Teilhard de Chardin

The Catholic Tradition has such immense depth and beauty! There are not enough lifetimes to really study and learn from all of the saints, theologians, writers, Desert Fathers and Mothers, not to mention the Bible itself, with its layers of esoteric meaning and symbolism.

Since I'm in the mood of finding my true self (easier said than done), here is a quote from Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) that I found to fit in well with my earlier post on soul searching. I found this quote in George Maloney's Mysticism and the New Age. Originally, the quote is from Teilhard's The Divine Milieu (confused yet? Sounds like a meta-quote, a quote inside of a quote!):

We must try to penetrate our most secret self, and examine our being from all sides. Let us try, patiently, to perceive the ocean of forces to which we are subjected and in which our growth is, as it were, steeped... I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seemed clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet... At that moment... I felt the distress characteristic of a particle adrift in the universe, the distress which makes human wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and stars. And if someone saved me, it was hearing the voice of the Gospel... speaking to me, from the depth of the night: It is I, be not afraid.

Makes me think of Russian nesting dolls or the chrysalis that transforms into a butterfly. Could it be that we are made up of many selves, layers of selves, like layers inside an onion? As we go through life, through many stages of growth, we become something a little new and different at each higher stage. We could look back to when we were 20 years old, or 10 years old, or 3 years old, and at each phase we were different, but yet, paradoxically, the same. So, too, spiritually: we have our external outer form, our body, our appearance, and we have our inner world, our interior life, perceptions, memories, and experience. Inner and outer forms change over time, yet what we are deep down, inside our depths, is that which is eternal, our God within.

In the quote above, Teilhard says, "I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seemed clear, I went down into my inmost self." This reminds me of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul, a famous poem and commentary you can read online that describes the journey of the soul towards God. The "lamp" could symbolize the "light of the senses," our physical senses which we use to perceive the world; Teilhard has metaphorically turned the light away from the outer, external world, to find an inner light into his inner abyss. St. John of the Cross also talks about going into the abyss within, "Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart."

It is said in many different spiritual traditions, that at some point one must stop relying on one's physical senses so as to be able to turn inward. Our physical senses are useful and necessary, but they can distract us from discovering the immense universe we have within our own souls. Here is Chapter 12 from the Taoist classic, The Tao Te Ching (translation by Feng/English):

The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.

In esoteric Christianity, there is a correspondence between the five senses and the Five Wounds of Christ. Our five senses bring us our experience of the outer world, linking us with its joys and sufferings. The symbolic death of our senses is, then, a sort of gateway, an interior resurrection, that unites us with Christ and our own true self.

Soul Searching

A Gangaji quote, from The Diamond in Your Pocket, relevant to my life at the moment:

In its power and simplicity, the question Who am I? throws the mind back to the root of personal identification, the basic assumption, "I am somebody." Rather than automatically taking that assumption as the truth, you can investigate deeper.

It is not difficult to see that this initial thought, "I am somebody," leads to all kinds of strategies: to be a better somebody, a more protected somebody, a somebody with more pleasure, more comfort, and more attainment. But when this very basic thought is questioned, the mind encounters the I that is assumed to be separate from what it has been seeking. This is called self-inquiry. This most basic question, Who am I? is the one that is the most overlooked. We spend most of our days telling ourselves or others we are someone important, someone unimportant, someone big, someone little, someone young, or someone old, never truly questioning this most basic assumption.

Who are you, really? How do you know that is who you are? Is that true? Really? If you say you are a person, you know that because you have been taught that. If you say you are good or bad, ignorant or enlightened, these are all just concepts in the mind.

I've reached a place in my life where I am starting to question some of the most basic labels that have been attached to me (whether by myself, by others, or learned through conditioning) to define who I am. I am questioning all of my goals and dreams, wondering how I decided that these were "my" goals and "my" dreams. Who is the "I" that chose them? What if the goals and dreams were changed to something else? Would it matter? Who creates the meaning, or decides which goal or dream is better or worse than another one?

An interesting conversation came up in my life recently about whether my comfortable, non-challenging, non-threatening, middle-class existence really boils down to a life of mediocrity. Is there such a thing as a life that is too easy, too simple, and too comfortable? Does this lead to sleep-walking through life? Can even one's spiritual life, in such a lifestyle, become a mediocrity as well; a hobby to be pursued in one's spare time like everything else? What would an extraordinary life look like, as opposed to a mediocre one?

Certainly there are examples throughout history of people who've awakened in their lives, stepping out of mediocrity into something else. The Buddha comes to mind, walking away from a carefree, sheltered existence in search of essential, naked truths. Yet for you and me, ordinary people working 9-to-5 jobs to pay the mortgage and buy groceries, it is hard to imagine dropping everything - literally everything - and running off to live in a hut on a mountainside, turning one's life upside down in order to get shocked out of complacency. Is it necessary? Is it required before one can truly, radically, evolve? What is the difference between an outer shock (radically changing one's physical life in the world) versus an inner shock (radically changing one's mind, feelings, attitudes, or beliefs)? Do we, those of us who live lives of seeming mediocrity, fool ourselves when we believe we can transform ourselves solely through internal means?

My husband, George, gave me a real Gangaji-moment last week when he asked me: What if, right now in this moment, you had attained all of the goals you had imagined for your life? What if you had a PhD, if you had written many books, composed lots of music, and so on? How would you feel right now? What would that change about you? How would you be different? -- And in all honesty I realized that nothing at all would change about me. Even if I had accomplished all of these things that I thought I had cared about, none of these things ultimately matter! My true self is not about accomplishments or goals or "my story" of what I have done or not done with my life. This was such a gigantic realization for me - how insidious our ego behaves, convincing us that there is always "one more goal" that needs to be finished before we can feel at peace or complete about our lives. We identify ourselves, our self worth, so much through what we do, but ultimately it is all illusory. Our "story," which makes us think that we are "a somebody," is yet another mask we wear to cover up our fears of emptiness and meaninglessness. We're afraid to really look inside and discover that we are not who we thought we were.

If we are not our story or our thoughts, then who are we?