguishing the “other-voice” we use when talking to others from the self-voice we use when talking to ourselves is extremely hard. With practice however, we can learn to make this distinction and even find the courage to use our self-voice in front of another person.
Obviously, you want to try this out first with someone you really trust. You can start by first meditating on death and allowing it to free your inner voice from its fear of the other, as well as opening yourself up to receive the other as they are, without judgment. After this, each person gets a set period of time (perhaps 5 minutes to start), where they simply speak their inner dialog out loud in front of the others. The others sit in receptive silence, as they work to see through their own reflection into the mind of the speaker.
You don’t have to try to uncover the other person’s deepest darkest secret or reveal your own. The objective is just to be the you that you are with yourself in front of others. You may be nerdy, angry, silly, sexy, all, or none of the above. The point is, we just don’t get to be with each other very often without socially moderating what we’re saying, and by creating a safe space, we give ourselves the opportunity to practice both freeing our inner voice and receiving the other without judgement.
Speaking freely is not easy. You may find that you sit with the other in silence. If this is so, receive their silence without judgement. Once the speaking begins, you may hear things that surprise you. If you look deep within though, on some level, that which is spoken was already known. Speaking and hearing are something we think we do all the time, but by removing the constant back and forth of our daily talk, we create a space for speaking with each other in a new authentic voice and fully hearing the other for the very first time.
As I shared earlier, my journey to Thanatism began with a prayer. I made a promise to God that I would never speak to another that which I was not sure of myself. I had come to evangelical Christianity through a youth pastor in my early teens, and although by early college (where I was studying to be a pastor) the journey of truth I undertook with God had led me away from an actual belief in the particulars of Christianity, I still valued much of what it had taught me.
One particular practice that I’d like to bring into Thanatism is that of the testimonial. This is one of Christianity’s most ancient and well documented practices, where believers share their conversion to the faith. It’s particularly ancient and well documented because of course, when a faith is new, everyone is a convert, and it is in fact these stories of conversion that make up much of the New Testament. Accordingly, I’d like to share with you my testimony of how I became Thanatist One.
Losing Christianity was a critical moment in my life. I realized that I had been wrong and led others astray. Because of this, I undertook a rigorous journey through the history of human thinking about the world, largely through the lens of Western Philosophy. I started at the beginning with the pre-Socratics, and ended up working on my Ph.D. in a department that specialized in postmodern philosophy.
As someone who had personally undergone the destruction of one worldview and had traced the historical development of humanity’s story about this world, the postmodernists, who exposed in great detail the contingent and all too human motives that shape our view of the world made a lot of sense to me. There was one claim in particular that began to resonate with me–we, as humans, can never know truth.
This isn’t a statement about the current limitations of human knowledge, but rather a deeper statement about knowing itself. Essentially, my thinking at the time was, since we can’t know anything outside of the stories we tell ourselves from our own limited perspective, claiming that one perspective or story is truer than another is a meaningless statement. Further, since all knowing is but a perspective, truth itself is a statement without meaning. I’m not going to go into an analysis of how good or bad this somewhat naive interpretation of postmodernism was, but what I can say is that it was the happiest philosophy I have ever held, and that if I were writing a faith based on it, it would be a much easier sell than Thanatism.
This philosophy is perfectly suited for today because it frees us from holding others to account as well as freeing us from any judgement. Because it views each person’s story as an equally valid human expression of the truth, it promotes the respect for every perspective so prevalent in contemporary moral thinking. Further, it maximises personal freedom by freeing us from any claims our contingent pasts might lay upon us. Better yet, since there is no truth by which our personal beliefs can be judged, nothing can limit what we choose to believe. In essence, we have no obligation to assess or correct any other, and no other has any claim on us.
Given I saw this as the end of philosophy, I decided to leave my Ph.D. program to attack that which had always been the largest constraint of my personal freedom–economic necessity. The plan was to become an entrepreneur and create enough personal wealth that I could do whatever I wanted for the rest of my life. Although this is a common dream for young people today, in that pre-internet time, I literally learned what an entrepreneur was from a book I checked out from the library, and no one knew what I meant when I described myself as such.
I moved to a new city and started my first company. Although entrepreneurship isn’t an easy life, it suited me and, given my philosophical outlook, I felt utterly free. And yet I didn’t. One time back in graduate school, as I was describing my new carefree philosophy to a colleague, she claimed my philosophy was bankrupt because it failed to account for the tragedy of life. I thought her sentiment was utter rubbish at the time, and yet it stuck with me. At some point, I concluded that the tragedy in my relativistic philosophy was that, even though defining our world is so important to us as humans, there was no truth we could ever know. A good enough answer, I thought, but one that didn’t fully settle that churning in the back of my mind.
