The Human Condition-2-Thomas Keating
The Human Condition-2-Thomas Keating
Sometimes it helps to turn to a story from another spiritual tradition: in juxtaposing the two stories, we may get a new insight. Here is a Sufi tale that is also about the human condition.
A Sufi master had lost the key to his house and was looking for it in the grass outside. He got down on his hands and knees and started running his fingers through every blad of grass. Along came eight or ten of his disciples . They said, "master, what is wrong?" He said, "I have lost the key to my house." They said, "Can we help you find it?" He said, " I'd be delighted."
So they all got down on their hands and knees and started running their fingers through the grass. As the sun grew hotter, one of the more intelligent disciples said," Master, have you any idea where you might have lost the key?" The Master replied, "Of course. I lost it in the house". To which they all exclaimed, " then why are we looking for it here?" He said, "Isn't it obvious? There is more light here."
We have all lost the key to our house. We don't live there any more. We don't experience the divine indwelling. We dont't live with the kind of intimacy with God that Adam and Eve reportedly enjoyed in the Garden of Eden and the Sufi masters seems to have enjoyed before he lost his key.
The house in the parable represents happiness, and happiness is intimacy with God, the experience of God's loving presence. Without that experience, nothing else quite works; with it, almost anything works. This is the human condition - to be without the true source of happiness, which is the experience of the presence of God, and to have lost the key to happiness, which is the contemplative dimension of life, the path to the increasing assimilation and enjoyment of God's presence. What we experience in our desperate search for happiness where it can not possibly be found . The key is not in the grass; it was not lost outside ourselves. It was lost inside ourselves. That is where we need to look for it.
Contemporary psychology has a significant contribution to make at this point. Infants do not have self-consciousness, or at least they have a very small amount. it emerges gradually through various stages of a child's development. Full self-reflective consciousness begins around the ages of twelve to fourteen. Prior to that time, we have an innate thirst for happiness but no practical experience of the presence of the divine within us. So we look for happiness somewhere else.
According to St.Augustine's theology, original sin has three consequences: (1) we don't know where happiness is to be found (ignorance); (2) we look for it in the wrong places (concupiscence); and (3) if we ever find out where it might be found, the will is too weak to pursue it anyway. That is the somewhat dismal view that Christianity has offered up to now. If you are a Buddist, you can track the same sort of idea in the teaching about sufferinh and the cessation of suffering.
Contemporary psychology has provided us with a knowledge of the unconscious. The discovery is only a hundred years old, and it casts an enormous light on all spiritual disciplines. In recent years, we have witnessed the development of various psychological theories such as codependency and the dysfunctional family, which assert that more and more people, at least in the Western world, are afflicted by these pathologies (as much as 95 to 98 percent of the population). These theories are getting pretty close to the idea of the universal character of original sin.
But the spiritual journey is more than a psychological process. It is of course primarily a process of grace. God also speaks to us through nature. The more we know about nature, the more we know about the mind of God. Einstein believed that science was directed toward discovering God's thoughts. Quantum physics itself is a kind of spirituality insofar as it is always looking farther into the unknown to see what is beyond the known.It is a search for ultimate reality.God is available through many sources besides the religious quest. I don't mean to imply that psychology replaces the work of religion, but it seems to me that it greatly supports religion and brings a certain clarity to area of the human condition, especially the discovery of the unconscious.
All of us have been through the process of being born and entering the world with three essential biological neeeds: security and survival, power, and control, affection and esteem. Without adequate fulfillment of these biological needs , we probably would not survive infancy. Since the experience of the presence of God is not there at the age we start to develop self-consciousness, these three instinctual needs are all we have with which to build a program for happiness. Without the help of reason to modify them, we build a universe with ourselves at the centre, around which all our human faculties revolve like planets around the sun. As a result, any object entering into our universe -another person or event-is judged on the basis of whether it can provide us with what we believe or demand happiness to be.
Reference: The Human Condition - Thomas Keating- Contemplation and Transformation- Foreword: Elaine Pagels.
