October 2005 Archives

Peter had asked, “I understand the power and value that Faith itself can bring to a man, but what does it really mean beyond self-induced freedom from uncertainty?”

Dear Peter, It is the posing of this question, inwardly, that creates the dilemma, and the “split” you feel between two paths: one of a resigned (yet putatively false) certainty, and one of an active uncertainty. The former feels less than truly human, as if one had “stopped” and given up everything to an illusory Super Power; while the latter is more true to our condition, but comes with all the attendant anxieties and concerns of that condition. The former is ideal, pretty, maybe even heavenly; the latter is real – and in that reality lies the more potent allure.

I have no interest in a God of the unreal, or in my mind coming to a halt. So how do I resolve faith/acceptance/delighting in the Khidrs of life, with introspection, questioning, searching, and that wonderful thirst which propels men to greatness?

The answer is: I do not resolve it, because I do not face this question; and that is because I do not seek freedom from uncertainty.

What is happiness? To me it is loving the current day as it is, and not looking forward to its end, or another, better day to follow it. I know I am happy when the current hour is absolutely enough, when I count myself lucky for having lived, and when the people in my life fill me with awe and wonder that I know such wonderful souls. This is not always because life is perfect and rosy – often it is bumpy, like today when I missed my flight, and then missed my metro stop and had to walk a mile in the cold dark of a San Francisco night – but because I choose to appreciate the wonder of life itself. I think happiness is found in living – consciously living. It is not an external state later applied to life, but the very condition of living itself. It is only when a person does not see this, precisely because they are seeking something better, that they face a constant disappointment.

Now, actively appreciating life, looking with wonder at the sky and wondering how molecules bond to form solid surfaces; thinking and thinking and thinking about the beauty of things and how they work: this is an active mind, an alive mind. It is not a mind resigned to the world, or one that says, “As long as God knows how butterflies stay in the air, that is enough for me.” I want to know, to understand airfoils and laminar flow, pressure gradiants and thermals, and everything else. I want to keep learning and questioning because this very process is my mind’s life. To resign myself to a world that I don’t understand and then move through it like a blissful zombie is not life; that is just a sweet death. And to wonder over an over again where happiness lies and quest to find it: this is not life either; it is missing the point. Neither path is what I seek; neither bondage in certainty, nor freedom from uncertainty.

What I want is what life is, uncertain, unsure, full of questions. My faith is that this uncertain and unsure life is pretty cool. It’s interesting. I like being alive. I don’t own much, I’m not famous, I’m not wealthy, but I feel like a child most of the time and I get excited very easily. I don’t have questions about what Truth is, because I’m not looking for Truth anymore – for Truth is all around me. Life is truth, living is truth. The fact of using your mind to look for truth is truth. It’s not seeing this which makes the whole thing so damnably complex. We are looking for what’s right under our nose, and then we wonder why it’s so hard to find.

I question always, not because I’m hoping to find a final Answer at the end of all that questioning, to put to rest all my doubts and fears, but because the questioning itself is fun. Finding new answers is exciting; learning new things satisfies my mind. I do it for the experience, not the end or what I might “reap” from the effort.

In our culture we look so much to the end, the product, the conclusion. We think Truth is something we can find, and that once we find it our search will be over and we can put it up on our mantle for all to see. Now, we think, our suffering will end, our uncertainty will disappear, we can finally go to sleep. At the end of a hard day, one deserves a rest, no?

Well, in a way our suffering does end: when pain ceases to hurt so much – when Moses pierces the lesson of Khidr – in a way uncertainty does disappear: when not knowing becomes part of the adventure. But in reality there is no end; the experience of living never ends. It only transforms from one form to another: from child to adult, material to immaterial, from experiences of the body to those of mind and soul. We are always changing, moving, becoming. This itself is the truth of living; not what we imagine ourselves to be heading toward.

