“Without understanding the source of suffering, human beings strive to gain happiness by possessiveness and greed, through violence and hatred. We act out of delusion and ignorance, creating pain as an inevitable result. Our grasping, our aggressive entanglement in the world brings with it unavoidable struggle and loss, yet all is done purportedly to seek safety, to find happiness.”
Jack Kornfield “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry”
If we ever hope to make this world of ours a better place for all who dwell here, now and in the future, then we must come to the realization that there is a way of life we must renounce. This way of life that we must renounce is largely a way of life that most of us choose to live.
I’ve recently read some statistics that are quite alarming. I’m not sure if they are completely accurate, but they do make their point. During the twentieth century, the 100 year making up nineteen hundreds, throughout our world communities, over 100 million people were killed by acts of war and violence. Currently, the nation’s communities have enough build-up of weapons of destruction to kill the remaining population ten times over.
In the Catholic Catechism we can find a detailed analysis of what constitutes a “just war”. Many contemporary writers now are saying that because of our nation’s destruction capabilities, there can be no such thing as a just war. Any war with the capability of totally destroying humanity cannot be just.
The model of community that has been used in our nation and world for thousands of years no longer works. These are macro communities, large and complex. We also have smaller communities, such as our family and church. These are micro communities, small, less complex. Regardless of the fact that our small communities or micro community are less complex, if they are based on the same secular model as the large macro communities, they will not work effectively. There will be fallout. The fallout will not be as devastating as experienced in the macro communities. It will not likely result in the loss of life, or destruction of property, but it will nevertheless be there. It will come in the form of disputes among its members, hard feelings, frustration, and feelings of helplessness and disappointment, to name a few. Does this need to happen? I’ve never been in a community yet where this fallout was absent. However, I do believe it is possible to have community without fallout. Before this can happen, we have to change our model of community. By that I mean we have to change the way we see and live community. And for me there is an element of urgency in this. This urgency lies in the fact that unless we as individuals begin to see community in this new way, then there is no hope that a change will take place in the more complex macro communities.
First, this “new model” of community, as I describe it, is not mine. I have adopted it through osmosis; that is through my personal experience of community and by reading and reflecting on writing by Jean Vanier, Scott Peck, Fr. James Sullivan, Willigis Jager, Eckhart Tole, and many others. In fact this vision of community by osmosis is still taking place.
Secondly, this new model is not really new. It just hasn’t been adequately tried.
It is impossible to give expression to the new model of community without an image, and this image must connect at a deeper level of consciousness. One such image is given below in the analogy of the twig and the tree taken from Willigis Jager’s “Contemplation A Christian Path”.
A twig that experiences itself as a twig on a tree and sees the other twigs, trunk and roots as separate, is comparable to our ego-awareness. That is knowledge stemming from intellectual and sensory perception. But the twig can also experience itself from within. It experiences itself as a tree. That doesn’t mean it stops being a twig, but it is in union with all that makes up the tree. It is one with the trunk, with the roots, and with the other branches. To experience ourselves from within, as the twig experiences itself as tree: that is our goal. To experience this oneness is not to abolish differentiation.
When we allow our ego consciousness to define ourselves as only twigs, then we will not see that we are also a part of the totality; the tree. Self-defining separates us from the totality. If we are able to see ourselves as both twig with all of its differentiations and, at the same time, as tree (part of the totality), then we have moved beyond ego consciousness into a contemplative stance of seeing. We move to seeing reality at the level of mystery.
Another image also introduced by Willigis Jager in his book “Mysticism for Modern times” is as follows:
“Arthur Koestler was the first to introduce the concept of holon. Holon is a Greek word which means "whole", a whole that does not exist for itself alone, but is always part of a larger whole. An atom, for example, is a part of a molecule; a molecule is a whole created from atoms, but it is simultaneously also a part of a whole cell; and the cell in turn is part of the whole organism. Thus nothing is exclusively a part or exclusively a whole; everything is both part and whole.
The holon thus has two tendencies: It must exist both for its totality and also maintain its own identity. In fact, if a holon cannot or will not maintain both its identity as a part and its integration in the whole, it dies and disintegrates into its parts. The atom has to be “open” for the molecule, the molecule must be “open” for the cell, and the cell must be “open” for the organism.
An eloquent example of what happens in a closed system can be found in the cancer cell. A cancer cell is one that excludes itself from the organism: In other words, it does not or will not maintain its identity as part and its integration in the whole. As a result, the cancer and the tissue around the cell begin to deteriorate.”
When it comes to community, we, as living organisms, are merely a continuation of this process. We are holons. We are individuals who have our own identity. We have our own personalities, our own talents, our own physical makeup, but in order for community to exist, we must also be open to the totality. We do not exist for ourselves alone, but are always part of the larger whole. Just as the atom has to be “open” for the molecule, and molecule “open” to the cell and so on, we must in much the same way be “open” to community.
Often times in communities, we become too much identified with and place too much important on the individual roles, and we think that by fulfilling our individual role, we are community. But this is not so.
Community is not about a bunch of individuals doing their individual thing. It is about our openness and awareness that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. It is about knowing that our health and well-being are contingent upon this awareness. And the quality that draws us into this awareness, this openness, is love. Love is the very substance that draws the “self” out of isolation and separateness, and creates the totality that we cannot possess by ourselves. The greatest gift we can bring to community is our love because its only love that gives witness to the totality of community and transforms those who are a part. The transforming agent is not anything we understand by way of concepts through use of the mind. What transforms is the experience of seeing and being a part of community where love is present. It is the experience of community itself. Without it, we cannot exist. We just disintegrate into our individual parts and we cause the overall community to disintegrate with us.
In this sense, community is sacred. It is the place where God not only dwells corporately but also individually. We become holy, part of God’s plan for creation as we move from egoism to love, from self-identification to identification with the whole, which reflects our true reality and destination.
Too much identification with the individual parts, our defined roles, are obstacles to our sanctification and the truth that underlies community. Too much identification with our understanding of doctrines and dogmas of faith that create the illusion of separateness from the totality are obstacles to our sanctification and the truth about community that is trying to find expression in this new reality. Our minds play tricks on us by creating the illusion that we are separate. We are holons, open to become a part of a greater whole. Our very survival as a human species depends upon us operating at this deeper level of reality. We must allow our consciousness to evolve in order to move away from the illusion that we exist in separateness from one another. We must accept this as mystery in the same manner we accept the trinity as mystery. (One God, three persons) We must set aside the fear and mistrust, this sense of separateness created by the illusions of our mind, and move towards the disposition of love and trust. We must move from “community for myself” to “myself for community.”
Those moments of grace described in chapter 1 are moments when one has passed through the doorway leading from the old model to the new. These graced moments are brief encounters with the mystery of this new reality. They are also evidence of the illusion that the mind plays on us as to our separateness. Please go back and read again those moments of grace. Recall those moments that you’ve experienced these moments yourself. These are all moments where the mind’s sense of separateness evaporates and there is a movement into unity with “the all” which cannot be explained through reasoning. The reason it cannot be explained is because it is beyond the limits of the mind’s ability to comprehend. The marvellous thing about the human condition is that we are given the ability to move beyond comprehension into a deeper level of reality. We call this mystery by many names: faith, intuition, higher level of consciousness, ultimate reality, God. But why name it at all. Names become sources of conflict when we each attach our own meaning to them.
It is through contemplative prayer, the suspension of the mind’s thoughts and feelings through use of a sacred word that we are able to place ourselves before the unknown, and the unknown, which has been waiting patiently for us, becomes all.
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