Living a deeper life

Part 6: Strive to keep in step with the Spirit and find peace

What does it mean to be a fully God-directed person? We do not decry the necessity of pursuing our worldly path. We have to live in the world, and sustaining ourselves can be a tremendous struggle. How fortunate so many of us are that our lives are so easy – despite the fact that, even then, we may have to work incredibly hard to make our way. The key rebuke to me is that – should I be able to find a deeper way of living – I should have always been following this way of life. However, we have said the past is past, and sometimes we need to spend many, many years just to get to the start line. That is not a rebuke; it’s the realisation that, given our starting point in life and our natural personality, it may take a long time to grow in wisdom sufficiently to realise what now needs to be done to live your life fully. I believe that this involves fully giving ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit. We must embrace our natural personality – this is the unique creation that God made us to be, but living in tune with the Spirit does not entail the submersion of our personality, lost within a constraining shell of standard religiosity, it entails the filling out of our unique life to attain the greatest expansion of which it is capable – to fully bring alive the potential we contain.

Living a deeper life must involve finding peace of heart and mind and soul. While we are troubled, we will be attending to the negative thoughts and feelings produced, which in itself will be unpleasant, and which are likely to demand our attention, and drown out other voices, perceptions and awareness. I think there is a gift of peace that God can give – it simply interrupts our natural or expected response to the situation we are in, and replaces it with a gift of deep calm – often with a sense that “All will be well”. And it is this assurance that all will be well – perhaps in direct contradiction of your actual circumstances – that allows the sense of peace to pervade your soul. I have often wondered – and wanted – that I might somehow receive this gift, and never leave it. I strongly suspect that this is not possible – not in the sense I was hoping for, because God’s peace is a gift to help you in particular circumstances. And the particular issue with it is that we are asking God to achieve a miraculous solution to our problems. I have come, at long last, to the conclusion that this is not a good solution – even if it was possible, which I strongly suspect it is not. What I was hankering after was that God would “overrule” the dynamics of my life and simply replace what would otherwise naturally be there with his spiritual gift of an invincible peace, that allowed me to float through all difficulties in an other-worldly sense of tranquillity. Far better, I think, is to achieve a sense of peace that is warranted by our natural state of life. (There is a theological tension here as, theoretically speaking, all spiritual progress is a gift of God’s grace, rather than earned by our efforts. Yet, in practice, spiritual progress is achieved in response to our efforts. We can still give God the primacy through our understanding that all is grace, but it is our task to co-operate with God by our efforts to make ourselves open to the working of his Spirit. Personally speaking, my developing theology, which focuses on the spiritual life, suggests to me that our efforts are crucial, in that the spiritual life entails us exerting ourselves in order to grow in the grace of God). So, we aim for a peace that is warranted by our natural state of life, I mean the peace that arises from spiritual harmony (to whatever degree we have attained that). If we have succeeded, albeit partially, to remove tension from our hearts and minds – and this term might be interchangeable with our souls – then the spiritual integrity we have found will warrant a state of peace.

Living a deeper life

Part 5: Transcendence and immanence: the call beyond and the discovery within

In the greater freedom that I now have, I want to focus on the most important goals. What do I really want to achieve? I acknowledge that this is so much easier when I feel I have achieved my worldly goals. But what now are the existential goals that I wish to attain before death. If my consciousness is to cease, I want to be someone who contained within that consciousness – even if only in transitory form – the ultimate in what it is possible for the human mind to contain.

I am aware of the very valid point that perhaps it was in the gaining of those worldly goals that I experienced the most precious and ultimate experiences. I think it is the problem of the transcendent. When one becomes aware of the transcendent dimension of life, there is always the thought that, no matter how wonderful the experience that you are immanently engaged in, there is something even more “behind” that experience. This may or may not be true. If we are also aware of the immanence of God within the everyday experiences of life, then we are in no way “missing out” on the depth of life by “merely” attending to the immediate tasks before us. Yet our transcendent moments open a window for us into a new world of exhilarating depth and fullness. Whatever the truths of the immanence of God’s love, it is also true that we are often engaged in superficial, trivial or partial living that is barely aware of the full wonder of life. Therefore, I ask myself: “Is there a deeper, fuller life that can be lived?”.

