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A very short Editorial, this issue:
Firstly,
our grateful thanks to James Gasson
for taking charge of the construction of this web site,
and having produced such an attractive page.
Secondly,
we would like to share the following delightful writing
by Donald Stowell.
The Anatomy of Joy
Donald Stowell
“Joy is endemic in the universe and the purpose of it,”
This dogmatic statement is found in the Journals of Søren Kierkegaard.
It echoes a similar statement by Confucius in The Analects,
“Joy is in everything: it is necessary to know how to extract it”.
This opinion expressed by two great intellects
is so contrary to the experience of the majority of mankind
and to the poets and writers of today
that it would be useful to know how they came by that conclusion
and if there is any justification for it.
The purpose of the following chapters is to find out how widespread is
this discovery or belief, and what are the reasons or experiences which
lead men to it.
This little book does not presume to be an exhaustive study of the
subject but, as it were, a pilot scheme which anyone may take up and
explore further for himself.
The general fear of world cataclysm, the break-up of societies, the
change of moral standards, despair and disillusionment - these things
have been common throughout history, It may be that never before has
there been such good reason for them as now. It is true that it has
never before been possible for man to destroy himself, with the rest of
life on earth, at the touch or a few buttons.
But if Kierkegaard and Confucius are right then there is no need to be
unduly apprehensive of the future. There is a great need for men to
know that joy is there to be found by those who look for it, as gold is
hidden in the earth waiting to be found. A better analogy might be that
of beauty which is endemic in the world of nature - though there are
many whom it fails to impress. Our question then is why do they miss
“the many splendoured thing” which seers and children discover as one
of the facts of life? It must not be thought that the author has not
encountered sorrow. He is well aware that the tragic sense of life
seems to many to be of the very nature of life itself. Drama and
poetry, novels and history itself have nothing to feed on without it.
But as hate can be thought of as the frustration of love, so sorrow can
be seen as the temporary absence of joy. The statement that sorrow and
sighing shall flee away, is, according to the experiences related in
the following chapters, more likely to be true than its opposite.
CHAPTER ONE
JOY
IS WIDESPREAD
From many parts of the world and over
many centuries there come to our
discussion thinkers who have discovered joy as something which lies
there at the heart of reality. It is objective - a thing like a musical
chord or a frequency of electrical impulses. This can be either tuned
into or it can come on its own initiative, quietly possessing one or as
a flash of revelation.
The Brahmin considers ultimate reality as Sat
Chit Ananda, which may be
translated as Eternal-Intelligence-Bliss. In the Awakening of Faith
from the Asvagosha it is written:-
The
body has infinite form. The form infinite attributes. The attribute has
infinite excellencies, and the accompanying rewards of Bodhisattvas -
that is the region where they are predestined to be born by their
previous Karma - also has infinite merits. Manifesting itself the Body
of Bliss is infinite, boundless, limitless, unintermittent in its
action, directly coming forth from the mind.
Without accepting all the above, the main
contention is clear - the
milieu of our existence is joy or bliss. Another from India is by Sir
J.C.W. Bahadur taken from an article in Hibbert Journal:-
It is
argued in texts of criticism that the end of aesthetic experience is
the creation of joy which is called Ananda or Rasa. These terms, which
are employed to describe aesthetic experience are indeed taken from the
Indian Upanishads - texts which describe the ultimate reality by using
the same expressions. Thus the Atria Upanishad uses the word Ananda
declaring that bliss is the Ultimate Reality. The Indian standpoint on
this issue may be summed up thus: that joy from the empirical artistic
creations is momentary, therefore it is that Man's endeavour should be
directed towards the achievement of transcendental bliss. Worldly joy
thus becomes only an aid in the realization of the real joy - viz the
experience of ultimate reality.
It is interesting here to compare
Plato's exposition of an
understanding of earthly beauty leading to the enjoyment of
intellectual and spiritual beauty. Beauty is a joy-bringer. What
contact there may have been between Plato and the Upanishads we do not
know, even less likely, except through the noosphere than a connection
between them and The Book of Changes, among the most ancient of the
world's writings. Yet under the sign TUI – The Joyous Lake we find:
The
joyous mood is infectious and therefore brings success. But joy must be
based on steadfastness if it is not to degenerate into uncontrolled
mirth …a quiet, wordless, self-contained joy, desiring nothing from
without, and resting content with everything, remains free from
egoistic likes and dislikes. In this freedom lies good fortune because
it harbours the quiet security of a heart fortified within itself.
From India and China let us go to America.
