To Have, To Do, To Become, To Be

The Ladder of Enlightenment

“There is nothing that testifies more clearly to perfect love than trust.”— Meister Eckhart

“The world is a closed door. It is a barrier. At the same time it is the way through.”— Simone Weil

Source

How do we learn to trust and love who we are?

I purposely juxtaposed the above humorous meme (taken from Kurt Vonnegut’s Dead Eye Dick) against the very profound leading quotes from great 13th century Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart and the 20th century secular Jewish woman who became a Christian mystic, Simone Weil. Earthly life, in case you haven’t noticed, is one of apparent contradiction and union between “world” and “spirit.” This can make the experiment of “What is the good life?” quite confusing.

We have been taught NOT to trust, as Eckhart mentions, the very stuff of precious human life— the often contradictory interplay and tension between spirit and world. Many have chosen one over the other. Others have tried to collapse one into the other. Still others have rejected the dance altogether, declaring themselves free from the source of their own breath!

If one simply contemplates and observes, however, certain truths and patterns begin to emerge. Amid the apparent contradictions and chaos of world and sprit, one finds a progression, a conversation in which spirit and world necessarily inform and draw out each other. Through an aware and grateful life, the world becomes the midwife of spirit, from “having” (surviving, owning, and being “owned” by the world) to “doing” (rising above mere survival to noble accomplishment) to “becoming” (finding the breath of spirit guiding one into new forms of knowledge and virtue) to finally “being” (realizing that one is the breath of the divine oneself and unifying with that divine source).

So Meister Eckhart is right. To go on this journey one must trust love, the love that gave rise to one’s own existence, and the love that gave rise to the world, and the love that gives rise to the ever-presence of spirit amid all contradiction, suffering, and struggle. One must come to gratefully embrace the perfect joy of life in all its manifest and creative forms as a gift of incalculable worth. Simone Weil is also correct: Though life may be painful at times, recognition of the inherent value of one’s own life and the world we live is the only human way through to the transcendent joy of spirit and the source of the author of Life. For no journey can profit one, nor transform one’s understanding, nor unify one with divinity without embodied human truth.

If we were angels, seeing the world in sepia tones, removed from the troubled emotions and rainbow colors of earth (but also from the marrow of human happiness and suffering) as in Wim Wenders’s classic film Wings of Desire, we would know how beautiful and varied human life may be. For every shiver and cold chill, there is a warm cup of tea, and if that is withheld, an opportunity for a warm heart to carry us through and upward.

Let us now look at these “steps” in human enlightenment, paying close attention that they are not mere illusions or false leads, but the learning of dance moves joining world and spirit to birth a full and devoted life.

To Have

“To possess is to be possessed and therefore to lose oneself”— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

In our present late post-modern society, we are afflicted by an epidemic of “having.” This has only been exacerbated by artificial intelligence (which should be dubbed “artificial stupidity” for the way it synthetically makes us narrower and shallower). Widely we adopt and consume pre-manufactured vanities, mindsets, identities, all driven by reinforcing algorithms that strive to give us more of what we already have and prefer more of that which we already prefer. Conceit dresses up as virtue. Gluttony dresses up as gourmandery. Our increasingly fattened minds, bodies, and hearts stagger under the weight of our own consumption as we find ourselves possessed (and enslaved), as Fernando Pessoa offers above, to that which we sought to possess.

We become what we have. We trade precious money and time for trifles. We guard these trifles, maintain them, insure them, become addicted to them. And we are left empty. A strange lack of meaning howls in the cave of possession and consumption as it dawns on us that we are controlled by what we arrogantly own. Even our personalities and ideologies become possessions and badges signaling what “team” we are on, and what insiders deserve our respect and what outsider deserves our contempt. Yet the whole game is one of disrespect… for the self, for others, and primarily to our own spirit. We throw our lives away on a piece of existential plastic, the golden ritual of a credit card, which is nothing more than nothing-money, incurring interest and debt in an already expiring life.

The “having” lens leads to a view of life as a collection of exotic and exciting moments— from having “peak” experiences in youth to having a “bucket list” in old age. The Good life is one in which one collects good moments and possessions and leaves an albeit evanescent legacy in the way of children, imprint, and reputation. Little is thought of service, humility, candor and other qualities that would indicate a “party pooper” that has quit the gaudy cavalcade, the contest of egos, in favor of something more lasting and fulfilling.

