Experience Confers Cynicism, Not Wisdom

Wednesday, 16 April 2025, 10:53 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

With experience comes wisdom, we’re told. But it’s actually just the opposite. Generally speaking, the accretion of experience denies wisdom and leads to cynicism.

Thinking on this subject, a few days ago I read two of the most unintelligent sentences I’ve ever read. They attest to the necessity of negating the useless memories of prior experiences, which is the essence of authentic meditation.

The author writes: “If I went to Heaven, surely the first few days would be pretty great. But would I eventually walk past golden mountains and silver trees and crystal ships on crimson seas with the same nonchalance with which I walk past granite mountains / wooden trees / etc. today?”

It’s a shrunken mind and heart that speaks of walking past granite mountains such a state of dullness and habit that one is devoid of feeling beauty or wonder. Yet the writer cynically proclaims, “We’re not designed to be as delighted by the thousandth sunrise as the first.”

Apparently he believes we’re “designed” to be as insensate as he is. It’s an astounding statement of self-ignorance to write such blather, reflecting a small, contemptuous view of life and human life.

Intimating a dim awareness of how destructive such belief system is, he adds: “Still, it feels like there ought to be some virtue of innocence, some sense in which we try not to help along our own cynicism, or at the very least we don’t drag the more-naturally-gifted-with-innocence down with us.”

Yet that’s precisely what he and countless spiritually arrested people like him are doing. Innocence is destroyed in children, physically or online, not just through sexual or physical damage, but also through disparaging attitudes in adults. And if innocence is only for young children, it is destroyed in everyone.

Cynical old men inadvertently show the imperative, in this era of depressing news and algorithmic feeds, of learning how to clear the mind of detritus and open at least an auricle of the heart to feeling anew.

There is no method to meditation; prescribed and guided meditations are oxymorons, which sustain the separative efforts of thought. Whereas the movement of negation is an effortless state of attention that clears thoughts, memories and emotions away as they arise, renewing the mind and brain.

Through passive observation without the infinite regress of the observer, the brain effortlessly gathers attention. Unwilled attention in turn initiates the movement of negation, allowing the brain to fall deeply still, and ending the enervating habit of looking through the encrusted lens of cumulative experience.

It’s the stillness of thought as memory and experience that renews the brain, mind and heart, and gives one the capacity to see and feel beauty and harmony again, and be open to the nameless inviolability beyond thought. There is no progressive way—just via negativa.

Other than two unseen wild turkeys calling to each other nearby, and a few swallows skimming over the surface of the water, I saw or heard no animals until the end of the sitting beside the stream, after a meditative state had begun. Then there was a rustling in the grass directly behind me; I turned to see a full-grown deer on the other side of the sycamore.

The buck hadn’t seen me through the brush surrounding the tree, so I held still as it came around to the path along the bank above the creek. The deer’s eight-pointed antlers were still covered with felt, indicating that it was young, despite its size. It was only a couple meters away when it spotted me, but didn’t so much as flinch.

We stared at each other for some seconds, without a species barrier, much less as predator and prey. The deer ambled down the bank into the water and took a long drink. Then it walked across and stood in the shade of a tree along the edge of the creek for some minutes, before slowly climbing the bank.

I’ve always found the “fallen” man and woman idea rather absurd. But the notion that people once lived in a Garden of Eden, and then fell out of grace into sin because of original sin, still holds sway over Christians, and in a Rousseauian way, New Agers.

Probably a subconscious memory of our long and relatively harmonious period as hunter-gatherers gave rise to the Genesis fable. But Genesis is a children’s story, meant to account for how humans could have great spiritual potential, and yet be so egoistic and small as a rule.

Though it has yet to be accepted as common knowledge, neuroscience has shown that the self is a conditioned and constructed program, nothing more. There is no “Higher Self;” that is nonsense imported from the ancient East. Nor does “inter-subjectivity” resolve the crisis of man’s alienation from and fragmentation of nature, since it upholds the basic illusion of separate selves.

Through passive watchfulness, an involuntary movement of negation is initiated. Allowing it to grow within, the domination of the self as a program and operating system within the brain ends, and the conditioning of family and culture ceases operating, at least for some timeless period.

Then there is the experiencing anew of inviolability beyond the mind-as-thought and experience. Though there is no Designer, that’s what the brain is truly designed for.

Martin LeFevre

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Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Scoop Contributor

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.

His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

lefevremartin77@gmail