So to me, God is like a best friend who’s given me consciousness so that I might enjoy the beauty of His being. However, His being is not beautiful in any textbook way, like a single Mona Lisa hanging on a gallery wall. That’s idealized, refined beauty. Rather, God’s beauty is so infinite and broad that it requires training the eye to see it all. And the more we train and educate our souls, the more of it we will perceive.

However, I do not train my inward eye toward some final end, some cessation of the training; I do it for the sake of the beauties I see. And in always wanting more, I continue on, never seeking rest and never begruding this movement ever-upward. I don’t play the game for the final longsword +5 at the end – but because the graphics are cool and the story is fun. The playing is the truth of the game; the seeing is the truth of beauty; the living is the truth of life. Forget the Truth of schools and scholars; Truth is in your reading of this e-mail right now.

Do you feel it? God’s nearness around your shoulders and in your chest – like your body itself is a creation of His love? Question if you have a desire to question, but because you want to question, not because people have told you to seek answers to endless questions.

To desire certainty is like wishing not to be part of this existence; to loathe uncertainty is to loathe the basic condition of life itself. Why should Faith be something to take us away from what life is? God created life. In my mind, what He desires most is for us to dig in with all we’ve got that we might appreciate and experience the many moments of wonder He’s placed there for the seeing – like an endless procession of beautiful longwords in an infinitely varied game.

If life doesn’t appear that way, then I say: look again. Are you seeing what’s there, or seeing what’s it not, like looking at an existential negative? Look long and deep, and when you find yourself lost in the vision, you will know at that moment what truth and happiness are.

Peter Lee sent in a comment and question regarding the last few blog entries, which I found so well expressed I asked for his permission to post it here. I will follow with my response to his closing questions tomorrow. Here is what he wrote me:

“I’ve also just begun my adventures on NWN [Neverwinter Nights] a couple of days ago, it is a remarkable game. :)

“However, I must admit that I am quite baffled in how you drew the parallel of such fantastic journey with our own.

“I find these games to be of such delight precisely because it is so different than how life really is. Such games always imply a positive experience, i.e. your progress is an absolute function of the additive. I currently don’t find life to adhere to the same formulae… although it is quite likely that you may disagree.

“For one, I have no idea what I’m living for. Well, that is not entirely correct. I do have ideas about what I’m living for, I just do not truly understand those very ideas. Not only that, I am not certain if I will ever fully understand those ideas, so my life’s quest always converges to a single idea: a quest for Truth.

“Living for Happiness, Love, Joy, Acceptance, Understanding, Freedom, Success, Wealth, Comfort, etc. ultimately falls back on what you consider those ideas to mean. But what is Happiness? What is Love? How do you know if you are on the right track to attaining these ideals? How do you even know if your understanding of these ideals is satisfactory enough to lead you to better understanding, ultimately taking you on the right path for finding them? Even if you are not certain what it is that you seek, is it possible for you to have found it?

“Here you may entertain a concept of God. In His grace, you are exactly where you should be. In His wisdom, you substitute your ignorance with His guiding hand. In Him, you graft perfection into life. In Him, you find raazi.

“But doesn’t that mean there is no more quest for Truth? We have found it. Truth is divine, given by grace and guidance, in His mystery it is endowed, and in His humor it is made known. In prayers you express your intent, and in His intervention, you are given what you seek… even if you may or may not understand what you thought you were seeking has been made known to you because who truly understands the mind of God?

“This is the fork in the road that I have been staring at for some time now. In one, I seek God and re-engineer life to operate in the fantasy adventure world formulae, the absolute additive, always progressing forward, looking for my next sword, since in Faith I can rest in comfort that I will find it. I will seek Khidr, ultimately to wield my blade in absolute authority of the divine. In another, I seek what is Undefined, following a path with infinite sign-posts, accepting the unfortunate possibility that I will never find what I am looking for, and that I may never find my next sword. I will seek Moses, except bear my questions with unflinching conviction in the properness of its utterance.

“I must admit, this is not the first time I’ve been at this fork. I have once embraced Faith without question. But it is a hazardous and difficult path to follow. I have tasted of peace, but never free from the question of its origin. That I may have Faith in any of my own choosing to serve any of my own ideals has shattered my fantasy time and time again, throwing me back to my quest for Truth.