Articles - Latest
- NEW ORLEANS R&B SINGER CLARENCE ‘FROGMAN’ HENRY DIES AGED 87
- ALBERT ‘TOOTIE’ HEATH OBITUARY
- AMERICAN-BORN FORMER SUMO CHAMPION AKEBONO DIES AGED 54
- WEIGHT LOSS INFLUENCER MILA DE JESUS DIES AGE 35
- CYNTHIA WEIL OBITUARY
- NORMAN BEDDINGTON OBITUARY
- OJ SIMPSON DIES AGED 76 SURROUNDED BY HIS FAMILY
- DJ MISTER CEE DEAD AT 57
- JON CARD | PUNK DRUMMER FOR ACTS SUCH AS DOA AND PERSONALITY CRISIS, HAS DIED AGED 63
- CECIL L. 'CHIP' MURRAY, INFLUENTIAL PASTOR AND CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER IN LOS ANGELES, DIES
- CHRISTOPHER DURANG DIES AT 75: TONY-WINNING PLAYWRIGHT AND SATIRIST HAS PASSED AWAY
- THE WALLFLOWERS' GUITARIST MICHAEL WARD DIES AGED 57 JUST DAYS BEFORE NEXT PERFORMANCE
- SOUTH AFRICAN FOOTBALL STAR SHOT DEAD IN HIJACKING
- SOLAR ECLIPSE 2024: WATCH LIVE AS RARE EVENT PLUNGES MILLIONS INTO DARKNESS IN INCREDIBLE SIGHT
- ON THE PLANE OF SELF CONSCIOUSNESS - VIII - COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS
- MAHAMUDRA PRACTICE OF THE KAGYUPAS - MILAREPA
- THE TANTRIC APPROACH - MILAREPA
- THE HUMAN CONDITION - CONTEMPLATION AND THE DIVINE THERAPY-7
- LOUIS GOSSETT JR, THE FIRST BLACK MAN TO WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR OSCAR, DIES AGED 87
- THE 1.6 MILLION-YEAR-OLD DISCOVERY THAT CHANGES WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT HUMAN EVOLUTION
- WILLIAM AND ROYAL FAMILY GATHER FOR PRIVATE FUNERAL OF THOMAS KINGSTON
- SCIENTISTS REVEAL PERFECTLY PRESERVED DINOSAUR EMBRYO FOUND INSIDE FOSSILIZED EGG (PHOTO)
- SAXOPHONIST CASEY BENJAMIN, WHO PLAYED WITH KENDRICK LAMAR AND BEYONCÉ, DIES AGED 46
Articles - Most Read
- Main
- Contact Us
- The science behind Ouija boards
- Cosmic Consciousness - What is Cosmic Consciousness-2
- Cosmic Consciousness-Introduction
- Cosmic Consciousness - Introduction-2
- MASSIVE 6.1 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE HITS NEW ZEALAND AS NATION STILL REELING FROM CYCLONE
- ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNRAVEL THE TRUTH OF APHRODITE, GODDESS OF LOVE, ON VALENTINE'S DAY
- The Human Condition-Thomas Keating
- Cosmic Consciousness First Words - 1V - 2
- Cosmic Consciousness First Words - V -
- Cosmic Consciousness V - 2
- Cosmic consciousness - First Words - IV
- Cosmic Consciousness - What is Cosmic Consciousness?
- Evolution and Devolution-Chapter 2
- The Human Condition - Thomas keating-3
- The Human Condition-2-Thomas Keating
- Drinking From The Mountain Stream - Milarepa
- Cosmic Consciousness-On the Plane of Self Consciousness
- The Human Condition - 4
- Cosmic Consciousness - 3 - On the Plane of Self Consciousness
- Evolution and Devolution-Chapter 1
- The Human Condition - 6
- Shakyamuni Buddha or India the 1st “Black Revolutionary Hero.”
- On the Plane of Self Consciousness - 2
- Milarepa's World
- The Human Condition - 5
- Milarepa's World-2
- The Buddhist System of Liberation
- On the Plane of Self Consciousness IV
- Contemplation and the Divine Therapy - 2
- JERRY RAWLINGS, GHANAIAN STRONG MAN WHO CAME TO POWER IN A COUP BUT INTRODUCED DEMOCRACY – OBITUARY
- The Buddhist System of Liberation - 2
- On the Plane of Self Consciousness IV - 2