Spirituality Beyond the Egoic
O Lover,
Most of us begin movement into more intentional faith for reasons strongly laced with self-interest, whether to escape gehénna, address existential meaninglessness, or respond to aging anxieties. In the early phases this is all well and good, for the species is needy. What is not so good is that many religious practitioners never escape that egoic phase clutching the comfort and security of faith while the centrality of the “I” remains unchallenged. A veteran of this dynamic much of my adult life, I am now being drawn by You into new territory.
As starters, I am seeing more clearly how we of the devout are probably as egoic as the proverbial pagan. Whether in the (Protestant) first half of my life (sanctification, justification, discipleship, etc.) or the (Roman Catholic) second half (Sacraments, clericalism, correct belief systems, etc.), what Merton called the “false self” can be and often remains central. For example, to be stuck regarding sin and the need for forgiveness can be scrupulous, narcissistic, and self-absorbed, whatever the piety. I have experienced how self-centered climbing the ladder of the stages of spiritual development can be. Indeed, the very quest for unítas Déi may become compromised with a sanctified yen for merit and accomplishment. Juan de la Cruz burned into my awareness that NOTHING, least of all religion, is exempt from the possibility of being distorted by the fabricated self.
That “desire,” even for You, O Lover, might remain largely egoic, to say nothing of dualistic, is disturbing. If to long for You is already to possess You, in the words of Gregory the Great, the “doctor of desire,” are we not invited to disappear into indistinctiónis and simply revel in You rather than fixate on something more needing to happen? Is not the egoic temptation lurking throughout what we call spirituality? Have not some of the mystics modeled this movement beyond the scrambling and ever-striving self and then been dismissed or persecuted as “passivist,” “quietist,” “indifferent,” and/or “disinterested” by Catholicism’s “majority report”?
Need not this blog as well be assessed in terms of the above? Have I not pondered intermittently across this near-decade whether these hundreds of posts were not, among other things, an expression of ”I” fixation? How much gelássenheit has been evidenced? Must I not acknowledge that my “struggle,” the quality of me known to my intimates, is not particularly self-forgetful? Is not this decade-long blog a documentation of the same?
So, not unlike other recent postings here, I am finding myself drawn toward allowing You to disappear the remnants of my false self into The Self who is You. On this day, O Lover, the impact of such a shift looms as seismic: first, it is a step away from egoic dualism and toward experiencing Reality as Singular, this modeled by the Christ’s “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30); second, it moves away from perpetual striving toward being, living and resting in You, a state of equilibrium within the Singularity of You; third, it portends liberation from the fixation on the realizing of this or that or the other thing, for all that is necessary already is; finally, it offers a place for the You-in-me to be and do in the face of the multifaceted and catastrophic clouds converging.
This prayer, elicited by You who are our Grúnt (“Ground”), concludes with the edited words of John the Baptist to Your Christ: “[My awareness of You, The Self] must increase, but [my false self] must decrease” (Jn 3:30).
