On Being Drawn Beyond the Egoic
[Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2024.]
O Lover,
In the above work the Benedictine Bourgeault, drawing on the the work of the Trappist Keating in addition to two Discalced Carmelite scholar/mystics (Constance FitzGerald and Bernadette Roberts), explores the far reaches of the journey into You. In contrast to the unítas distinctiónis (“embrace of the distinct” or “two in One”) characterizing the vast majority of two millennia of Christian mystics (the Eckhartians and some Beguines excepted) with Juan de la Cruz providing a kind of canonical stamp, Bourgeault discusses a yet further ripening variously depicted as the “dark night of the self,” “ fusion nonduality,” “unity consciousness,” “no self,” and “ultimate Self.” (The “no self” term might remind some of the fateful title The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls by Beguine Marguerite of Porete who was burned by the Church in 1310.)
Why does any of the above matter? Why bother? The community of Jesus has always been vulnerable to a kind of reductional minimalism repeatedly preferring the doctrinal to the experiential, kataphatic staidness to apophatic unchartedness, individuated identity to any flirtation with deified absorption in You. Oxymoronically, I both am disposed toward such caution and yet experience You as drawing me powerfully beyond my hesitations. More specifically, I have long been aware of how much of my life, not excepting my life as a spiritual being, passes through the switchboard of my egoic self. The activity of experiencing You is something I seek, I want satiated, I savor, even as I paradoxically can fear the possible loss of that fortified I. My best intentions notwithstanding, prayer can drift toward ensnarement in my expectations, my assessments, my self-awareness. My efforts to escape this conundrum are themselves maddeningly egoic, my own agency much too small to free me from this ligature.
Is it then surprising, O Lover, that I hit on references like “no self” (Keating & Bourgeault) or unítas indistinctiónis (Bernard McGinn)? Can the Augustinian firewall between You as Creator and us creatures remain intact in the face of the confluence of the massive impact of the Incarnated One and our universal groaning for You (Rom 8:19-23)? Whether in this life or another, I long to be freed from this egoic centering which has both made my life possible and repeatedly fettered me. Far from being a mere intellectual exercise, that of which I write in this post is thus of vast existential import.
In the meantime, the shape of my faith remains that of desire: I long for You; I long to be awash in the gelássenheit (“releasement”) which is You. And amid this “meantime” I acknowledge that the fear of the loss of the I is slowly diminishing, and words like “whatever!” and “however!” are becoming new-found friends. It is still all about trust, and I trust You, O Lover, sans asterisk.
