I am a shameless lover-of-beauty. A simple equation and a great pleasure: see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel, beauty - and I am delighted. Asceticism has never sat well with me; it feels incomplete, despite any number of attempts by evangelical Christianity to preach about how the world and the flesh are evil. I am thankful to now have words and structure, and in responding to the blog, an inspiration, to explain what I've known all along.
Near the end of Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis describes the theory of Enjoyment and Contemplation found in Time Space and Deity, written by Alexander. For example, when one sees a table; one enjoys seeing, and contemplates the table. In bereavement one Enjoys (in the author's sense of Enjoyment) grief, and Contemplates the beloved. So when one hopes for something, one Enjoys hope and Contemplates the something. In short, Enjoyment is the act, and the thing Contemplated is the subject, or perhaps object is a better term, of the act.
But to attend to your own love or fear is to cease attending to the loved or dreaded object. In other words the enjoyment and the contemplation of our inner activities are incompatible. You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same moment; for in hope we look to hope's object and we interrupt this by (so to speak) turning round to look at the hope itself. Of course the two activities can and do alternate with great rapidity; but they are distinct and incompatible.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, "Checkmate"
If I were to seek out Beauty for its own sake, then I would be, to paraphrase Lewis, in a futile attempt to Contemplate the Enjoyed - to make the act of experiencing into the object of my thoughts. A poor substitute! No - I enjoy seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, feeling, and, in so doing, contemplate Beauty.
In a discussion of the Isha Upanishad over at the wisdomreading group I shared these words, and wish to present them again in the imperative:
Dance lightly, hold loosely, drink deeply.
"For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."
excerpt from Prayer of Saint Francis
May we all seek to give, seek to forgive, and seek to die daily; and in so doing, find incomparable riches, total forgiveness, and life everlasting.
8 comments:
Yes. Nicely put. In my vocabulary it is the difference between experience and imagination about experience. Two different orders of reality.
According to Tolle, God can only be experienced/felt. Feeling your body, which is easier for women, is a portal into the sacred. You can follow the feeling deeply until you are completely at peace and in the present moment. If your eyes are open, and you are observing something, you can feel the oneness of the object you are observing. You, the observer, become one with the object, subject and object become one. When you think about something, you are thinking about the object, but thinking is a poor substitute for feeling or experiencing it. He illustrates this with an example of van Gogh's paintings. When van Gogh painted a chair or his room, you can see the Beingness or Aliveness of the chair or room in the painting. Most people just perceive a chair or room. They are just objects, but van Gogh felt the chair or room and painted what he felt, what he experienced.
So, you already know intuitively that life is to be experienced and enjoyed. Love and do what you will. Do not let commandments and laws inhibit you from enjoying life fully. If you are in touch with Being/God, then you are beyond the laws and such because you are living in right action. Feeling God is living God. Thinking about God is a poor substitute.
"When the Way is lost,
afterward comes integrity,
When integrity is lost,
afterward comes humaneness,
When humaneness is lost,
afterward comes righteousness,
When righteousness is lost,
afterward comes etiquette."
Tao Te Ching
You seem to know the Truth intuitively, allowing you to experience it fully and freely. I had to be told the Truth and then later on found a book that explained it. Once I experienced the Truth, the explanations had less significance because they weren't the experience. But being a Man, my mind holds sway over me more and I have to remember to stop thinking and just enjoy the moment. I have to still a compulsively thinking mind.
Bliss and happiness as you experience life!
If you've not read it, I invite you to check out Matthew Fox's book "Original Blessing." He has a number of great chapters about SAVORING and CELEBRATING beauty - the senses - delight - ecstacy...
The concept of the book is that we're not born into original sin ("the world and the flesh are evil"), but that life is a wonder and beauty to be savored ("see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel, beauty").
Julie,
I love that Lewis quote. Lewis sort of turned me on to Christianity when I was a teenager but then I drifted away from him as he seemed to be co-opted by evangelicals who interpreted him very narrowly and seemed to think of him as their property. Thanks for reminding me that he was indeed a mystic!
JB,
I recognize in Van Gogh subjectivity.
He painted what he percieved instead of what he thought was there.
Perception is fluid. That is why the proportions were off and the colors flickered. That is the way we actually percieve(when we look), but instead of perceiving we usually only look at and see a thing for a moment and then switch back to imagination. Naturally in our imaginary picture a chair is always the same size. But try looking at a chair out of the corner of your eye for one minute and see if it does not seem to change size or even turn into something else.
If you are really brave, try looking at yourself in a mirrir in a dimly lit room for five minutes.
Warning, this can be scary.
Lewis wrote: "But to attend to your own love or fear is to cease attending to the loved or dreaded object."
This may be simplistic, but I perceive this as love yourself or love your neighbor. Jesus was reported to say "love your neighbor as youself", not instead of yourself as some ascetics might think, but as yourself. This of course suggests we should love ourselves, and in fact Eric Fromm wrote a book with the thesis that one cannot love God, self or other to any other degree than he loves the other two.
Erich Fromm: The Art of Loving (1956).
He was an atheistic psychiatrist and therapist; I suppose he may have understood God in the same sense as Carl Jung, as a psychic fact. Anyway his Art of Loving was high on the Religious Book of the Month list (back in those ancient days).
In the face of beauty, you write "...I am delighted." It appears that you are, and this brings a smile. Thanks for generously sharing your delight.
Aki
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