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Sunday, February 03, 2008
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: Pleasure, Flow, And Peace
Before I light into the topic above, allow me to pass along a remarkable piece sent to me by a dear friend. The author must have been equally remarkable, for I can think of nothing of its kind to equal it.
In that place between wakefulness and dreams, I found myself in the room. There were no distinguishing features except for the one wall covered with small index card files. They were like the ones in libraries that list titles by author or subject in alphabetical order. But these files, which stretched from floor to ceiling and seemingly endless in either direction, had very different headings. As I drew near the wall of files, the first to catch my attention was one that read 'Girls I have liked.' I opened it and began flipping through the cards. I quickly shut it, shocked to realize that I recognized the names written on each one.. And then without being told, I knew exactly where I was.This lifeless room with its small files was a crude catalog system for my life. Here were written the actions of my every moment, big and small, in a detail my memory couldn't match. A sense of wonder and curiosity, coupled with horror, stirred within me as I began randomly opening files and exploring their content. Some brought joy and sweet memories; others a sense of shame and regret so intense that I would look over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching.
A file named 'Friends' was next to one marked 'Friends I have betrayed.' The titles ranged from the mundane to the outright weird 'Books I Have Read,' 'Lies I Have Told,' 'Comfort I have Given ,' 'Jokes I Have Laughed at .' Some were almost hilarious in their exactness: 'Things I've yelled at my brothers.' Others I couldn't laugh at: 'Things I Have Done in My Anger', 'Things I Have Muttered Under My Breath at My Parents.' I never ceased to be surprised by the contents.
Often there were many more cards than I expected. Sometimes fewer than I hoped. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the life I had lived. Could it be possible that I had the time in my years to fill each of these thousands or even millions of cards? But each card confirmed this truth. Each was written in my own handwriting. Each signed with my signature.
When I pulled out the file marked 'TV Shows I have watched', I realized the files grew to contain their contents. The cards were packed tightly, and yet after two or three yards, I hadn't found the end of the file. I shut it, shamed, not so much by the quality of shows but more by the vast time I knew that file represented.
When I came to a file marked 'Lustful Thoughts,' I felt a chill run through my body. I pulled the file out only an inch, not willing to test its size and drew out a card. I shuddered at its detailed content..
I felt sick to think that such a moment had been recorded. An almost animal rage broke on me. One thought dominated my mind: No one must ever see these cards! No one must ever see this room! I have to destroy them!' In insane frenzy I yanked the file out. Its size didn't matter now. I had to empty it and burn the cards. But as I took it at one end and began pounding it on the floor, I could not dislodge a single card. I became desperate and pulled out a card, only to find it as strong as steel when I tried to tear it.
Defeated and utterly helpless, I returned the file to its slot. Leaning my forehead against the wall, I let out a long, self-pitying sigh.
And then I saw it.. The title bore 'People I Have Shared the Gospel With.' The handle was brighter than those around it, newer, almost unused. I pulled on its handle and a small box not more than three inches long fell into my hands. I could count the cards it contained on one hand.
And then the tears came. I began to weep. Sobs so deep that they hurt. They started in my stomach and shook through me. I fell on my knees and cried. I cried out of shame, from the overwhelming shame of it all. The rows of file shelves swirled in my tear-filled eyes. No one must ever, ever know of this room. I must lock it up and hide the key. But then as I pushed away the tears, I saw Him.
No, please not Him. Not here.. Oh, anyone but Jesus. I watched helplessly as He began to open the files and read the cards. I couldn't bear to watch His response. And in the moments I could bring myself to look at His face, I saw a sorrow deeper than my own.
He seemed to intuitively go to the worst boxes. Why did He have to read every one? Finally He turned and looked at me from across the room . He looked at me with pity in His eyes. But this was a pity that didn't anger me. I dropped my head, covered my face with my hands and began to cry again. He walked over and put His arm around me. He could have said so many things. But He didn't say a word. He just cried with me.
Then He got up and walked back to the wall of files. Starting at one end of the room, He took out a file and, one by one, began to sign His name over mine on each card. 'No!' I shouted rushing to Him. All I could find to say was 'No, no,' as I pulled the card from Him. His name shouldn't be on these cards. But there it was, written in red so rich, so dark, so alive. The name of Jesus covered mine. It was written with His blood. He gently took the card back. He smiled a sad smile and began to sign the cards. I don't think I'll ever understand how He did it so quickly, but the next instant it seemed I heard Him close the last file and walk back to my side.
