The Secret? Law of Attraction? Beware Dr. Feel Good

It seems we human beings never grow tired of easy answers, especially Americans. We want the easy fix, the cheapest way, the short cut, the pain pills. Who wouldn’t want this? But wanting is not living. And living as a true human being requires more of us. More than simply the will to have what we want.

How many people have you heard lately talking about “the secret to life,” the law of attraction,” or the power of “manifesting”? Sure, it all sounds good. But this is just the latest recycled version of the power of positive thinking approach to life that has led so many people astray over the centuries. I’m not against people enjoying life, an optimistic approach to living, or taking responsibility for one’s life. I am suspicious, however, of anything that tempts people to believe that: their individual happiness is the ultimate goal of living; that however they define that happiness or the fulfillment of their needs is fine, as long as they choose it for themselves; that they are fully in charge of their lives and do not need to depend on any other; and that a life worth living is always pleasant and easy.

I Want, I Want, I Want
Most purveyors of the law of attraction (and yes, these people are manifesting making lots of money off people who want to hear this easy talk) encourage people to ask, What do I want to manifest in my life? What we should be asking ourselves is the questions that come before and beneath that question: How can I know what to manifest if I don’t first understand what is illusion and what is true? How does it help me in the long run to manifest my desires if what I desire is as ephemeral and unsatisfying as smoke when what I really need is fire? What have I gained if I become adept at attracting to myself what feels good for an instant but what cannot prove an enduring foundation for the future? A new car? A six-figure income? A romantic partner? All good—perhaps. But should these be the object of our heart’s deepest and purest intention?

I,I,I,I,I
Are these the questions we should be asking ourselves, What do I want? What do I want to attract? What do I want to manifest? I, I, I, I! That’s the second part of why this recycled power of positive thinking talks is so tempting: it focuses not only on desire without asking what is worthy of human being’s deepest desire, but on the “I,” the individual ego. In this age of consumerism and economic fearfulness, of “social” networks that seem not to slake our isolated and alienated selves’ thirst for community but only increase it, we don’t need anyone to coach us to focus on ourselves more. For most genuine paths of salvation in the world, the “secret” of living well is never to focus on the self, but to go beyond the healthy self to recognize that one belongs to something larger and that one has a role to play in that something larger, a role that does not always lead to one’s personal happiness or needs being met in the moment.

It’s common today to bash traditional religions as being external, authoritarian, or the enemy of the spirit’s evolution, and to valorize the “spiritual” movements that focus on the internal individual making free choices. But true religion, whether it is in the form of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Islam, or whatever, has always pointed the self beyond its self. Obviously traditional religion can be corrupted to serve lesser forces. Unfortunately history shows us this over and over again. But so can spirituality be corrupted. Has Ayn Randism brought peace to the world? No, it has brought injustice, violence, and suffering. What will the followers of the law of attraction bring to our world, beyond their one personal desire for their individual happiness.

Beware the Highway Robbers, Find Yourself a Trustworthy Guide
One of the most trustworthy life coaches I know is that doctor of the heart called Ghazali. At the end of his life, after writing countless books of spiritual counsel for theologians, mystics, and other adepts, he wrote a guide for the spiritual life for ordinary persons, The Path of the Worshipful Servant to the Garden of the Lord of All Worlds. He wrote the book because the path is so difficult and “the danger involved so enormous.” He explains why it is so in his introduction:

It is indeed a rugged path and a hard road, fraught with many obstacles, serious hardships, remote distances, enormous difficulties, frequent hindrances and impediments. It is beset with deadly perils and interruptions, abounding in enemies and highway robbers, and offering very few companions and followers. This is exactly how it needs to be, since it is the path of the Garden of Paradise….

Then, in addition to all of that, the servant [of the Lord] is weak, the time is difficult, and religious commitment is subject to retrogression. There is little leisure and much preoccupation. Life is short, and there is incapacity in work. The critic is perceptive, and the appointed term is near. (The Path of the Worshipful Servant to the Garden of the Lord of All Worlds. Tr. Muhtar Holland, Amal Press, p. 2)

Whom would you trust when you set off on a journey to a destination you want to reach before you die? A person who tells you, It's easy, all you have to do is want it and it will be yours? Or the person who has been traveling there a long time and tells you, The way is hard, there will be help all along the way, the destination does not belong to you but you to it, and it is the only place worthy of your travels? Dr. Feel Good? Or a true doctor of the heart?


But first, make sure you know where you’re going.

Mudballs That Glitter: More on the Body/Spirit

Near the opening of her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston refers to human beings as “mudballs that glitter.” For over thirty years I have carried this image with me as a kind of shorthand for the spirit-flesh embranglement that we call “human being.”