One day, I was reading a book by a medical doctor who was explaining how our bodies die. I can’t remember why I had picked up the book, perhaps it was just morbid curiosity, but after putting it down one afternoon, the question of where the tragedy in my philosophy resided came up again, and I remember saying to myself so clearly that I might have even spoken it–“The tragedy of life isn’t that we can never know. It’s that we already know.”
The knowing that I was referring to, was that we know that we’re going to die. This truth ripped the protective veil of my happy relativism from my face, exposing the face of a frightened and cowering child. I knew. I had never known something so fully in my entire life. I am going to die and cease to exist forever. The reason why my philosophy of not knowing had made me so happy was because, by eliminating the possibility of truth, it had nearly eliminated from my life that one tragedy that haunts us all–death. I was using the artificial tragedy of “never knowing” to in fact hide from that which I had always known–I am going to die.
It took me about a year to unpack this personally. During that year though, death ripped through layer after layer of lies I had been telling myself in order to hide from the realities of this world. As a result, my entrepreneurial career changed. It became less and less about securing my personal freedom and more and more about using capitalism to change this world for the better, and I spent the next 20 years trying to do just that.
I will repeat here the simple rule of entrepreneurship I learned over the next 20 year that I expressed earlier–if you want to create a successful company, don’t try to change what people care about, rather make it easier for them to do what they already want. As you can probably tell from the sentiment above, I didn’t manage to change the world through capitalism, and although I did manage some degree of financial freedom, ultimately, I never created the great business that would set me, or this world, free.
In lieu of this, I’ve spent the last two years creating an economically sustainable place of relative peace for me and my family. As a precondition of giving up on my world-changing ambitions, however, I required that this new venture afford me two additional opportunities. First, it had to give me some free time to write after the first year. Second, it had to create a place of sanctuary for those who might want to join us. The idea was that what I wrote would serve as a beacon for those who might want to rethink ourselves and our world, and that the place we’ve built would give us the opportunity to come together and meet. What you’re now reading is the beacon, and we have in fact, created a pretty good place (a tropical resort actually) where we can begin to meet one another.
And that’s my testimonial. I found a faith at a relatively young age that taught me to appreciate the truth and my responsibility to the world. I eventually discarded what was untrue about that faith, and sought personal freedom in a relativistic worldview. In that pursuit, I eventually discovered that I could never be truly free until I honestly faced that which I feared most. And after failing to create a better world through our most powerful existing social structures, I’ve decided to write a beacon to draw together a few other people who might be willing to take a shot at creating a better world through personal transformation.
If you think you might want to join us in this experiment, I encourage you to reach out with your own story at thanatism.org.
Of all the spiritual disciplines, you might be most surprised to see prayer in the Thanatist arsenal. Afterall, death isn’t likely to answer our supplications. Prayer, however, is more than asking for things and the asking is more than receiving. When we pray, we first acknowledge a higher power. Death is certainly that. We acknowledge that we are not entirely in control of our lives. Death will concur. By reaching out and acknowledging our weakness, we set our proper place in this world.
Further, when we ask for something to become true, we are naming our care. Although death won’t intervene for us in any supernatural way, a key component of Thanatism is accepting that life is a choice made daily. When we name that which we care for, we set our intentions for the day. In naming those things we care about, we also separate those cares which we cannot control and must release, from those upon which we must take action to realize.
Prayer is also a time to give thanks. Although this world is indifferent to our own happiness, it yet still bestows blessings on us daily. We have created so much for each other in our modern world, and yet we so often focus only on the failings of our fellow humans. By giving thanks for all that we are as humans and all that we have, we remind ourselves that life is a gift and that both those around us and the earth itself give abundantly.
Another important component of prayer is that of asking for forgiveness. As Thanatists, we are obligated by the truth, but we shall fail in the truth sometimes. We may deceive ourselves about our motives. We may deceive others for personal gain. We may choose to flee in the face of adversity rather than face our fears as we know we must. Failing is part of being a human, and as humans we need a practice where we can release our failures out into the world daily. We do this both to name them and acknowledge our weakness, as well as to heal from the pain that failure causes us.
Prayer isn’t just about our concerns either, for having been freed from our self-centeredness, we know that there are many needs greater than our own. We must pray for others. We pray for others because we know, even in their own weakness, they are all we shall ever know or be known by. When’s the last time you took the time to name those who you care about? Just saying their names? When’s the last time you asked those who you’ve named what they need help with? Prayer helps us step outside of our personal world of care and to extend our intentions to others.
