THERE IS A PORTION of our life that has to be spent in solitude. Indeed, in one respect we are always in solitude, for no human being can fully penetrate the depths of feeling of another person's life. Thus the two most important events in anyone's life - his birth and his death -are always solitary even though their external circumstances may be attended by a number of people. The experience of loneliness is a very necessary episode on the road to divine recognition, for it is in God alone that we can effect a true relationship which is constant and sustaining. Thus the life of solitude is the life that leads to the direct experience of God, in whom alone we can find that rest that is truly dynamic activity. "He who has the Son has life," says St John. He who knows the Son within himself is in harmony with all conditions of men. His solitude is consummated in that relationship which brings into reality the communion of saints.
The inner life is one in which we penetrate the depth of our own natural isolation in order to attain to a knowledge of the power that sustains us, the power of God. When you are naturally shy and find you cannot mix with other people on the superficial level of pleasantry that passes for friendship in most societies, you should not be unnecessarily worried about this isolation. You are being given the opportunity to penetrate beneath sociability to a real depth of life. You will never make friends by forcing yourself to be with people, by joining clubs and societies that do not really interest you, or even by making yourself useful to others on a charitable basis. You have first to learn to know yourself and to accept yourself as you are, without in any way blinding yourself to your many defects. It is only when we are at one with ourselves as we now stand that we can flow out to others in unreserved attention and concern. This is the inner part of loving. We cannot even ask God to help us love another person until we have learnt to accept ourselves, even indeed to love ourselves, as we now stand. And this self-love is again a divine gift.
To speak of loving yourself sounds very heretical to the conventionally religious person who has learnt, through the repetition of confessional statements, to see himself as a miserable sinner in whom there is no good at all. The traditional theology of the fall of man, inherited from Adam's fatal error, sees human nature as totally corrupt. It is one of the more fortunate results of modern scientific understanding, based on the theory of evolution and modern depth psychology, that this crude interpretation of the fall is now being superseded by a more enlightened view of human nature. Man is a spiritual being - by which I mean a person capable of conscious union with God through the action of a morally enlightened will - living in an animal body. And this body, transient as it is in terms of the immortality of the soul (which is the organ of the spirit), is a holy creation. Its impulses move it to survival and procreation, without which the soul would be impotent while on earth. The Hebraic insight about the fundamental unity of soul and body is the truth, and it stresses the fact that spirituality infuses every act of life, not only prayer and religious observances but also the work by which we earn our living, the sexual life whereby we grow in relationship and procreate, and the acts of eating and excreting whereby the body maintains its health. The joy of worldly life is the acme of spirituality, and no action is too mean to be beneath the influence of the Holy Spirit. Thus high spirits, a sense of fun and an enjoyment of the physical beauty of the world (including other people) are all spiritual faculties that should be encouraged and not suppressed.
If an over-emphasis on the body (the common attitude in contemporary society) leads to a hedonistic view of life that ends in the meaninglessness of decrepitude and death, so also an over - emphasis on the soul leads to a life - denying flight from reality which is often confused with spirituality, but which in fact thwarts any growth of the personality. The soul grows through its restriction in matter during the process of incarnation. It is the growth in disciplined limitation that alone can lead to a union with God. Thus the body and its chthonic (earthy) instincts are good provided they are under the control of the soul. They become demonic when they take charge of the personality and lead the individual to a life of mere self-gratification.
To love yourself is to accept yourself as you are, and to thank God that you are as He made you. This does not mean self-inflation, as the Pharisee in the parable thanked God that he was not like other men such as the miserable publican. It means an open-hearted acceptance of our whole nature, the good and the bad, the radiant and the dark, without judgement, and a dedication of one's whole being, weak and defective though it may be, to God's service. The dark recesses of the personality are as much part of God's providence as the gifts and talents He has bestowed upon us. It requires no great effort to accept and glorify the fine aspects of our personality. It requires a lifetime of hard work and compassion to see that our defects are even more important portals to the divine grace. "My strength is made perfect in weakness." This does not mean that we should be sentimental about our weaknesses, excusing them conveniently as inevitable by-products of faulty education or heredity. It means that we must accept them directly, cease castigating ourselves over them, and begin to use them constructively in our lives.
