A Direction
In a comment to the previous discussion thread, Kevin at Acoustics, Health & Sufism cites “having a clear heart that knows through experience, the difference between ego and ‘not ego’” as central to understanding what authentic religious experience is.
For me, this also points to a key issue in spiritual development: getting over ourselves. Whether you call the self that gets in our way sin, selfishness, or ego, it's what prevents us from being more alive to what is more and greater than ourselves alone.
And whether we view spiritual development as “dying to self and living to Christ," articulate it in the framework of another belief system, or speak of ignorance vs. becoming more enlightened, to me, it is our movement in this direction that matters most.
In Christian terminology, this is the way and the life. This is “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." This is the direction of our peace, strength, and joy as individuals and the direction of our long term viability as a species.
Salmon Song
Singing, singing, throw a life into the sea
Like salmon flinging, ringing out the changes,
Strong charges of their swimming, leaping destinies
Running home to spawn and die. I too
Fling, sing, dive down, hurl forth again
Gladly in Thy name;
Unfurl my length, uncurl coiled strength without reserve
To move more sleekly, sing more sweetly,
Better serve; help stir the waters running through this earth
Help move, help birth, a world.
Swim strong, to God return, give all:
It is a cleaving song that calls,
And life that in the losing lives.
Paul Martin
For me, this also points to a key issue in spiritual development: getting over ourselves. Whether you call the self that gets in our way sin, selfishness, or ego, it's what prevents us from being more alive to what is more and greater than ourselves alone.
And whether we view spiritual development as “dying to self and living to Christ," articulate it in the framework of another belief system, or speak of ignorance vs. becoming more enlightened, to me, it is our movement in this direction that matters most.
In Christian terminology, this is the way and the life. This is “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." This is the direction of our peace, strength, and joy as individuals and the direction of our long term viability as a species.
Salmon Song
Singing, singing, throw a life into the sea
Like salmon flinging, ringing out the changes,
Strong charges of their swimming, leaping destinies
Running home to spawn and die. I too
Fling, sing, dive down, hurl forth again
Gladly in Thy name;
Unfurl my length, uncurl coiled strength without reserve
To move more sleekly, sing more sweetly,
Better serve; help stir the waters running through this earth
Help move, help birth, a world.
Swim strong, to God return, give all:
It is a cleaving song that calls,
And life that in the losing lives.
Paul Martin
Posted by Paul at 10:44 AM Permalink
29 Comments:
I wrote a poem this morning to answer as best I could, your question on your previous post--your writing challenges me to look deep inside my own way of seeing God--and also to share it--
After I wrote it, I saw the topic you bring to us on today's post, which fits in with my train of thought, too...
It's posted up on my blog...
finally their corpses decompose in the streams and litter the shoreline with nutrients...they are devoured by scavengers.
In the end the Bears excrete all of the minerals in the Forest and the trees absorb the Salmon fertilizer.
Hmm...I guess you're right..
we need to realise that in the end Life is all about fertilizing others..
death to self is a benefit to everything else around you.
HOMO ESCAPEONS: I know exactly what you mean. That's one way of looking at it.
Thank you for stopping by again. i am humbled by your comment.
I enjoy reading your blog very much. While mine is just a daily devotional, a sort of appetizer, yours is the entire buffet. I find myself needing to think about what you have written and absorb the thought. Thank you for that.
Peace and prayers,
Neva
PS. If you lived close enough, we'd bring some dinner over to share with you.
N
A beautiful and inspiring poem!
Thank you!
Margie
Heyyyy long time no see! So happy to see that you are blogging again...i enjoy reading your blog.
(((Hugs)))
Peace & Love
But I like your poem very much :-)
i told my doc i was stupid yesterday. cos i seem to be living my life all wrong. no excuses this time. not young anymore. darn. you can only bluff yourself this long. the end result shows. the fruits? i think i bear good fruits. but the material side, my or my, i am a bad business person.
i've been thinking, am i not blessed enough? now when i see others thriving, i see that the Lord has blessed them. i didn't think it this way before.
Im proud of you ...Its great to see your photo too with a smile ...
Im spreading the word on J. Andrew Lockhart’s Haiku Treat featured in LIP (www.livinginpoetry.blogspot.com/)
NEVA, thanks. It's the fact that you act that I admire. Isn't there even a verse on that... something about faith without works being empty...
