This is in reply to Cal Roeker’s comment on the last blog, “Discovery Through Denial”: (Note: this was written before the latest comments (below, added to "Discovery"), which would have changed at least the tone a bit. Yes, as Rooson notes, a pilgrimage is a time of reflection; and the word "privately" at the end of Roeker's comment does change its emphasis.)
If one is really interested about spirituality and ego, read Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island. I believe I had a blog on that a few years ago, but it’s always worth a refresher. To summarize, anything can and usually will be used by the ego as either a defense or a boost – including criticism of aestheticism, which might just be a defense against an inner laziness. For instance, who hasn’t heard people say, “I don’t have to go to church – nature is my cathedral!”, and then they barely go to nature, and rarely with an attitude of divine reverence? The criticism is the cop-out, a defense against changing a routine that the ego thrives on, comforted and cushioned against challenges to its supremacy.
The ego hates challenges, unless they are easily overcome and give instant bragging rights. Yes, everything can be used as an ego boost, but as stated in the last blog, when the challenge is truly great, the ego often fades from relevance. Then it comes down to surviving the challenge. Simply put, it is more likely the critic of the pilgrim rather than the pilgrim himself who is assuaging his ego.
It is like this: in a documentary about Baba Ram Das that I saw and wrote about a month ago, there is one great excerpt that the picture had. It was of a young and charismatic Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Das’s original name) telling an audience (my paraphrase): “I am one of the few people I know who likes talking to dying people. I like to because no one anywhere else is more honest. There is no bull shit among the dying.” An arduous sacrifice or pilgrimage is an attempt to mimic the state of dying – to leave the normal parameters of our physical being to experience what is beyond. It often succeeds, simply because it is so difficult. The ego becomes only a rider then, a hitchhiker taking a back seat to what is really driving the car, which is the inner eternal spirit.
So it is a better path, but like everything else in this world – maybe even among a few of the dying – not without its frauds. In said book (above), Merton mentions all manner of fasting and penance that he and his fellow brothers did to garner accolades. We have only to recall Jesus’s admonition of the Pharisees who fasted to impress others with their holiness: “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.” (Mat. 6: 16) Note, however, that Jesus did not say to NOT fast; except for his disciples, who were “guests of the bridegroom,” it was taken for granted that fasting was good for the soul. We are just not to brag about it. Jesus’s forty days of fasting in the desert serves as a prime example (of course) of the value of fasting and self-denial. It was then that he met, and bested, the devil. His action was not to boast, but to serve as an example.
Then there is (Saint) Padre Pio, recently canonized. This is actually an interesting case because it shows the degree of skepticism, even hostility, which the Church hierarchy has towards special sacred events or people.
As a child, Padre Pio did not play with his classmates in his small hometown in Italy, because they blasphemed. Instead, he played with his guardian angel, who he could see and talk to clearly (he could also see others’ angels). He slept with a rock for a pillow to mortify himself. As a young novice and then priest, he would fast for so many days that they would have to send him home to his mother to fatten him up. But then came the stigmata – that is, the open, bleeding wounds he developed on his hands, feet, and side that mimicked the wounds of the crucified Jesus (the first known case was with St. Francis in the 13th century). This was too much for the bishops and others in the hierarchy, who believed he was somehow doing this to gain attention, or because he was mentally deranged. He was examined by many doctors who could not explain the amounts of blood lost without death, or the lack of infection or bad odor in and from the wounds, but nevertheless, an onslaught against him as a fraud continued throughout his middle years. He was forbidden to hold public mass or to leave his convent or to appear in public (the public found him anyway and adored him to the point of obsession) by the Vatican (the Holy Office) itself. Eventually his supernatural powers (to heal, to bi-locate, to prophesy, to read minds) and saintliness could not be denied.
This shows the extent to which even the Catholic upper echelon marginalizes those who undergo hardships for spirituality. Penance is often something that is questioned even more severely by the powerful, which Jesus might have foretold in his Beatitudes, where he blessed the meek, for it is always the innocent laity who first recognize the fruits of the Holy Spirit in both Man and nature. Could it be that the smart, the official, and the revered are reading into others what they would do themselves, as the Pharisees did?
In any case, it is clear that to do some sort of spiritual penance or exercise is better than doing nothing at all. If you fear your ego will get in the way, tell no one and admonish even yourself when you start to think that you’re great. But don’t say that it is all silly - that God is within you, and what more can you need? Unless you are one of the few born without sin, as the Jews and Christians would put it, you need spiritual help, and penance in the form of fasting, or of pilgrimages, or of other actions that stress the will, have been known by nearly all people of all cultures to, as the American Indians say, “make the gods pity you” and grant favors. Although you might not deserve them anyway, you probably deserve them more than the guy sitting in his armchair already satisfied with his share of holiness.