Finally, Thanatism is not a personal philosophy, but rather a faith to be celebrated with others. Although our personal prayers help us to set our intentions, give thanks, release our failings, and extend our care to others, when we give voice to these same supplications in front of others, they become real. Naming our care in front of others creates an obligation to act. Giving thanks in front of others gives us a chance to acknowledge their roles in our lives. Asking forgiveness in front of others is both humbling and can mend hidden wounds. And praying for others in their presence affirms publicly that we care. Finally, by praying together for this world, we set a communal intent to extend our care beyond that which we currently are.
As Thanatists, we are not too proud to pray. We of all of earth’s people know our weakness. Reach out daily to acknowledge your limitations. Speak your care into the world to free that which you cannot control and to steel yourself in action for that which you can. Give thanks for your daily blessings. Name those you care about, for they are all you will ever know. And let us pray together, so we might be more accountable, humble, and unified as a people toward our common cause.
One practice that I’ve developed to help me become a better Thanatist is what I call the “death trip”–a simple, short meditations that helps bring a particular aspect of our own mortality’s healing power to our minds. These can be generic meditations on our own mortality, or they can be designed to elicit certain powers of our mortality–destroying the ego, being present, or resetting.
I’ll share a few death trips below, but I want to use this as an opportunity to make something clear about Thanatism–Thanatism isn’t mine; it’s ours. I’m using these posts as a way to get things started, but there is much work to be done and it will take all of us to do it. We can do much better than the death trips I’ll share. In fact, given the multimedia tools at our disposal, I can only imagine what we might come up with. As your own practices develop, I hope you’ll consider contributing them.
Only Now
Think back. Think back to your first memory and bring it forward in your mind. Likely you aren’t sure if it’s your first, but that sort of forgetting is part of what you are. Can you visualize yourself clearly? For me they are just wisps of reconstructed thought–crouching on the stairs with a friend looking through the banister at the babysitter below and feeling devious, an image of my friend’s rubber mouse and a longing to possess what wasn’t mine.
When’s the last time you brought these thoughts to mind? Where is that child? What did it feel like to be that person who knew nothing outside of the small world she was born into? What was he looking forward to? Did she have regrets? Was he happy? Is she you? If you can’t answer these questions, who can? If you don’t think about them, who does? Is that child alive today or is he already gone?
Now imagine your resurrection into an eternal life. Spend some time adjusting. Now what? Perhaps you’re omnipotent and can summon forth whatever your mind can conceive. Perhaps you start by meeting with every other human who has ever lived. How long did you spend with them? Do you know them completely? Are you really still human when you’re done?
Now venture forth to every planet. Every star. Every feature of the night sky visible and beyond. Time is not a concern. What happens when you have done everything? What are you? Perhaps it’s time to stop. But there is no stopping. You are eternal. Stopping does not exist. Ends do not exist. You have eternally just begun.
Do everything you’ve just done again–and again–and again. You’re no closer to the end than you were before. You’re just at the beginning. Again and again. No closer to the end. Again and again. What have you become? It doesn’t matter, you’re still at the beginning again. Keep going and going and going. And when you’ve reached the end, start again and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. It’s just the beginning. It doesn’t stop there. It doesn’t stop ever. You never stop. You can never stop. You are eternal.
Now come back to you. Feel your breaths. Remember your first love. Your life is a precious few seconds in the eternal. Think of everything you’ve accomplished. Think of everything you want to become. The whole sum of who you have been and will ever be is just an instant in the eternal. And when those breaths stop, in an instant of the instant that is the totality of you, you will never be again. And when everything you have known on this planet is gone, when our earth, our sun, and everything humanity has ever known exists no more, it will just be the beginning of an eternal nevervoid of not you.
The eternal will remain–the eternal not you. It will never end. It will continue and continue and continue. It does not stop. It is always a beginning–even should the universe come to an end. You do not exist there in the Nevervoid. It does not stop. It continues. It is the eternal. It is the eternal not you and it will soon begin. You will not see the end. You will not be, but for the instant you are. You are now, friend. Nothing more. You are now, friend. Nothing more.
Automaton
Forget. Forget it all. The thoughts of what you have to do today. Those are gone. That person exists no more. Your past, your memories, they are no longer yours. That being is dead. All that it was, has been washed away with it.
