Transcendent vs Secular Interfaith

[path_of_one]

Hi, Nick-

Sorry I can't respond in detail tonight. I'm still pondering a few things from the posts, trying to articulate others, and I've got a several day road trip ahead of me so I should get computer access early next week again.

As for Simone- I'm interested. I hope it's not that you think I'm disinterested. It's just that in my line of work (and my personality), I'm interested in many, many writers/philosophers/mystics. And I try to have a balanced and critical approach to practically everyone. I don't mean critical as in mean, but rather as in reflective and cautious. No one is beyond criticism- there are flaws in everyone and it behooves us to wrestle with them- both our own and those of others. I have to bounce things off other writers/theorists/philosophers I've read and pondered, as well as my own spiritual experience... what I believe to be right given my personal experience of God. Sometimes a thought just hits me, other times it takes time (sometimes a loooong time), and sometimes my answer is a non-answer- God doesn't want me to deal with something yet. There are things (so far) that I would agree with Simone on, and I grasp some of what she is saying (I think) far more intuitively and personally than perhaps you realize. But it doesn't mean I will put her (or anyone, for that matter) on a pedestal and see her as the answer. Nor Plato, nor Einstein... All have flaws, all have weaknesses in both logic and experience... as do we all. The questioning is what I'm after.

I will say I certainly try never to be stuffy as you describe, and I don't teach either anthropology or religion based on memorization of facts. Of course, students need to show they "get" the concepts, but even my exams (when I have them) are designed to be learning experiences... I want them to figure out the relationships, to be critical, to dig in deeper. The point of education, to me, is to assist people in figuring out how to learn, to grow, to analyze, to self-reflect... Education is a life-long endeavor and not a four-year plan to stuff knowledge in someone's head. Students will learn far more from the rest of their lives than they ever will from me. My job is to make them curious enough to seek, and to give them tools with which to become reflective about their own lives and themselves, how they interact with others, and encourage them to tackle problems with courage and creativity.

As for the heart... briefly (too briefly)... if we are open to God's grace, I believe our hearts (as a metaphor for our Spirit-given intuition and empathy, not our emotion) are bent toward God's will, giving us clarity. All people have the capacity of intuition and empathy, but accuracy and furthering of our spiritual intuition and empathy depend on dedicated cultivating of the Spirit in ourselves. That may be too bluntly put, but it's all I have time for right now.

 

[Nick_A]

Hi Path

I'll have to sing you a chorus of "On the Road Again."

I don't mean to suggest that anyone should blindly accept anything. Simone embarrasses me because of the quality of her search. Only a special heart could need in this way and with such purity. Regardless of how politically incorrect it appears, a genuinely spiritual man with higher interests has the highest regard for and feels protective towards this objectively female quality because he both lacks and needs it. The princess can kiss the frog which provides him the completion to become himself and he in turn provides the quality of consciousness she needs for completion.

Simone was stuck with dealing with problems men wouldn't because of their stupidity. So if she makes us look like a bunch of a-holes, good for her. I for one appreciate it.

I'm very much caught up with the question of what creates a human perspective. We know in our lives how our perspective has changed as we age. The perspective of a person at ten is different then at twenty which is different at thirty and so on. This means to me that the perspective I value in myself now may seem rudimentary in twenty years so how good is it? Is Shakespeare right that all the world is a stage and everything is just dust to dust? Are the ancients and Plato right to suggest we live in illusion as in Plato's cave? Does man have the ability to gradually awaken, "evolve," as suggested by Thoreau in Walden into a new quality of "being" which is the essential message of Christian re-birth" so as to become himself: "To Be."

"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?" Thoreau

So should we share questions or answers? A lot of Interfaith seeks to deny questions and agree to soothing answers which are meaningless. I believe that people can share on differences without insult if they remember what Thoreau, Simone, Plato, Buddha, and others knew which is that as we are, we are arguing fantasy so why defend dreams with so much defensive animosity?

A person writes the book: "I'm OK, You're OK." Sounds wonderful so he makes money. Suppose someone now writes a book: "I'm an Idiot, you're an idiot." It would be closer to the truth but too insulting to buy so wouldn't sell. Yet it is the attitude I believe within which genuine clarification becomes possible.

Of course it is insulting but can some of us be willing to attempt to rise above it even with complaints of elitism? Who are we to suggest this human condition of psychological sleep referred to in so many ways by all the great traditions? Yet if true, we have the moral obligation to admit it.


Simone introduced me to this most important word "metaxu." which she got from Plato and is very little known. it refers to what simultaneously psychologically connects and separates people. Society offers a quality of metaxu. Can it be enhanced for the sake of furthering the course of a more objective quality of human perspective" towards "awakening?" At least she tried and left many questions and also some indications of what could be necessary.

The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weilby Stephanie Strickland won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 1993. She does take a very feminist perspective but with a little mind stretch we can see how it refers to humanity as well. She writes in the intro:

"Weil came to her philosophical and religious ideas by a path that included elite university training, factory work, potato digging, harvest in the vineyards, teaching philosophy to adolescent women, partisanship in trade unions, anarchistic Socialism, pacifism, rejection of pacifism, a conversion experience that did not lead her to joining ... a religion, exile in New York City, and employment by De Gaulle's government-in-exile in London.

Weil used her body as a tool as well as a weapon. She threw herself under the wheels of the same issues women are starving for answers to today: issues of hunger, violence, exclusion, betrayl of the body, inability to be heard, and self-hate. ...

"Weil, our shrewdest political observer since Machiavelli, was never deceived by the glamor of power, and she committed herself to resisting force in whatever guise. More 'prophet' than 'saint,' more 'wise woman' than either, she bore a particular kind of bodily knowledge that the Western tradition cannot absorb. Simone Weil belongs to a world culture, still to be formed, where the voices of multiple classes, castes, races, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions, can be respected. To achieve this culture is an impossible task, but, as Weil would remind us, not on that account to be forsaken.

Today we look to Weil for hope, for meditation, for the bridge a body makes. She knew that the truth had been 'taken captive,' and that we must 'seek at greater depth our own source,' because power destroys the past, the past with its treasures of alternative ideals that stand in judgment on the present."

Yet Thoreau indicates how far we are from evolved human perspective. But as Stephanie said "but, as Weil would remind us, not on that account to be forsaken."

The objective transcendent is what Thoreau refers to. The secular is the "Beast" Plato and Simone wrote of. How does an individual seek to connect them and help the Beast to grow? Can a society raise its quality of metaxu so as to understand in the heart the proper balance of obligations and rights? I don't know and have my doubts but heck, if Simone and others can try, who am I to be the party pooper? So in support of "awakening," I'll take Simone's advice and be willing at the expense of nasty growls when revealing the truth of fallen human nature, to "annoy the Great Beast."