If you are born in this world it is because you are meant to be. The development of your soul requires you to experience and negotiate the material world. In order to unfold its divine potential your spiritual self needs to meet the challenges, demands and opportunities of physical plane existence, the main one of which being the separation from God. The spiritual self exists in a state of non-separation. I don't say union because this is not fully conscious as true union is. To reach the state of conscious union is the whole point of the exercise.
You are meant to be in the world and therefore the tendency some spiritually sensitive individuals have to escape the pressures and exigencies of material life is, however understandable, wrong. We are in the world to be in the world. At the same time, the opposite form of behaviour which is to see this world as valid in its own right is also wrong. We have to take the world seriously but we also have to understand that, in itself, it is not important. This is what Jesus meant when he said we need to be in the world but not of the world.
Many religious people nowadays are of the world. They do not have their head in the sky. They may talk about the sky but they do not behave as though that is where they have come from or even where they particularly want to go. Why come from? To be truly religious means to be aware of yourself as having your origin on a higher plane of being. There is something in you that already is with God and you know it and with all your heart wish to get back to that. But God has sent you to the world. Maybe he is testing you to see if your desire to be with him is stronger than your desire for worldly goods when these are before you. Or maybe there are lessons you need to learn to do with service or love or humility. You are a seed planted in the darkness of the earth. You need to use the nutrients of the good earth to help you grow but you will only grow if there is that in you that stretches up towards the light. Then your worldly death will be the moment you break through the surface and see the sun. Unlike those seeds that never stretched towards the light and so do not sprout as they should so remain in darkness.
@William wrt the need to be in the world; I agree.
ReplyDeleteI recently watched a really worthwhile documentary about Mount Athos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5pwfLRI-R8
I found it fascinating, and appealing in many ways - and in general a very likeable, admirable, kind of life was portrayed.
Yet I did not find anything very holy about what I gathered of the Athos monk's lives. To my mind, they seemed to be going through the motions - not (in most cases) hypocritically - but just that the monastic idea "doesn't work" anymore - not in the way it used to work, and is supposed to work. Some good things were happening for sure, but really - I felt it wasn't enough. Somehow there was a disconnection.
(If I were a Russian - I would not want to rely on Athos - but would want to make my own national and better equivalent - because, if anywhere (and there may be nowhere), Russia would be the only place it *might* work nowadays.)
Now, of course, it is possible that holiness and genuine spirituality would not come across in a documentary, even indirectly; and likely that a truly holy monk would not cooperate with a documentary! Nonetheless, the impression I took away is that the whole thing did not ring true.
Regarding monks, I don't think one can say the same rules apply to everyone and it would be a tragedy if monasticism died out because it does represent and embody something important for the world. But I do believe that most people who are drawn to the spiritual life are now meant to lead it in, to a certain extent not necessarily fully, the world so they can balance spirit and matter within themselves and express the former in the latter. Just as Jesus did really. He was not a monk apart from during an initial period of preparation when he may have been something along those lines. Different times call for different approaches and we are now in a time when we have to live the spiritual in the material. A monastery may be a necessary place at a certain point in learning but at the end of the day it is an artificial environment.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. It seems so many tasks of faith are to walk a tightrope (the narrow path) - to be in the World and not of it.
ReplyDeleteIt sometimes makes me panic. But your first sentence also functions like the words of Gandalf. Bilbo was meant to find the ring. I was meant to be born in this world. And that _is_ an encouraging thought. Thanks.
Thanks Donald. It is a comfort when the world seems dark to know that we are here at this time and in this place because we are supposed to be and we have a work, great or small, to do.
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