Insight And Transcendence: Plug it In

After reading our post, Time Faith And Progress, a reader emailed and asked us, “Why is it so hard for good to triumph over evil?” In addition, our learned reader posed a second question: “How do we establish a relationship with God? What do we have to sacrifice of ourselves, to do just that?”

We believe that both those questions are related.

Within each of us is found our essence- that core raison d’etre that we all share. We have within each of us, an essential goodness. Our most meaningful and profound moments are times spent with each other in peace, or doing good for others. Instinctively, this is what we want to teach our children.

That said, having that goodness emerge from within is not easy. One of the great challenge we all face is recognizing who we really are, the real look to our souls that  provides the insight that defines the nature of our existence. It is when we are able to share that part of ourselves with others that we truly allow the best part of ourselves to emerge- and it is from that best part of ourselves that our potential can be reached. As we reach out to our potential, we need to remember that there are others sharing in our endeavor, willing to help and offer a helping hand. They too, are partners in actualizing their own, and our successes.

It is said that evil exists because ‘good men do nothing.’

In other words, they refuse or are unable to reach inside to that very best part of themselves. They cannot or will not actualize their potential. It isn’t that they do not recognize the good within themselves- they do- they just cannot seem to reach that good and make it a tangible and real expression of themselves.

Of course, the ability to reach within and bring the very best of who we are isn’t easy. If it were, we’d all be heroes.

We live in a world that trivializes goodness and and character. It is the virtues of money, sex and inflexibility that are extolled. ‘Take no prisoners’ has come to define not only political agendas, but moral ones as well. Success often means trading in values that might actualize the very best of who we are, for values that will clearly enslave us.

We do have the ability to reach that part of ourselves that is the best of ourselves and if we choose, we can make that self actualization as natural as breathing. Who we are won’t change- in fact, we can choose to reach out to our own unique potential and evolve into our best selves.

The quickest way to the self actualization that will reveal the best of ourselves is really simple. Be considerate. Sounds simple, we know, but humor us and read on.
It does not matter what you do for a living or what your interests are. Make it your goal to be considerate to those around you.

Your inner ‘best self’ will not ever replace your outer best self. In other words, if you are a lawyer or a doctor, reaching that inner ‘best self’ will only make you a better lawyer or a better doctor. Actualizing your best self does not mean you have to wear orange robes and hang out and airports with conga drums. Actualizing your best self is about making the small world around you a better place. If you elevate the world around you, then you elevate yourself.

As we noted below, reaching our best selves is about integrating all those things that make up our lives and transform those things into a life that is unified and meaningful. We are not required to dispose or kill off any part of ourselves to make room for something ‘new and improved.

No matter our ‘outer selves,’ we will be remembered for our inner selves, that part of us that relates to others. Our achievements might be recognized of course, but in the end, what will come to define us all are the small things, the ‘inner self’ that was manifested. Bill Gates daughters will remember him not for his wealth, but for how good a father he was. They will remember his smile and not his stock portfolio. They will remember the walks to the parks and playgrounds, not the programs or presents. Similarly, he will be remember by others here and in places far away, for the efforts to help, to reach out and make a difference.

For good to triumph over evil, we need to access and actualize our better selves. It is not difficult to do good- in fact, it is rather fulfilling and addictive! It is difficult to begin to do good. For that to happen, we need to make the effort to reach inside.

Of course, we see the extolled Mother Teresa’s and John Paul II’s and say to ourselves, well, I don’t want to be like that! Who can fault anyone for thinking that?

(We recall a conversation with a friend who attended Catholic school, years ago. She recalled, as a very young girl, how the nuns would come into her classroom every Friday and remind them how they had to ‘heed the call’ if they heard it. My friend recounted how her most fervent prayers to God were reserved for Fridays, as she beseeched God not to call her.)

We do not have to sacrifice ourselves, our very being, whatever that might be, to establish a relationship with God. In fact, the only way we can have a real relationship with God is to understand ourselves, to seek out real insight.

With remarkable and clarity and acuity, Dr Sanity describes insight. She first notes,

Insight is a wonderful thing. The power or act of seeing into a situation and apprehending the inner nature or motivation of one’s self–especially the why–can be extremely liberating… Only by being aware of these kind of hidden truths and inner motivations can a person gain control over them…

Awareness of self does not change the self. It only empowers one to transform and elevate themselves. We remain ourselves- we only reach into ourselves and have access and the potential to actualize the best of who we are.

Dr Sanity goes on to note that the ability to transform and elevate oneself is not easy, notwithstanding the plethora of ‘pop psychology’ mantras that claim “change is simple” and comes at no cost.

But insight can also sometimes be devastating…

But there are situations where achieving insight and understanding the motives behind one’s behavior (as well as what one can and cannot control) can generate deserved guilt and shame. That is when such emotions can be productive and initiate a change in behavior for the good. While it is painful to acknowledge horrible truths–but truths nonetheless– such understanding of one’s self is essential for personal growth and normal personality development[emp- SC&A].