Fernando Pessoa himself sought to combat the gnawing fatalism of possession-as-life with a sardonic humility and the one thing— artistic creation— that seems to free us from the wages of consumption and its inherent unconsciousness and objectification. He wrote poems, which he called mediocre (critics disagree), and in The Book of Disquiet he wrote on daily life, laced with poignant philosophy, which honored the ordinary, always with an awareness that all this possession, even of life itself, would fade. The last lines of the book (a collection of scattered essays, under various heteronyms) stand in my mind as some of the best last lines in literature:

[The full and free audiobook can be found in two parts here and here, the quote coming from 7:19:36 mark of the second link]

The nondescript old man with dirty gators who often crossed my path at 9:30 in the morning, the crippled seller of lottery tickets who would pester me in vain, the round and ruddy old man smoking a cigar at the door of the tobacco shop, the pale tobacco shop owner. What has happened to them all, who because I regularly saw them were a part of my life? Tomorrow, I too will vanish from the Rua de Prata (street in Lisbon, Portugal) the Rua Dostoredores, the Rua dos Fanquiros. Tomorrow, I too, I, this soul that feels and thinks, this universe I am for myself. Yes, tomorrow I too will be the one who no longer walks these streets whom others will vaguely evoke with, “Uh what's become of him?,” and everything I've done, everything I've felt, and everything I've lived will amount to merely one less passerby on the everyday streets of some city or other.

We own nothing, not even our own lives. We show up in life and the lives of others, and then we too vanish like all created things. We are temporary stewards. Our consequential choices revolve around what kind of, and how good, a steward we will be. We are not what we have, for all possessions vanish, and Pessoa hints that we are not what we do, for that also vanishes.

Let’s explore the intricacies of doing, for even artistic creation has an element of doing and manifesting, even though it evokes something far more than that.

To Do

“Create in love as you were created in Love”— Zeus Yiamouyiannis

I see in my son, as an adolescent 16 year-old male, someone traveling in the liminal zone between having and doing. There are spurts of blowing off schoolwork for video games (consuming and having) and then committing to rowing conditioning (applying and doing). In many ways, doing is the higher form of having called “accomplishment”. One has the satisfaction of achieving something of value and saying “I did that.” I stand out among the mere grazers and the herd. My head pokes above the parapet. I am not simply a sheep, but a human capable of putting something forward, rather than simply taking something away.

This is progress.

Source

The notion of giving in “doing”, of contributing, rather than simply taking, is definitely a step up in one’s spiritual evolution and human maturation. Producing is more commendable and life enhancing than merely consuming. One is not merely presented with comfortable options, but makes strategic choices requiring practice, development of skill, dedication, and passion.

Aristotle is said to have said, “You are what your repeatedly do. Excellence is, therefore, not an act but a habit.” (This may be an apocryphal paraphrasing, but the gist is true to Aristotle’s philosophy.) What Aristotle was getting at is that life fitness requires consistent exercise in the form of steady, healthy practices (vigorous habits) forming a steady good character (excellence). There is something undeniable here: You have to get off your butt to live the good life. You cannot simply be a spectator or a couch potato and become whole. You have to show up to the game and play, and play at your best— a best which develops ever upward as you learn, grow, excel and therefore exceed your former limits.

With the advent of subjectivity-centered meaning, convenience, self-driving cars, calculators, and consumer economies, we have steadily been taught to have our “doing” done for us by proxies, which only serve to sap our capabilities and sharpness. Pablum replaces performance. Even morality morphs into into something centered around preference: “You’re offending me,” rather than “You are objectively harming that person.” Advocacy takes on the character of intention over results, performance THEATER (protests, social media “likes”) over performance.

Doing, that actually does something, must make a comeback if we are to go forward, but that is not enough. If this doing is merely individually offered and focused, it could do more harm than good. Therefore, we ought not merely “do” but pursue and particularly powerful and power form of doing called “creating.” “Creating” offers something new into the world. “Creating in love” offers something from one’s own heart and talent that verifiably enhances the world and its possibilities. “Creating in love” is fast becoming a necessary art in this midst of the world’s present tumultuous transitions.

If we are to be healthy, it is important to remember that we do not merely individually “do” (as the Striving Man in my book The Spiritually Confident Man) but we “co-create with others.” Our doing ought to be collaborative, appreciative, and permeable, to invite the spirit of the age, through our own hearts and talents, into the body politic. Call this “informed” or enlightened (rather than ignorant) doing. Rather than simply trying to amass billions of dollars (unhealthy, avaricious doing), we attempt to to rack up billions of instances of good will.

To Become

"We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time."—from Little Gidding by T.S. Eliot (Source)

As we pool our creating, and we learn into mutual good will, a certain faith emerges, a recognition that we are changing, or more accurately being changed by the chemistry created by our interaction. We begin to see ourselves and our lives, as Nietzsche says, as unfolding deeds rather than as doers. Rather than standing as a director of our lives from an alienated point outside our own growth and development, we allow our selves to be a part of the play itself. Immersion in the moment opens a certain alchemy that goes beyond “goals” and “aims” largely pre-determined by prejudices and ignorances of the past.