He placed His hand on my shoulder and said, 'It is finished.' I stood up, and He led me out of the room. There was no lock on its door. There were still cards to be written.
The author, Brian Moore, was 17 when he composed the above story. He died shortly thereafter, in a car crash on Memorial Day, May 27, 1997.
UPDATE: I have been multiply and reliably informed that the above-named Brian Moore did not write the above story -- that it is in fact the composition of Christian author Joshua Harris. Apologies for the misattribution.
The temporal pleasures are a source of much consternation to many religiously inclined persons. The traditional term for such persons is "bluenoses." Their view of the quest for worldly pleasure is, to put it gently, other than kind. They regard temporal pleasure as a distraction from higher things, and therefore to be minimized if not shunned altogther. Some are more zealous about it than others, of course, but even the saner sorts tend to feel a great conflict over the matter.
Why? Christ did not condemn any of the worldly pleasures. He was concerned with other human tendencies entirely: our indifference toward God, our arrogance about our own qualities and absorption in our own stature, our disrespect for our forebears, and our frequently deplorable treatment of one another. But not once did He thunder against pleasure as such, except as it might constitute a temptation toward irreverence, blasphemy, self-exaltation, or injustice.
The motives for bluenoses' abjuration of pleasure are fairly easy to unearth, both logically and historically, but they're not my principal focus today. Rather, I'd like to ruminate over the nature of the highest pleasures, how they're achieved, and the end state toward which they point a Christian soul.
The least of the pleasures affect only the senses. Their effects are fleeting. They touch our perceptual centers, but they fail to engage our minds, our emotions, or our spirits. The enjoyment we derive from them drops off rapidly with application, an effect well captured by the economic principle of diminishing marginal value.
Above those are the pleasures that touch the mind and / or the heart. This deeper level of engagement can bring a sense of enlargement, of a greater comprehension of the world around us. (It's the reason why those who've learned to love the printed word are so hard to separate from their reading matter.) If you're of an analytical, philosophical, or scientific bent, you probably know this degree of pleasure. Indeed, you've probably had conflicts with family or friends who've tried to divert you from it and toward some lesser undertaking.
Above those are still another set: the transcendent pleasures, which flower in us when we manage to merge with their source. This is a difficult matter to capture in words, for words are the tools of individual cognition; they serve poorly to describe a state of being in which one's individuality has been sundered. The occasions for these in a typical man's life might seem few. When I wrote about an unexpected one, some years ago, I elicited a number of private reactions that could be summarized as "You lucky stiff, I have no clear idea what you're talking about, but I think I've been there too...once...maybe."
In surveying the categories above, I find the theme of enlargement and unification unavoidable. What we call pleasure with a small "p" is as small and transient as its initial, while the great Pleasures, in which we merge with a concept, with a beloved, or with God, are so large that they defy our reason...unless we're in the process of experiencing one at the moment.
One of the great attractions of Buddhism is its motif of Enlightement. Just as the body strives away from pain and toward pleasure, the mind naturally strives toward the acquisition of knowledge. The possibility of knowing all things in perfected joy is as tempting as any bait ever cast before a thinking being.
But Enlightenment of the Buddhist variety contains a trap for a temporal being: What then? For a time-bound creature can't just sit around, enjoying his Enlightenment. It's antithetical to his nature. Besides, at some point the Missus is likely to want the garbage taken out or her car washed.
Buddhist-style Enlightenment is not achievable anyway. The materially-founded human mind isn't expansible to that extent. But its appeal as an ideal is undeniable. It compels us to ask, "What partial or temporary enlightenments are possible, such that a limited temporal being is capable of achieving and enjoying them?"
Which brings us to the subject of flow.
A few years ago, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi authored a remarkable book: Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience. Though his discourse was marred by some regrettable dismissals of religion and some irrelevant digressions into social theory, Dr. Csikszentmihalyi helped to illuminate a critical aspect of the highest available state of consciousness: the unification of the consciousness of the actor with the acted-upon subject.