There is also the question of whether we have just one quality of awareness, that may be either directed towards deep or shallow objectives. So, perhaps, there is no such thing as a “deeper awareness”, it is simply the case that when we become aware of deeper things, our awareness records and responds to that depth. However, perhaps it is also possible to develop a deeper awareness that becomes our general way of being, such that when we attend to things that are “routine” we can nevertheless experience them in a deeper, more fulfilling and vibrant way. It is this question of the possibility of deeper awareness – that could theoretically be entered into and never left – that we are considering.

So, what are the existential goals that a spiritual person should be devoting themselves to? Having become aware of the reality of God who, regardless of our previous thoughts about transcendence and immanence, deeper and shallower experiences, is always more than we can take in, how may we fill ourselves with all the depth of God of which we are capable? What shall we do and how shall we act?

Living a deeper life

Part 4: Let the wind fill your sails

I realise (very late on in life) that I am a habitual thinker. I have a stock of favourite things to think about. Very early in the morning, they will spark into life, and I will pick one or the other of them up and run with it again. Or something will trigger a thought, and I will gladly take it up and think it through all over again. I must admit that I enjoy doing this. I am a deep thinker, and I like thinking, but I do now realise that this is not an entirely positive trait, and I therefore become the prisoner of my thoughts – thinking through all the old ones for the umpteenth time – rather than the director of my thoughts, choosing what to hold in my mind and heart today. This is a truly awesome thought: if I have a free choice – and I now see that I do – what will I choose to dwell on now?

Although much of what I think about is creative and positive, I can be dominated by the negative aspects of my personality. They are genuinely part of me, but I tend, in my inmost self that directs what I think about, to collude with those negative traits, rather than putting a firmer hand on the tiller to direct my thoughts to something more positive. The tendency to dwell on mistakes or anxiety rather than put them behind me has already been referred to.  

I am a careful and cautious person. I’ve already noted my hatred of making mistakes. So I have “played a pretty straight bat”. And that’s all good, and much good has been achieved by it. But what if now – directed by God – I can be a bit braver? If I was willing to courageously take chances – and risk failures without being distraught by them – what more good might I do?

Now that I have a greater awareness and freedom, I believe I can better resist the external and negative pressures that have often driven my behaviour, and instead focus on the inward aspect of my personality and spirituality – which are quite well-developed already – to allow that inner well of spiritual living water to direct me. I don’t have to be bossed about or blown about or distracted. What can I find within myself that I can now employ with greater vigour to achieve my own deepest goals rather than more superficial goals, and perhaps set by others? And, of course, when I ask, “What can I find within myself?” I am not at all asserting some individualistic, self-realising form of egotism, I am asking, “If now at last, I truly, deeply sink my heart into the well of God’s Spirit, what is it that might well up?”. If I do not impede it, or neglect it, or give up on it, how might God direct my life? I have always believed that God’s Spirit is like a spring of living water, and I know what it is to drink of it. Yet I have treated it as a well to return to from time to time to refresh myself as I direct my attention to my tasks in the world. However, the promise is that we can experience this spring constantly welling up within us, and so my attention could be always plumbed into these depths, even while engaged in my worldly tasks.

Living a deeper life

Part 3: Don’t just follow the old grooves; chart your course as though free to rove anywhere over the ocean, and pursue your way vigorously

I recognise that I am a responsive person. There are many good features to this: it helps to make me considerate and kind, to notice what is going on around me, and to try and help others rather than massaging my own ego. Yet it can easily make me a passive person, reacting to a situation created by others rather than directing my path actively in the way that I have chosen. What should that path be? If I don’t have to follow any pre-set route, but can be truly creative, what kind of a life do I want to carve out – both for myself, and to offer as an alternative if others are also seeking something better?