Forget. Forget more than just you. Forget it all. You don’t know what it means to be a human. You’ve never fallen asleep, eaten a meal, or opened your eyes. You’ve never held a phone, ridden in a car, or used a microwave. You don’t know anyone. You don’t even know what it means to know another. You’ve never had a conversation, smiled at another person, or held a hand. You’ve never seen another human. You don’t even know what you look like. If you looked in a mirror, what sort of miracle would you see?
You are a new human. This is your first moment, your first day. You have no past. You have no future. You have no connection with any other. You’ve just been created and dropped into this world, at this time, and all you have to do is begin to be.
Focus on your body. Feel gravity pulling down on your arms. What does it feel like? Slowly, just barely move your arm up. Do you feel the resistance? Are you holding something in your hand? Focus on your finger tips. Do you feel them or what they are touching? Why haven’t you felt them before?
Now take a deep breath. Do you feel the pressure in the center of your body? Visualize your diaphragm pulling down. Visualize the vacuum it’s creating below your chest that pulls air into your lungs through your mouth and nose. Feel the blood vessels absorbing your oxygen rich blood. Feel the blood being pulled from your lungs into your heart. Feel it forcefully ejected again and again to the rest of your body.
Now think of the you that’s doing this thinking, the voice that’s talking to you inside. As you read these words where are they going? Physically? Try to feel the center of this you in your big toe. Were you able to do it? How about at the point of your right elbow? Can you imagine it there? Now try something different. Try to feel the you that is thinking this slightly above and behind your eyes. Is that easier to feel? Can you feel the words and the voice, there in your head?
It’s possible because that’s where you are. You’re feeling your brain at work. You’re feeling you for what you are. A body. A body that takes in air to function. A body that pumps each breath through the blood within. A body that takes in light through the transparent membranes of its eyes and can sense the rhythm of the air through tiny bones in its ears.
Go ahead and smile. Feel the muscles tightening around your mouth as they lift its corners. It’s okay to be a body. You’re a miracle in action and this journey has just begun.
Care
Feel your mind reaching out. Feel it sorting through impressions, memories, hopes, fears. When it latches onto something, you have found care. Don’t try to control your mind right now. Let your care run free. Where does it land? How does it make you feel? Is it an object of your choosing or does the object of your care choose you?
If you feel unsettled or unhappy, where did your care go? If it’s found a destination, name it. Say it out loud. That word is the source of worry. When care lands on fear, we worry. If you feel the cloud of concern, but your care won’t reveal its source, you are anxious. Let your mind speak to you. Let it speak until it reveals the source of your fear. Hold that object in your mind, and let your mortality wash over it. What does death have to say? The object of your fear is temporary, just as are you. You have no ability to maintain that fear in the face of death, for death comes for all. Death is the end of fear.
Letting go. This is the first step to true freedom. Freedom comes from caring, and the first step to caring is letting go. Let go of that which you hold so tight. Let go of that which you fear to lose. Let go of that which you strive for so hard that it makes you sick. Choose to let go. Choose to set your care free. Hold up the sick object of its affection to death and let death take its toll.
What if you don’t care? What if your care is broken? What if you let it go and it returns empty? Care that is too often denied will retreat. It hides. It turns within. It feels disgust. Sick care cannot choose, until it has been reawakened.
Death teaches us that we have but one life to live. To live is to care, but how can a creature who no longer cares be redeemed? Your care needs to discover its true nature again. It needs to be drawn out of you. To begin its redemption, just reach out. Not metaphorically, but with your hand, reach out. The object doesn’t even matter. Just reach out and touch.
Feel the contact of the other against your skin. Let your fingertips brush against it. Feel the rough. Feel the soft. Feel the wet. Feel the warmth or the cold. Name what you feel. Round, sharp, delicate, squishy, grainy, prickly, hard. Describe that which you touch until words begin to fail you, and then describe it more.
Move now. Find another object. Touch it. Feel it. Describe it. Find another. And another. And another until you’re forced to leave your place where your care has been trapped to find another object to touch. Walk, ride, run until you can’t touch anymore and then find yet another object to touch.
Finding. This is the second step to true freedom. Freedom comes from caring, and the second step to caring is finding. Touch the world until it touches you back. If you touch the world enough, you shall find your care.
Finding your care is not the end though. You’ve gone out. You’ve touched until you couldn’t touch anymore. You found the object of your care and you named it. You spoke it out loud, but did anyone hear?