Hurston’s image came afresh to me last week as I was walking along the rocky northern shore of the Atlantic Ocean. I looked up out of my reverie and everything was shining. Everything. Even the rocks. I looked more closely. It wasn’t reflected light. The grains of sand, the waves, the seaweed, the skate purses, the rocks weren’t reflecting the light of the sun; they were shining from within, with their “own” light, a light answering the light shining from the sun, a resounding antiphony of light. I looked more closely. It was as if everything was made of light, formed of light—not simply the sentient beings, but every being, even the rocks, and I remembered my Ojibwe friends in Minnesota arguing (against the vocal disbelief of other students) that rocks, too, are alive.

Even the rocks on this beach I was walking through were alive. I could see, feel the light enlivening them. That light, that energy, that creative power, that palpable generativity was one, One shining in and through them all, each separate being. The shapes and colors and density of each individual shining was no more than and no less than a declaration of the infinite variety of the One that was even now bringing it into being, fashioning it, sustaining it, accompanying it faithfully on its journey of coming into being and perishing.

Walking through this riot of light, I thought of the many circles of mystics from all religious traditions—both orthodox and heterodox, both those I am at home with and those whose dualistic or other doctrines are far from my experience of the world—who have witnessed to the light in the creation. The Hebrew scriptures (Psalm 97:12) say “Light is sown for the righteous,” leading many who came after to cultivate and reap that light. Gnostics of many sorts speak of light/spirit trapped in the matter of our created world. The Zoroastrians focused on the path to a world all of light through purity and righteousness. Augustine reports that the Manichees ate cucumbers and melons to imbibe the great amounts of light trapped in these foods. Lurianic Kabbalists speak of the breaking of the vessels at creation, which scattered sparks of light throughout the created universe, and of repairing the world (tikkun olam) by gathering up these scattered sparks. The Hasids, too, speak of our task as human beings as finding the One everywhere one looks and gathering the light shining in all that exists.

Whatever the differences in their worldview—dualistic, non-dualistic, theistic, nontheistic, atheistic—these mystics have seen something, something real in our world, a vision that often bears fruit in a moral life that recognizes the connection among all things and all peoples, and that draws one away from forgetfulness and self-absorption and cruelty and toward humility, justice, and compassion. This insight, whatever its (sometimes wild) accompanying imagery or concepts, invites human beings, beings of flesh, mudballs, to live in such a way that we, too, shine. It invites us to remove the veils that cover that light in us, to stop hiding the light in us from others, to stop trying to extinguish the light shining in us because we cannot bear it, or cannot bear its often confusing and disturbing coexistence with our fleshly selves, to become more and more transparent so that it shines through us the way it shines through the rocks on the ocean shore, through all being, gracefully, naturally, joyfully, for anyone walking by with eyes to see. To become not simply mudballs that glitter, but mudballs that shine.

Even the rocks are shining
Shining with the glory of you

Passing through
from this angle and this one and
this
lost in ourselves
we miss their offering
speckled, pocked, pooled
scarified with light
alive
declaring the wonder of being

If these, too, can shine,
why not this battered tent of flesh?

Emptying, Emptying, and Again Emptying Our Vessels

Mystics often use the metaphor of “polishing the mirror of the heart” to point to the ongoing process of coming into deeper communion with the One. Ghazali speaks of the heart as being made of iron. It inevitably rusts unless we keep polishing away the grime and other impurities in the surrounding atmosphere that build up on it. This work is never ending. Once one has polished that iron into a brilliantly mirror that can reflect the beauty, love, and glory of the One, one still must work daily to keep that surface free from blotches, smears, and scratches, or the cloudy mists that settle on it and darken it. This is the work of the heart.  Part of this work is forgiving oneself for the spots and layers one must polish away and thanking God for the grace to see and remove them, and  giving thanks for the times when the mirror remains clear. Here is how he expresses this in On Knowing Yourself and God, or, as he called it in Persian, The Alchemy of Happiness, the summary of spiritual teachings he wrote near the end of his life.

     The heart is like a bright mirror; repugnant traits are like smoke and darkness which, when they touch it, darken it so that tomorrow one will not see the Divine Presence and it will become veiled (to one’s view).  Good traits are the light which reaches the heart and wipes away the darkness of sin.  It is for this that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)  said:  “Follow a bad deed with a good (deed) so that (the bad) may be erased.” At the resurrection, it will be the heart which comes into a desert, either bright or dark.  None will be saved except him who comes to God with a sound heart. (Qur’an 26:89)

     A person’s heart, at the beginning of creation, is like (raw) iron from which –if a person keeps it as he should—is made a shining mirror that displays the entire universe.  If not, it will all rust and become so that nothing will be reflected in it.  As God Most High said: Nay, but that which they have earned is rust upon their souls. (Qur’an 83:14) [Al-Ghazali On Knowing Yourself and God, tr. Muhammad Nur Abdus Salam, pp. 18-19]

Recently I had an experience that showed me a different image for this daily work, an image which led me to a deeper understanding of this process of cleansing or emptying the heart and the goal of this daily work. Here is the image that came to me.