The constructive use of a defect leads to greater compassion, firstly towards other people with similar impediments and finally towards ourselves. We have a blue-print of perfection in our own souls; this blue-print is of God, who is the way to perfection as well as the perfection itself. We recognise perfection as that which leads us towards the ineffable Godhead. A perfect person (the incarnate Christ) or a perfect work of art is not one in which all positive attributes of truth, beauty and goodness (or love) reach their final manifestation. Any such finality, while dazzling us for a period of time, would soon lead to boredom and decay. There is one end of perfection only, and that is union with God, Who transcends all categories of rational thought. Of Him nothing is known except through the experience of union that comes from love. Thus the perfection of which we are to partake is one that leads us beyond the exigent to the eternal, beyond the personal to the universal, beyond the temporal to the immortal. All great work, whether in science, art, or especially in human actions, leads us beyond finality to eternity.
It is our defects which, while they reveal how far we are from God, also show us the way to His grace. Our talents and gifts are the real snares that lie in the way of spiritual progress, and I am not speaking merely of such superficial gifts as physical beauty, intellectual brilliance, or artistic performance. These can quite clearly lead to self-inflation and pride. But it is the gifts of the spirit - which are largely psychic - that can very easily obscure our view of God. Anything that exalts the personality diminishes the soul. Anything that inspires the soul integrates the personality so that it becomes an even more perfect vesture of the spirit. It is the awareness of our faults that illuminates the path to perfection. Once we have confessed our sins and acknowledged our deficiencies, we can in faith call for divine aid to lighten our inner darkness. Thus is the soul inspired. Great art inspires the soul by revealing to it its divine creator. So does any noble action, one born in charity and carried out in compassion.
We can do nothing if we hate ourselves, or feel that all our actions are doomed to failure because of our own worthlessness. We have to take ourselves, good and bad alike, on trust before we can do anything. Thus I cannot give of my life to another if I have nothing to give in the first place. The result of a practical self-love is that my attention is no longer fixed on myself with all its defects and inadequacies. Only then can I give my attention wholeheartedly to the other person. But if I am constantly aware of my lack, I will be straining every effort to make that lack good. I will grasp in the most self-centred way to gain the attention and approbation of others. Thus do I boost an inadequate personality by selfish actions. And some of the most selfish acts are those that pass as piety or social philanthropy. This does not mean, of course, that all religious and social action is perverted self-seeking, but it does stress the need for insight into one's own motives and attitude. If I do good in order to assert myself or justify myself in any way or even to attain personal salvation or reach the divine presence on my own, I have no knowledge of love and my actions are mere selfishness. But if I do good without so much as thinking in categories of goodness and evil or of my own standing with man or even with God, then I have begun the painful glorious journey of losing myself for the sake of God. This self has to be lost for its real, eternal counterpart, the soul, to be finally revealed. But it cannot be lost until it is warmly cherished, just as a parent cherishes its child without in any way being deluded about the child's goodness.
To acquire this enlightened view of personality is part of the life of the spirit. Like all the other inner attitudes that transform our lives and make us worthy servants of God, this changed view comes from outside. Mere intellectual appreciation is at most a precursor of understanding. The change of heart, or "metanoia", comes to us from God. But in order for this to happen we must be prepared. In other words, the inner life proceeds by discipline, a discipline by which the soul is dedicated to God for His service, and not for our benefit. Of course, we do benefit, but this is not the reason for the quest. When we can say with St Paul, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," then we have truly arrived. For the self that now lives is not the one which looks for benefits or rewards, but rather one that has no existence at all except in union with God in Christ, who is God's eternal word in action throughout the whole created universe, and Who was with God before the foundation of the world, and in Whom all created things are to be united and lifted up into the unity of the Godhead. This disinterested seeking for God is very important, for a great deal of the "self-development" that is in current demand is based on occult techniques that tend to increase personal power without developing the spiritual nature.
If one is to approach God in silence, the mind must be still and at rest. When it is filled with all the world's commerce it cannot know the one thing that matters. When we speak of knowing, let us use that word in its archaic sense of having an intimate relationship with someone. We can only "know" in this context when the mind is quiet and receptive. If only we had that inner tranquillity we would be filled with that void in which all is contained. To be still in complete joy and surrender is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He is always wanting to enter our consciousness, but we never seem to be at home in ourselves to receive Him.
The cultivation of the inner silence is called meditation. It is unnecessary to commend this practice, because it is nowadays talked about by so many. Yet despite the many teachers of the subject and the various techniques used, the minds of most people, even experienced meditators, are usually far from the centre where God is known. This is because the attitude and objectives of many of those who meditate are not centred on God but are devoted to the aggrandisement of the isolated self. There is no harm in commencing meditation with a dominating concern for self-improvement, but if through the practice of meditation the perspective of the individual has not transcended the personal to reach the universal, there can be no doubt that the technique is merely one of self-indulgence.
