There seems to be a fundamental problem in life, that while passive, assimilative compliance leads (in our society and world) to disaster and damnation -- on the other hand, there is a very big problem when we consciously and conscientiously seek a specific thing.
This both in physical material terms (as when people pursue a career plan, or a plan to find a lover or spouse) - and also spiritually.
It seems that many people (including some of the greatest spiritual exemplars) have deceived themselves and fallen into error by exerting their considerable powers by devising strategies to discover and attain some very particular thing.
Many people seek specific knowledge - and seek it by long-term efforts: the long monastic training by prayer, liturgy, meditation, labour; years of ascetic striving by desert-dwelling hermits; the prolonged initiation of mystery religions, spiritual science, ritual magic (alchemy, astrology, divinations etc).
The resulting gross divergence in outcomes, results, beliefs, dogmas, rules and laws, practices and compulsions - is evidence that the process was one originating in the defective wilfulness of fundamentally-incapable beings.
The big problem of all such spiritual effort; is that people do find what they seek - yet what they seek is something that has been decided by their conscious personality-mind, and implemented by the mundane will-power.
Such people think they know what they need, and they suppose that they know what is good for "other people" and for "the world"...
And mostly by the transformations of themselves that happen because of their sustained and willed efforts; they find... what they seek, only only what they seek... Find this by various combinations of enhanced abilities, diminished intuitive discernment... of actual-finding with self-deception.
Ultimately Life (at least for a follower of Jesus) ought to be about loving relationships with other people, other beings, with God and Jesus and others... and the creativity that arises from such loving relationships.
Life is therefore, ultimately, NOT about changing other people for (what we regard as) the better - that is attempted manipulation - which is a psychopathic and selfish thing, even when justified by altruistic theories.
Relationships are ultimately NOT about us knowing just what others most need, nor about planning other people's lives (For Their Own Good) - whether materially or spiritually.
Life is ultimately NOT about making a better world for everybody by knowledge, skill and determination exercised over time...
Because we really have no idea of what that better world actually is - and the attempt to devise and impose a better world lead to propaganda and coercion - justified by "the common good" (and always by "the end justifies the means" thinking).
The fact that this stuff is inevitable (and to a significant extent) in our mortal world, is because this is not Heaven; and our world is permeated with evil and undercut by entropy.
But even if inevitable to a degree, this kind of will-directed strategizing should not be our ideal - yet it is, unfortunately, presented as the ideal by most religions and spiritual systems!
We cannot know what is good in any degree of specific detail; even less can we know how to act and arrange things to "make" good.
To pretend otherwise leads to great and general harm, including (and primarily) harm to Our-Selves.
But we do know enough of such matters to be able to live well-enough to develop spiritually and attain salvation - after which, as eternal resurrected beings in Heaven; we can get on with participating in the world of divine creation.
But not before.
We cannot have it by wanting it; because:
What we want (in our mortal selves and world) is not really IT.
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