Death teaches us that no one will ever know us except those with whom we share this world. A care, once found, is an isolated thing until it is shared. Your care isn’t truly free if it’s trapped inside of you. Ah, but the other. The other can cause pain with a single glance. The other must be feared. So we let this go as well. We let go of the glance of the other. We hold it up to death and let it wither in the dark. And just as we found our care by touching indiscriminately, we find our other by sharing without expectation. We share, not for the other, but rather to nurture our care.
Sharing. This is the third step to true freedom. Freedom comes from caring, and the third step to caring is sharing your care with others. Let it run free amongst the others until the sideways glances turn to interest. If you share your care freely, you won’t need to find your people. They will find you.
Letting go. Finding. Sharing. What more is there to life? Such a life of caring and sharing is indeed grand, but care is not for you alone. Not everyone has been able to let go. Not everyone has found their care. There are others, just like you, who keep their care to themselves out of fear.
Seek these people out. If they cannot touch, touch them. If they cannot find, show them what you have. If they are afraid to share, listen. Draw forth their care into the vacuum of your being.
Caring for. This is the fourth step to true freedom. Freedom comes from caring, and the fourth step to caring is caring for others. A world of one caring being isn’t a world. If your care burns bright for the world to see, but others fail to shine, it is still a world of darkness, but if you care for others, this world shall glow with a white hot heat.
Surely this must be the end. What more can there be than a world full of care. What more can there be than a world full of sharing. What more can there be than a world where we all show our care for one another? There is nothing more. And although that’s all that care can offer, it is not the end.
Ending. This is the final step to true freedom. Freedom comes from caring, and the final step to caring, is letting it go. Find your care and set it free. Show your care to others. Care for others until their own care is set free. Revel in the caring world you have chosen to create, but also know that your care shall one day end. Only then, when you accept the end of your care, shall you finally be free.
The power of Thanatism is that, in an instant, it can create a new mind. It is a belief that is so core to the rest of our beliefs, that once accepted and truly experienced, it rips through all of our other beliefs so thoroughly, that it can fundamentally change who we are.
Having said that, we are much more than what we think or believe. We are fascinating and unique combinations of our biology and personal histories. We’ve “been” these things that have been built up over our entire lives much longer than we’ve been Thanatists, and because of this, they still have a huge impact on who we are. That’s one reason why if we want Thanatism to be more than just a one time insight and would like it to rather live and grow into something powerful enough to change us and this world for the better, it’s critical that we develop the practices to teach and train both of those more ancient parts of ourselves.
There are other reasons as well. As I explained in Death and Ourselves, in Thanatism, death serves the role of the “existential tool” that gods in most faiths play. Like all of these existential tools, death works because it wrenches us away from our day-to-day thinking to remind us something important about ourselves. It can do this because it is so utterly foreign to our normal daily thinking, but this foreignness, which is the source of its power, is also its greatest weakness. As humans, we’re relatively simple creatures. We’re fascinated by that which is directly in front of us. This means that unless we develop daily practices to remind us of our mortality and what it means for our lives, it won’t have the daily impact we need it to in order to transform our lives.
Worse, death is even harder to make present than traditional existential tools because, not only is it foreign, it is also sad and terrifying. Once again, we’re relatively simple creatures. Our brains have evolved to turn away from things that we don’t like–in fact, that’s almost what those feelings of sadness and terror are by definition–aversion reactions. Death is so powerful as a focus of faith because it possesses these characteristics, but it also makes our daily practices all the more critical.
Beyond this, and perhaps most importantly, the practices that will follow aren’t just daily rituals to help Thanatism transform you. We shall also discuss practices that bring us together. As I’ve explained before, Thanatism isn’t a philosophy of life, it is a faith, and as such, one of its most exciting possibilities is that we might be able to experience it together.
Worshiping together is important for all faiths, but particularly so for Thanatism because as Thanatists, we each allow death to destroy our personal immortality projects. Although, in sum, these self-centered fantasies do a great deal of harm to our relationships with ourselves, others, and our society, they also provide us meaning. Because of this, once we’ve exposed the ever-me as a fantasy, we’re left with a void, and as I’ve tried to suggest, what fills that void most naturally and most meaningfully is our ability to build deeper and richer relationships with each other.
With Thanatism, like with all faiths, there is something uniquely powerful and exciting about the moment of conversion. Because of this, we naturally see the daily practices of faiths as the boring part. This sentiment is entirely fair and I encourage you to bask in the afterglow of your new mind as long as life will allow. Having said that, if you want that new mind to last, I encourage you to explore, adopt, and even help us as a community develop these practices that are the only way to transform Thanatism from a moment of insight into a new way of life.