Though Dr. Csikszentmihalyi's formulation presupposes a character to a flow experience that's absent from some very high states, such as the sort that sometimes arises from intense prayer, it is nevertheless instructive. It bears a strong resemblance to traditional descriptions of mystical transport, in which the subject feels himself to be at one with all things, or with God. It implies a surrender of the borders of identity, such that divisions of I / thou become irrelevant. This provides an explanation for why deliberately seeking out a flow state is unsuccessful more often than not: rather than committing himself to the moment, the seeker is pursuing the flow state as if it were a little pleasure, a sweetmeat he could pluck from a shelf. Immersion in a flow experience appears impossible without the unresisting surrender of self: what C. S. Lewis, in his discussion of innocent pleasure, called "self-forgetfulness."
If there is no self, there is no "other." If there is no "other," there cannot be communication, competition, or conflict. Though one may be active, one cannot be at war, neither with a non-existent "other" nor with himself.
"Peace means something different from 'not fighting'. Those aren't peace advocates, they're 'stop fighting' advocates. Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it." -- Jo Walton
The late British fantasy authoress Jo Walton's approach to peace clears away much of the offal that surrounds the concept. Peace is indeed "an active and complex thing." It demands the involvement of the whole of a people; even one dissent would spoil the recipe, and invoke Walton's requirement for combat.
Perfect peace is impossible without perfect concurrence around certain fundamental axioms: the natural rights of all men to life, liberty, and property. The seeming impossibility of peace on Earth is entirely the result of dissent from those axioms. What does it matter that the South Koreans are passionate about peace, when the dictator of North Korea is determined to slaughter and enslave them? What does it matter that the Israelis are desperate for peace and willing to trade half their tiny nation for it, when nothing will satisfy the Palestinian irredentists but the total destruction of Israel? What does it matter that Christians, virtually to a man, desire peace more ardently than the breath of life itself, when millions of Muslims demand the subjugation of all Christians (and everyone else) to Islam, and will stop at nothing to achieve it?
But that's perfect collective peace we're talking about. That's not individual peace, "the peace that passeth understanding" that's attainable by passage into and through a flow state. Individual peace "has all that it wants and wants all that it has;" it does not concern itself with others determined to make war.
If only it were more infectious.
I'm a very fortunate man, in that, in my regular, day-to-day activities, I can frequently achieve the flow state. I've developed the habit of submerging myself in the various things I do: planning, designing, programming, estimating, analyzing, debugging, managing, reading, writing, lecturing, joking, loving, cleaning, playing and praying. At my best moments, I'm inseparable from what I do. It sometimes causes a spot of trouble, as anyone who's tried to get my attention and was rewarded with a start and a shriek of fright will tell you. But I'd rather cut off both arms than lose the capacity for it.
I believe that everyone has the ability to enter into such a mystical union with what he's doing. It's not easily taught or learned, and it might be elusive to someone whose ego "won't get out of the way," but it's achievable. The peace it confers eclipses all other states of being. For a Christian, it transforms mundane existence into a single, continuous prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
To know that peace is achievable is to desire it above all other things.
If you can achieve it, you can make for yourself something seemingly denied to the world beyond you. If you can pass the thirst for it to others, you can begin to fulfill one of the great promises of Christ:
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. -- Matthew 5:9
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
I am not quite as late as you think.
Posted by Jo Walton on 02/03/2008 at 05:10 PMMy word, Miss Walton, what a delightful surprise! My copy of your book The Prize In The Game lists you as “late.” How wonderful that it’s in error—and welcome to Eternity Road!
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 02/03/2008 at 05:20 PMThere is a brain structure that is tasked with telling the body where it is in space. It performs this action a specific number of times per second. When stimulus arrives at the same speed that this structure processes, it shorts out and says “You are everywhere”.
Surfers were known to describe an ellusive state in which they felt they were “one with the ocean”. Very good rock climbers and skiers report the same thing. They felt like they were “weaving in and out of the rock” I know of at least one alpinist who could remember individual crystals in the rock during his hardest climbs. This was derided as a bunch of hippie nonsense, but it has a scientific explanation.
Posted by on 02/04/2008 at 09:46 PM
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