The Self's Way

Before the Beginning

Before the beginning was before the beginning; it was the self's dream time before the self was.

The Beginning

Consider how we come to life. The self comes to being by abandoning innocence for experience. To take on being, the self must separate itself from the One in which all things ground themselves. When a self takes on being, the self begins to experience creating and being created. The dream time of innocence yields when the self leaps into life. When the self becomes aware that it exists, it begins to experience itself as a self, and all other realities as other.

Once the self has tasted experience, the self yearns to solidify its difference from the universal stuff. The self wants to be free to go its own way and define its own limits. In due time, the self discovers it can set its own course, that it can brave the turbulence to be separate, individual, and its own self. When the self makes this discovery, it sets about being who and what it defines. This is inevitable; we all have done it, and we started very early. When we set about defining ourselves, we lose our grounding in the One.

Traditional theology called this original sin. Sin is an awkward word. We learn early that sins are certain proscribed actions. Religious teachers batter us with lists from the ten commandments, often supplemented by excerpts from Leviticus and Paul's epistles, carefully cemented with the teacher's own prejudicial proscriptions. The social scientists and psychotherapists among us have different lists of misdeeds, cemented together with their biases.

All these lists of misdeeds misunderstand sin. Sin is removing one's self from the One. One may well argue that this act or that is destructive, but no rule of behavior is absolute. "Do not kill," says the commandment. If someone attacks a person under my care and guardianship, with the intent to kill, and my only recourse for stopping that attacker is to kill, how can I avoid killing? If I do not kill the attacker, my ward will die. If I preserve my ward, the attacker must die. We do not find sin, or virtue, in deeds. Sin is the self's disconnection from the ground of its being.

We have a mystery. The One allows us to choose the sin state. It does not grasp us in an unbreakable clench, or pour out wisdom and power upon us. The One will not stay our leaving. Why? The One's universe works the way it works. Science tells me how it works. Not even the One tells us why it works the way it works. We separate ourselves from the One, and that's how we become a self.

The Marketplace

We live in a universe of fascinating things. We have things to make. We have things to buy and things to sell. We have work to do, and games to play. We wake in the morning and go to bed at night. We fall in love and we fall out of love. Getting and begetting occupy and amuse our time. The sun comes up in the mornings, and the moon sets at night. The marketplace never sleeps. Round and round life goes, and we progress from crawling out of the cradle to crawling into the grave.

Life is wonderful. Most of us yearn for more than we think life provides. We come to know some vital part of things is absent. We try to fill the gaps with other things, other activities, other people. In the end, no thing fills our empty places.

Consider the Preacher, who wrote, "I undertook great works; I built myself houses and planted vineyards; I made myself gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them; I made myself pools of water to irrigate a grove of growing trees; I bought slaves, male and female, and I had my home born slaves as well. I had possessions, more cattle and flocks than any of my predecessors in Jerusalem. I amassed silver and gold also, the treasure of kings and provinces...whatever my eyes coveted, I refused them nothing...then I turned and viewed all my handiwork, all my labor and toil, and I saw that everything was emptiness and chasing the wind, of no profit under the sun."

Some among us seek religions and philosophies to answer our emptiness and disquiet. "Give me rules, lots of rules, with gods who take charge of everything," they say. Others make religions of denying whatever gods their neighbors worship. Still others bury themselves in the busyness of the marketplace, denying their emptiness is real.

The Preacher further says, "I have seen the business the One has given men to keep them busy. He has made everything to suit its time; moreover, he has given men a sense of time past and future, but no comprehension of the One's work from beginning to end." Many mire themselves in the marketplace, some in sad resignation, others in despair. Others tune down their awareness to a low level, so as to put aside the nagging emptiness they cannot fill. They choose to no longer chase the wind or feel the emptiness. They submerge themselves in the marketplace, and wither under the sun.

