We will revisit that theme again, I am certain. For now, another: what is the true self? I have spoke of this before, that I have learned that what I thought to be myself was only a thin mask made for the ego to present itself to society, one that often becomes mistaken for the true self. For the mystic, ANY notion of a separate self is a mask, but I do not wish to go that far at the moment, but rather stay with our temporal selves in this world. Still, here, we hide ourselves from others and ourselves. In "My Life with the Saints" by James Martin, he uses a few quotes to illustrate this point. From Metz, "When the mask falls and the cave of our being is revealed, it soon becomes obvious that we are religious by nature, that religion is the secret dowry of our being." Deeper still, this one from Thomas Aquinas: "All I have written seems like a straw compared with what I have seen [in mystical revelations late in life] and what has been revealed to me." Of the first, I'm certain that we all can recall times when the mask Metz is talking about has fallen, which usually happens at times when mortality is seen in its truth - that is, at times when we believe ourselves to be truly threatened. "There are no atheists in foxholes" goes with this, but there is much more: the person who is revealed to us in such times is not only frightened or begging for divine mercy - he is fundamentally different. This 'new' person may be braver or more cowardly than the previous persona thought he was, or more organizational, more dependent, more fatalistic, or more a fighter. This is nothing new to people who have been in harm's way regularly, and it is the reason many people court danger. They wish, even at the risk of death, to become more real.
I think of this because of a dream I had the other night. It did not have the feel of a special God dream, those coming very seldom; rather it was a blunt message of the self to the self, a special dream of a different sort. In it was revealed a truer nature of my being, one that I have long forgotten, one of a more feral, blunt and reactive temperament that has been buried under successive layers of socialization. It was me at, say, 5 or 10; but also me at 20 or 30, although in a more subtle guise; and still me in my 50's, but so buried that I had forgotten about it. This "me" reminds me more of people in older times and, given my readings of late, of Jesus's disciples. This "me" would, like Peter, have been prone to slice off the ear of the attendant who came to take Christ from Gethsemane. This "me" would also most certainly have denied Christ three times and more to protect himself. He would also be more prone to launch off into a rough sea, attempt to walk on water, or fall on his knees in the midst of thunder and wonders. A "me" that is more adventurous, braver, more immediately spiritual, yet in some circumstances more a coward, more likely to take advantage of a situation, more self-centered. That is, more the basic man. A regular working stiff, a soldier, a fisherman, a Viking gone bravely on Western seas who falls on his knees at the maelstrom.
I had forgotten him in my settled habits and age, but he is still there. He is as much "me" as "me" can be. The gray hair and steady habits are only physical and mental aspects born from age and complacency, different from a more authentic someone, much of him formed before thought and words were realized. One does, I must believe, have a basic nature. It is this nature which confronts the mountain cliff, and this which confronts the Ultimate while still the self.
Thomas Aquinas speaks of an even deeper self - one that is beyond the man of the world but before the saint who has gone beyond this world. He speaks of another self that most of us have or will experience as well. Here we are led beyond the discursive and the selfish to a pure experience which leads to a pure thought, or intuition. I think it might be best described as the Zen moment, when the present, the "now" becomes that "infinity in a grain of sand." You have found it in those moments where nothing else but what you are right then matters - when dreams and hopes and fears dissolve into pure being. Aquinas, a man of both deep rational thought and faith, could only describe it in terms of "knowing." And when thinking of these two personas, it makes me think that Jesus did not chose the fishermen only because they were common men; but also because, in their simple fierceness and loyalties and fears and pettiness, they were more apt to see the truth, the "present" of eternity, than the many-layered or more sophisticated; as the first quote states, when we strip away the persona, we find the religious man. Here, in the person who just "is" we find not only striking self-centeredness and cruelty, like a grown child, but also someone with an easy and natural ability to feel what is just beyond. It is this man who I was looking for in my adventures with the Indians. It is this man I discovered in my dream. He is NOT the man of the future, for he cannot expand extensively from himself and his family and his tribe. But he is LIKE the man of the future in his essential honesty with himself.
So, it may be that the man (person) of the future is the man who wears no mask before and after he has seen the wordless truth of Aquinas. He is, in other words, Peter after the Pentecost, Buddha under the banyan tree, the Zen student who is hit by "now." He is the stripped-down self before the power and the fury who receives grace in the eye of the storm and keeps it. He is, in other words, totally himself led by the will of the Absolute. He is, then, maybe an answer to my own question: does God lead, or are we left to our own devices? Yes, IT leads, but only if we know ourselves, raw skin and all. FK