Rumi, the Bible, and Self-control

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“He who has no rule over his own spirit is like a city without walls.” The writer of Proverbs recognized the battle we all wage with our internal haunts. The apostle Paul also acknowledged this human frailty, declaring “I will to do good but evil is present with me.” We are a composite of contradictory impulses and most of us manage to “give the name of action” (Shakespeare, in Hamlet)  to the good ones and sublimate the bad ones. Our news reports are filled with those who were less capable of that God-given fore-brain wizardry.

And the Persian poet Rumi put it this way, “intelligent people want self control; children want candy.”   God, that guy was good, even if he was a damn Iranian!  (wink, wink)

 

Showers of Blessings we Plead!!!

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I woke this morning to the unanticipated sound of thunder and the flash of lightening. We were going to get a respite from this oppressive drought (which God has sent merely because of my sin!!! wink, wink; I just can’t get over this narcissism!!!). I performed a ritual that I’ve utilized the last two years or so and gone to the garage, opened the door, grabbed me a chair and cup of coffee and reveled in the gracious beauty of a magnificent, generous rainfall. An old hymn always comes to my mind on these moments, “Showers of Blessings” even though the hymn was not talking about rainfall!

And, being random as I am, that brought to my mind the following verse from my beloved brother, William Shakespeare. This is so magnificent and it gets more so every time I read it:

 

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. . . .
. . .
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
(The Merchant of Venice)

 

Oh, yes. Showers of blessings. They are around us each day if we but look.

Emily Dickinson was “visited” abruptly

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In my last posting, I shared an Emily Dickinson poem and put my twist on it, interpreting it to mean a “visitation” from the Spirit of God, a visitation that presented her with “difference.”

Most of us get this “visitation” over the span of a lifetime, sometimes starting with a conversion experience or a mystical experience. There are those, however, are visted more abruptly from time to time and find it very frightening. And I think the frightening nature of these “abrupt” visitations is why God approaches us gently most of the time as we can’t handle such approaches from the Divine.  (In the classic Jack Nicholson line, “You can’t handle the truth!”)

Here is another Emily Dickinson poem which, I think, expresses her having been visited abruptly on some occasion. It is vivid and harrowing.

The Master      

He fumbles at your spirit
        As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
       He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
        For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
       Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten,
       Your brain to bubble cool,–
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
       That scalps your naked soul.

When winds take Forests in their Paws–
The Universe is still.

Viva la Difference!!!!

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I think most of the time we live our lives on automatic pilot, blithely be-bopping along listening to the tune of our prejudices and self-serving certainties. This is a problem individually and collectively. But occasionally, reality (or might I say “Reality”) intrudes and we are given pause. As W. H. Auden said, “O blessed be bleak exposure on whose sword we are pricked into coming alive.”

My dear friend, soul-mate, and sweet heart Emily Dickinson knew something about this exposure. In the following poem she poignantly and vividly describes a visitation of this always present Presence:

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the heft (or weight)
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ‘t is like the distance
On the look of death.

Difference is scary. In literature and philosophy there is a lot of discussion of “difference” and its meaning in our world culture. But difference is scary as hell as we naturally prefer to live in our comfortable, smug little world of certainty. I love the way Emily set this poem up with “There’s a certain slant of light…that oppresses, like the heft of cathedral tunes.” She then addresses the “heavenly hurt” that has been sent and though it leaves no “scars” it does leave the gut-wrenching phenomena of “difference” in our heart.

But who would ever opt for “hurt” of any kind, even “heavenly” hurt?!!!! To mature spiritually, however, we have to find the temerity…and Grace…to fore-go our own interests and need for comfort and allow “difference” to visit us. This visitation makes us acutely aware of our own mortality, of the ephemeral nature of the world we live in, and the connection we have with everyone else…and even with this lovely world itself.

 

D.H. Lawrence and Shame

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D. H. Lawrence is one of my favorite novelists. He was consummately talented in delving into the human soul and exploring its intricacies. In The Rainbow, he eloquently describes the vulnerable subjective world of a female toddler, Ursula, who is enthralled with her father. And on a particular day this enthrallment came to an excruciating end as he brutally crushed her delicate little world by abruptly introducing his own. (I quote an extensive excerpt from ch. 8; but you might appreciate the set-up even more and you can readily obtain it free on the internet.)

And she played on, because of her disappointment persisting even the more in her play. She dreaded work, because she could not do it as he did it. She was conscious of the great breach between them. She knew she had no power. The grown-up power to work deliberately was a mystery to her.

He would smash into her sensitive child’s world destructively. Her mother was lenient, careless The children played about as they would all day. Ursula was thoughtless-why should she remember things? If across the garden she saw the hedge had budded, and if she wanted these greeny-pink, tiny buds for bread-and-cheese, to play at teaparty with, over she went for them.