"The end of all man's toil is but to fill his belly, yet his appetite is never satisfied," says the Preacher. "The light of day is sweet, and pleasant to the eye is the sight of the sun; if a man lives for many years, he should rejoice in all of them, but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. Everything that is to come will be emptiness." When the self discovers the emptiness within itself, the self yearns to fill its emptiness. Many selves despair, after seeking what will fill them, and yield to unconsciousness. Better it seems to these selves to set aside the emptiness, to no longer know it, than to go on searching. Other selves persevere, until they come to know that they alone, even aided by all the wisdom of the ages and all the science of the moderns, cannot fill themselves. When the self learns this, and accepts that this is so, then the spiritual journey can begin.

Waiting

The journey begins with waiting and expecting. The self has trouble dealing with this. The self longs to plunge into action, to solve its internal emptiness. The self yearns to fill its emptiness. The self begins to explore, to read books and manuals, to listen to pundits of profundity, and to seek out preachers and teachers of renown. The self drowns in confusion, for all the teachers see the matter from different places. The self studies until the words of the Preacher ring home and true, that; "the use of books is endless, and much study is wearisome."

The self must exhaust its longing to fill itself. When the self has exhausted its longing, then it must sit and wait. Into the quiet of exhaustion comes the expectation. One is coming to the prepared self. In the quieted self a Herald proclaims, "After me comes one who is mightier than I. I am not fit to unfasten his shoes."

All the turmoil the self's exhaustion had quieted comes into action again. Waiting for the coming is a difficult time. Eagerness and fear alternately stir the self. The Herald sings a song, "Enlarge the limits of your home, spread wide the curtains of your tent, let out its ropes to the full and drive the pegs home, for you shall break out of your confines right and left..." and the self trembles. The Herald's song threatens the self's familiar world. A voice cries in the wilderness that the self must prepare a way for the One who is coming, and the self that has wanted fulfillment rankles at this demand.

The Herald proclaims repentance, and the forgiveness of sins. The Herald proclaims the inadequacy of the marketplace and the ineffectiveness of the self's efforts to remake itself. The self trembles before the Herald's foretelling and denunciations. The Herald's message awes and terrifies the self.

The Herald's message also tells the self that a wonder will be born. The One for whom the self waits will come. Amid the turmoil and trembling that losing the familiar brings, the Herald says, "Greetings, most favored one! The One is with you." The One to come is at once the self's threat and the self's comfort, and so the self alternates between excitement and fear.

The One waits until the self is ready. The self waits until the One is ready. Doubts plague the self. How will it know when the One has come? How will it know that this new reality has come to life within it? Will its emptiness then be full? Will the self recognize the One? Will the self want the One, or want the One to go away? Can the self return the One to the sender if this situation does not work out? In weariness the self takes up the trivia of the marketplace to fill the time until the One shall come.

The One Comes

The One comes. The wait ends when it is right for the wait to end. The One comes into the self, and the Herald identifies the One to the self as the Teacher. The Teacher comes with a promise, which the self hears as the fulfilling of its emptiness. Some parts of the self react with joy. As the simple and unlettered shepherds were glad when the angels sang about the birth of Jesus, so at the simplest level the self is glad the Teacher has come. Prudence, that wise virtue of the marketplace, rules the self, however. The self intuits the Teacher has power and is dangerous, and the self hides much from itself, lest the Teacher discover and destroy the self, or the self lose control and destroy the Teacher.

The self, moreover, knows the rigors of the marketplace, and fears the marketplace's threat to the Teacher. The self is in a new time of life, does not know how to act and react, and prudently sends the Teacher into an exile where it will be safe while it grows in wisdom and stature. The self quickly learns to be judicious, and say little to others about the Teacher, for there are those in the marketplace who will take up weapons to slaughter the Teacher before it manifests itself. When the Teacher comes, the self finds both joy and fear.

Making the Teacher Known

The Teacher will not bide forever in exile. The Teacher, just by being present within the self, begins to influence the self in new directions. The self knows the Teacher is with it, the self still hopes the Teacher will fill its emptiness, if, indeed, the Teacher is not itself the filling for the self's emptiness. The self sets about determining how to use the Teacher to fill its emptiness.

