The Empathic Essence



Can you explain the context of your latest letters and writings about The Numinous Way, and do these have any political or religious associations?


The primary context is a personal tragedy - the suicide, at a still relatively young age, of someone I loved, hours after I had left her to return to my home, following a visit which lasted six weeks during which time we had discussed marriage. This tragedy had a profound effect on me, as did my relationship, of over eighteen months, with this lady, forcing me to reconsider, yet again, everything I believed in, and forcing me to face, on a very personal level, questions relating to suffering, religious faith, humility, remorse and redemption.

The secondary context is, and was, the continuation of my decades-long quest to answer fundamental, and ethical, questions about the nature and purpose of our lives, in particular a continuation of questions relating to personal honour, empathy and compassion.

In respect of this personal tragedy, I came to understand, to know, my own failure, my own errors, during that time, and previously, as I came, yet again, to feel in an empathic way the suffering of others, and such things, such feelings, such a knowing, led me to strive to find new answers to fundamental problems such as the genesis of suffering.

Thus, my letters, and essays, in the months following this tragedy, were my attempts at solving such problems and my attempts at expressing my own personal feelings. In them - especially in the letters - I was honest about how I felt, about the strong need I, surprisingly, found for God, for the catharsis of prayer, for the healing of redemption and forgiveness given by a Saviour.

Hence, I felt the need to believe, again, in such things as the Catholic Church, in God, in Allah; the need to pray, in a Church, or through Namaz. And hence I once more attended Mass, both Catholic and Anglican, visited monasteries, and talked to monks, Priests, Vicars; as I visited Mosques, and talked to Ulamah; and as I read, searching for answers, many, many books, including works on Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and other faiths and Ways of Life. Often, I was re-reading works I had read and studied in previous years, such as the New Testament, the Quran, Bukhari, Origen, Thomas a Kempis, Böhme, the Pali Canon, Meister Eckhart, and so on.

Gradually, painfully slowly it seemed, I began to express some answers - or, rather, I edged slowly toward finding some personal answers, some personal solutions, which answers and solutions were a development of my own The Numinous Way, and thus a rejection of the answers of conventional religions and philosophies.

This brief description, however, makes the process seem easy and straightforward, but it was not. I stupidly in my weakness, in my inner need, allowed myself to be diverted, a few times, by accepting previous, and sometimes conventional, answers accepted in previous years and previous decades, which answers I had already rejected or had begun, this year, to move away from. This new albeit brief acceptance only, however, led me to error, to err, again: to begin to be again a cause of suffering. This I felt, and then after weeks firmly knew, was wrong - for I finally came to understand and accept, and make the fundamental premise of my own life, that the most important thing is to cease to cause suffering, and that all abstractions, all ideals, all dogma - and the striving for them - are or can be the cause of suffering. What matters is empathy, compassion, and love: to strive to alleviate suffering, to accept that personal love, between two people, is more important, more human, than any dogma, any -ism, any -ology, and that personal honour is rooted in empathy, and thus in compassion, and does not derive from or depend upon God, or any deity, or anything regarded as a divine revelation, or upon the teachings of Buddha or any Master. Thus, I came to give a solid foundation to the ethics of The Numinous Way: empathy, compassion, and honour.


In essence, there was, for me, pathei mathos. Due to this pathei mathos, I have gone far beyond any and all politics, and beyond conventional religion and theology toward what I believe and feel is the essence of our humanity, manifest in empathy, compassion, personal love and personal honour. Hence, I cannot in truth be described by any political or by any religious label, or be fitted into any convenient category,  just as no -ism or no -ology can correctly describe The Numinous Way itself, or even the essence of that Way. Therefore, I believe it is incorrect to judge me by my past associations, by my past involvements, by some of my former effusions, for all such things - all the many diverse such things - were peregrinations, part of sometimes painful often difficult decades-long process of learning and change, of personal development, of interior struggle and knowing, which has enabled me to understand my many errors, my multitude of mistakes, and - hopefully - learn from them.


As I wrote in a letter to a Catholic friend (1):

"For myself, I have moved away from [the answers of] Christianity, being unable to accept "scripture" as a revelation from God, and unwilling to be associated with any organization or group which promulgates any creed or doctrine which causes suffering, or whose doctrines or actions lead to people's unhappiness, however good the intentions. There is also, of course, for me a rejection of Jesus as "the" means to salvation, and a rejection of "heaven, hell" and the concept of sin. There is a great personal loss in such rejection, and it has been an anguished struggle these past six or so months, for there is [thus] no supra-personal authority to take away the anguish, the remorse; no catharsis brought via numinous sacraments; no given redemption... It is, as I have written several times, easier to believe, to accept some authority, to have available answers; to have the love of God, of a Saviour. It is also healing to have prayer - it is especially healing to have prayer...

Thus have I struggled to refine The Numinous Way - to develope answers I am happy with, as in my recent essays Redemption and The Numinous Way and Honour, Empathy and the Question of Suffering. I am still struggling toward answers. Perhaps I shall never find all the answers I seek; the answers which will bring the kind of peace found after Communion at Mass; found singing plainchant in Choir, and in the wordless devotion, kneeling, after Compline, before a statue of the Virgin Mary. So there is a sadness, almost a resignation - and occasionally, very occasionally, a sigh, a smile, of hope, as on the warm days of an English Summer, outdoors in the hills or fields, when one is at peace among such numinous beauty."