Then suddenly, perhaps the next day, her soul would almost start out of her body as her father turned on her, shouting:

“Who’s been tramplin’ an’ dancin’ across where I’ve just sowed seed? I know it’s you, nuisance! Can you find nowhere else to walk, but just over my seed beds? But it’s like you, that is-no heed but to follow your own greedy nose.”

It had shocked him in his intent world to see the zigzagging lines of deep little footprints across his work. The child was infinitely more shocked. Her vulnerable little soul was flayed and trampled. Why were the footprints there? She had not wanted to make them. She stood dazzled with pain and shame and unreality.

Her soul, her consciousness seemed to die away. She became shut off and senseless, a little fixed creature whose soul had gone hard and unresponsive. The sense of her own unreality hardened her like a frost. She cared no longer.

And the sight of her face, shut and superior with self-asserting indifference, made a flame of rage go over him. He wanted to break her.

“I’ll break your obstinate little face,” he said, through shut teeth, lifting his hand.

The child did not alter in the least. The look of indifference, complete glancing indifference, as if nothing but herself existed to her, remained fixed.

Yet far away in her, the sobs were tearing her soul. And when he had gone, she would go and creep under the parlour sofa, and lie clinched in the silent, hidden misery of childhood.

When she crawled out, after an hour or so, she went rather stiffly to play. She willed to forget. She cut off her childish soul from memory, so that the pain, and the insult should not be real. She asserted herself only. There was not nothing in the world but her own self. So very soon, she came to believe in the outward malevolence that was against her. And very early, she learned that even her adored father was part of this malevolence. And very early she learned to harden her soul in resistance and denial of all that was outside her, harden herself upon her own being.

She never felt sorry for what she had done, she never forgave those who had made her guilty. If he had said to her, “Why, Ursula, did you trample my carefully-made bed?” that would have hurt her to the quick, and she would have done anything for him. But she was always tormented by the unreality of outside things. The earth was to walk on. Why must she avoid a certain patch, just because it was called a seed-bed? It was the earth to walk on. This was her instinctive assumption. And when he bullied her, she became hard, cut herself off from all connection, lived in the little separate world of her own violent will.

I don’t think this father had any idea what he was doing when he insisted on his values and rules. He was just very angry and lashed out, oblivious to how devastating the fury appeared to his beloved, vulnerable little girl. The resulting shame caused her to retreat into a shell, into “the little separate world of her own violent will.”

Shame is one of the most basic human emotions, possibly the most primary experience we have as our ego begins to formulate. There is some sense in which we all get “shamed” into reality, into the “common-sense” world of everyday reality. But though it is “common-sense” to the world, to the little child who has yet to accept its proffered terms, it is a strange and bewildering world.

Emily Dickinson and Loss of Perspective

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Emily Dickinson was mad as a hatter and that is why she could leave us such a treasure trove of poetry. Now if she had been completely mad her poetry would have been incomprehensible and thus would not have merited the term “poetry.” But, in her case, she brings a different perspective on reality as do all good poets. She looked at things differently from her cloistered little room upstairs in her prominent father’s house.

Here she writes a poem about a boat that got pulled too far from the shore and its “perspective monitor” ( i.e. “observing ego”) was oblivious to the fact that “my little craft was lost.” I think Emily’s “little craft” got very near the edge often but it never completely got lost and thus she left us the aforementioned treasure trove of poetry.

‘Twas such a little—little boat
That toddled down the bay!
‘Twas such a gallant—gallant sea
That beckoned it away!

‘Twas such a greedy, greedy wave
That licked it from the Coast—
Nor ever guessed the stately sails
My little craft was lost!

Perspective is everything. That is all we have. If we lose sight of this fact, we have succumbed to the ministrations of those “greedy, greedy” waves. If we remember the fact that we only have a perspective, then we can echo the words of the Apostle Paul, “We see through a glass darkly.”  And someone else once noted, “We can’t have a perspective on our perspective without somehow escaping it.”

 

Rumi, Shakespeare, and Moral Codes

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The Persion poet Rumi noted, “Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” This is similar to Shakespeare’s famous observation, “Nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

These two quotations appear to convey moral relativism which permits basically anything under the sun, appearing to convey the absence of any moral absolute. But I do not feel this is the case at all for the teachings of these men suggest they have much more in mind than mere self-indulgent behavior. Each recognized that it was the God-given capacity to think which creates categories for the whole of human experience, including those categories of what is right and wrong. But it is only “thinking” and the capacity to think that allows this categorization to take place. They are merely noting that “thinking” and the resulting categorization of human experience can appear to be quite arbitrary. For example, not too many years ago in our country African Americans were thought of as second class citizens, and in the Deep South in particular, were second class citizens in the estimation of most white people. And having been raised in the South, due to this pervasive mind-set that my sub-culture was imbued with, I saw African Americans as second class citizens. For, as we learn to perceive, so things are. The categories formulated on the basis of our perceptual field are real, as far as we know it. And unquestioningly accepting these categories is validated day in and day out in the community. However, due to the strong arm of…may I say it…an “intrusive” Federal government our thinking regarding race has changed significantly in the past fifty years. African Americans are not viewed with the same racist mind-set by many Southerners and those who continue to subscribe to those Neanderthal beliefs are forced to treat them with more respect, albeit begrudgingly in most cases. One other example is prominent in our world history. At one point the prevailing world view was that the world was flat. That viewpoint was reality and anyone who deigned to suggest otherwise did so at the risk of ridicule or worse. The world was flat for that is how prevailing thought described it.