The self begins to manifest new behaviors. Perhaps it limits its unkindness. Perhaps it notices the wants and needs of other selves more than it ever has before. Perhaps it lays aside some self-destructive behaviors. Perhaps the self forgives itself for wrongs it has done before, and sets about remedying its wrongdoing.

The self keeps accounts of its good deeds and bad deeds, for how else is it to measure its improvement? The self demonstrates to the others in the marketplace that it has changed. Where once it cheated, and gave false weight, now it weighs true, and adds a mite for the succoring of widows and orphans. Where once it spurned the lame of foot and mind, now it takes time to listen to maimed minds and slows its pace to stroll with those who limp.

The Teacher gathers to itself the elements of the self that are beneficial and makes allies of them. The Teacher heals some of the sicknesses in the self, and casts out some of the demons that torment the self. The self knowingly submits to the Teacher's guidance in many things, but the self does not give itself over wholly to the Teacher. The self is not ready, yet, for that.

The self may do many mighty things as the Teacher becomes manifest in its life. Outwardly the self becomes a reformer of society. Inwardly the self reforms itself. The self examines the "rules of life" it thinks the Teacher has taught it, and learns to be righteous within the Law's spirit, rather than its letter. Jesus taught the disciples; the self lets the Teacher teach it how to behave. The self is in control of its life, has marked its journey's route, and hews to the path. The self eschews the unfitting, the wrong, and takes up the right act and does the fitting thing.

The self fills itself with its own progress. Day by day in many little ways it is improving its behavior in the marketplace. The self does not understand, yet, what Jesus meant when he told his disciples, "If anyone wishes to be a follower of mine, that one must leave self behind; that one must take up its cross and come with me. Whoever cares for his or her own safety is lost; but if one will let oneself be lost for my sake, that one will find one's true self." The self still operates as a user of the Teacher, as master of the Teacher, or as a buyer of the Teacher's wisdom.

The Teacher judges the time and the self's preparation, and when the self is ready, the Teacher reveals itself to the self in a transfigured form. The Teacher manifests itself as other than what the self has perceived it to be. The Teacher manifests itself as the Christ, the anointed one, the logos that has been from the beginning in the company of the prophets and the angels. The self does not understand; the by now familiar Teacher, the Teacher, is dazzlingly different. The self seeks to control the situation, or to run from the Teacher.

The Teacher becomes the Purifier, and commands the self to listen. The self shrinks from knowing the Purifier. Such knowing is too fearsome. The Teacher is companionable and familiar. The self yearns for the Teacher it knew.

The Purifier does not go away. The Purifier begins to prepare the self for the rest of its journey. The self hides from this knowledge. The Purifier continues to present itself, until the self can at last accept it.

The Time of Stripping

One by one the Purifier challenges the self's illusions. The Purifier exposes the self's old familiar virtues for the self-serving acts of self-purification they were. The self protests, of course. The self defends the good it has done. The self berates itself for the good it failed to do and for the evil it has done. The ruthless Purifier again shows the self how barren its noble acts of charity and piety have been. The Purifier demonstrates the vanity of the self's repentances.

Broken, the desperate self asks what it is required to do. What the self does not expect is the Purifier's demand that it give up itself. The self resists understanding. The self fears dying. The self wants to improve the self it has created, not obliterate it.

The Purifier reveals to the self a further requirement. The self must take on that which it has despised. When the self sets out to be worthy of the Purifier in it, the self denies those things it sees that do not conform to its image of the Purifier's expectations. The self perceives these things as darkness, and will not admit to them, lest they block the light. Jesus pointed out that the One goes to the dispossessed parts of the self to reclaim them.

Consider how Jesus dealt with the Samaritan woman. Jews of Jesus' time despised Samaritans, and had no dealings with them, yet Jesus, in John's story of the journey, declared the new truth to this outcast woman. Consider also when Jesus was addressing tax collectors and other bad characters, how the rule-keeping Pharisees chastised him for it. The light of the Purifier illuminates the shadows of the self, and bids the self own them.