I need to develop my powers of judgement, direction and energy. If I can use my awareness to rise above the immediate melee of conflicting demands for my attention then I can raise my head above the mist and see the way for me to go. This includes resisting the temptation to simply react against what external agencies are saying, and resisting the lazy, easy way of just doing what I usually do, and, instead, taking charge of the inner competition for “brain-space” – that is resisting the competing impulses to spend time thinking about my habitual favourite topics: what do I choose to hold in my mind today?

I confess that I have often been overcome by the pressures that I face. I worry about things far too much. Although in many ways my natural default demeanour is of a deeply peaceful person, I am also prey to anxiety. Being too sensitive, I allow things to prey on my mind, and find it hard to let them go. I hate to make mistakes and have a terrible fear that some action of mine might have spoilt what would otherwise have been. I hate the idea of failure. I take my responsibilities very seriously and agonise at the thought of not fulfilling my duties, or letting someone down. I could have had a more robust spirit, more adept at drawing on my inner resources to project self-confidence rather than allowing the context or framework in which I find myself to contribute so much to my self-esteem. If now, I am to be more resilient, more creative in what I choose to offer to the situation, more willing to offer what I think, and confident in my own judgement rather than sensitive to the judgements of others, what would I have to offer?

Living a deeper life

Part 2: Joyful awareness in attention to what we’re doing

A key possibility arises from the fact that I am someone who looks up from my book often. What do I mean by this? For many years, while on holiday, one of my greatest treats is to have, say, a whole morning free to read my book; it is sheer pleasure. Yet I feel myself torn: reading my book is sheer pleasure, yet I also want to look up to appreciate the sheer pleasure that I am able to read my book. Of course, when I am looking up, I am not reading, but when I am reading I am not taking in the full awareness of the ability to spend this time reading. Is it possible to do both? Possibly not – but is this a clue to what I’m seeking in living a deeper life. Many wise people aim to be wonderfully aware of the presence of the present moment,  but there has been throughout my life an either-or element to it: I can either enjoy the existential moment of being here, but that moment has no content – other than the appreciation of the existential moment, or the moment has content – in this case, reading my book – but I lose that awareness of the wonder of the moment.

However, one fruitful step in response to the issue of distraction, is that before, I would look up, but just for a few moments, to become aware of the wonder of existence, but then I would feel drawn to move on: my time is short before my period of leisure is over and I am back to the burden of work that must be done. If I am now free not to have to move on, I can work (and I think this is something that really needs working on) on exploring precisely what it is that “calls to me”, which makes me look up from my book, but which has been too intangible for me to fully take in. I think it’s the resonance of the fact that life – being alive – is more important than any particular thing we do with our lives. What we do is always going to be so partial compared to all the things we might have done – that is why it is so vital that we perceive the absolute and ultimate in the particular. It is impossible for our experience to be anything other than minute, yet we can appreciate that the course we have chosen to follow expresses within it the absolute and ultimate. However, even beyond this truth, I think I am seeking after a deeper joy in the fact of living. It doesn’t really matter what you do with your life – provided you have exercised some sort of choice in what you do, and are free from unwarranted suffering and oppression – the important thing is to be aware of, and exult in, the wonder of being alive. Now that I am free from having to do things in the world of work, I really want to apply my attention to that joy in living. If I can then blend that wonder seamlessly into the activity or content of what I choose to do, then I think I will certainly be living a deeper life.

(In 7 parts)

Living a deeper life

Part 1: What do I really want to do with my life?

