I was listening to a dharma talk this morning and the speaker was discussing “dependent arising”. Her example she gave of dependent arising was about a glass. She said that a simple vessel, a glass, could be used as a drinking glass or could be used as a flower vase. There was no physical difference from glass to glass between the two applications. When the glass is used as a vase, however, we think of it differently because it might get dirty in ways that a glass wouldn’t when being used as a drinking glass. This would lead us to perceive the glass as a vase because that’s what we saw it being used as, that’s what we conditioned ourselves to think. The same would hold true in reverse if the glass were always used for drinking. However, if somebody we knew and loved were violently assaulted by somebody smashing a glass over their head, our perception of the glass might change yet another way. We might see it as a weapon, or it may remind us of something violent and frightening.
The point is, I believe, that the world we see, how we define who we are and what we interact with, is not objective. It is dependent upon what we have previously experienced. Our entire stream of consciousness arises in response to what we have previously experienced, even down to whether we think of something as dangerous or sustaining, ugly or beautiful. While this is a Buddhist teaching, it brought to mind something about my life as a Witness and that is my attitude towards “the world”.
When I was a Witness, I was quite certain that the people outside of my religion were unimportant at least, dangerous at most. My perception of a schoolmate, teacher, even relatives like my grandpas, grandmas, uncles and aunts, was colored by this idea because they were worldly. If they were going to die at Armageddon anyhow, likely, then I better not get to know them too well, better not care about them too much. My feelings about my friends and family were not arising out of how much I loved them, they were arising out of the beliefs I was taught, the belief that I should care about them, but only so much.
It’s strange how that conditioning works in the long run. Even after I left the religion, after I no longer believed that so-called “worldly” people were dangerous or to be avoided, I still found that this idea of them would arise at the deepest subconscious emotional levels despite my actual thoughts. I could allow myself to love somebody, to accept them, to make them a part of my life, but there was always something held back unless they were a Witness or formerly a Witness. As long as this kept happening, I couldn’t ever really think of myself as worldly either, because my sense of who I was and my place in the world is dependent on my relation to others and if I couldn’t feel an emotional bond to other “worldly” people like I could with Witnesses then my inner self identified as a Witness (an atheist-Buddhist-Witness, but still a Witness in the same way that I’m Minnesotan or that I’m 5’8“, just a part of who I am, not what I believe).
Four years into this whole new life (I’m four years old! Yay!) I have found that my bond to anything and everyone JW is weakening. As I spend more time with the awareness of this perception and where it comes from, as I spend more time thinking and talking about it, it fades and a new perception arises. As time and experience with my new life collect up their stores in my mind, my intuitive sense of who is my clan, who is my tribe, has drifted and shifted. I feel different connections towards some people I’ve known my whole life and I feel new relationships with people I meet on a daily basis. I don’t suddenly feel bonded to all the ”worldly“ people, not at all. I don’t really feel like ”one of them“, but that’s really because I no longer perceive that there is a such thing as ”worldly“. By lumping the whole of humanity into a single class that was ”them“ instead of ”us“, my mind was completely unprepared for all the varieties of connections, all the different tribes that make up even the population of the bus I’m riding right now.
You see, there are no ”worldly“ people. They are not united by creed, color, culture or anything else. I always intellectually knew this but it was also a useful mental shorthand to just divide the world into ”worldly“ and ”in the Truth“. This mental shorthand was buried so deep in my brain that it kept me from ever developing the subtle abilities required to figure out how to find friend and foe and family in the world at large. Only over time can I feel the compass drifting as the clarity of the previous position becomes fuzzier and fuzzier.
Sometimes this means that I don’t feel connected to anyone at all. This includes my son and my wife. Sometimes there is a kind of numb feeling inside that makes me feel completely clanless and clueless about where I belong in the world. Fortunately, this is rare. Fortunately I usually feel a real connection to the people that make up my daily life and I keep trying to push myself to expand that circle, to connect to more people regardless of their backgrounds and based on who they are. It’s surprisingly difficult, but I’m learning and I’m getting better at it. I think that psychologically this whole emotional disconnectedness is one of the hardest parts about joining the world after a lifetime as a Witness. Am I the only one with this experience? From looking at other XJWs I’m fairly certain I’m not, but I can’t be sure.
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