Monday, January 3, 2022

Perennial Prescriptions

I don't really do New Year's resolutions anymore, since I now believe anything worth doing is worth doing always. Sure, there are minor practical considerations that often need tweaking, but best to get first things first right and all those other secondary matters will eventually line up in their proper order. 

In regards to those important primary matters, it's not like we can negotiate our way into them through some annual ritual. We have to want it ALWAYS—even if partially concealed with competing desires and commitments. 

And if you're not tending to those important things, eventually you will get signals you're going the wrong way. COVID has done that to many in my circles: not the virus itself, but the environment it created that forced many to look at themselves. So if I was to give advise for those looking to put what matters first, I would probably echo an excerpt I read from E.F. Schumacher's excellent book A Guide for the Perplexed.

I don't think these 'tasks' have to been done in a strict linear fashion as Schumacher details below, but could actually all be approached simultaneously while emphasizing some aspects over others depending on one's stage of life. I do agree with him that you have to at least start with the first and second to some extent. 

He says that,

“His first task is to learn from society and 'tradition' and to find his temporary happiness in receiving directions from outside.”

[Why re-create the wheel (or at least recognize you have been indoctrinated into one spoke of the wheel without being aware of the whole of it)? There is so much to learn from culture and tradition. And not a sclerotic tradition, but one that comes alive today. Human nature does not change much, and the real insights to Truth are eternal. The shoulders we stand on often have more originality and freshness than many of the contemporary thinkers of today. Learn from the past and present, with breadth, height, width, and depth.]

“His second task is to interiorise the knowledge he has gained, sift it, sort it out, keep the good and jettison the bad; this process may be called 'individuation', becoming self-directed.” 

[We are still individuals with particular inclinations. Not everything will resonate with everyone. The point is to integrate what does make you come alive and make it your own to embody; with your gifts; and to be lived with autonomy and mastery.]

“His third task is one that he cannot tackle until he has accomplished the first two, and for which he needs the very best help he can possibly find: it is 'dying' to oneself, to one's likes and dislikes, to all one's ego-centric preoccupations. To the extent that he succeeds in this, he ceases to be directed from outside, and he also ceases to be self-directed. He has gained freedom, or, one might say, he is then God-directed.”

[This is an endless task of praying, meditating, and contemplating that is really not a task. It is more an undoing. We undo our cravings around who we think we are to become as we really are. As t.k. says: “I” is a superstition masquerading as unquestionability. So better to always inquire what is Real beyond our ego-centered “I”.]

What I particularly like about Schumacher's prescription is it includes both the inner and outer path to God. I'm also reading W. Norris Clarke's The Philosophical Approach to God, where he states “It is one of the powerful perennial attractions of the Neoplatonic style of philosophy that the inner spiritual ascent of the soul to the One and the outer metaphysical ascent through the cosmos reveal themselves as two sides of the same coin. The spiritual and the metaphysical are not closed off from each other, but mirror each other in different orders.”

We are here to understand, and “to understand is ultimately to unify: it means first to discern the parts of anything clearly, but finally to unify them into a meaningful whole in itself and then with all else that we know” (Clarke).