Journeyings
As for my own journeyings, they have been many and varied - in essence
a search for meaning, identity and purpose, and also, to be honest, an
inner following of an ideal, a dream, a sense of personal Destiny.
Thus, outwardly, I have studied, and been involved with Taoism,
Buddhism (both Theravada and Zen), Catholicism (of course!), Islam, and
various pagan ways. There has also been a decades-long history of
political and "para-military" involvement, as I strived to change
society in accord with some political idealism I believed in - which
involvement led me, in my pride, arrogance and stupidity, to cause
great suffering to others, and to have the experience (twice) of being
in prison. For I often used, and incited, violence, in my pursuit of
political abstractions, and was, for a long time - and still am, by
many - perceived as some violent fanatic, an extremist, and even as an
"evil man".
This perception of me is understandable, although I personally regard
it as incorrect because during my years of involvement I was, for most
of that time, controlling my natural empathy, and compassion, believing
that "sacrifices had to be made" in order to create some better,
idealized society. That is, I placed some abstraction - political, or
"religious" in the case of Islam - before human beings: before their
happiness, before a simple, joyful, human love. Thus, I regarded
violence, war - and some killing - as an acceptable "price"...
Sometimes, during these decades, it did get too much, and so for a
while I ceased my involvements - to study various philosophies,
religious, or Ways; to wander around, as tramp, for some months; to
spend nearly two years in a monastery; to get married for the first
time and strive to live a "domestic life"; to live in a tent for
several months; to travel around the world; to spend six months
(following the death from cancer of my second wife) living in an hotel
translating Greek literature... But always, always, I returned to my
posturings - to striving to change the world in accord with some
idealism, in accord with some abstraction I held in my head, stupidly
believing that I was indeed trying to make the world a better, a more
noble, place: and arrogantly, pridefully, believing that I could make a
difference.
Gradually, very gradually, my pride, my arrogance, my sense of personal
Destiny, my belief in abstractions - political, social and religious -
have all been worn down, so that now I am somewhat like some of the
monks I knew who joined the noviciate after the Second
World War because their personal experience of war and suffering
changed them, greatly. But in my case, my pride, my arrogance, my inner
belief, was, it seems so great, that it took me decades to be
fundamentally changed - or, rather, to shed, to have taken from me, the
illusions of this world, to accept I had been wrong, to feel the
meaning of humility.
Yet - somewhat shamefully to recall - I understood many things, such as
the need to cease to cause suffering, several times over the years:
understood them both intellectually, and emotionally; rationally and
empathically. But always, always, I in the end returned to involvement,
to causing suffering, as I always, always, in the end and in my
arrogance, rejected the answers of all religions, philosophies and
Ways, striving to find my own answers.
Now, I live quite quietly, almost as a recluse,
spending my days walking in the hills, or reading, or messing around
with (and testing) computer software, or just
watching clouds pass. Still searching, for answers; hoping that I have
at last ceased to cause suffering - but knowing only that I do not
really know, that I am fallible, that I have been wrong so many times
in the past; that my answers, such as they are, are only my answers,
accepted for the moment, and feeling how incomplete these answers are,
with so many questions remaining unanswered...
With her death - over seven months ago, now - I felt,
surprisingly strongly, the need for prayer; the need to once again
believe in God, in a Saviour; to have again the healing, the catharsis,
of the sacraments of the Church. So I became perplexed, hoping to
believe, wishing to believe, but not believing - or, perhaps, not being
given the Grace to believe, from the Holy Spirit. So I fought, again,
against myself - striving to find my own rational and empathic answers,
beyond religion, faith, God...
Is this striving yet again my arrogance, my stupidity, my pride?
Probably. Thus there is again the question of humility - of just
accepting; of surrender to a supra-personal redeeming love. And yet -
and yet there are the doubts, intellectual, and born from empathy: from
the knowing of Nature, of the Cosmos; from the knowing of my own
answers, however, feeble, born out of the struggle of the past seven
months, the past several decades of my mistakes.
DW Myatt
(Extract from a letter to a religious of OSB)