Embodying the Christian message

I heard something so deeply meaningful on the radio this morning that I haven't yet fully digested it.  But I want to share it while it is still fresh and perhaps gain some insight by doing so.

The man being interviewed was Jean Vanier who founded an organization called L'Arche Communities. (You can find it here: https://onbeing.org/series/. I greatly recommend these podcasts.) In L'Arche Communities, which now are numerous and all over the world, mentally "disabled" and "normal" people live together without being labeled the way I just did. The whole point is love and  movement beyond the separation that is born of ideas about who is better or worse.

I'm not saying it the way Vanier did. This man is full of compassion -- it's in his every word and in his tone of voice. And what he said gave me just a glimpse of what has always puzzled me about Christianity: what is this dying on the cross thing about?

Weakness, vulnerability, and the willingness to suffer are what it's about, according to Vanier. It's the opportunity to let in another's suffering and know it as our own that allows us to become truly human.

I am reminded of something that happened to me long ago: I encountered a beggar on the street. Whereas I usually moved away in fear, this time I felt for some reason I wanted to give him money. I actually went to have coffee while I pondered this! I didn't want to give out of pity or out of an idea of what I "should" do. In the end, I decided that if I felt moved, I should give him something, just a small coin. Maybe I would find out why I wanted to do this in the doing of it.

When I dropped the quarter in his can, the man said "thank you." But it didn't feel like the "thank you" came from "over there" -- our of his mouth. It was as though the bottom fell out my mind, as though I'd fallen down an infinite well of consciousness where there wasn't any "here" and "there." Over the years, as I've experienced this in other contexts, I've come to understand it as the mind opening to the reality that we are not separate, except to the extent that our minds build a "thought barrier" to the "other." In that moment, it was as though the "thank you" came from me, but a much larger "me" than the one I usually knew myself as.

Still, even as I came the experience itself became less mysterious over the years, I always wondered why it happened specifically with this one person, a street person whom I didn't even know. I wrote to my spiritual teacher at the time about it. He responded, "YOU are a beggar." I recall not really liking that response very much. Now I'm wondering if he didn't see more deeply than I was able to follow.  It seems to have been a moment when I myself became the "poorest of the poor." I was not giving out of pity but because something in me -- not my ego or my rational mind but something deeper and purer -- responded with the universal love that comes out of the humanity we all share. This is what I heard in Jean Vanier this morning.

No-self and terror

Singer, in her book about cults referenced in my previous post, describes problems some people have after doing meditation for long periods -- both long periods every day and over years.  One man writes, "'Suddenly I became one with the air conditioner.  I just dissolved, and it seemed that when the air conditioner started up it just took me out of my body.  There wasn't any me on the bed -- I was "at one" with the motor sounds.  It was unspeakable terror.  I had dissolved and melded with a motor sound.'" Cults in Our Midst by Margaret Thaler Singer (1995 edition), pp. 144-145.

"Unspeakable terror"?  I remember how it was for me when I first started to notice that the objects I used to think of as outside myself weren't really outside at all.  There was a mystery to it, a curiosity, but certainly no terror.  It was what I had sought, in fact, back in those old days when I did Zen in Japan and read all of those marvelous stories about people who had become one with trees and birds and such.  (No climate control in Zen temples in Japan, so becoming one with an air conditioner wasn't likely!)

So why was this man terrified?  I think this has to do with preparation. Many of the techniques that were used in a monastic setting in Asia came to America with the idea that they could apply to anyone (especially if they could be taught for a good price).  When they work, the ego begins to dissolve -- the ego being, as I think of it, just an arbitrary thought wall separating oneself from the outer world.  And I would guess that if someone were not prepared for this to happen, he would imagine he was going crazy.

So can there be too much meditation?  I am hardly qualified to speak about this since I don't meditate, but my guess is that yes, for some people, there can be too much of at least some kinds of meditation.  The ego does help us navigate the world and it can't be bullied into submission.  If it feels that it is going to be annihilated, it will rebel by manifesting various symptoms, including terror.  In the end, in my experience at least, the ego doesn't have to be annihilated -- it just becomes seen as provisional, not absolute.  But one doesn't know that it will work out that way in the beginning, and for some people, that could be terrifying.

Two Kinds of Unity

Lately, I've been thinking about two different psychological processes.  One is the process of identification with others.  For example, children identify with their parents.  As young adults, we often identify with someone we admire, or even worship.  But although the admiration is conscious, the identification is less so.  Thus, we may find ourselves adopting ideas and attitudes of this people even when those ideas and attitudes have nothing to do with the reason we originally admired them.  It is as though we unconsciously imagine that if we become like them, we will also acquire the wisdom or beauty they have.  And once the psyche really does believe that these attitudes are its own, it is virtually impossible to un-do the process, even when it becomes clear that those ideas or attitudes don't serve us. 

The second kind of unity is when we realize that we in fact are one with someone (or everyone) already, that it is our basic nature.  In this kind of unity, the self doesn't take in something from the outside; rather, it sees itself in a new, expanded way.  Oh, I'm so much larger than I ever imagined!  It's as though the self, instead of taking attitudes or characteristics in from the outside to make itself bigger, realizes that it already is infinitely large and doesn't need any additions.

And, I suppose that the motive for the former process could be said to be the desire for the latter.  That is, we want to be larger than we experience ourselves, and if the only way we can imagine to do that is to identify with others, then that is the way we will do it.  But it never satisfies; only the second kind of unity satisfies.