by Joseph F. Schmidt, Published by Saint Mary's Press, Christian Brother's Publications; Winona, Minnesota; www.smp.org . © 2000
Chapter 3, page 27
Introspection:Narcissism and the Limited Ego
IN THE SEARCH OF OUR EXPERIENCES, in the unfolding of memories to learn of our weaknesses and giftedness, are we not in danger of focusing on ourselves in a narcissistic way ? Are we not in the further danger of rationalizing and manipulating our experiences so they tell us what we want to hear ?
- If he were the Messiah, he would know what kind of woman she is who is washing his feet.
- The Messiah would not do such and so because we know what the Saviour will and will not do .
The natural feelings of sympathy and admiration that the Pharisees must have had for Jesus were stifled by their preconceptions . They left no room for the unexpected in their experience, and so an awareness of God could not enter .
The Eastern mystical tradition is perhaps more conscious of this difficulty with preconceptions than is the Western popular spirituality. In some forms of Eastern discipline, in order to open the disciple's mind to the nonrational and to the unexpected, the religious master presents the spiritual novice with a KOAN as the focus for meditation . The koan is a statement or question that makes no sense . It usually includes elements that offer no coherent or reasonable basis from shich an analysis can be made . The classic koan “ What is the sound of one hand clapping ? “ contains elements that are themselves in contradiction, and so no reasonable answer by analysis is possible . This is the point. In meditation on the koan, the novice, perhaps after months or years, comes to an awareness that rational analysis will not do; the answer, if there be an answer, must come from beyond rationality and analysis, which is to say, from beyond the ego .
The understanding of the koan does not come from rationalizing or manipulation the data but emerges in the ego's act of yielding to helplessness. Therefore, it is not a matter of rationally working at the koan that brings awareness. Rather, being in faith with the koan leads to personal awareness and transformation .
In a similar way, we might say that many of our experiences are themselves koans .
They contain elements that we see as contradictory and as making no sense : the death of a beloved child, failure in an area of special competence, a serious injury, falling in love . We ask ourselves for an answer or a meaning . We analyze and reason, but no understanding is forthcoming . Again, that is the point .It is not by rational analysis or by the manipulation of the data of our experience that the answer will come but by an egoless reflection in which we open ourselves to a source of power beyond ourselves . It is not by rationally working at the memory of our experiences that we gain awareness; rather, by being in faith with our experiences, we grow to a sense of our finiteness and giftedness, and therefore to a sense of God's power and care . Reflecting on our experiences in a reverent way, far from being narcissistic, opens us to the source of life on the other side of our limited rational ego .
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