Dave Kashen argues that spirituality is direct experience, not inherited stories, and that identity is just a thought. He explains how meditation gives access to presence and peace, changing how you interact with others.
It has felt a lot more powerful to directly experience something than to believe a story that, you know, somebody else wrote. And so that in some way, for me, spirituality is just like this practice of like really looking at my direct experience of what's, what's occurring. Um, it's almost like the opposite of mythicism. It's like if I let go of believing all the things that I've been believing, what do I directly experience? Right? And identity, our identity is itself a thought. So, like, if I even let go of that, of this thought that, like, I'm this Dave Kashen guy with this, you know, history, and if I even let go of that thought, what do I directly experience? For me, that's been the path to what I call and people call spirituality. It's a sense of like, what's here when I let go of all the stories and all the thoughts? What's left over? And there is, I don't want to say something, but there, I experience an experience when I no longer am thinking and my mind does go quiet. And, uh, there's something that feels really, uh, profound about having that experience. And there's a depth of peace and aliveness and love that I feel that because I've sort of touched that through meditation, I have that touchstone and I can kind of bring it with me into my everyday more and more. So the more I meditate, the fine— the I find the more I'm able to come from these states of presence and love when I'm interacting with people, and that to me is a real benefit to going to the meditation gym, as you say, Andrew.