As a result of these articles and letters, how do you think other people perceive you? I ask because it does appear that some individuals regard you as "mad" while others cannot comprehend what they regard as all your many "changes of belief".


Personally, I am not interested in how I am perceived by other people. My concern is striving to answer certain fundamental questions - striving to solve certain fundamental and ethical problems - which questions and which problems relate the genesis of suffering, to the meaning of our lives, as individuals, and to just what is the essence and purpose, if any, of our existence, of our humanity, and what can we do to, how can we, change ourselves for the better without causing suffering.

My varied life has been a search for meaning, a search for identity, a search for answers, for solutions, and for many decades I arrogantly and pridefully saught answers and solutions in a very practical way by becoming involved, on a quite personal level, with various -isms or -ologies. I lived these answers, such solutions, for months, sometimes for years, until I discovered, through such a practical experiencing, that they were unsatisfying, for me, or failed to fully answer my questions or solve the problems of life, of existence, of meaning. Along the way, I made many, many, mistakes, and caused much suffering. Also, for many decades, I did have a certain set of beliefs which I - incorrectly I now know - projected onto life, and onto people. That is, I perceived life through the distortion of some ideal, some concept, some abstraction, which I strived to attain, and which striving involved me and others in not only causing suffering, but also in trying to get individuals to conform, be constrained by, this ideal, this concept. One of these ideals I upheld, I adhered to, was active on behalf of and which I propagated, for decades, was - and is - categorized by many people as "political". Another ideal I upheld, and propagated for a few years, was - and is - categorized by many people as "religious".

Now, I understand, know and feel, that such ideals, such concepts, such abstractions - however they are categorized and however described, by others - are wrong: an immoral imposition upon the simple numen which is our life and which should be our living, for such things take away, or deprive us of, or hide, or emasculate, the very essence of our humanity, manifest as this humanity is in empathy, compassion, personal love and personal honour. All such ideals, concepts, abstractions - which include such things as The State, the Nation, the dogma of religion, the idealism of politics, the myth of progress - cause, have caused or can cause suffering: they are the genesis of suffering because they place some abstraction, some ideal, some concept, some myth of duty and destiny, before our simple humanity.

For me, there has been a slow, a very slow, journey of discovery. All that I have studied, all that I have experienced, all my many and various involvements, all my mistakes, have been in one sense stages of this journey. I would like to believe it has ended or is nearing its end, but I have arrogantly and mistakenly believed that in the past. So, in truth, I really do not know where I am on this journey, although I do feel I have at last discovered, or glimpsed, the essence, which essence - as I keep writing and saying - is empathy, compassion, love and honour: the striving to cease to cause suffering and to thus be fully human, to live as an adult human being, and not as the feckless child, swayed by our desires, and not as the one who incorrectly, in delusion, believes they are adult and who is in thrall to abstractions, to ideals, to myths, to concepts.


Thus, in the past two years my personal writings, and many of my missives regarding The Numinous Way, have been expressions of a very individual interior journey.  In addition - and I have explained elsewhere (2)  -  there has been, several times, a return by me to the suffering-causing abstractions of my recent past, and some written effusions as a result of such a return. Part of the reason for such a return was I had still not completely solved, to my own satisfaction, certain questions about a certain oath of loyalty I gave in relation to a specific Way of Life, and thus felt a need to honour such an oath, despite my own reservations and despite those recent answers of mine which I expressed through my development of The Numinous Way. Another part of the reason for such a return was, yet again, a warrior desire to change things by confronting, and contradicting, the perfidy, the non-personal, non-local, dishonour that I found still had the  power to make me angry. Thus, even these recent mistakes, by me, have been useful - part of the continuing process of my learning.

Furthermore, I can quite understand how people can be confused about me, especially if they only read one or a few of my recent writings, and thus do not view them or me in the context of other such writings, in the context of an interior struggle, and thus as expressions of pathei mathos.


Will you continue to write, and will you publish such writings?


I shall write if I have something to express - and often the act of writing itself is an aid to one's own understanding. Hence, one can understand some of my recent effusions as but parts of some as yet incomplete whole; as the musing, the scribblings, of some traveller unsure of the final destination.

As for publishing such writings, such effusions, such scribblings - at this precise moment of causal Time, I do not feel any inclination to do so, although I shall probably make an exception in respect of some poems, as I have done with the publication of verses such as The Sun of Warm November. Yet, in all honesty, I may well find that a certain silly unnecessary vanity returns in the not-so-distant future, leading me to again publish such things, believing - mistakenly or otherwise - that for someone, or some few, sometime, they may have some significance, or meaning, and might, perchance, cause them to question some-things.

All I can hope to do is to strive - hopefully successfully - to live the basic truths I have discovered, live the essence, which is to cease to cause suffering, to understand the causes of suffering, and hope that my writings, the many mistakes of my life, reveal at least something of this essence.




DWM
(Revised 2454542.753)





Notes:

(1) I have amended the text slightly, to correct typos and to clarify the sense in one or two places.

(2) For example see Part Three of my Autobiographical Notes.