On Life: Part 4, Getting Unstuck

Over the years in my efforts to make sense of life I have read broadly and appreciatively from many sources, from many faith traditions, from many disciplines of study.  Often I have found in this pursuit marvelous insight, sometimes just a turn of phrase that opens up a seeming universe of new and richer meaning.  Still when all is said and done I believe almost all I’ve learned comes down to a very few basic principles taught by Jesus.  One, the first, is the fundamental necessity of getting over oneself.  This we looked at in my last post.

The second principle of Jesus that is absolutely fundamental to understanding how life works is to get over whatever you’re attached to, to somehow get unstuck from all the things that keep you from really living.  Jesus says this often, in many ways, in many of his stories, in many of his encounters, one of the most famous being with the rich young ruler in Matthew 19.  But the most startling way he said it is in Luke 14:25-27, “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.  And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.’”

This is, of course, a shocking text, that we are to hate our fathers and mothers, our wives and children, our brothers and sisters – that we are to hate those to whom we are most naturally bound.  So what’s going on?  Didn’t Jesus speak of love all the time and didn’t he undeniably love his own mother?  It’s helpful to remember, I think, that Jesus is so much more Eastern than readers in twenty-first-century America suppose, and he has this way about him that only Eastern masters have: the stunning paradox, the apparent non sequitur, the seemingly outlandish proposal – “Gouge out your eye,” “Cut off your hand,” “Sell all that you have,” or “Oh, hate your father and mother” – to break up our patterns of thought, to disrupt our complacency, to smash our clichés and platitudes, to force us to look at life again and think.  It’s almost what a Zen master would say.  And I think there is a certain truth to that.

Perhaps the answer, however, is simpler still; perhaps it lies in the real meaning of the Semitic word for “hate” (or the word translated “hate” here), because the word means “to turn away from, or to detach yourself from.”  There is nothing of the emotion we experience in the expression “I hate you.”  Jesus is warning his followers, “If you cannot detach or get unstuck from your father or mother, from your wife or children, or from your brothers or sisters, you cannot really follow me.” 

Certainly this is true in this particular historical moment, Jesus setting out resolutely for Jerusalem, knowing he will be killed there, but this is also timeless, universal truth that goes to the heart of being alive.  This is brilliant insight that the wisest have always known.  Whatever you cling to in life, whatever you have convinced yourself you cannot be happy without, has “potential nightmare” written all over it.  It may be a person, a place or an outcome.  

Think about it; most of your misery in life comes from the things you’re attached to.  Think of the things you cling to in life and see them for what they are – nightmares that cause you excitement and pleasure on the one hand (and in small doses) but also worry, insecurity, tension, anxiety, fear and unhappiness on the other (and often in large doses).  And in fact you keep going through that cycle.  You find something or someone or some outcome you convince yourself you can’t be happy without.  You do have these moments of exquisite pleasure.  Then fear (fear that this will all be lost), and worry, anxiety and unhappiness.  Then pleasure again.  And then worry.  And pleasure and worry.  And you’re completely missing out on life, on all the people God gives you, on all the things God gives you, and on all the outcomes he makes possible, some of which are more glorious than the one you’re stuck on.  Life is giving you so much, but all you can see is the thing you cannot be happy without.  Yes, things are always coming together and falling apart, and coming together again and falling apart again, but often it’s their falling apart that creates space for what is new and better.

On Life: Part 3, It Begins with Getting over Yourself

There are, I've found, many insights into learning to live more wisely and compassionately.  I learn to make my peace with change and to live in the present moment.  I learn to drop certain story lines.  I learn to open myself up to larger and larger perspectives.  In the end, however, all these insights come down to three basic principles of Jesus.  The first I’ll work with right now, the other two in posts to come.  

This is the first one.  Jesus in Matthew 16:21-28 urges those who wish to make sense of life – those who wish to “find” life – to get over their selves: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.  What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul?  Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”  It’s important to realize that the word translated both “life” and “soul” here is the same Greek word, ψυχή, transliterated “psyche” and meaning one’s inner life, essentially one’s self.

This text, of course, has a context, Peter confessing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (in Matthew 16:16), and then Jesus beginning to “explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things … , and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”  Peter of course objects to this: “This shall never happen to you – all this talk about suffering.”  But Jesus has heard that voice before.  Back in time.  Out in the wilderness of Judea.  So he turns to Peter (in verse 23) and says, “Get behind me, Satan!”  Peter, there is no other way than turning the other check, going the second mile, in fact, all the way to the cross.  The power is in getting over yourself. 

So Jesus says (in verse 24), “If anyone would come after me,  he must deny himself.”  He must renounce self as the center of life and action.  He must renounce self as the center of the universe.  Of course this goes against almost everything our culture, especially our culture, tells us, but it’s exactly what every world faith eventually tells us.  After all what is the self?  Stop and look and see.  Try to describe your real self – the core “you.”  What exactly is it?  Quick!  I ask, “Who are you?  No, who are you really?”  How do you answer?  What exactly is the self?  Is it your name?  Your age?  Your gender?  Your job, what you do for a living?  Your fears?  Your dreams?  Your beliefs or even your behavior patterns?  Is it your personality?  What is the core you?  Any idea?  So we have built a whole culture on this thing called self when we have very little idea what it even is.

           

Jon Kabat-Zinn in his classic book Wherever You Go There You Are introduces the concept of Selfing.  Selfing is the way we construct out of almost everything and every situation an “I,” a “me,” and a “mine,” and then operate in the world from that limited perspective which turns out to be mostly fantasy and defense.  If you really think about it, you will see, he says, that what we call “the self” is really a construct of our own mind, and hardly a permanent one either.  This “I” construct is continually dissolving and reconstructing itself, always slightly differently, virtually moment by moment.  So it’s no wonder that we so easily feel put down or diminished, small, insecure and uncertain, since the existence of “self” is so fragile. 

Jesus is saying, “For life to work you have to shift your spiritual center of gravity off your self.”  You have to shift your spiritual center of gravity off your ego, off of all those thoughts by which you separate yourself from others.  The truth is – and it’s taught in all world literature and mythology – that in every culture the really creative acts are understood to involve some sort of dying to self.  Deep down inside, we have always known that. 

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t identifies eleven companies who have outperformed the market almost seven times over, over a period of fifteen years.  He found that in every case their leaders were self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy, and that they hardly ever talked about themselves.  There were no Donald Trumps.

You find yourself by losing yourself, by getting out from under the pressure of having the details of your own life be central to the operation of the universe so that every outcome, decision, success or failure seems so deadly important.  Only the soul set free from agonizing self-consciousness is fully free to explore and participate in the world beyond the self.  Only such a soul is free to see, to understand and to love.  As long as you are obsessed with your own security, or your reputation, or how you come across, or even your own spiritual journey, you are not available either to give yourself to others or to be kind to yourself.  And you are not free to live, or even to make sense of life.

But where does one go to learn this, and practice this?  Are we all on our own?