There is an inner courage required to look at one’s self in the mirror of insight and truly know the person looking back. All of us are capable of the most horrible behavior; just as we are capable of finding ways to rationalize it and cover it up or blame others for it. Psychological health requires that we look into that mirror frequently and understand our own motivations and behaviors and not flinch in recognizing the truth about ourselves.

It is only through insight, that real understanding of who we are and where we fit it- when need to acknowledge our strengths and when we need to be humble, that we can comprehend that what is transcendent- that awareness that we are indeed connected to something bigger than ourselves and that connection actually empowers us. Define that as you will.

Transcendence is real because our connections to each other and other realities, are real. Within each of us, is a bond with each other, that if left to each us and not to those with agendas and ideologies, for the most part, we will value and cherish. Actualizing that ‘inner good’ strengthens that bond- and gives ‘leaders’ less of a grip on us.

All our agendas and ideologies have a limited life span, because they are valid and fueled only as long as there are those that need to fuel those ideas and agendas. Those things that are transcendent need to no fuel and will endure forever. Not even on their death beds do children forget their mothers and not even in dementia is a fathers touch forgotten. And through it all, no one needs to remind a parent just how much they love their children.

We can achieve transcendence because we are part of a transcendent world. It is our choice to plug in all the time, some times or never. We can choose to be considerate, compassionate, loving and kind.

Or not.

Time, Faith And Progress

To struggle with faith is as much a part of faith as anything else.

Throughout history, saints and sinners, rich men and poor men and the powerful and the weak, have all shared the same underlying struggle. Long after we are gone, there will be those who struggle with the angels on Jacob’s Ladder (we have written about some of that struggle, here), faith and meaning.

There is one constant ground rule in our struggle with faith. Time always moves forward. While we may employ the newest and most novel of arguments with God, we cannot go back in time. There are all kinds of miracles God has brought to bear- and there are miracles that never occurred, even when we most needed them. Notwithstanding the miracle of making time stand still (the sun stayed in the sky long enough for Joshua to vanquish his enemies), or the day move faster, God has never allowed us to go back in time.

Why? Because there are no do-overs. There is no shortage of forgiveness and penance, but there are no do-overs, because we must learn to be accountable. It is only by being accountable that we really learn. To learn mercy, we must know the pain of weeping and to know forgiveness we must know the shame of our own deliberate blind eyes and failures. If we were able to go back and ‘fix our mistakes,’ we would never learn the things that validate and confirm us as being ‘made in God’s image.’

This is true for everyone, regardless of professed faith.
As time has progressed, we have come to understand God’s word in new ways. Now, to be clear, we are not talking about recasting God and faith, but rather, we have come to see more facets of our faith, facets that may have been obscured or hidden from most of those that came before us.

When we read or hear stories as children, we understand them in very simplistic terms. Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Hans Brinker’s little Dutch Boy, enthralled us, scared and eventually comforted us, because that is how children see the world. As adults, we see the fables in a more complex- and contemporary terms. In fact, we may understand the fables in very different ways than our grandparents. Faith and God were very different for our grandparents. For example, they saw antibiotics as a true miracle. We can’t imagine a world without them. They are just another pill bottle in the medicine chest.

The same is true of understanding the bible and our faith. We are meant to see and understand faith and the bible in ways that are relevant to us. We are meant to make faith and the bible as current and contemporary as we can, because faith and the bible are as relevant today as they were yesterday. Over time, our understanding of our religious texts have deepened. Ideas that were once easily understood, are now viewed with more texture. Biblical exhortations to violence, once religious benchmarks, have been supplanted by exhortations to do good works and to ‘pursue peace,’ because our understanding of the bible, our understanding of faith and the understanding of what is expected of us, have progressed.

Yesterday, The Anchoress wrote a post, Faith, Reason and Forced Conversions, in which she discusses the forced ‘conversions’ of former Fox News kidnap victims Centanni and Wiig and the meaning behind those forced ‘conversions.’ She touches upon a few very very nuanced realities:

The demand to “convert or die” is not a thinking demand, it is not born of reason. It is culled forth from a dark heart given over to something larger than a human sense or sensibility. It is an unnatural requirement…

The Anchoress also notes,

The re-naming of these two Western men is particularly telling. While it may mean nothing at all to a secularist, it means quite a lot to the Islamists watching the world over, and to the Christians and the Jews, as well, because they too understand it. Abraham, Noah, Jacob, Sarah, even the apostle Peter were all given new names by God, the new names had to do with relationship and covenant. “I shall give you a new name,” is one of God’s promises. To give up one’s name is to give up one’s self. To allow someone else to name you is to count yourself the lesser [emp-SC&A].