“I sometimes miss the innocence of my Faith, the comfort of completeness that it offers. Deep down, I feel a stirring whenever I entertain thoughts of His voice, bringing endowment of divine purpose and knowledge, to have Truth be made known and to call me forth from the multitude with a command marking me His… such fanciful dreams of empowerment and freedom! What wonder if my Faith was Truth! Yet I am continually repulsed by its premise, the self-evident nature of its dogma, that it grows with power in acceptance, not in questioning.

“John, how do you resolve your inner conflict of the meaning and the Truth of Faith? I’m simply referring to your act of Faith, not what that Faith is actually composed of. I understand the power and value that Faith itself can bring to a man, but what does it really mean beyond self-induced freedom from uncertainty?

“A world without God is a frightening and an unsettling place. Some may even call it “meaningless”. But as far as I can tell, it still is the same world. Only the lens of reflection has changed; of what I may see and find that Faith may have blinded is the current quest of my choosing.

“I wonder what will be my next sword?”

I love to play fantasy adventure games on my laptop, especially right now Neverwinter Nights. In those sort of games, it’s typical to start out as a fighter character who wields a plain, simple sword. It’s a good sword, capable of doing a fair bit of damage, but there’s not much sexy about it. Just a long piece of metal for bashing in the heads of a few kobolds. Next kobold.

As you journey on, sure enough the character undoes enough kobolds to begin raising in levels, until the amazing day when he finds his first longsword +1. At the beginning this is a wonderful event, because, you see, it’s a magical sword. It almost glows with possibilities. It’s likely has very little weight, and shines with its own light when you wield it. It probably has its own name.

It reminds of the day when I traded in a Toshiba laptop for my first Apple PowerBook. It was like going from a longsword to a longsword +1. (There are many changes in my life which bear a striking similarity to the feelings evoked by adventure games).

A few days ago I decided to upgrade to one of the newest PowerBooks, which were announced this past week. I made a little table to determine how much “better” they were, and found they had improved in no less than fourteen categories. Yes, I had found my longsword +2 – with added fire damage!!

So as I was saying my prayers at the end of the night and getting excited about the new laptop – friends who know me well understand the spiritual connection I have to computers, which are, for me, a mystical window into the worlds of the mind – it occurred to me that in every game I’ve ever played there has always been a longsword +4, and a +5, and so on until you find a weapon named “Demonslayer” or some such, with abilities so amazing it makes it hard to sleep at night.

It was at this moment I realized: we are always heading toward something better. I don’t mean “better” in the sense that what we have is no good; a longsword +1 in the hands of a level 3 fighter is a fine thing, and it’s worthy of much appreciation the first day you find. But as a character progresses in ability, he will need better equipment – and lo and behold that equipment is always there to be found. There may be challenges and difficulties along the path, but after every mountain is another valley full of new goods and magic items.

This realization tempered my excitement somewhat – now knowing each new thing is stepping stone, there to be treasured until giving way for something better suited to our future – and it also showed me there is never a cause to worry: what is needed can always be found.

I suppose this is a matter of faith, since my belief in these things is tied to my belief that God is willing to provide them. It both detaches me from seeing each new longsword as the “end all, be all”, and fills me with a sense of excitement at wondering what each new sword will look like – whether I find it in this world or the next. It gave me a distinct feeling that things will never cease becoming more wonderful.

What if progress along the mystical path toward God is measured by our capacity to love our own creation? According to what I called “the reflexive principle” a few weeks ago, this love gauges the amount of love I have to offer the world around me; and which sets the bar for my faith in how much God loves me.

This faith has to do with my certainty that my prayers to find Him will be answered; or that He wishes to assist me; or that after asking for something my attitude is not, “Why would He do that for me?”, but rather, “Why wouldn’t He?”