It is well-said that life is something that happens when you’re too busy to notice. Therefore, those glorious moments of “recollection of our senses”, when we become acutely aware of our state of life, are both exceptionally precious, and they strike us with great force, as we suddenly realise where we have got to in our lives. Therefore, it is not a criticism to say that I now want to live a deeper life. It could even be an illusion that I have not been living the deepest life of which I am capable already. Nevertheless, with my recent retirement, the greater depth of awareness that I feel, now that I have more time and repose, and the much reduced sense of busyness and distraction, mean that I feel able to commit to a deeper way of life. Of course, I would have to find this way of life – to discover what it is – in order to live it, and such a thing might not exist, but I suspect that it probably does. I do also, of course, need to lament and repent that I have not been living a deeper life all these past years. If such a life does exist, then it would have been perfectly possible to find it in the midst of my busyness, so I am in no way suggesting that such a life can only be found in the freedom and peace that retirement brings from the burden of work. It would have been much better if I had been living thus all along, but there is no point in worrying about that now; I must direct myself to the future and see what I can discover. What is it that I sense might now be possible?

There is no need (well, not nearly so much) to be distracted. I have enormously more free time than I used to have. There is no-one in authority over me at work telling me that I have to do this, that or the other. There is no framework of activity dictating what I must do in any sort of daily or weekly rhythm. I might, in other words, say: “I am free”. So, the big question is: “What do I want to do?”. If there is (almost) nothing that I have to do, then what do I want to do? And if I shake off old habits of thought, rather than simply acting in reaction to what I had to do – and so, for example, in contrast to my usual busyness, having no higher goal than reading my book, I can ask the existential question: “How do I want to spend today?” And, freed from the demands of earning a living, there is no societal or organisational role that I need to conform to. This really is a radical freedom. I don’t need to adopt the default model for retirement – that I am having a nice long holiday at the end of my life; I can do something entirely different if I wish. But what is that? I perceive the call “to be strange” both as a critique to the failures of society and to express something inherent in my character, but what is the life-enhancing way to do this?

True freedom

Part 7: I can never have it, yet I have it, until I have it

There are, no doubt, other elements to incorporate with the three-fold awareness.

No-one is born with this awareness; no-one comes to this awareness without having first, to some degree, going astray from the way they now come to consider to be the way of fullness of life. So, we become aware that we are where we are; we are not complete, or free, and certainly not perfect. We are damaged and hurt, and we have inflicted the same on others. Yet, we don’t have to wait until we get to the destination we desire before we can at last say, “Now I am free!”. We can be free as we understand the point we have reached, and though we are far from home, we are complete in our acceptance of the truth of our situation and in our desire to reach the destination we now see is right. We are not fully free because of the powerful forces in society which shape our lives and limit our actions, but we are free in the inner harmony we can find, and work towards, between our desires, actions and conscience. So, our true freedom is not spoiled by our past failures, the impositions of society around us, or our distance from our final destination which is full attainment of our goal.

It is now, perhaps, that we see most strongly the contrast between the freedom the believer knows and that known by the atheist – even if the atheist’s freedom only existed in theory rather than practice. For we have become aware of the gap between the all-fulfilling vision that the believer has in God and their failure to live up to it, while also clarifying just what the life of faith is: to work towards the goal that has caught your heart and won you to faith.

Yet the person without God, no matter how inspiring their atheistic vision, is always falling short of it. In our human weakness, in practice, we will console ourselves by aiming lower, accepting the compromises of life, and settling for less. Yet the believer, receiving God’s gifts of grace, by which he treats us as righteous, even though we are not, enjoys the complete liberation of receiving the fullness of God’s love. So, the ultimate – true – freedom that the believer enjoys, as well as the entirely human harmony of desires, actions and conscience, is the freedom to dwell in the presence of God. There is such disharmony between the ways of humanity and the ways of God, that there could never be freedom from tension and loss and failure. So, in the same way we recognised that true freedom does not exist if there is disharmony between the elements of desires, actions and conscience, so we see that – when it is all up to us – there will never be true freedom because there will always be disharmony between us and God. However, when God, in his grace, grants us the gift of admission to his presence – a presence we do not deserve – then we attain true freedom, not only in relation to ourselves, but also in relation to God. True freedom exists when we have achieved harmony between our desires, actions and conscience, and when we have allied our conscience to the will of God, and when we dwell in his presence.