The Purifier does not command the self to succumb to its shadows, only to own their reality. In the wilderness, the Adversary tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread. Jesus accepted his power and refused to misuse it to sate his own hunger. In the same way Jesus refused to worship the Adversary, that is, to succumb to the shadows of his self, or to tempt providence by jumping from the temple. The self that denies it has shadows has not met temptation and mastered it. That self still clings to its pretense of righteousness.

The Self and the One Go Away

The self comes, at the last, to its own destruction. Paul wrote of this to the Romans. Think back. The self began to define itself when it emerged from innocence. Indeed, this is how the self became a self differentiated from all other selves. This self now comes to die. Again and again the self has tried to improve on its first creation, and has failed. The self flees from its death. The self offers the Purifier to death to save itself. The self becomes one with Judas and Peter.

The self accepts the Judas price, its own self-defined survival, and turns the One that would bring the self to true life over to death. The self is at once victim and executioner, for the self cannot survive its betrayal of the One within it, and repents its betrayal. The self must embrace its own death for the sake of the One, even as the One embraces death for the sake of the self.

All the helpmates and disciples of the self abandon it. The self has sent the One within it away. Now is the hour of the self's greatest despair and danger. Nothing is. No thing is. The One, even the One is gone. The self determines that the light no longer shines in the darkness, that the darkness has mastered the light. The self yields to its despair, and dissolves.

The Return

Now the great mystery occurs. The One returns. The dissolved self also returns. Death and dissolution are not victorious. The light shines in the darkness, and on the self that dwelt in a land of deep darkness, illumination glows. The self grounds itself in the One.

The self is wary of this new life. The self does not walk easily with it. The self had prepared for darkness and dissolution. The self had prepared for nothing. The self had embraced its emptiness as all there was for it. Because the self has joined with its negative through the One's agency, the dead self lives again. The One has transformed the agony into serenity. The disciples of the self, the helpers it has drawn to it to cope with the marketplace, are unsure and doubting. Assimilating renewed life takes time. Nothing has filled the self's emptiness; the One has transformed the self's emptiness into fullness.

The self trembles on the edge of the new life. Much that the self had rejected as wrong finds its place in this new life. Much that the self had kept in shadow now shines as a lantern. What the self had long owned the One has helped it transform into new things. The rules and modes of living in the marketplace that the self had long used find a new expression in the self's new life. The self that died returns to life, just as the One that died returns to life within the self. The self questions the One, doubting. Only the One's assurances over time can reassure the self.

The Commissioning

When the self becomes familiar with its transformation, the One manifests itself in a new way.. For a time the self, unused to its reborn state, trembles in awe and rests in praise. The self clings to the resurrected One in it. In time, the reborn self lets go of itself as a new creation. The self stops clinging to the One. The marketplace clamors for the self's attention.

The One presents itself as the Sustainer. It commissions the self as an agent in the marketplace, promises to partner the self. The self began its journey to indulge itself and its own needs. The journey transforms the self to understand and include the needs of the marketplace. The self feels too fragile to endure the marketplace's demands without the Sustainer's support.

The Sustainer partners with the self in the self's new life. When the self is confused or weary in the marketplace, the Sustainer holds the self up. When the self doubts, or struggles to determine the appropriate behavior in a situation, the Sustainer counsels the self. When the self grieves or fears, the Sustainer comforts the self. When the self laughs, the Sustainer rejoices.

The self's delights its in partnership with the One. The One does not provide the self with an infallible rule book. The One provides an attitude toward life that includes all other selves and the One's created order. Paul wrote his understanding of this attitude to the Romans. He urged patience, love, harmony, peaceableness, and doing no wrong to any neighbor. Paul urged respect for each self's understanding of right and wrong behavior as the One's partner. "I am absolutely convinced," Paul wrote the Romans, "that nothing is impure in itself; only, if a person considers a particular thing impure, then to that person it is impure."

The self at rest in the company of the One dares all things, and fears nothing. This, then, is the self's end, to take up the business of life and live as the One's partner and agent in the marketplace until it is the self's time to leave the market and rest in the One.

After the End

After the end is after the end, and a resting in the One.

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