I don’t mean self-love by saying this, which is usually love for an imagined identity rather than the real stuff of who we are; I mean love for all the beauty and ugliness, the imperfections and the things we do well; I mean sitting down to prayer at the end of the day and thanking God for having made this the seat of my awareness.

In a way, it’s about being raazi concerning those aspects of my being which are largely beyond my control. This opens an eye (the eye of a lover, who sees beyond all “flaws”) to who and what we truly are.

The opposite of this is self-hatred, where is most of the focus is on who we might become. In fact, we hate even our efforts toward it, such that we hardly believe we can accomplish the perfections we’ve set for ourselves. We are rotten at the core, and only by shunning our creation, and bending it to some nobler end, can we hope to salvage something from this ruined existence.

Thinking on it, I found that some religious and philosophical institutions have enshrined this mentality, becoming a sort of institutionalized anti-humanism. They see us starting from a point of sin, or lack, or ignorance, and most of the “point of life” is in escaping that original condition. By validating a sense of self-loathing, and indicating that this journey is the only hope of redeeming a being who otherwise shouldn’t have been, they lock people into a fervent wish to escape their own skins.

But by loving our own creation, I mean to say that we began whole and perfect, as a seed begins perfect. Everything the tree is meant to be lies within the seed, it only needs tending and nurturing to bring out all of its fruits. What it needs is warmth and encouragement, not the prodding sense that as a sapling, it’s hardly grown enough. What child would respond well if constantly compared to the adult who it was yet to be?

I wonder even if we don’t halt ourselves along the path of our true growth by that loathing, like a plant hidden in darkness. Can we open our arms fully to the sunlight when we don’t believe we’re worth it? Or is real happiness found in being pleased with what is.

I was asked recently what I thought about the nature of beauty and truth. Since these are typical questions for Philosophy, I wanted to know my presents thoughts on the matter. After a moment’s reflection, I replied that I think the experience of the present moment is all we can ever know of truth and beauty. Anything beyond these – such as the principles and ideas we abstract from experience – exist in the realm of human concepts and limitations, creating an impression of the real world which my uncle calls “the phenomenal world”.

But thinking further, my opinion has changed. It is not the present moment which holds beauty, but a capacity of the present to reveal it. It’s like looking into a mirror: you see whatever is reflected at that instant. Take the mirror aside, apart from what’s showing, and there is nothing but your own face staring back at you. Is beauty “in” the mirror? No. But it possesses a capacity to reveal it.

Then what is it that we look at? I remember seeing an old castle in Germany, which had been standing for many centuries. It was in good shape, with huge stone blocks and impressive, iron-banded doors. It presented a convincing image of strength and stability.

That perception of strength and stability is what my uncle calls the phenomenal: existing only in the momentary experience of those who perceive it (however they perceive it) – a trick of time and shape (cf. Qur’an 27:88, comparing mountains to clouds). Peel aside the glossy exterior of most buildings and likely there are veins of rot, rat warrens, insect burrows, and other things we’d rather not know about. As the veil of time is lifted – moving into a distant future – that castle is already crumbling into dust, its memory fading away until the space is only an empty field again.

That we are beings of phenomenal experience makes this perfectly okay, since we’re not asking the castle to endure forever. Or are we? The image of the castle certainly feels almost like a promise – and we want the physical object to make good on that promise. We put a certain degree of trust in it, invest some of our heart in it. We begin to have faith in it. And this is where I think we go wrong.

It’s not that the phenomenal world is a sham – any more than a mirror is a sham, though its images might still amaze – but that we buy into it, expecting it to become something more. Even if we’re told it’s just smoke and mirrors; that the whole, pretty world we know is only dust and energy in manifold forms; we still want it to end up real in the end. Because if it doesn’t, where else can we turn?

The man who stores up wealth in his bank account wants that phenomenal wealth to somehow turn into real wealth, since the phenomenal wealth of gold and dollars seems to hold a certain promise. Yet it doesn’t. Christ warned us of the easy susceptibility of mortal wealth to decay and theft. But it just feels so real and solid; can’t we believe it is?

