“Yet do not misunderstand my words. I did not say that you must desire to un-be, for that is madness and blasphemy against God. I said that you must desire to lose the knowledge and experience of the self. This is essential…It is possible, of course, that God may intervene at times and fill you with a transient experience of himself. Yet outside these moments this naked awareness of your blind being will continually weigh you down and be as a barrier...just as in the beginning of this work the various details of your being were like a barrier to the direct awareness of yourself…See how necessary it is to bear this painful burden, this cross of self?”
—Privy Counsel Ch. 13
This issue of the self is one of the most difficult aspects of contemplative practice. Intellectually, we rebel at the notion that “self” is a problem because we cling to this concept so desperately. And even once we’ve made peace with the idea of losing the self intellectually, in practice it remains the last and greatest barrier to real contemplation.
It is also difficult because our understanding of human psychology has advanced to the point that we share a general consensus that a healthy sense of “self” is fundamental to personal well-being, and that not being able to perceive or honor appropriate boundaries with others can lead to a variety of emotional problems. Likewise, we imagine that if we lost the “self” we would cease to have emotions or even a personality. All of these misperceptions are rooted in a lack of understanding about the real nature of the contemplative experience.
Everyone has had a contemplative experience, whether they realize it or not, and the author comments on this when he mentions those transient times when we are filled with an experience of “God’s self.” It is not necessary to use theological language to identify these moments. We have these moments when we look up at the stars at night and are filled with a sense of awe at the majesty of the universe, or when we see the ocean and are struck speechless at its beauty, or we look into the eyes of our child and are overwhelmed by the enormous mystery of unconditional love.
In those moments, we do not cease to be, but we are lifted beyond the normal boundaries of our “self” and experience an interconnectedness that is far beyond it. Our self remains intact, but we are given a brief glimpse into the infinite ocean of being from which the self (and all other “selves”) emerge. This is the contemplative experience, and we know it well. Meditation or centering prayer practice is meant to nurture a deeper sensitivity to that reality beyond the self (which nevertheless contains the self), so that we live in greater, ongoing awareness of it.
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2 comments:
Ok, so I don't loose the self, instead I pull away from the reality of self. Yet, why would I want to do such a thing? After all, is it not the experiences I have perceived during my life, good and bad, that make the self I have come to know? How can leaving self behind make for a better self afterwards, if the self we are trying to improve has no part in such process?
Marco
Marco, this is good material for a long conversation with a good bottle of wine...let me just say for now (and I'm probably just going to make this more complicated) that you don't really lose the self at all. The self is not a problem. The problem of the self is that we cling to it so desperately, as if it were a reality of substance, separate from other types of "being," that we fear everything that threatens the self. When we rest in the silence of contemplative awareness, the self is just there, doing what it always does, but it doesn't cause a problem anymore. Clear as mud? Let's get that bottle of wine...
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