One More Foolish Failure
I am such a fool; such a failure, in evolutionary terms, in the
perspective of the Cosmos. Here I am, entering the
sixth decade of my life, having spent the last forty years seeking
experience and wisdom and having, in that time, made so many errors,
mistakes, and been the cause of much suffering, personal and otherwise.
How then can I be deemed wise? How - when I have leant, from sorrowful
experience, from my own pathei-mathos, from the personal
tragedy of the
dying and the death of two loved ones, and yet have always always,
until now, returned to pursuing suffering-causing abstractions and
unethical goals?
There is no excuse for this failure of mine, year following year -
although of course I have always made excuses for myself, as failures
often do. Wordy, moral-sounding, inexcusable excuses almost always of
the unethical "the end justifies the means" kind.
No excuses - because from sorrow, from personal tragedy, I felt,
dis-covered, the unethical nature of all abstractions, be they deemed
political, religious, or social. And yet I always seemed, until a month
ago, to gravitate
back toward them, as if there was some basic flaw in my personal
nature, my character, that allowed or even caused such a return, such a
stupid forgetting of lessons learnt; as if I was in truth an addict,
addicted to challenges, to strife, to violent change, because such
challenges, such strife, such violence brought or seemed to bring a
vivifying existence, a sense of belonging, of being alive - and yes, a
feeling of being different, special, in the sense of believing that one
is able to make a difference, to the world.
Thus, I have been human - all too human, far too human; caught,
trapped, by that egotism, that bloated self-esteem, that has blighted
our species for centuries, for millennia, and made us place some goal,
some idealism, some ideal, some abstraction, before empathy, before
compassion, before our evolution into higher beings.
In addition, for a long time, I desired, yearned with all my being,
with a sorrowful passion, to believe again in God, in Allah, Ar-Rahman,
Ar-Raheem, As-Salaam - who thus could forgive, redeem, and guide, and
from whom there
might, could be, redemption and thus catharsis, and who thus could take
away those doubts about myself, my actions, that never, ever, left me
when I returned to the foray, to the pursuit of some inhuman
suffering-causing abstraction or other.
Only in moments during all these years - these long, these too-long,
four years - did my being reach out again to the Cosmos, my bloated
all-too-human self-esteem punctured, brought down to Earth, by some
incident, or some intimation of the divine, of The Numen; as when I
chanced to listen, to hear, to feel, In timorie Dei
from Répons Matines pour la fête de saint Bernard,
and knew again as if for the first time the essence of one allegory,
the suffering, the hopes, the errors, the potentiality, of human
beings, century upon century - bringing thus a profusion of tears so
that moisture fell from my eyes to moisten my beard as, outside my
room, the modern world flowed as it flowed, replete with noise and
ego... Or as when I out walking along some Promenade by some sea caught
the smile, the very essence, of a women, youthful, who passed me by in
warming Sun and whom I in that one transcended moment seemed to become
with all her happiness, sadness, hopes, memories and living: such an
intimation of goodness, there, nascent, ready and willing to spring
forth when a trusting love caught her, again. Or as when I sat in Sun
to watch a young family, in some town Park, playing as such young
fathers, mothers, often played with their children less than a decade
in their living.
Or as when I watched from a boat the Sun set over a calm almost
wave-free Sea, the red disk descending, larger, slowfully, there where
sea horizon cut the darkening of Earth's sky to cause such a profusion
of changing colour that one was calmed, again, in those moments;
stilled and almost awed as one watched, felt, such beauty, presenced on
such a home as this.
But only in moments, during all those years.....
Perhaps all religions were, in their genesis, an answer to such
stubborn foolish human forgetfulness that brought me down, for all
those years; and - in their development - an aid to remembering what we
so easily forget, what I so easily forgot, except in such transient
moments; an aid, a means, by their rites, of presencing for us, in our
ordinary, daily, lives, some intimation of the divine, of what we
might, could, should be, when we cease because of egotism to forget,
when we remember the suffering of others and especially the
suffering that we ourselves have caused, and thus acquire or develope
the dignity of humility that we human beings so desperately need, and
always have needed.
Perhaps - until, that is, those religious ways lost or obscured, the
numen, the numinous, in, by and through abstractions, dogma, by
requiring the certainty of a certain belief, or by changing their
ancient rites in some vain unnecessary temporal effort to be "modern
and relevant".
I tried; I did try, for years - to return to such ways, such religious
answers; needing them - hoping to find in and though them and their
rites that constant remembrance, that constant presencing, of the
numinous that I felt, knew, understood, would keep me a better, more
enlightened, more empathic, and compassionate, person, mindful through
humility
of my own errors, arrogance, and mistakes.
But it did not work, for me - except in moments; far too few moments.
For always there were deep feelings of there being something missing in
their rites; of there being something just too abstract, too
un-numinous, in their requirement that one accepts certain beliefs and
dogma. As if the pure numinous essence has somehow by some means and
over time been lost, or might not have been fully there even in their
genesis.
Perhaps, possibly, probably - this is just my all-too-human arrogance
re-asserting itself, yet again. My presumption, my illusion, of
knowing, born from some all-too-human desire. But the stark simple
truth was that such accepted, conventional, religious means did not
work for me - or no longer worked for me. No longer presenced the
numen, for me; no longer enabled me to rise, to go, beyond my selfish,
foolish, error-prone self, to where the essence of empathy and
compassion and the numen itself seemed to live, far beyond our temporal
world of selfish suffering-causing human beings.
Thus did I slowly, sometimes painfully, from my pathei-mathos, construct
for
myself,
over years, my own Way.
But even this Numinous Way of mine seems incomplete, as it is only my
own uncertain and possibly quite feeble answer. For even now I seem to
have no means, in and through this Way of mine, to presence the Numen,
on a regular temporal basis to remind myself of the mistakes of my
past, to feel again the living numinous Cosmos beyond that often
mundane world which has now become the place of my daily living.
Thus is there the same old haunting question - of how long will it be
before I in my addiction forget The Numen, yet again, and so return to
the suffering-causing habits of so many previous years?
For now, I can only hope against hope that I have strength enough,
memories enough, humility enough, to keep me where I know I should
belong: infused, suffused, with the world of the numinous, enabling
thus such an empathic living as can make us and keep us as ethical,
compassionate, human beings; one sign toward the higher human type we
surely have the potential to become.
David Myatt
March 2010 ce