This hoping – a faith that the mirage will become the real river – leads to a constant sense of dissatisfaction with life. It’s just never turns out “as it should”. Every generation for century after century has expected better times around the corner: religion, philosophy, science, poets, have written and dreamed that one day, the phenomenal world is going to turn around and finally become what it promised to be. In that day, decay and theft will either be gone or mitigated. If it doesn’t happen in “this life”, it’s believed to happen in some other life. But the consistent idea is that present reality just isn’t quite right, and that we’re all waiting for existence to finally get its act together.

A natural consequence of the failings of phenomenal reality to satisfy is the belief that it has failed because somehow we failed: either by being essentially unsuitable for a better reality, or having failed in the prerequisites to achieve it. The falsehood of the phenomenal becomes a criticism of our own hope in it; and this, I fear, can only lead to an condemning cycle of self-hatred. When the world itself is a constant reproof, to where can a person turn?

But I think this is a problem we’ve created for ourselves. In wishing the phenomenal to be more “real”: more enduring, permanent, grand, perfect – those eternal qualities we glimpse in the ephemeral – we’ve created a dissatisfaction which demands an answer: Why shouldn’t it be? The mind tries to resolve this flaw in the world and comes up with the idea that we screwed it up: that we didn’t get it right and must labor to right those wrongs. Religiously it becomes a perception of moral flaw; scientifically, a flaw of understanding; artistically, a flaw of technique or inspiration. The imperfections of the world around us become our imperfections in our own eyes, and this, because we believed it should have been better.

What is the real world? Plato’s “real real”? When we see past time and space, past distinction and multiplicity, what presents itself to the mind’s eye? What is it we keep wanting the phenomenal to become? The alchemists wanted to reach it, to discover the secrets of capturing the real, in order to restore the arts of perfection and ever-lasting health. They wanted to bring its quintessential nature into the human sphere so as to correct the flaws they perceived in the world around them. Who hasn’t been striving to “bridge the gap”, to reconnect the soul with the reflections of God it perceives in the mirage of life?

In some way, I think everyone is trying to bridge the phenomenal into the real, or imbue the phenomenal with its qualities. They want the facade of granite and steel to become a real building that can never fade; they want their wealth to become an unassailable quality whose value does not decay; they want their ideal to reflect truths that are as unyielding to argument as truth itself. In so many ways, we take the phenomenal to be real, and then try to patch up the weak spots so it somehow becomes the real.

In all of this there is a critical misjudgment, which I think begins with believing in the images of the phenomenal, and mistaking the forms for their essence. It’s not that any one form contains the essence, but that the essence lives by the infinity of its forms, a kind of Aristotelian home for Plato’s perfections to dwell in. It is all one masterpiece, not a broken promise. We make the errors in it that we see, by demanding something of the eye it can’t deliver: a perception of flawlessness in a world where flaw is the salt of beauty.

Becoming raazi, however, is a profound journey. It involves not only the mind – to perceive the will of God – but the heart, in accepting and being pleased by it. It is the difference between knowing that “God works in mysterious ways”, and being comfortable with the strangest and most mundane of those mysteries.

For example, God knows that our future can take innumerable paths, and He is always affecting our circumstances to lead us down the best path. I know that some don’t believe in such an “interactive God”, but I think the efficacy of prayer implies a divine responsiveness to our present condition. At any rate, who knows what each of our possible futures might hold? In one, I get home after a long drive; in another, I might experience a fatal accident and the end of my life and chances. The difference between the two might be only a few seconds – mere moments!

And so, not wishing that my life end today, God slows me down by those couple seconds I need to survive. The form of the slowing uses whatever is at hand: possibly a car to cut me off, causing me to brake suddenly. If one is “far from the mystery”, the event seems like an aggravating, momentary thwart to my plans; yet maybe that car just came between my future life and impending death. You never see the car you didn’t hit you. So I wonder if that car cutting me off is not “the hand of God”, holding me back for a few seconds in order to craft for me a better future – using the least amount of interference possible.