MARGIE, thank you.
DENNIS: I've seen this referred to as "spiritual pride."
To my mind, it's one particular possible expression of the underlying problem: ego. And of course everybody has an ego problem, even though ego problems vary a lot in their particulars.
Mine hasn't happened to include much by way of spiritual pride, probably because, to speak metaphorically, God had to smack me upside the head really really hard, and more than once, for me to start to get anything.
As far as I can tell, ego is part of the human condition. In my own experience, although my ego has become both "thinner" and "spottier" with time - sort of like my hair... it's a survivor and looks for ways to hang on. Yeah, it really is a lot like my hair, lol...
The sorts of mindfulness techniques you refer to I've found very useful. Buddhism has a lot to offer in terms of concrete practices that work against ego.
I've read that Buddha himself resisted the attempt of some of his followers to divinize him by telling them that he continued to have trouble keeping to his own Eightfold Path!
KATHY, great to see you, look forward to dropping by your blog again regularly.
CRYSTAL: I don't know... it's like you sound, maybe... disgruntled? Over your mortality!!? Shouldn't you be like in despair or something, lol?! I think it's your use of the word "stuff" in this context that's getting to me!
Tone is so hard to gauge sometimes in print, feel free to clarify! Thanks about the poem. And be sure to tell Homo Escapeons! He seems to have this tendency to go REALLY far with analogies lately...!
(Thanks for putting up with me guys, I am not being serious enough here...)
MISTI: Oh, yeah, this helps, lol... So I'm having a problem being serious and you lead off with "I need to be like the salmon?"
Is this a conspiracy...? OK, let me just settle down here and read the rest of what you wrote...
If people materially thriving/not thriving is an indication of God's blessings/curses, wouldn't you have to say God's not much of a judge of character?
IAMNASRA: I appreciate it, and thanks for sharing that link.
Darius before was trying to redefine, almost reinvent Christianity: a task heavy enough to kill anyone.
Now, Paul, you write about "dyin to self and living to Christ" and I am sure this must be reflecting almost literally your own experience.
You too have been that salmon. Darius has died or at least cast off a skin, revealing someone else.
I'm so excited about this.
perhaps i am way off ... but this sort of makes me think of the prayer of serenity ... i'm sure you know how that goes. and then there is my other favourite: "he who dies with the most toys ... still dies."
the things we 'small' humans think are so important ... are, in the grand scheme of things, so trivial.
having just emerged from nursing the very sick and dying ... i have felt/seen the and of g-d. it was humbling ... and left me awestruck - watching ... feeling a soul leave its body. makes one realize ... what life is really all about.
the poem is beautiful. i will have to come back and read it a few times ... @ a time when i am firing on all cylinders, lol.
thanx for visiting my blog.
=8^)
Through my journey of chronic physical pain and illness, it is interesting to note that getting over oneself takes on new depth of meaning when living in a physical body that serves as a constant reminder of dying to self.
Thank you for your wonderful insights, and your beautiful poetry.
I am not going to complain about my aches and pains now.
Will read your post again later , enough to write an intelligent comment
I feel that ego is not to be eliminated but rather to be controlled and made subservient to our higher or real self. The silent pull from within is the real self - the stronger pull from without through our senses and feelings is the ego - the I and me and mine. The body and its senses, and mind and its thoughts are not the real self. The real self is consciousness which the ego depends upon in order to exist. The pull of the body and its snses are so strong that we don't think to look beyond this and enquire into what is it that makes us aware of our body in the first place.
RED M: Sounds like all cylinders to me! I know what you mean about the sick and dying. In how they died, the two people whose deaths I witnessed transcended how they lived.
As you suggest, it’s much better to do what transcending we can while we have more time!
PAT P: Thank you, and also to Firebird for that reference.
SERENITY: Great metaphor, and glad you bumped into this blog. I look forward to stopping at yours.
I know what you mean by one’s physical body, when it features chronic pain and ill health, being a constant reminder of dying to self. It's a hard way, but it can still be a way when it turns out to be the only path ahead and the roads we would have preferred to choose are closed.
For me, this has been a way that has shut down immense possibilites for joy. Still, I have to say that it has shown me immensity from another angle, so to speak - in starker relief (or maybe unrelief!)