This world was God’s storeroom.  Lined up on the shelves were billions of clay vessels of all sizes and shapes, each one unique.  When God needed a particular vessel, God would reach directly for it.  Only if the vessel was completely empty could it be used. If it was not completely empty, it remained on the shelf, for it could not contain what God needed it to contain; it could not be used. 

Different religious traditions emphasize different kinds of imagery for experiencing God and pruifying our hearts to serve the One in truth.  Roman Catholics often prefer visual metaphors—to see God or have a vision or the truth; “For with Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light do we see light,” as the Psalmist (36:9) sings, and Augustine and others love to chant with him or her. Protestants, picking up on the prophetic tradition of Israel, often prefer audial metaphors—to hear the call or listen for the Word of God, whether it comes in thunder or a still small voice.  Mystical traditions vary, too, with some, like Ghazali, using visual images and others audial images. Still others use sensual images—the fragrance of the spirit, the warmth of God’s love.  Individuals, too, though formed by traditions, have their preferences.

The visual and tactile image of the clay vessels that came to me helped me understand not only the process of emptying, but the goal of this emptying as well. What fills us up and makes us not useful?  Things and desires, distractions and addictions, yes.  But also anger, fear, grief, and disappointment.  And hope and expectations and longings—even the longing to serve, to be used.  These all crowd around us in out vessel, forming a barrier so we cannot feel the true shape of the clay vessel that God has shaped for us at creation.  To be present to the One, one must be wholly empty.

And how do we empty ourselves?  For many of us, it is God working through out lives who empties us, who batters our hearts until we exhale all we have been clinging to, leaving room for the presence of the One.  Some of us do what we can to aid and abet this emptying process:  We chant the name of God, Yud-He-Vav-He, the Jesus Prayer (Lord, have mercy), or Al-lah,  exhaling all that fill us up, all that is definite, the Yud, the Vav, the have mercy, the Al, and inhaling the Nothingness that is the One, the He, the Lord, the Lah.  

This was not all the image that came to me made me see.  When I saw the storeroom of clay vessels, I realized that not all the vessels that were empty were used.  They had to be ready to be used by God for whatever purpose whenever they and only they were needed, but being ready, empty, was no guarantee that they would be used, ever. Some vessels might wait 80 years to be used, some only a day.  Some might empty themselves  every day for 50 or more years, only to be full on the one day that the hand of God reached for them.  Some might empty themselves every day of their lives and never be used.  The goal was not to be used, to be of service.  That was a goal of the ego, a hope and expectation and longing that filled the vessel and made it unusable.  The goal was simply to be empty, to be usable, to be serviceable, to be ready, if and when God needed one, and to accept that this was up to God, not oneself.  If one sat empty on the shelf one’s entire life, then one sat empty on the shelf.  One does not guide her own destiny, chart his own path.  One surrenders, empty, emptied, emptying, to the One. This is our daily work and our daily spiritual nourishment.

Give us this day our daily bread—empty us. Give us this day our daily work—emptying.

We Are Anxious, We Are Afraid, We Want to Fall Back Asleep

It amazes me how many ways we find to run away from ourselves.  The temptations are endless.

What is temptation? Anything that keeps you from becoming who you are, who you were meant to be.  Anything. 

Some temptations confront us with a clear and urgent choice like the one Moshe put before the fledgling nation:  Choose you this day life or death, the difficult freedom of the way of the Teaching or the easy way of the scattered and lost. Emanuel Levinas, in his essay “The Temptation of Temptation” (Nine Talmudic Readings sets before us another like choice like this:  Place ontology, the science of being, first, or ethics, the responsibility to the Other that confronts you, first.  The temptation of temptations is to choose knowledge, for knowledge sets you at the center of the universe.  If your choose obligation, you acknowledge that you stand always already in relation to an Other than has a prior claim on you. That is the way to life.

Some temptations come with the full force of drama, complete with warning lights and sirens and axes falling.  That woman or man who promises to be a better match for us than our current partner.  That urge to hurt the person we love.   The need to push another lower to raise ourselves higher. 

But it is the countless, tiny little temptations we face every day without realizing it that worry me today.  All the distractions of “normal” life that we allow to crowd our lives and dull our attention. We want to pay attention, be present to the Presence, and what do we do?  We watch TV, we exercise harder, we call our friends, we drink wine or beer or smoke, we surf the Web, we frenetically try to keep up and stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter, we read literature meant for consumption, we clean our houses, manage our family’s lives, search out great meals and other pleasures, shop, find new hobbies to “pass the time,” consult the stars and psychics, follow the lives of the gods and demigods we call “celebrities.”  None of these is bad in itself.  But when we do them unconsciously, repeatedly, they keep us from going deeper.  It’s easy to stay on the surface.  Nothing is required of us. 

