In the past months, we’ve talked about our story and how it fits into God’s Story,
how redemption refines our story and how in today’s frenetic world, meditation provides
calm to our story. Today, I’d like to talk about the self and how it sometimes gets in the way until the real self, our
soul, comes through.
In our society, when we greet someone, we exchange our labels
(mom, dad, carpenter, engineer, teacher, college student). In order to live in
our world, feel comfortable and a part of society, we often create labels and
even take steps not to lose them; in fact, we often try to multiply all the things we are. By doing so, we feel like
we belong, we’re accepted and we have a purpose. These labels sometimes become attachments, something to hang onto. As
we expand our life, we see changes; our family grows, our working experience
expands. But, in reality, that is still a limited view of our self. You might say we only see a sliver
of what’s really going on, what reality
truly is.
In a recent post, we talked about meditation, where we
can get in touch with a greater reality, our soul. Some are afraid to venture
into this space; and yet, it offers more than we can ever imagine. We may think
it fantastic to Google something; but, right within us, we have the ability to
ask a question and receive the answer, specific to our needs. I think what
stops us is our fear and our belief that we are not worthy. Who could really
care that much about me? So, instead, the thought that we are not worthy gets
buried deeply and eats away at us and we become stuck and further attached to worldly
things for their make-believe comfort. I believe somewhere deep inside we
actually know why we stay attached to worldly things but hesitate to venture
into the spiritual realm.
Part of attachment
on earth is actually to find ways to separate – to find blame, to point fingers
or to make me right and you wrong. This keeps things nice and neat
and compartmentalizes everything so we stay in control (or so we think). But
all the finger pointing eventually
leads to one person – our self. In the end, we are the only ones who do not
love ourselves, who cannot forgive ourselves, who deceive ourselves, who betray
ourselves and who judge ourselves. No one does that to us, no matter how much
we seek to blame; we do it to ourselves; that is, until we accept God into our
lives, relinquish control and come to learn that God has loved us all along.
Gerald Sittser expresses this beautifully:
“Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton warned that
sooner or later every one of us will have to descend into the abyss and enter
the darkness. Schooled in the mystical tradition, he was especially attracted
to the writings of John of the Cross, who taught that passing through the ‘dark
night of the senses’ and the ‘dark night of the soul’ is both inevitable and
necessary in the life of faith. It is the only way to be weaned from all
earthly attachments, even religious, to mature in faith, and to surrender our
cherished – and imagined – control. It is a simple and easy task to live by
faith when light shines all around us and God provides ample evidence of his
presence, goodness and power. Then again, faith always comes easily when it
isn’t really needed, as love comes easily in romance. But such easy faith must
come to an end in order to become true faith, as romantic love eventually must
include the disciplined work of marital love. We must leave the mountain, where
all seems clear, and descend into the terrifying darkness below. Faith is not
faith when it sees, wills, and gets what it wants; it is not the same as
self-confidence, natural optimism or positive thinking.”
