Thought for the Week: The search
Ken Orchard reflects on searching, finding and 'the self'
I have spent most of my adult life searching for something. I’m still searching, so I assume that I’ve not found it yet. It might considerably increase my chances of success if I even knew what it was I was looking for! I don’t think it’s ‘God’ and I don’t think it’s ‘truth’. It’s as if I’ve always been trying to make sense of something – probably life. I’ve never felt the need to travel in order to find whatever it is and I’ve never felt the need to enlist the help of a guru or a spiritual teacher. I think I’ve always known that whatever it was I was looking for was inside me, so that’s where a lot of my attention has always been. As a result, I’ve often been accused of naval-gazing and self-centredness. Nevertheless, I’ve always had this sense that if I just dig around a bit more, then surely I’ll find whatever it is.
But if I don’t know what it is, how will I even know when I’ve found it? Perhaps it’s actually ‘me’ that I’m looking for – a hidden, elusive part of me which I never quite manage to track down. Sometimes I get a glimpse of it on the periphery of my psycho-spiritual vision, but as soon as I turn towards it, it’s gone. I give it all my attention – to try to remember what it was I glimpsed – but it’s gone so completely that I begin to doubt whether I ever saw it in the first place.
Actually, if I’m honest I don’t really believe that I’m ever going to find it. I don’t even know if I want to find it any more. I’ve got to the stage where I tell myself that the searching is the important bit, not the finding. I’ve even got to the stage where the searching has become such an important part of my life that I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t have the search? I’m afraid ‘I’ might be lost if I actually found ‘it’.
That’s probably the point. There are lots of New Testament references to ideas like ‘the old self must die for the new self to come to life’ and my old self really doesn’t want to die. It’s hanging on for all it’s worth. I think it might actually be sabotaging the search for the new self in order to keep itself alive.
So, to sum up, at the moment I have the old ‘me’. This old ‘me’ has spent the past forty years searching, trying to find a different ‘me’. But the old ‘me’ is so attached to its own existence that it has managed to convince me that it is the search for the other ‘me’ that’s important, rather than the finding of it. And it has done this because it fears that as soon as I find the new ‘me’ I won’t want the original one any more.
Whatever happened to simplicity?
Comments
You cannot find that which
You already have!
It is like madly looking for your spectacles which you put on the top of your head.
By andavane on 31st May 2018 - 15:59
You cannot find it, but you can experience it. What you say is so very true. I only hope you can get to the next stage. Centering Prayer or Christian Meditation are wonderful ways of getting there. So is the Enneagram.
By Richard on 31st May 2018 - 20:29
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