DR SU: Do you refer to Sufism and the Koran? I must have bumped into you at Kevin’s blog. Sufism, if I’m stating this correctly, is a highly contemplative branch of Islam. I'm especially interested in contemplative religious traditions.
I wonder whether the scripture you cite might additionally be construed that such persons defy mortality in the following sense: that their own mortality, even before they die, may have ceased to be an issue for them personally...
JANICE: Thanks, and for those thoughts about what “ego” means to you - another word requiring definition. At least here, most ways of looking at it would share the basic view of ego as an aspect of ourselves which is less authentic and in some sense less real than our better nature.
For me, ANY success and positive feedback feeds the desire for more "ego-stroking", and gives me the illusion that I have accomplished this stuff on my own. (can't, of course)
The "depression" I feel almost immediately when this happens, is when the ego-stroking need leaves me hungrier than before, and is breaking my connection with God...
There's only one thing I can do, and that is to take a pin, pop the ego-bubble, give up the success and the hunger with it, and become naked and helpless again in God's hands...
paradoxically, it's the only way to grow...
floating up on the buoyancy of having nothing, is faster than climbing.
"“dying to self and living to Christ,"
I am not sure how to react to this question - particularly during the Feminist Theology WOrkshop times and, particularly after spending last eve's session with Sallie McFague and various other Theologians...
I, particularly don't want to die to anything "to be" - as Christ and our father/mother/Creator - is already "in/within me". It beggs the question: Why should there be the death of anything involved?
I am sensing there is an intermeshing of beliefs/concepts. While that sometimes is a good thing, at others, it is simply crazy-making.
Peace. love and joy
Paul, you mentioned getting over ourselves. To me that means moving away from being so self-centered, so full of ourselves, so puffed up with pride. Surely though you don't mean that we should strive to rid ourselves of healthy self-respect, self-esteem, self-love, and self-confidence. Can you help me out here? Maybe I am just dense these past few days.
BTW, I had trouble signing in under my google account for some reason.
i could not resist interjecting my two cents' here.
what value or vibrance would life hold ... if death did not exist? perhaps this is primitive thinking ... but something that is available in such bountiful, overabundant amounts becomes almost valueless.
just my thoughts.
Probably about the most difficult word to employ in terms of holding together a discussion that includes non believers as well as believers.
A lot of people prefer something like "higher power." But I suspect most atheists hear that as "God."
And "God" is usually understood as a Creator existing apart from creation - an Other entity whose existence people argue about.
So just the idea of God could easily run several posts, just to get people thinking about what they mean, or don't, when using that word.
ANGEL DUST: "Dying to self and living to Christ" isn't my phrase, but a frequently referenced New Testament quote or close paraphrase.
In the post, I presented it as a Christian way of referring to what seems to me to be the central developmental task of adulthood: becoming increasingly alive and present to more than our self interest as narrowly construed (selfishness or ego). I wasn't trying to promote the Christian belief system, just figured the phrase would resonate with people from that tradition.
I'd add that as far as I can tell, none of us can completely die to egoism. It's a matter of taking a direction.
SUSIE Q: I definitely take your point. On the one hand, it's true that I'd have trouble coming up with a better answer to the question of what it means to become a better person than getting away from forms of self preoccupation that lead us to disregard others.
On the other hand, there are forms of self interest that are beneficial. For example, if we don't take care of our own basic needs, we can't be of use to ourselves or others.
And although becoming less egoistic is, in general, what growing up is all about, I agree that egoism has some positive value. I'd even say a degree of egoism is a necessity early in life, and that even as adults, there are circumstances in which egoism can be helpful as a kind of tool long after we have learned, at heart, not to take our egos seriously.
(I'm not much of a technician... Anyone else having trouble posting comments? My guess is it's some temporary glitch around the new google/blogger deal and maybe from your end because I was having problems logging in for a while too.)
RED M: I really don't know how to think about that one. Similarly, you hear people say we couldn't experience pleasure without expeiencing pain.
Since life in fact always hands us both, for me it's beyond knowing.
Yes you bumped into me at Kevin's blog and I am glad I found your blog.Yes it is such that when a human realises their true nature and experiences it, death is no big deal.I was recently visiting some shrines in New Delhi and found that perhaps in death , some personalities simply get more influential ...
For me though, in my teens and early twenties, mortality was central to a world view that saw everthing as futile.
GAUTAMI, glad you liked it -
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