We know how alive we feel when we wake up from this stupor and are really present, even for a moment, to another person or the natural world or ourselves.  Yet we keep going back to sleep.  We keep sipping that sleeping draught so we will not be fully present. St. Paul said it well:  “The good that we would we do not; and the evil that we would not, that we do.”

Why, when we know gives us life and what numbs us, do we keep choosing what numbs us?  Why do we keep enslaving ourselves to empty habits that drain the blood from our lives?  Why do we keep running away from ourselves?  Why do we keep hiding?  Why are we so frightened of becoming who we are?  So afraid to be free?   So afraid to be found?

Crying Out for a Vision

To remain present to the Presence every moment is a continual challenge. We keep slipping back inside the prison of our fears, anxieties, disappointments, anger, pride, desire.  Once back behind the bars of our self, how do we escape? There are times when a liberator comes to us from outside, saying just the right word, hitting just the right note, performing just the right action that bumps us out of our narrow vision to see ourselves and the world anew.  This agent of liberation could be a teacher, a friend, a stranger on the street, a book, a piece of music, a wonder of nature, an illness, a trauma, a crisis, a gift—anything.  But what of the times when no agent appears? When we are left inside, alone, and our faith, once a strong flame,  flickers in the winds howling around and inside us? When we feel abandoned, desperate? 

Cry out to God. Literally.  Practice the kind of prayer that Hasids call hitbodedut.  Seclude yourself and begin talking out loud to God. Scream. Cry.  Complain.  Lament.  Accuse. Give voice to the depths of your feeling, the not so flattering ones included.  Don’t be afraid to expose the worst of your personality.  Forget your image of yourself as a spiritual or pious  or loving person and just speak from your heart—all of it. 

What kind of spiritual counsel and practice is this?  Isn’t it wrong to complain? Are we not supposed to bless and thank God for all that happens, the sorrows as well as the joys, evil as well as good?  Isn’t it blasphemous to speak to God this way?  Are we not to praise God’s name and stand in awe before the Presence?  Yes, yes, yes, and yes. 

And yet hitbodedut is a practice that can break you free of your little self so you can stand in the Presence in awe, praise, and thanksgiving.  Here’s how it works.  You express all that is in your heart in the language of your heart, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav teaches, talking in whatever way will lead you to “experience true heartbreak.” (Likutey Moharan B 25; in Aryeh Kaplan, The Light Beyond, 226) He doesn’t mean only until you feel the full force of the pain or sorrow or fury you are carrying; he means until your heart breaks open.  You cry out, giving full vent to the depths of your heart. As you talk to God, you begin to hear the words you are saying. You hear how silly or petty or angry or unhappy or blaming or lost you are.  You begin to “see” yourself from a distance, as if from a larger field  of vision. You and your experience and feelings and personality are put in perspective and so become fundamentally altered.  Perhaps, seeing yourself from this perspective, you begin to have compassion on that little self daring to speak so boldly about its little concerns to the One.   It may take minutes,  hours, or days, but if you are sincere in crying out to God in this way, you will be bumped out of your self-concern into a larger space where you can breathe spirit freely and calmly. 
Complaining is a dangerous habit. It quickly becomes a trap.  But a sincere complaint, spoken from the heart directly to God ,is one way to draw closer to the Presence. The Psalmist knew this.  Why have you abandoned me?  How long must I wait?  My enemies surround me. The prophets, too. You have ringed me about with walls, set obstacles in my path, sent lions to devour me.  And Job, that troubled friend of God. I cry out to You, but you do not answer me…You have become cruel to me; with your powerful hand you harass me.

Hitbodedut is also a sign of trust in God. The Psalmists, prophets, Hasids, and others who shout out to God are not afraid to show themselves in all their humanness to God; for they trust that the All Merciful will not judge them for what they do not yet see or accept but will accompany them on their journey to full communion with  the One. Like a child raining puny fists on the chest of its father, or a lover crying out to his or her beloved, “Be with me as you were in the youth of our love!”,  they know they are loved. They trust that the One who loves them wholly and unconditionally will never abandon them, but will wait them out and guide them as they journey closer.  If they did not, they would not be locked in this embrace with God, crying out with such passion.  Being held in this loving embrace while they cry out is what brings them the calm they need to realize they are not little selves straining against prison bars but the friends of God.

The practice of hitbodedut also sets a liberating limit to the troublings of the heart, whether they take the form of complaint or railing or tears. Practice this conversation with God one hour a day, the Hasidic masters say, and then leave it behind and move through the remainder of the day in joy, free to serve.