So, back to “wrong doing” and “right doing” or Shakespeare’s “good” or “bad.” Yes, it is only thinking that makes anything right, wrong, good, or bad. However, what these gentlemen were teaching is that we must get beyond mere categories, mere words, mere labels and learn that subscribing to a mere moral code will merely leave us trapped in the letter of the law. Sure, these moral codes will constrain our behavior and thus serve a useful social purpose. We cannot function as a society without them. But at some point we have to grow spiritually to the point that we are no longer merely constrained by the mere letter of the law but by the spirit of the law. Therefore, if I want to do something which I feel is “wrong”, I am given pause and proceed to ask myself, “Now what does this reflect about the depths of my heart? If I want to do a brother harm, what does that say about me, aside from whatever this brother might have done?

Now Rumi’s note that “I will meet you in a field that lies beyond that domain of right doing and wrong doing” is rich. A field conveys an open space, an area out beyond the narrow confines of a moral code, and this is the realm of the spirit. When we are rigidly governed merely by the letter of the law, when our heart is jam-packed with rules to which we are slavishly devoted, we can never get beyond, we can never get out side of our self, and we can never get into that Sacred Space where honesty, openness, and intimacy is found. This is the domain of the “I-Thou” relationship so eloquently described by Martin Buber.

Let me reiterate. A person who is slavishly devoted to the letter of the law, whose life consists of punctilious observation of moral, religious, and spiritual rules is trapped inside himself/herself. And if he/she finds the comfort of like-minded people, great comfort can appear to be found, but at a great price. And usually this mind-set produces a judgmentalism which has to be wielded on other people as the beasts within which this “letter of the law” carefully constrains will be projected onto the outside world. One expression of this poison is the view that the world is “going to hell in a hand basket, is inherently evil, and must be actively combatted.” Well, the world has evil present but I argue that groups with that emphasis need to pay an equal amount of attention to the evil within their own hearts. The evil outside with which they are obsessed is actually within their own hearts. This is the classic projection spoken of my Karl Jung.

Gratitude and Forgiveness

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Oprah Winfrey had a thoughtful blog posted this morning in the Huffington Post, making observations re gratitude and forgiveness.

She described the “power of gratitude” that she had discovered in her life and noted how the practice of daily expressions of gratitude can produce a “shift in your way of being in the world.” I too made this discovery a couple of years ago, discovering that the ritual of gratitude can be a powerful tool in coping with the vicissitudes of daily life. When things are not going well…or when they are…I try to just focus from time to time during the day on the many things in my life for which I can be grateful.

She listed forgiveness as the “other fundamental building block” in her life, describing it as “releasing all grudges, need for revenge or attachment to what woulda-shoulda (and I would add ‘coulda’) been.” And this is very tough. For I know that I hang onto grudges, disappointments, and shame that lies decades behind me. But I just can’t let them go.

I think it is very easy to grasp the concept of God’s forgiveness and to “accept” that forgiveness as a concept. But it is another matter to delve deeply into the heart and allow Forgiveness to permeate one’s being. This error is related to the human tendency of keeping God “way out there and far off” and not allowing Him to dwell within which is what Jesus meant when he reminded us, “The kingdom is within.” Discovering this “kingdom within” is a spiritual enterprise and it is not furthered by mere regurgitation of biblical bromides, regarding of how noble and inspiring they may be. And once again I must confess, when I’ve resolved this dilemma, I’ll let you know!

Below is the posting from Oprah:
Five days ago, I asked that you open yourself to the power of gratitude. If you took me up on that offer, you should already be feeling a slight shift in your way of being in the world. Looking out for five things to be grateful for changes the way you see your whole day — and eventually your life. It’s a major cornerstone of living a happy and fulfilled life.

The other fundamental building block I know for sure is forgiveness: releasing all grudges, need for revenge or attachment to what woulda-shoulda been.

My favorite definition — if you’ve watched “The Oprah Show” or read O magazine, you’ve heard me say it repeatedly — is that forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different. That was said by an expert many years ago on the show.

When I first heard it, I literally I got goose bumps. The message that came through so clearly and stayed with me is this: Forgive, so you can truly live.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you condone the behavior or, in any way, make a wrong right. It just means you give yourself permission to release from your past — and step forward with the mud of resentment cleared from your wings. Fly!

Is there someone you need to forgive? Let that be the best gift you give yourself this year. It’s the gift for all seasons.