To force someone to convert or even acquiesce to another’s faith is to deny the necessary struggle with faith in which we must all engage and participate. To force conversion or subservience to faith is to go back in time because those who make those demands are incapable of living in the present and are themselves weak and dysfunctional. Faith is about progress and greater understanding. It is not about the daydreams of bygone days and the romantic yearning for yesterday’s simpler times.

Faith is about today and tomorrow and the current and real relevance of that faith in our lives. That is the faith we struggle with. Healthy faith prepares us for tomorrow. Dysfunctional faith keeps that tomorrow from being meaningful. That is the faith that is imposed.

Ali Eteraz recently wrote, Fjordman’s Tired Tropes, a post in which he not so gently excoriates Fjordman, not so much for his beliefs, but rather, for the way Fjordman presents his beliefs.

From his Scandinavian perch, which renders him influential solely because no one else has the requisite English speaking ability to occupy it, has only one lesson to impart: Islam is an Evil War Machine seeking to conquer Europe while the “true” owners of the Continent cannot fight back because they are too corrupted by the legacies of Communism.

Shopenhauer told Europe that Reason was weak and insignificant, eventually comparing it to a lame blind man. Fjordman is the post-modern kitsch version of Shopenhauer’s pessimism. The glass is half empty; no, no, it is altogether empty, and it is those immigrant Muslims in Europe, and those Jihadis Muslims in the Middle East, and those post-Communist conspirators around the world, who have drank it, and as a consequence of this, war is the most likely outcome, so let’s all prepare for the forthcoming apocalypse (which given European military might will mean the massive destruction of all things remotely Muslim, which is too bad because killing is never easy).

Eteraz wryly notes that Fjordman’s faith is really no diferent than that of the radical and backward looking Islamists Fjorman abhors (there is a certain irony here. Eteraz is clearly more repulsed by violent and backward looking radical Islamists than is Fjordman. They are part of his immediate world. Fjordman can go home at night and drown his sorrows in meatballs and glogg).

The distinction is not a small one. Eteraz, looks forward- he not interested in what was yesterday. Of Fjordman he states,

…Islam and Jihadis are synonymous. In the same piece quoted above he makes a casual leap from “Islam” to “Jihadis.” Lost in this quantum leap of absurd proportions are the hundreds of millions of altogether apathetic and blameless Muslims (who are blown up in Iraq, Tanzania and Kenya and whose businesses are extorted by the so called Militias of Allah) who also consider Islam their religious home. Lost in that leap are the innumerable reformists, jurists, writers, novelists, film-makers, and every day heroes. His problem is the same as that of any other avowed Islamophobe: the inability to understand that his best bet of engagement with Islam will occur via the same Muslims whom he does not even recognize exist. But I didn’t write this to speak about the selective myopia that strikes some members of the right blogosphere when it comes time to conflate Islam with Jihadis. That is not something for me to ‘fix.’ There will have to rise among the right those who are capable of more nuanced thinking. Thankfully there are already such people. May their lucidity triump over this other myopia.

What is important is that Eteraz does not allow Fjordman to frame the issue. Eteraz, ever looking ahead, frames the issue in relevant and realistic terms- we have to deal with reality and not the romantic notion that we can go back in time. Muslims are in Europe and in America. Reality.

Anchoress sees the radical- and backward looking Islamists as a threat to us all. Eteraz sees Fjordman and western reactionaries as equal threats. They are both right. Unless we can all look forward, we are all destined to look backward- and if that happens, faith becomes meaningless. The Catholic Church was recently excoriated by many conservatives for their stated position on illegal immigration, that the Church would offer help to all who needed it, in any way they can. Clearly, the Church is looking at reality and looking ahead. The 10-12 million illegal aliens that are already here are not going away- and they are not invisible or disposable. They are a separate and distinct issue from border security. We cannot go back in time- not just for ourselves, but for the following generations. They will learn, by our example, how we must look ahead, always, if we and our faith, are to be relevant.

Eteraz and Ancoress are on the same page, really. Their observations are not at loggerheads. They each understand that in order for faith to be relevant and meaingful, faith must look forward.

Looking forward also means making mistakes. That is the nature of progress.

One Scandinavian feminist insisted that Muslim violence against women was the fault of the women because they dresses to provocatively- as if all Muslim men were beasts and could not control themselves- or even more simply, were unable to avert their gaze from the temptresses that surround them.
Conversely, an Australian cabinet minister demanded that Muslim immigrants change their ways and assimilate. He didn’t ask, mind you, he demanded. If there were ever a classic guarantee of grief, a demand to assimilate, rather than an extended invitation and outstretched to integrate and participate, is it.

Accommodations are always reached by those in the middle. Those that espouse political and radical extremes are always relegated to the periphery and always end up being rather ineffectual, surrounded by marginal players.

Like real art that stands the test of time, we will find a way to make room for each other that will stand the test of time. That may infuriate the extremists, but in the end progress will not be denied.

That has always been true in the past and that will always be true in the future.

It’s all a part of moving forward.