Becoming raazi seems to mark a dividing line between knowledge and understanding, between ilm (knowledge in the head) andirfaan (knowledge in the heart). A classic example of this distinction is found in the Qur’an, in a story where Moses meets the deathless prophet, Khidr. I’ll retell that story here in my own words, based on what appears after verse 65 of chapter 18:

One day Moses and one of His servants were walking between the “two seas”, when they came upon one of the servants whom God had endowed with knowledge (whom commentators believe was Khidr).

Moses asked Khidr if He could join him in his travels, because he hoped to learn something of the higher truths God had taught him. To this Khidr replied, “You will not be able to hold patience with me, for how can you be patient with something when your understanding is incomplete?”

Moses replied that He would be very patient with Khidr, and would not disobey him in anything. So Khidr allowed Him to follow him, but asked that He say nothing about whatever He might see – unless Khidr himself should start the discussion.

They went along together until at one point they were in a boat, and Khidr suddenly opened a hole in the bottom of the boat to sink it. Moses exclaimed that he was trying to drown them, and how very strange that was! But Khidr only said, “Didn’t I say that you wouldn’t have patience with me?”

Moses regretted this outburst, and asked Khidr to forgive him for forgetting his vow. So they continued, until they met a young man, whom Khidr instantly slew. Moses shouted, “How could you slay an innocent who has done nothing? What an evil thing you’ve done!”

Again Khidr replied, “Didn’t I say you wouldn’t be able to have patience with me?”

Moses again regretted his criticism, and said, “If I say another word, remove me from your company, for you would be fully justified in doing so.”

Then they continued on, until they came to a town whose inhabitants refused either food or hospitality. But when they found a wall on the point of falling down, Khidr set to work and repaired the wall. Moses said, “Surely you could ask for recompense after all that work!”

But Khidr only said, “This is the parting between you and me; though first I will tell you the meaning of those things which tested your patience.

“As for the boat, it belonged to certain men in dire want, who used it to ply the water. I rendered it unserviceable for a time, because there was a certain king after them who seized on every boat by force.

“As for the youth, his parents were people of Faith, and we feared he would grieve them by his future rebellion and ingratitude, so we desired the Lord to give them another son who would be pure of conduct.

“As for the wall, it belonged to two orphans in the town. There was a buried treasure beneath it to which they were entitled. Since their father had been a righteous man, the Lord desired they should attain full maturity and recover their treasure – which would not have happened had the treasure been found too soon.

“This is the meaning of those things about which you could not be patient.”

Sufi writers have referred to this story as an illustration of the difference between two kinds of men who devote themselves to God: those who are conversant with the Law and obey, like Moses; and those who see beyond the Law and rejoice at the wisdom of God’s ways. Moses was inclined to judge the actions of Khidr by His own standards – according to the word of the Law – while Khidr acted out the greater plan of God (which sometimes contravenes the lesser).

I don’t think the purpose of the story is to say that mystic understanding confers an authority to act like Khidr, which some have believed, but that if we were to meet with Khidr along our Path, perhaps we might appreciate him as a servant of the better good, rather than judge him harshly.

What form does our Khidr take? Perhaps he is that car which just cut me off on the road – seemingly acting one way, but to another purpose.

If we meet our Khidr – in the shape of our enemies, disappointments, and apparent cruelties of God – should we react as Moses had done? Would we be able to keep patience with his company? To be raazi means that we could, that we have gone from ilm toirfan, and that our reactions are no longer governed by the limitations of mortal vision. As Bahá’u’lláh wrote of a lover who had been ruthlessly chased by a watchman (his Khidr) into the court of his long-lost beloved:

Now if the lover could have looked ahead, he would have blessed the watchman at the start, and prayed on his behalf, and he would have seen that tyranny as justice; but since the end was veiled to him, he moaned and made his plaint in the beginning. Yet those who journey in the garden land of knowledge, because they see the end in the beginning, see peace in war and friendliness in anger.