If one wants to meditate, it is important first to place the body at ease, but not in such a posture that sleep can easily be induced. The body must always be glorified. Mortification of the flesh harks back to a medieval dualism of flesh and spirit whereby the flesh had to be subjected before the spirit could be in command. A modern spirituality sees that the spirit is best in command of a willing, healthy body which can be progressively resurrected by the enlightened, all-pervading spirit.
Once the body is stilled in comfort and with reverence, the emotions have to be quietened, and the stream of thoughts that traverse and trouble the mind slowly dissipated. To do this is the heart of meditation. It is performed by filling the mind with one thought, or image, or repeated phrase (or even a repeated sound, which is called a mantra). At first the mind may, in its ignorance, try to dissect or analyse the seed of meditation, but it must be instructed to rest on that theme or sound. To stop analysing and criticising and to flow out in active blessing (which is the heart of rest) is the basis of a real relationship.
Meditation is a relationship in the depth of silence with the object of meditation. And when the relationship is complete, subject and object merge into a unity in which the one becomes the other inasmuch as both lose their separate identity and instead are members of the body of creation, which is the universal body of Christ. This is the I-Thou relationship of Martin Buber, in which there is neither subject nor object, but all is one in that ultimate reality which is God.
When this glorious state of union is experienced, the soul is free and in communion with all other souls. It is then that the divine presence may irrupt into the personal consciousness and the soul may know incontrovertibly of the divinity within it. But this is a gift from without; it cannot be grasped by techniques, no matter how arduous and painstaking they are. The more one grasps, the more the isolated personality is in command and the further one is from a knowledge of God. The technique of meditation is one of progressive self-annihilation so that the spirit can make itself known in the soul. This is called "contemplation".
In the depth of meditation you begin to know yourself better. As the outer trappings of personality are shed and the complexes of the unconscious mind lose their emotional hold on the attention, so the soul lies revealed in its pristine glory. The distracting elements of the personality can be viewed with a greater perspective which is itself a fruit of the detachment from personal grasping that comes from meditation. The quiet mind can discern truth because it is less dominated by the outer world of conditioning and the inner world of psychological debris than is the untrained, distractable mind in everyday life.
He who knows the eloquent silence of meditation is no longer alone. He is in communion with the unseen world of eternity, with the living and the dead. The communion of saints becomes a real experience, and relationships with those still in the flesh assume a greater depth than before.
Thus, the quiet mind is a mind that is fully awake. It is aware, receptive, waiting in reverence for the divine command. "Here am I. Send me." (Isaiah 6.8). The mind of unawakened man is asleep even when engaged in furious activity. This is because the unawakened mind is merely a passive cipher of all the unrestrained impulses impinging on it from its unconscious part. It acts not in control but as a mere machine. The quiet mind is controlled by the soul. It listens more and asserts itself less.
Do not make the mistake of believing that inner tranquility and the practice of meditation are means of escaping from the world's work. If meditation does indeed evoke an attitude of apathy to the things of the world, the philosophy and practice underlying it are suspect. The proof of a healthy quietness and a beneficial type of meditation is an alert, untroubled mind that can act positively in every demanding situation. Such a mind listens in attention to another person's troubles, meditating on these troubles and the person who is afflicted. Proper relationships with other people are really meditations upon them and their problems, not in a separative, analytical frame of mind, but in that union of regard which can identify us with the person and feel direct compassion for him. It is thus that we can be of assistance to another in trouble - not so much by giving infallible advice as by being with him and supporting him during his period of travail.
To be of help to someone, we must first achieve detachment from his problem while having a real commitment to the person himself. We cannot, indeed must not, solve another's problems. Not only are we ignorant of his soul's destiny, but we must also allow that soul to grow into its natural freedom by working out its own salvation; the problem at hand is one milestone on the way. But we can support the person. A real relationship is one of quiet commitment. In this quiet awareness we can do one of the most difficult of all things: we can learn to say "No". True love is stern and unemotional. It is not a doormat to be trampled on by selfish immature people. Not only is this deleterious to oneself, but of even greater importance it hinders the growth into maturity of the other person. Even Jesus had to leave the disciples before the Holy Spirit could enter their consciousness fully, and proceed to lead them into all truth - a function incidentally which is still uncompleted because of the unawakened consciousness of people even today.
As the inner life is cultivated, so we move beyond the isolation of loneliness to an awareness of the unity of all life. Communion with people is now possible because we have no further need for self-assertiveness. And at last we can approach God directly in prayer. This is the culmination of the inner way.