I need to answer the "why I have skin in the Tantric game" question. I'm fascinated with Tantra because it helps me answer existential questions, ones that seem perilous to neglect. Call it a midlife crisis if you must, but my entire life seems like one ego trip after another. My spare hours are a procession of one shiny object after another. The working world, seeing my discontent at the procession of 40 hour weeks, suggests more 40 hour weeks will calm things, if I'd only add evenings of internet (and weekends of alcohol when it all gets too much.) And it seems to me that the answer is not simply to spiritualize the ego trip and call the shiny objects holy. [bxA]
Catholic theology is absolutely beautiful, but for me it isn't enough. Awaiting the bridegroom, I've never had the foresight to bring lamp oil, and can only hope that learning to sit down and count the stars is sufficient alternative to a neurotic grab for what's lacking. Perhaps the bridegroom has shut the door so I'll finally sit in the otherwise kind outer darkness and ask how much of the wailing and gnashing of teeth comes from my own mouth. If I'd have known, in the beginning, what I know now, I'd have asked "what's the cost involved" sooner. What's the cost of success in a professional world driven by ego? What's the cost of satisfying desire when the reward is a discount for your next purchase? And most importantly, what corners of my own awareness have I left obscured and messy by denial's benign neglect? One thing is certain: our theology casts a shadow, and it is psychology.
It's one thing to say that I'm sinful and need God's grace. Catholic theology has answered that question. What it hasn't adequately done is unpack the pandora's box of concupiscence, to ask why my ego gets so clingy, why desire is so intolerable that I'll give it the worst of what it wants so it'll go the hell away, and why satisfaction is so terrible that I'll layer blame upon blame to forget it. I needed to deal more thoroughly with theology's psychological underpinnings, if only in pursuit of a kinder relationship to my own mind. That, in short, is the purpose of this post.
This next little section is going to borrow its structure from the Dharma--because Buddhists have, since their inception, been more than competently dealing with mind. I have summed up the primary psychological effect of original sin in something I call the "Four Humble Truths."
The First Humble Truth is "All life is abstraction." Original sin did a number of harmful things. One of them was taking the set of ideas we'd begun to form about everything, granting it permanence and substituting it for the thing itself. For the rest of human history, we've been interacting with our ideas about creation instead of creation itself. We do this with God, with self and others, with mini-mart hot dogs and porches: nothing is exempt from abstraction. And the biggest consequence of Abstraction is "othering." In the beginning, we were part of God. And God is one. I suppose it wasn't too terrible when we were brought to the animals and began to call them things like "wildebeest" and "hippopotamus;" when we encountered Eve and said "flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone." In other words, we "othered" everything. At least at first, I'd bet this was innocent enough. But I wouldn't fault HaShem if he was taken aback that we didn't just say "God, God, God" over and over.
The Second Humble Truth is "All is in need of recapitulation." In other words, we share in Christ's work of "remaking" all things. This involves facing the way we're at fault for perpetuating sin, facing the brokenness of all things, and gradually witnessing and cooperating with the ways grace and the energy of the spirit conspires to change them. Absolutely everything is in need of recapitulation: our religious ideas, our relationship to our emotions, the way we get stuck in our head when we could be facing the reality. Reality is tastier. It has peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Idealized PBJ's fill no stomachs.
The Third Humble Truth is "The vehicle of recapitulation is the Body of Christ." Christ incarnated in the "fullness of time." That means he's a paradigm, and we project onto Christ what we think of ourselves. In a sense Christ was history's first mirror. And when Christ taught his disciples that he was in each and every person and thing (by appearing as a stranger and saying plainly "I am the gate for the sheep") he turned all of our othering into a mirror as well. In Christ, all you ever see is yourself, until you live your own reality fully. When Christ "ascended" he was hidden from their view. Another way to say that is that he so deeply identified with us that we only find him by finding ourselves. So finding him feels like we've lost him, because he is us.
The Fourth Humble Truth is "The way of the Body of Christ is the Humble Tenfold Way." It should be noted that "humble" in this case doesn't mean "self-deprecating." Instead it means "totally accepting." We've been taught that we're good. Becoming humble means eventually accepting that we're also evil. The Humble Tenfold Way is humble prayer, humble practice, humble intention, humble action, humble effort, humble speech, humble work, humble knowing, humble thinking and humble belief. All of these things involve either accepting something we'd rather reject, or refusing to kowtow to ego. So followers of the way pray "have mercy on me, a sinner" because accepting that is rough. They work without thinking their work makes them better than others. They speak plainly, knowing that all forms of judgment create suffering. I've gone into detail about the Four Humble Truths elsewhere. That's the gist of it: growth in the humble tenfold way invites Christ into deeper and more intimate levels of daily life. Eventually the distinction between us and Christ disappears entirely.
To be humble is to do shadow work. It means remembering we can get ideas about ourselves that distort reality. It's a device so simple we almost thought it novel when alcoholics, by the hundreds, admitted they'd made their lives unmanageable, and were powerless. It seems, for me, that the way to protect or reclaim Eden's innocence is to remember that I'm also its serpent. The way for God's people to be who they are is to remember that they can conduct themselves in a way that makes God call them "not my people." The way to become a rock on which Christ can build his Church is to remember that I am also a satan.
But the law told me that plainly. Deuteronomy said "You shall not add to, or subtract from what I command you." Glorifying myself, or forgetting my liabilities--I'm on the hook to avoid both, and now that I know, my actions are willful. And to whatever degree that's universal: maybe, now, when the law says "Hear O Israel," we know the cost of covering our ears.
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