An e-mail exchange with Oliver Burkeman of the Guardian newspaper:
Your column this week this week is a remarkably succinct account of a truth known
for centuries in Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and ancient Greek
cultures. However the reason many Buddhists (Christians etc. etc) seem
so "tightly wound", and why Seneca (and lots of monks) spent so much
time in seclusion is that the truth is simple but not easy. That's why
Jesus talked about the narrow gate which few find and why he told the
parable of the sower. How different the world would be if there was a
short cut!!
Regards
Richard Craig.
Dear Richard Craig,
Thank you very much for this email, and for your kind words, and my apologies for the delay in replying. Simple vs. easy: yes, this sounds like a very profound point. Maybe even one I'll try to explore in a future column head-on, since I suspect a case could be made that much of self-help culture catastrophically confuses the two.
All best wishes and thanks again
Oliver
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Yes, but how?!
Being new to the blogging business I have only just realised that the most recent posts are displayed first, so the title of this post might be somewhat mystifying unless you read the preceding one. Maybe I should stop trying to be consecutive!
The question is how do I live the Now Show? How do I live in the present moment? How do I deal with the mental chatter which obscures the present moment by focussing my attention on either the past or the future? How do I deal with the mental commentaries and videos, that I constantly run on everything that I encounter and do? How do I just accept what is in each present moment? The answer, I discovered in 2005, is simple; not easy but simple. I become the observer of all that is going on mentally. I realise that Descartes was wrong. It's not,'I think therefore I am'. It's just 'I am. Therefore I am.' There is in me, as in all human beings, a depth, a presence, a spacious, silent,stillness which is the real me and from which I can observe all the mental goings on which, for so long, I thought was all there was to me.
In a recent book on Dostoevsky the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams asks whether we could imagine, "living in the consciousness of a solidity or depth in each other which no amount of failure, suffering, or desolation could eradicate." It's not just that we can imagine it. We can do it! What's more people have been doing it in most cultures and most religions for most of recorded human history. What seems to be significant about the contemporary situation in cultures which have been based largely on Christianity, is that a profound transformation of consciousness is taking place. We can no longer believe in an interventionist God 'out there' who drops in from time to time. Instead we discover that 'God' (whatever we might mean by that) does not know how to be absent. Now, that is good news!
The question is how do I live the Now Show? How do I live in the present moment? How do I deal with the mental chatter which obscures the present moment by focussing my attention on either the past or the future? How do I deal with the mental commentaries and videos, that I constantly run on everything that I encounter and do? How do I just accept what is in each present moment? The answer, I discovered in 2005, is simple; not easy but simple. I become the observer of all that is going on mentally. I realise that Descartes was wrong. It's not,'I think therefore I am'. It's just 'I am. Therefore I am.' There is in me, as in all human beings, a depth, a presence, a spacious, silent,stillness which is the real me and from which I can observe all the mental goings on which, for so long, I thought was all there was to me.
In a recent book on Dostoevsky the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams asks whether we could imagine, "living in the consciousness of a solidity or depth in each other which no amount of failure, suffering, or desolation could eradicate." It's not just that we can imagine it. We can do it! What's more people have been doing it in most cultures and most religions for most of recorded human history. What seems to be significant about the contemporary situation in cultures which have been based largely on Christianity, is that a profound transformation of consciousness is taking place. We can no longer believe in an interventionist God 'out there' who drops in from time to time. Instead we discover that 'God' (whatever we might mean by that) does not know how to be absent. Now, that is good news!
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