Christian mystic, Anthony de Mello encapsulates this well (p. 83-84):

If what you attempt is not to change yourself but to observe yourself, to study every one of your reactions to people and things, without judgment or condemnation or desire to reform yourself, your observation will be… always open and fresh from moment to moment… You will be flooded with the light of awareness, you will be transparent and transformed. Will change occur then? Oh, yes. In you and in your surroundings. But it will not be brought about by your cunning, restless ego that is forever competing, comparing, coercing, sermonizing, manipulating in its intolerance and its ambitions, thereby creating tension and conflict and resistance between you and Nature… No, the transforming light of awareness brushes aside your scheming, self-seeking ego to give Nature full rein to bring about the kind of change that she produces in the rose: artless, graceful, unself-conscious, wholesome, untainted by inner conflict.

I have explained this to my students as the craft of “becoming what your already are.” In theology this involves the reality of the spirit (being) meeting the world (becoming) as “already but not-yet”. The spirit, the uncreated light, “is” and the created world “becomes.” Uncreated being ensconces the created self, which transforms, dies, and rebirths along with all created things.

I encourage people in my counseling, books, and teachings to grow into their being, into their divine genius. Divine genius is that completely unique and central gift in you to be offered to the world, AND found nowhere else in the universe BUT in you. This divine genius is something that cannot be taken away or destroyed, but only known, unfurled, and offered as the rose offers her mathematically perfect petals and aesthetically appealing scent.

By becoming or transforming, you are NOT proving yourself in any way, for or against anything. Those attributes inhabit the realm of competing and doing, which has its place (as we have previously discussed) in human and spiritual development. No, here you are “coming into your own,” to share with others and gratefully share BACK with that source which gave you life and genius. In so doing, you explore, travel the circle, and know your starting place for the the first time.

As a parent, I see this in my son, who does quixotic things I can remember clearly doing as a boy of his age— avoiding work and then, in spits and starts, dedicating myself to profound activity, daydreaming endlessly in a way that may look like laziness but lays the dreamscape foundation for a unique and interesting life, alternating between a bleeding heart for the underdog with callous and ignorant indifference to the needs of others. Life is NOT a comedy to those who think and tragedy to those who feel, as the saying goes, but rather a tragi-comic melding of feeling and thinking, of suffering and joy, of world and spirit that may resemble a confusing life-chain of contradictions from the OUTSIDE, but which makes perfect sense in its essence— as long as we stay still and attentive to its essence, that is!

This fundamental living contradiction AND collaboration between becoming and being is core to the art of being human.

To Be

“To be, or not to be: that is the question”— Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

We become to be, that is the answer.

We ought neither oppose NOR succumb to a “sea of troubles” created almost entirely by our overthinking and reaction and confusion around a fundamentally productive tension between becoming and being. Let us simply embrace that tension as a gift from God rather than a curse. Sure it is baffling, IF we feel the need to take sides! Let us instead appreciate ALL we have been given. Let us acknowledge the disorientation created by our contradictory life demands, but let us also appreciate how this disorientation also throws us out of our complacency and ignorance. Contradictory life conditions serve a Zen koan-like function (and genius) leading us beyond the war of irrationality and rationality, emotion and analysis, toward supernal creative and engaging intuition, into the heart of creative existence itself, into Love itself, and beyond self-importance.

We don’t need “importance”. We are ALREADY beautiful and unique. That reality is far greater, more timeless, and more valuable than “importance.” Importance is a label, a sign of insecurity. Divine genius and divine nature are confirmation of something that transcends security and insecurity. When the eternal divine is recognized as being at the core of our nature, we no longer need to appeal to or possess anything to protect ourselves from other things because we all share divine essence! We don’t need security, because we are “safe” simply AS we are, and BECAUSE we are.

Meaning does not emerge out of the games we play, but out of entering into Nature, Life, Joy, and Love and their eternal play. We surrender to being, and find within this surrender infinite beauty and trust-beyond-trust, for there is nothing more trustworthy than that, by its nature, which needs neither trust nor capitulation, but rather us ourselves as we are, as we have been and as we always have been, as we will be and as we always will be.

Again Anthony de Mello from The Way to Love (p. 85-86):

When nature destroys, it is not from ambition or greed or self-aggrandizement, but in obedience to mysterious laws that seek the good of the whole universe above the survival and well-being of the parts. It is this kind of violence that arises in the mystics who storm against ideas and structures that have become entrenched in their societies and cultures when awareness wakens them to evils their contemporaries are blind to. It it this violence that causes the rose to come into being in the face of forces hostile to it. And it is to this violence that the rose, like the mystic, will sweetly succumb after it has opened its petals to the sun and lives in fragile, feeling loveliness, quite unconcerned to add a single extra minute to its allotted span of life. And so it lives in blessedness and beauty like the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, with no trace of the restlessness and dissatisfaction, the jealousy and anxiety and competitiveness that characterize the the world of human beings who seek to control and coerce rather than be content to flower into awareness, leaving all change to the mighty force of God in Nature.

So let us not so much possess as to set free.

Let us not so much do as serve.

Let us not so much become as to arrive where we already are.

Let us not so much even “be” as to find eternity in a moment in utter presence and gratitude.

Be well and live an interesting and aware life,

Zeus