Nobility Joy

[Simone Roberts]

To pick up where we left off....

Nancy's in blue, I'm in black and green:

What's the difference, for you, between struggle and difficulty that's necessary, that comes from the world and situations that arise, and the kind of struggle and difficulty you impose on yourself? Overcoming does feel good, heroic. It should. The confrontation does result in strength. That's all fine, as far as I'm concerned. And so is celebrating it. I completely agree!

The trick, I think, is that we have to also find the nobility in pleasures and joys. Yes, the problem I am realizing in very subtle ways that I have only found nobility in the tragic in suffering...in things that are "hard".  And of a very old part of me believes that this is how God see it too.  Now does my mature rational mind think that?  Of course not, I am simply noticing that often my "rational" mind is not in charge of what I am doing, feeling.

It's important that in order to think about pleasure, Gilligan goes to Greek myth -- not Christian. Christianity is not renowned for its narratives on pleasure, and most contemporary preachers don't spend much time in The Song of Songs. Maybe you should. Not that that will get your unconscious to instantly chill out, but the conscious (rational) mind does get to talk to the unconscious, so maybe some long meditation on the Song, and on passages in Gospel that emphasize the good parts of being good would be helpful. ??? This is (and isn't) just me, but there's a real advantage for a church to convince its parishioners that suffering is noble, and right, and your only good choice because you're suffering proves your faith and dedication. I call this the We Killed Jesus school. That school also tends to tell its adherents that the preacher and the church are the path to salvation, and thus get lots of people to do what they want. It's effective. It's also mean. It's a medieval hangover, in my thinking. But, just thinking that doesn't create any freedom to be noble in one's joy or pleasure. Thus my suggestion.

I keep trying to remember to have a chat with myself when I'm in these kinds of conflicts. To see what's really going on, and meet the real need. It's possible that it's because Culture Says that joy is not noble, but escapist, that we have a hard time valuing our joy as we do suffering.

I've never been able to square that in some Christian teaching: God is love, god loves you, and wants you to suffer. Love, by definition, may not always be easy, but it does not seek suffering.

They have as many lessons for us as our struggles. As you show here. Once you did these pleasurable things as escapes. And now? You still do them. But what are they? How has your relation to them changed? Into one that means you're attending to these things, which is different from running from something else. Years ago I would say my choice to reach for a glass of wine and the phone was a reactive or unconscious choice.  What I find now, is that when I ask myself ...do I want to do that, or simply settle into the solitariness I choose the later...and actually feel peaceful in the choice.  Do I still call someone, yes, but now it is more often because we haven't talked in a while and its time to check in.  I schedule it at a time when I am not terribly busy ...the biggest difference is that once I finally chose this aloneness, this silence I am finding a particular kind of pleasure in it.  The point I was trying tomake in here, is that I realized that I chose to face the aloneness rather than to fill the space partly for HEROIC reasons...partly for pragmatic ones.  Heroic: my children will be proud of me, I will be proud of me (and it is true they are and I am)  Pragmatic:  I want to be free.  It's hard to feel free when you are running away or avoiding something.

Amen. Sounds like before alone meant scared, and now it means comfortable. But, the fear had to be faced. I guess one fo the distinctions I draw is the one you make. Calling people just to avoid yourself or a situation is not harmful (usually) but it is a kind of hedonism (and we've all done it) because it's about escaping what's really going on. And so, is usually not all that satisfying.

Here's what else I would say about the difference between choosing to call a friend when I could be just as happy reading a book is that whatever I choose then really feels like pleasure. 

I'll bet that's because the action and the real intention match up. ???

When I "had " to get on the phone to keep the loneliness away 20 years ago, I would have this nagging guilty feeling.  I knew some where inside I was running away and not facing something.  So I needed more from the conversations that I woul dnow.  Does this make sense?  Maybe that was hedonism...I've thought that maybe hedonism is a running away from something...like its the flip side of stoicism or aescetism...althought I must confess I do know aescetics who derive pleasure from fasting etc.   More later....nance

Yep, I was writing as I went. I would, do, see it this way. I think the key is that even a little hedonism like this one is not only the flip side of asceticism, it's also the flip side of pleasure. A gentle kind of asceticism, to counter our little hedonism, is just what you've done. To choose being alone, but choose it in order to be with it, to read the book, the be with yourself.

