08 Dear Jack: Nourishing the Delusion

Dear Jack,

I believe that one of the greatest gifts God has given us is our capacity to think for ourselves. If I do my best to understand a particular issue, and then honestly and openly seek His inspiration, and I reach a conclusion that differs from “what the prophet says” or from the “official church position” then what should I do? How can God expect us to act against our own conscience? Isn’t that a betrayal of the worst kind?

From,

On Whose Authority?

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Dear On Whose Authority?,

A few weeks ago, I told Wondering that she must believe no one and “be a lamp unto” herself. I would give you essentially the same advice On Whose Authority?, you must do what  you feel in your heart to be right. But I need to caution you, being your own lamp is much harder than it looks.

Every single one of us is brilliantly wise,  a beacon of love and  a fount of knowledge in some areas and hopelessly deluded, unkind, superstitious and mistaken in others. This is just the truth of being a human being —  we’re a mixed bag. If we’re honest about this state of affairs, we may get worried and start looking for ways to “fix” ourselves. Sometimes this comes from a truly wholesome desire to be less flawed and more loving towards our fellow humans. Sometimes the fix-it impulse comes from a place of craven implacable fear, a deep suspicion that we are terrible and unloveable. Wherever the impulse originates, we seem to understand in an almost intuitive way that we can’t go it alone, we need help.

So we start looking for someone who knows more than us,  we    decide we need a rabbi, or a guru, or a prophet. And we may, in fact, really need a prophet or a guru. I believe that spiritual teachers  can bless our lives with tremendous wisdom, but those prophets  and rabbis are just as human as we are. They may be genuinely inspired in some areas and just as deluded, or more, than we are in others. So how do we know who to trust while attempting to  overcome our own cluelessness? If we trust no one, we can’t learn, but if we fall into the trap of hero worshipping our teachers we set ourselves up for grave disappointment. If our leaders behave in ways that are less than heroic, we may be crushed. Even worse, we may ignore our instincts when the leaders or institutions we’ve put our faith into do something  wrong  (See: Penn State, sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church, Proposition 8).

I think the only way  out of this  tangle  is to  pull on the threads of different questions. Instead of asking who is right and who is wrong (or what is the capital-T Truth), we need to ask how can I be less deluded, less mistaken? There is a quote from Einstein that speaks to this:

“A human being is part of the whole, called by us Universe. A part limited in time and space, he (she) experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion from his consciousness. Striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion; not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the one obtainable measure to achieve peace of  mind.”

Ultimately,   I think we need to be asking ourselves: How can I be more full of love? Because any teaching that does not have love at its heart  will not help us. And saying that is not an airy-fairy, easy answer because there is nothing easy about truly loving ourselves or others. Furthermore, getting rid or our delusions is not like wiping the slate clean, it’s something we chip away at slowly over our whole lives. There is no easy answer,  no perfect teacher or perfect method that can save us from ourselves.  When  we talk about being a lamp unto ourselves, we aren’t talking about finding a way to burn so brightly that we don’t need prophets, we’re talking about seeing clearly, viewing our prophets with equal parts honesty and compassion. Losing our delusions takes a lot of faith,  humbly doing our best with the knowledge that we have in each moment and trusting both ourselves and the teachers that life has put in our path. We have to strip  away one delusion and not lose heart when we find 10 more beneath it. We have to screw up a lot, because our mistakes and errors of judgment are usually our greatest teachers. When we talk about being a lamp, I think we are talking about being full of a light that is like the sunrise,

Sunrise

You can

die for it–

an idea,

or the world.  People

 

have done so,

brilliantly,

letting

their small bodies be bound

 

to the stake,

creating

an unforgettable

fury of light. But

 

this morning,

climbing the familiar hills

in the familiar

fabric of dawn, I thought

 

of  China,

and India

and  Europe, and I thought

how the sun

 

blazes

for everyone just

so joyfully

as it rises

 

under the lashes

of my own eyes, and  I thought

I am so many!

What is my name?

 

What is the name

of the deep breath I would take

over and over

for all of us? Call it

 

whatever you want, it is

happiness, it is another one

of the ways to enter

fire.

-Mary Oliver

Yours,

Jack

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