Henry Miller has a passage
about clowns in an article called The smile at the foot of the ladder:
Joy is
like a river, it flows ceaselessly. It seems to me that this is the
message which the clown is trying to convey to us: that we should
participate through ceaseless flow and movement, that we should not
stop to reflect, compare, analyse, possess, but flow on through
endlessly like music. This is the gift of surrender and the clown makes
it symbolically. It is for us to make it real. At no time in the
history of man has the world been so full of pain and anguish. Here and
there however we meet with individuals who are untouched, unsullied by
the common grief. They are not heartless individuals - far from it.
They are emancipated beings. For them the world is not what it seems to
us. They see with other eyes. We say of them that they have died to the
world. They live in the moment fully, and the radiance which emanates
from them is perpetual song of Joy.
Now let us ask an agnostic
classical scholar of Oxford about her
experience of joy. Eileen Harrison wrote:
… the desire to
be good, or rather to be better, is a much bigger thing
than the desire to be helped, and it is much more mysterious, indeed is
probably un-understood to the end. It is very closely linked to the
physical life, food supply and the rest, but it always beckons to the
non-animal in us and makes the mere animal difficult to live with. It
explains why thinking is no good at all, unless one feels and is
excited. It lives on the psychology of ecstasy and beauty… man comes
into the world with a memory of beauty otherwise unimaginable. If he
keeps his soul fresh and undefiled his passionate desire issues in the
creation of an image of this heavenly beauty informed by the breath of
the artist's passion ... last night with misery and utter loneliness …
it was worse then anything I had ever felt like a blank despair. I fell
asleep at last and woke about six bathed in a most amazing bliss and
feeling that all the world was new and in perfect peace. I can't
describe it - the new birth is the best. It was what they all try to
describe and it was what they mean by communion with God.
She was not looking for joy. It
revealed itself to her without any
effort or desire on her part. How can such an experience be explained
except by saying that some wave-length of reality - a pulsation from
Sat Chit Ananda penetrates consciousness during sleep.
The rest of this book, together with an
introduction and a Life of the author, is available on a seperate page
(The Anatomy of Joy).
The book is also available as a PDF file
(The Anatomy of Joy PDF).
The
Importance of Being a Failure, by Editor
Victor Macgill
[My talk for tonight is inspired by the book, The way of Failure: Winning through Losing
by Mariana Caplan, and my reading is taken from that book.]
We human beings need to feel good about ourselves.
We need to feel safe, we need to feel important, we need to feel loved,
and we need to feel in control of our lives and the situations we find
ourselves in. Not feeling good about ourselves causes anxiety,
which we generally try to avoid.
Often these bad feelings drives us to find solutions
that are more about reducing the level of our anxiety than they are
about finding the best solution to our problems. We often go for the
quick fix rather than the true solution. We take on addictions such as
alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, fame and status, work, chocolate,
coffee, and perhaps more pertinently for those of us here tonight, even
spiritual development can be an addiction.
We feel good when we succeed. I recently
listened again to a tape set I have had for many years on how to
succeed in life. It was very good and had important lessons we do need
to remember. It talked about stopping negative emotions and using
positive affirmations to keep focused on our goals. The problem is
though, that the more important success becomes in our lives, the more
failure becomes unacceptable.
We will not grow and learn unless our false
solutions fail us. Until drinking alcohol or taking drugs fail to take
away our anxiety or fail to create negative consequences in our lives,
we will just keep continuing to do it. As long as the lure of fame is
greater than the insecurity we try to hide, we will stay in the dream
and not progress.
So, a vital truth about life is that
everything that is important to us will fail. Sooner or later, we will
get sick, we will be parted from those we love, we will be parted from
our money and possessions, we will fail to live up to our dreams and
expectations of ourselves and others, we will get old, and of course we
will die. It does not matter how many tricks we try to play on
ourselves to pretend that we are in control of ours lives, the truth
remains that everything that is important to us will fail.
Our physical bodies will fail us. It
might be a nice idea if we were to live forever in our physical bodies,
but think about it. They would have to be constructed to be that much
stronger, and be that much more complex and would requiring far more
energy to run than the bodies we have. Elephants have much stronger
bodies than us because of their size. They are the biggest land based
animal, but us for all their size they do not live that much longer
than. They also eat enormous amounts of food. Land animals don’t get
bigger than elephants because they just become too cumbersome and
inefficient.
In short, our physical bodies can not
live forever, they are built to wear out. The only way we can achieve
physical immortality is through death and procreation, because that
gives us a new generation, who can live beyond us. It is only through
failure by dying that the next generation can grow and improve.
Through procreation, we can evolve into
even more complex beings, but evolution only works when those who fail
to be effective in their environment do not get to procreate allowing
the most efficient to survive. Again it is by failure that we grow and
learn.