It's one of the hardest ongoing lessons, to be with yourself and be good company. I'm doing (and not always well) a LOT of that these days.

Si

[Margaret Howard]

Hi Everyone. I'm new here, was added by Miss Simone, have been hovering a bit. Now I will try my hand. I don't know how this rambling of mine will be received, but thanks in advance for letting me ramble, and I will look forward to any related discussion.

 

These are such moving and crucial questions, pleasure and life and suffering. I've been fearing a bit that whatever I have to say might end up sounding simplistic or trite -- these things are very hard to express. I mean, agony and suffering are marvelously fun to express, at least for me, and while not easy exactly, I would say rich with expressive possibility. When I was depressed, when I was in existential crisis, when I was mad with pain (all the various times), this is when I did my best writing. This bothers me a lot, and I still haven't found a way out of it -- how to write when pleasure (the pleasure of the heart's contentment) becomes the stasis. We'll see.

 

In the meantime, here is the base of the reality (so-called) that I am working with at present:

 

Pleasure is our natural state. The thing that keeps up out of our natural state is the conditioned action of the mind. When we can stop trying to think our way out of our pain (which includes doing actions, like reaching for the phone or the wine, for all of those things are -- even more than they are hedonistic -- actions, avoidances, that take us away from ourselves. So, pleasure; mind.

 

I know. Pleasure as a natural human state sounds ridiculous. And, as Simone is saying, the idea is so far removed from the Christianity that makes suffering the only nobility and all the influenced that's heaved upon us that it sounds either wicked or silly, at first, to say that pleasure is our natural state. But if there is anything at all to any religion surely it's what's at the core: God is Love. And even without religion, what is it that holds the universe together? What is it that holds our cells together? Causes us to take care of our children and long for peace? Surely it's some protoplasmic thing we could call Love. And even a priori all that, the resting state is love. Surely.

 

But we're conditioned to action, to move, to react, and to avoid. Everything in our world conditions us to that. So when there's pain, there is all sorts of action of the mind (thinking, strategizing) we do to try to get out of whatever it is we're feeling. Oh my God, am I so good at that. I am the world's best strategizer! But here's the thing -- nothing ever works to get away from pain. Especially not trying to figure it out. I know, that's the ultimate blasphemy for the intellectual, and I had a hard time giving that "concept" (ooo, paradox, cool) a try. I lived my whole life always saying, "If I can only understand __________, I can find peace with it." Not. The attempt to understand is just a strategy to avoid my pain.

 

Instead, finally, I came to see that even my pain deserved my compassion. So, instead of running away from it or analyzing it to trying to kill it, I began to meet it, tenderly.

 

Pain arises. I close my eyes. I am quiet. I let the pain have me. I give it my tender, loving attention, locate it in my body: locate it in my body, and move into it, tenderly tenderly. Hello, pain. As my mind tries to pick it apart, see what's inside it, or drift off in order to avoid it or find a way to talk about it (which is to avoid the sensation of it), I move back into it, like moving into a cloud. Hello, dear pain. Let me put my hand on your little head, gently. And then, eventually, because compassion and tenderness are disarming, the pain opens up, gives way, lets me (my awareness) move through it to something deeper. The pain dissipates and there I am, in the core of my own being -- Love. In my heart center. And my heart center is growing outward, charming the air. There it is. The pain wasn't the reality of me. It was visiting, just there, looking for tenderness like everything else in the world. Now I feel the nature of self. Peace. Compassionate sweetness toward absolutely everything. And my mind needs not tracks to race down. There is nothing to look for. Everything is right here. And it feels good. It is so pleasurable.

 

So is suffering the noble state? No. Suffering is a distraction of mind. Maybe some noble actions can come out of suffering. Or noble poetry. Or bad poetry and gruesome actions. But if there is such a thing as nobility, then where can it reside but in who we really are, underneath what has been conditioned? That untouchable core of being? In this view, that core is truly undamagable. Nothing can touch it. It is always there. It can always be accessed in a moment. If we can get past, in that moment, the temptation to strategize or avoid or whatever mind thing we use and be willing to feel whatever scary thing it is that descending right now, meet it tenderly. That's all.

 

So that's just some experience I've had in recent years. Less poetry, more pleasure.

 

Thanks,

 

Margaret

--
"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

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