Quakerism and spiritual awakening
John Elford believes we need to look deeply into ourselves
Now thou must die in the silence, to the fleshly wisdom, knowledge, reason, and understanding; so thou comest to feel that which brings thee to wait upon God; (thou must die from the other) that brings thee to feel the power of an endless life, and come to possess it.
- George Fox
Quakers often describe themselves as seekers, and in Meeting for Worship there is a sense of waiting on the Divine. As our thoughts calm down and our ordinary sense of self becomes more transparent we become aware of a wider and deeper reality that is in truth ever-present and eternal, and that some call ‘God’.
This is a taste of ‘the peace… that passeth all understanding’ (Philippians 4:7). But most people find it hard to touch this place of peace in their busy lives: they need to make time to loosen the grip of the thinking mind, and this is often most easily done in Meeting for Worship, in meditation or in nature.
Many of the great religious traditions speak of the possibility of spiritual awakening, a radical change in perspective whereby spiritual truth is directly perceived, no longer seen ‘through a glass darkly’. There are techniques such as self-enquiry and meditation; yet even in traditions that are ostensibly aiming at self-realisation or awakening people may practise for decades without reaching their goal.
Whatever our views about the spiritual path, almost everyone carries with them a sense of incompleteness, of something lacking; and what lies at the root of this is one’s sense of self. Following the way of the heart, mystics talk of ‘losing oneself in God’, a total devotion in which the ordinary sense of self disappears. Following the way of knowledge, the mind can be used to thoroughly investigate the sense of ‘I’, which may be seen to be insubstantial – merely a thought. In both cases all inessentials are stripped away to reveal what was always there: God, Brahman, Oneness.
Here lies a great irony: what is called ‘spiritual awakening’ is the realisation that there never was anyone to awaken; there is no separation between God and ourselves; all is One. In this sense, the spiritual path as conceived by the mind is a mirage. Nothing needs to be added, for we are already whole and complete as we are; but we cannot see it, and hence we search with our minds – a part searching to realise the whole – a laughably impossible task. We need to see that reality can never be grasped or understood through the ordinary thinking process. When this is seen in one moment of clarity everything collapses into a divine simplicity and singular awareness (‘If… thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light’, Matthew 6:22) whose truth is wondrously self-evident, without need for reference to any external agency or teaching.
It is also the end of spiritual seeking, for what was sought has been found, albeit in a radically different way than was expected: for the notion of seeking was dependent on the idea of oneself as a seeker, and this, like all concepts, has been seen to be empty of any real substance. This awakening to the nature of reality rarely comes out of the blue: it is usually the fruition of a long spiritual search, but there is always a strong element of grace, because we cannot ‘do it’ ourselves, any more than we can lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We can put ourselves in the way of it through deep spiritual enquiry and through persistently trying to understand what is really going on and what life is all about.
How does this relate to Quakerism? A gathered Meeting for Worship – the heart of Quakerism – brings its own sense of satisfaction: at its best it is a rich communion with the Divine and with others; and a Quaker life of simplicity and service to the community, whatever form that may take, brings its own rewards. But if we are truly reaching towards the Light we need to look very deeply into ourselves, and to question all our assumptions about who we are.
In the Divine Light there is no Quaker, Catholic, Buddhist, atheist or agnostic, for all such distinctions are merely creations of our human minds.
Comments
Quite right
By Richard on 2nd February 2017 - 14:00
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