Truth Beyond Reason

Breaking Free from the Prison of Justification

‘God has no why, but is the why of everything and to everything’
~ Meister Eckhart

When our choices depend on reasons and justifications, we remain half-alive, disconnected from the vivid movement of truth, beauty, and goodness as it flows through reality. The fact is that life—real life, true life—isn't reasonable. Things aren't true because of reasons, they're true because they're true. When we depend on reasons to move and orient we're at best functioning according to a facsimile of what's true. This facsimile is hopefully based on the best efforts of those who are attempting to express how truth 'works' through words and systems of justification—what Buddhism refers to as 'right view.'"

Or perhaps worse, we've adopted ideologies and superstructures that have low fidelity with the structure of reality, and then we're making choices that are more or less fully disconnected from how things actually work. We create suffering for ourselves and others because we're out of accord with the way things are.

The Architecture of Separation

At the most superficial level of the mind we have parts: discrete, separate sub-minds that operate according to reasons. They often function through the logic of justification: 'I don't want to feel this uncomfortable thing, so I'll behave in ways that structure reality to avoid feeling it.' This basic stance creates an adversarial relationship with reality and obscures the movement of truth as it lives in the world. Spiritual unfoldment involves deconstructing the justification network our parts operate from and accessing a deeper reality where a prior relatedness exists between all things.

In this prior relatedness, there is a thread of aliveness and truth that we can more and more live according to. This thread of alive truth does not operate according to reason, instead it operates according to direct knowing and revelation, according to truth and beauty and goodness and allurement. It operates according to value and love.

Love Beyond Reason

Consider our most intimate relationships: our dearest friends, our partners. We don't love them for reasons. We love them because we love them, because that's the truth. If somebody were to tell us 'I love you because of this discrete and specific reason,' we would feel disappointed. We would feel like 'well, that's not love. That means if that reason changed, you wouldn't love me anymore.'

Love operates beyond reason and justification. It flows from direct recognition. When we experience this in our closest relationships, we glimpse something fundamental about the unreasonable nature of reality - and the deepest truths of existence operate in this same unreasonable way.

The Freedom of Aimlessness

I remember my teacher at the monastery talking about someone who had trained with him for many years and eventually had a huge breakthrough. He described this person with such glee, such joy in his voice, saying they had been living for many years now "a totally aimless life." To the ego structure, this aimlessness can seem frightening—maybe I won't get what I want, maybe I'll lose control over my life, maybe I'll be taken advantage of, maybe I'll waste my potential, maybe I'll disappear altogether. These fears illuminate the justification network that is the prison of reason. The ego clings to direction and purpose because without them, it faces its deepest fear: that it isn't truly in charge.

But this fear reveals our fundamental confusion about desire itself. Our minds are under the illusion that we want something other than what reality is directly offering us. This confusion is the source of our suffering. Beneath our surface wants—the career achievements, possessions, and status symbols—lies a more fundamental longing: to be in intimate contact with what is. Our desire for a Tesla or prestigious job is actually a distorted expression of our deeper yearning to touch the living truth of existence.

Beyond the Rule of Reason

When someone embodies this way of being, they become inherently threatening to power structures that depend on networks of justification and reason. History shows us how societies have persecuted, imprisoned, and killed those who live beyond these controlling frameworks (for instance, Jesus). Such individuals cannot be manipulated into betraying what they know as true. They remain untouched by the collective currents of self-deception that maintain social control.

Being in relationship with such a person can challenge us deeply. At the monastery, many people believed my teacher was evil. He was not evil. Rather, many people experience life in such an upside down way that they can only perceive through their ideological frameworks and justification systems. Those who exist outside these systems and invite or even push others to break through them are easy to label as dangerous or evil.

The Movement of Faith

As we move beyond reason, a different kind of intelligence begins to guide us. Called by many names—vision-logic, intuition, inspiration—this intelligence increasingly becomes the foundation for our choices. A thread of alive, erotic truth emerges from the depths, and we find ourselves helplessly following its movement. Our relationship with life transforms as we shift from the mind's understanding to the heart's faith.

This faith is the heart's intelligence. Unlike reason with its endless justifications, the heart moves with its own inherent coherence. It knows directly. The heart is bound to no external logic and yields to no persuasion. It operates according to its own nature, with exquisite sensitivity to the contours of reality as they present themselves.

The Clarification of Desire

The clarification of desire is essentially a movement of reflection and direct inquiry into the architecture of justifications and reasons that we feel compelled and constrained by. When we do this inquiry, we see how much of our world, our justifications for why we are the way we are and why we do the things we do, is built on a system of avoiding feeling certain ways—avoiding feeling helpless, or avoiding feeling lost or alone.

Instead of feeling those feelings, we create elaborate systems of justification and reasons. We find ideologies that fit, that resonate with our compensatory patterns. We identify with them, find others who share our ideological structures, and then defend them against the onslaught of reality, which is always other than what we think.

This is no way to live. This is not life. This is a posture of ongoing defense and fear. It is not love. It is not truth. It is not beautiful. If we see ourselves in that way of being, we should be very afraid, and we should, as soon as possible, with as much urgency as possible, escape—get out, move beyond these constraints. For our sake, and for the sake of everybody we're in relationship with, and for the sake of the world, we must find a way of being beyond reason.

Work with me: I offer one-on-one guidance helping people develop secure attachment with reality through deep unfoldment work. If this resonates, explore working together