Now, of course, as spiritualists,
we believe that life continues after death. Even then, it
does not change the underlying principle of that through failure we
grow and learn, it just makes it happen over a series of lifetimes
instead of just one.
We all need to have a sense
of meaning in our lives. Without it, we feel anxious. So, if we find we
lack of a sense of meaning in ourselves, what do we do? We just make up
a new one to reduce our anxiety back to something we can cope with. We
do the best we can with what we’ve got to create a picture, a map of
the outside world that enables us to explain our experiences and
maintain a positive sense of who we are. So long as it works well
enough, we will continue to use it. Unless it fails, we will rarely
seek out a new way to find a sense of meaning that will work better for
us.
And what about our ego?
We often hear people saying we need to get rid of our ego,
but that is simplifying things bit.
The ego is often used to describe that part of ourselves
that is self-centred and leads us to negative actions.
That is not what it is.
The ego is formed by our beliefs and values,
which are shaped by our past experiences.
It forms itself into a map of ourselves and how we see the world.
Whenever we have a decision to make,
we take out the map and use this map
to make sense of what is happening around us
and guides us in our decisions.
If we have a good map, we make good decisions,
and if we have a bad map, we make bad decisions.
As our lives change and we have new experiences,
our ego must change to keep up, but, as I said before,
the ego is formed from our past so it doesn’t like to change.
It tends to likes to keep things as they, because that is what is familiar.
The ego struggles to avoid change.
How do we then deal with it?
We do not want to get rid of the ego,
since that would leave us without any map to guide us at all.
Without an ego we cannot live, because we lose the link
between ourselves and the world outside.
Rather than getting rid of the ego,
we should work to make the ego stronger and more adaptable,
so it can accept change and accept the failure of the old map
rather than see it as a threat.
The ego can then become a means to form a new and more efficient map
that will help our spiritual development.
We each have a set of internal standards we live by.
Those standards give us a guideline
of what we see as being all right to do,
and those things that are not right to do.
Being human however,
we find that at times our actions do not meet our internal standards
and we feel a failure.
Bill Clinton comes to mind as a person who achieved great success,
only to let himself down by his actions.
How does he still manage to feel OK about himself after what he did?
Before we race to judge him,
we need to acknowledge that we will all have a time in our past
when we did not meet our expectations of ourselves
and we must find a way of still being comfortable with ourselves
and living with the anxiety caused by our failure.
We can’t do it by more succeeding,
we must do it by truly forgiving ourselves
and accepting our failure.
We often avoid accepting failure by
distorting our perception of the world outside.
We blame others for our failings, we minimise our errors,
we deny things that are actually true,
and we justify and find reasons why we had no choice
but to do what we did.
Each time we avoid our failings,
we miss opportunities for growth.
Even our God must fail us if we are to truly grow.
Have you, like me, had an underlying belief,
that if I live a good, true spiritual life,
I will get good karma and nothing bad will happen to me.
That’s OK, but it’s a pretty limited view of God,
seeing God only as a good daddy who will look after me
and make everything all right,
rather than taking on our responsibility as vibrant co-creators
of this unfolding universe.
In order to gain a greater understanding of the depth of God,
that good daddy God has to fail, that God has to die.
The Buddhists say,
“If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him”.
If you see what appears to be spiritual perfection while still on the path,
you are just deluding yourself,
you have made a shallow image of God to meet your own needs,
rather than embracing the true reality of what God is.
Your God must die, before you can meet the true God.
That’s why Friedrich Nietzsche said,
“God is dead, Long live God”
Spiritual development is a necessary part
of finding and living our true potential as human beings,
but we need to examine what drives our search,
because it can become an addiction, just another quick fix.
We can use spiritual development as an excuse to not make change.
The feel-good atmosphere can be alluring and even addictive
taking us further from the path of real growth.
We can become too comfortable with ideas to challenge them.
True spiritual development is always prepared to fail,
because it is in failing that we grow and move further along the path.
We do not like to face the fact that
sometime life is like the movie title, As good as it gets.
It is a brilliant movie I highly recommend.
It showed the struggle of a man burden by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
It was in accepting who he was
and his limitations and those of the people around him,
that freed him to find love and come alive to life.
To sum up, we feel anxious when we are confronted by our failings
and would prefer to avoid them and just keep on living as we have.
However, when we understand the importance of being a failure,
of accepting ourselves as we are,
but also learning the lessons from our failures
that we can win by losing and gain spiritual advancement
that will never be possible to the person, who must always succeed.
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![[Carnyx]](carnyx.gif)
![[Rev Michael Cocks]](mcocks.jpg)
![[Rev Victor MacGill]](victor1.jpg)