It would be lovely to end there, but I cannot, and so I depend on paradox and on grace. I will probably never attain complete harmony between my desires, actions and conscience, but God will take the giving of my heart to this goal as token, and treat me as though I have. I will probably never manage to fully love what God loves, but he knows that I love him, and he has said that this is enough. I treat God as someone to visit rather than to dwell with, but he is always open to me; he calls me, and I am always free to come to him. I know what to do – work for that three-fold harmony, and in that effort, and in his grace, I have true freedom.

True freedom

Part 6: Three-fold harmony

What might this freedom entail?

I think the essence of it is finding harmony between desires, actions and conscience.

If I have desires to do actions but I don’t do them, I have tension and unfulfillment, and so am not free. This is so on both the negative and positive. Perhaps I have a desire to do something that is wrong, but manage to overcome this temptation. I have done the right thing, but am not truly free because I won’t allow myself to do something that I would like to do. If I give in to the temptation, I have now done what I want to do, but at the same time I didn’t want to do it because I disapprove of that action, and so I am not free because I was not able to live up to the values I believe in. Similarly, if there is some good thing I would like to do, but don’t do, because I am afraid or lazy, then I have failed to find true freedom. If I could find complete correlation between my desires and my actions, then I would be truly free – provided, of course, that both desires and actions are in harmony with my conscience. For one (false but tempting) solution to the human dilemma of temptation – and which I suggested is one which atheist society can easily fall into – is to “solve” the tension between desires and actions by making compromises and giving yourself permission to do things even though you feel they are not really right. However, if you could eliminate the tension between desires and actions by only ever doing what you truly desire to do – and IF you could match those to what your conscience tells you is good and right and proper to do, then you would have true freedom, because you would always be doing what you want to do, and what you want to do would always be what you approve of. We must truly desire the good, and act accordingly.

Now, we should note, that the atheist could do this too. If the atheist could attain harmony between all three elements, and IF their conscience could be completely attuned to what is completely good, then they would also have true freedom. And they would have simply demonstrated that they don’t need God, and it is fully possible for humanity to attain perfect goodness by themselves. All I would say, is that we have noted the difficulties in this that arise through human frailty and corruption. And, even if it was possible for humanity to achieve perfect goodness independently of God, the atheist is still missing out on the relationship with God that the believer discovers as a reality. I think that – theoretically – it must be possible for humanity to know – and perhaps do – the perfect good without God, but in practice this is not going to happen. Of course, believers do not attain to perfect goodness either, but they, at least, acknowledge their failure and constantly aspire to follow God’s way, whereas the atheist was desiring complete freedom from God precisely in order to do what they want rather than what God wants, and to do so while still claiming a clear conscience, or by ignoring their conscience – which implies a difference between God’s moral code and humanity’s moral code – in which case, experience suggests to me that we should go with God.

On reflection, it seems an impossibly simple solution to suggest that true freedom lies in the harmony between desires, actions and conscience. Yet we instantly recognise that this is the agenda for an entire spiritual life, to continually work and battle and strive to tune your own will to God’s will, to direct your actions always in tune with love and justice, to train your mind and heart to desire what is good and pure and lovely. And more than simply train your mind, but to grow and develop your heart and mind and body until you dwell gently and peacefully in the love, truth and grace of God. So, the whole life of faith for the individual, and the mission of the society of God’s people, is all encompassed within this three-fold harmony of desires, actions and conscience.

True freedom

Part 5: If you love someone, pleasing them is not surrendering your freedom but fulfilling it

So far, we have considered the atheistic appeal of freedom from God, and some answers that a believer would give. However, it is still necessary for the believer to go further and outline what true freedom might be – a freedom that is understood as a freedom that is enjoyed within their relationship with God. Two key questions present themselves:-

• Is it possible to have true freedom if you are taking account of God?
• What might this freedom entail?