This is in reply to Cal Roeker’s comment on the last blog, “Discovery Through Denial”: (Note: this was written before the latest comments (below, added to "Discovery"), which would have changed at least the tone a bit. Yes, as Rooson notes, a pilgrimage is a time of reflection; and the word "privately" at the end of Roeker's comment does change its emphasis.)
If one is really interested about spirituality and ego, read Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island. I believe I had a blog on that a few years ago, but it’s always worth a refresher. To summarize, anything can and usually will be used by the ego as either a defense or a boost – including criticism of aestheticism, which might just be a defense against an inner laziness. For instance, who hasn’t heard people say, “I don’t have to go to church – nature is my cathedral!”, and then they barely go to nature, and rarely with an attitude of divine reverence? The criticism is the cop-out, a defense against changing a routine that the ego thrives on, comforted and cushioned against challenges to its supremacy.
The ego hates challenges, unless they are easily overcome and give instant bragging rights. Yes, everything can be used as an ego boost, but as stated in the last blog, when the challenge is truly great, the ego often fades from relevance. Then it comes down to surviving the challenge. Simply put, it is more likely the critic of the pilgrim rather than the pilgrim himself who is assuaging his ego.
It is like this: in a documentary about Baba Ram Das that I saw and wrote about a month ago, there is one great excerpt that the picture had. It was of a young and charismatic Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Das’s original name) telling an audience (my paraphrase): “I am one of the few people I know who likes talking to dying people. I like to because no one anywhere else is more honest. There is no bull shit among the dying.” An arduous sacrifice or pilgrimage is an attempt to mimic the state of dying – to leave the normal parameters of our physical being to experience what is beyond. It often succeeds, simply because it is so difficult. The ego becomes only a rider then, a hitchhiker taking a back seat to what is really driving the car, which is the inner eternal spirit.
So it is a better path, but like everything else in this world – maybe even among a few of the dying – not without its frauds. In said book (above), Merton mentions all manner of fasting and penance that he and his fellow brothers did to garner accolades. We have only to recall Jesus’s admonition of the Pharisees who fasted to impress others with their holiness: “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.” (Mat. 6: 16) Note, however, that Jesus did not say to NOT fast; except for his disciples, who were “guests of the bridegroom,” it was taken for granted that fasting was good for the soul. We are just not to brag about it. Jesus’s forty days of fasting in the desert serves as a prime example (of course) of the value of fasting and self-denial. It was then that he met, and bested, the devil. His action was not to boast, but to serve as an example.
Then there is (Saint) Padre Pio, recently canonized. This is actually an interesting case because it shows the degree of skepticism, even hostility, which the Church hierarchy has towards special sacred events or people.
As a child, Padre Pio did not play with his classmates in his small hometown in Italy, because they blasphemed. Instead, he played with his guardian angel, who he could see and talk to clearly (he could also see others’ angels). He slept with a rock for a pillow to mortify himself. As a young novice and then priest, he would fast for so many days that they would have to send him home to his mother to fatten him up. But then came the stigmata – that is, the open, bleeding wounds he developed on his hands, feet, and side that mimicked the wounds of the crucified Jesus (the first known case was with St. Francis in the 13th century). This was too much for the bishops and others in the hierarchy, who believed he was somehow doing this to gain attention, or because he was mentally deranged. He was examined by many doctors who could not explain the amounts of blood lost without death, or the lack of infection or bad odor in and from the wounds, but nevertheless, an onslaught against him as a fraud continued throughout his middle years. He was forbidden to hold public mass or to leave his convent or to appear in public (the public found him anyway and adored him to the point of obsession) by the Vatican (the Holy Office) itself. Eventually his supernatural powers (to heal, to bi-locate, to prophesy, to read minds) and saintliness could not be denied.
This shows the extent to which even the Catholic upper echelon marginalizes those who undergo hardships for spirituality. Penance is often something that is questioned even more severely by the powerful, which Jesus might have foretold in his Beatitudes, where he blessed the meek, for it is always the innocent laity who first recognize the fruits of the Holy Spirit in both Man and nature. Could it be that the smart, the official, and the revered are reading into others what they would do themselves, as the Pharisees did?
In any case, it is clear that to do some sort of spiritual penance or exercise is better than doing nothing at all. If you fear your ego will get in the way, tell no one and admonish even yourself when you start to think that you’re great. But don’t say that it is all silly - that God is within you, and what more can you need? Unless you are one of the few born without sin, as the Jews and Christians would put it, you need spiritual help, and penance in the form of fasting, or of pilgrimages, or of other actions that stress the will, have been known by nearly all people of all cultures to, as the American Indians say, “make the gods pity you” and grant favors. Although you might not deserve them anyway, you probably deserve them more than the guy sitting in his armchair already satisfied with his share of holiness.
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