The universe & me:

...There is no doubt that we should behave morally, and what is being said here is not to be construed as an indifference to morality...

...Attention to the ways in which doing what at the most obvious level we want to do-our desire-leads us around, may show us how the thing we think of as liberating can actually be enslaving...

...But morality does occupy us too much, perhaps because it involves the things we can take care of ourselves, without our having to endure any vision of ourselves as completely inadequate, totally contingent...

...I pushed the button and the child looked at me furiously...

...A lot of the way we experience the world is filtered through clouds of irritation, unreasonable expectations, fear, and all sorts of self-centered emotions and reactions which effectively keep us from experiencing what Caussade, in a lovely phrase, called "the sacrament of the present moment...

...Only asceticism, a willingness to go against what seems to be the grain, can begin to show us the complex depths of that life, and can reveal the fact that desire and the fulfillment of desire are not necessarily the same" thing as freedom...

...This should apply to everything we encounter, not just those things we tend to think of as spiritual or ethical...

...This applies not only to those forms of anger which are obviously out-sized and wrong, like yelling curses at innocent but inept drivers, or berating a child, but also to the forms of anger we experience at political leaders, or the irritations encountered in the course of an ordinary workday...

...OF SEVERAL WINDS John Garvey THE UNIVERSE & ME THE PLEASURES OF RESENTMENT A few days ago I walked toward an elevator and reached it at about the same time as a woman who was holding a child, aged, I guessed, around one-and-a-half or two...

...the pleasure is the same...

...I have seen people turn on waitresses because, seconds before, they had spilled shrimp sauce on themselves, and I have been angry at objects (balky electric typewriters, unreasonable computer programs, even hairbrushes) which would not respond as I thought they should...

...Saint Seraphim of Sarov addressed each person who came to him as "my joy," and meant it...

...The fact that moral behavior can exist apart from prayer and asceticism ought to teach us that it is not particularly Christian, or religious...

...An approach to this problem which says "You shouldn't be irritated at the unexpected phone call, the visitor you would rather not have dropped by without calling, the need a friend has for a ride-that isn't right or virtuous, and he or she too is a child of God, you should be grateful for the opportunity to serve others, etc...

...Most of us are very far from being able to see others, to see creation itself, as God sees the universe at the moment of creation, knowing it, rejoicing in it, as good...

...I realized then that he had planned on pushing the button himself...

...It is an important social necessity, a form of civility...

...To feel wronged is bracing, in a sour way, a form of pleasure-pain...

...that sort of moralism never got very far with me, because if I took it seriously I would go around thinking I deserved some credit for what, in a better person, would pass for simple decency...

...My response to too many people is, "You again...

...How free are we if we feel we must be free to do something we want to do...

...This is part of what I mean about the psychology of spirituality...

...Eastern Orthodox spirituality speaks of ' 'guarding the heart"-that is, paying attention to what goes into the heart and how we respond to it...

...his mother is in charge of the universe and plainly messed up here...

...Please don't write to tell me about William James's excellent Psychology of Religious Experience...

...There has not been enough attention paid to the psychology of spirituality...

...That isn't too far from adult logic, either...

...He turned in his mother's arms and slapped her...

...One Buddhist text, for example, refers to the feelings of aversion we experience when confronted, say, by the decaying corpse of an animal, as a form of anger directed at an object, unreasonable in the most profound sense...

...and to feel that you are being kept from your rightful place by someone else (a parent, when you are adolescent, or a superior in a corporate or religious or governmental structure, when you are an adult), or by an unreasonable circumstance, allows the feeling that the world would be right if only it weren't for-whatever it may be...

...The end of a prayerful life, the goal of asceticism, should be a clarity of understanding and activity which is denied us when we are incapable, because of distraction and self-involvement and webs of attachment, of simply being before God in the present moment...

...Until this illusion is shattered, even "good" uses of my time (things like putting up with someone who bores me, working voluntarily for an important social cause, etc...

...This struck me as a nice illustration of child logic: he wanted to push the button...

...Morality, insofar as it means the self-conscious pursuit of virtue, could be the greatest enemy of spiritual understanding, short of distraction...

...To behave in a way which you know is moral-whether that means refraining from theft or adultery, or behaving in a positively "good" way, through the performance of a generous or courageous act-can reinforce the ego and protect us from self-awareness...

...One meaning of this could be that morality, doing the right thing, is at most a by-product of spiritual understanding, not its point...

...When Eckhart says that our following of Christ means that we should first be aware of what we most want to do or are most inclined to do (and of course there is a distinction between the two), then refrain from doing it, and watch ourselves carefully-this is a great part of what he means...

...I am not referring to studies of religion as a phenomenon...

...There are several sayings in the desert fathers to the effect that it is a greater work to conquer anger than to raise the dead...

...The pleasures of resentment are nursed in some small degree by nearly everyone, and in large degree by many...

...It also fails to get at the illusion which lies at the root of the irritation...

...A lot of anger-a lot of the kind I have experienced, anyway-comes from the illusion that our time is literally ours, a thing we have a right to, a personal possession, and anyone whose demands mean that I will not get to use it as I wish will be resented...

...This illusion is the infantile one that the universe has been structured around what I see as my needs, and if it hasn't been, it should be...

...Where asceticism has been at its worst, where it has been most misunderstood, has been where it is concerned with moral action...

...are spiritually pointless-I am likely to think that it is good of me to do these things with "my time...

...None of this is far from infantile reacting, if indeed there is any difference at all...

...this stranger did it instead...

...Self-denial can, in fact, be the beginning of true freedom...

...therefore she should be punished...

...Jesus says that after we have done everything we ought to do, we are still unprofitable servants...

...What we need is something which can be found occasionally in the desert fathers and in the Philokalia, as well as in some Buddhist writing...

...I do not mean that we should not behave morally, only that we should not regard moral behavior as much more important than taking out the garbage...

...The degree to which anger and resentment inform our inner lives would disturb us, I think, if we could see it clearly...