The first question is relatively easy (!) to answer – at least in principle. If the believer agrees completely with God, then doing exactly what God wants will be doing the same as doing exactly what you want. There is no sense of God imposing a moral code that you’d rather avoid – if only you were free, or of submitting unwillingly, or of accepting some sort of deal: “I’d rather do x, y, and z, but if I do I will lose things that are even more precious, so I guess I’ll have to “suffer” now in order to get what I want”. Instead, the believer is completely won over by the vision of life that God offers them, and gives themselves body, mind and soul to these values. They love what God loves and want nothing other than this. All this, the believer will see very clearly, and if there are elements that they don’t understand, they will have such complete trust in God that they will gladly “go along” with what God is saying, and hope to understand one day. This is pretty straightforward. Of course, there are the huge issues to do with human temptation and weakness, such that the believer finds it extremely difficult, and often impossible, to do the things that they genuinely believe in. This is certainly a very big issue indeed, and is addressed elsewhere, but for now, I believe we have successfully answered the first question. The atheist wanted freedom from God because they felt a difference between what they wanted and what God wanted, and they didn’t want to give way to God. However, for the believer – as they grow in spiritual maturity – there is no difference and so doing what God wants is perfect freedom because it is also what they want. Given what we’ve said about human frailty, the believer enjoys a dynamic, vibrant freedom, because “obeying what God wants” is a fast-track way to achieving a fully moral and satisfying life, quicker than waiting until you see for yourself that this is the ideal way of life.

True freedom

Part 4: We have paid a high price: we wanted joyful liberation and created a horrible mess

The second freedom the atheist valued was to choose their own moral code. In response, the first thing I note is that claiming the freedom to choose your own moral code very easily becomes a slippery slope to immorality. This is just to do with human nature. We are so adept at justifying our own behaviour, so clever at manipulating the facts to suit us, so quick to see faults in others but slow to spot them in ourselves, so very easily biased, that it is extremely likely that relying entirely on our own judgement will become a mealy-mouthed self-justification for harmful behaviour. In this respect, I become sceptical of the atheist claim that ditching God was a genuine principled action to achieve higher values than a supposed restrictive and oppressive God was allowing, and it was, instead, an attempt to ditch the voice of conscience holding us to high standards. The believer will, of course, say that the atheist has got an inadequate picture of God, so the God they are rejecting is, in fact, a false caricature of God, which the believer themselves rejects. Atheists have, in effect, set up God as an Aunt Sally to make it easy to knock down. It is true, of course, that there can be very principled grounds for atheism, and also that believers have often distorted their own picture of God in ways that can have very negative effects. For now, I simply note the psychological motivation for the atheist to ditch God in order to do things that they would not be able to do if they still felt that God was there and that such a God disapproved of their actions. It is certainly a complex task to review the multiple effects, positive and negative, of atheist society’s decision to reject God. For now, I simply challenge the atheist assumption that rejecting a value system based on belief in God in order to attain the complete freedom to make up your own moral standards actually produces a positive effect overall.

The third freedom was to value sexual freedom above all others. This is the price we pay: in order to gain greater sexual freedom we have to abandon moral values that would prevent us from getting what we want. Again, I must resist the traditional religious negativity to sexuality; perhaps sexual freedom is a good thing – at least to some degree, and humanity has been longing for generations to have more sexual freedom. However, especially given what we’ve mentioned above about our ability to fool ourselves in moral matters, and our understanding of how corruption has a creeping destructive effect, we should be fully alert to the possibility that our desire for freedom will lead us astray. Within our current focus here of paying a high price, it is clear that we have had to abandon many moral values to do with modesty, decency, privacy, intimacy, as well as our commitment to faithfulness in relationships. We have commercialised sex and treated the body as a commodity – and clearly this applies overwhelmingly to women. The pornographisation of society has distorted relationships between men and women, with women under huge pressure to play out the fantasies of their partners. The breakdown of marriage and the unhappiness from multiple failed relationships is a severe burden to individuals and fractures society. The “safety-net” industry of abortion has become a necessary corollary to cope with the “mistakes” that our human use of sexual freedom causes. We have paid a high price for it.