A sense of lack generates anxious feelings. We may cope by excessive shopping, eating, or other compulsive behavior. We may seek ways to draw attention to ourselves. What if we are looking in the wrong direction as we seek a solution for the universal need to feel connected?
Minister, essayist, lecturer, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was among the most influential writers of the 19th century.
Emerson would ask us to notice how much we rely on our calculating-self, the part of our thinking preoccupied with comparing, evaluating, wanting, and designing our next move. Today we call that calculating-self our ego—the insatiable, internal narrator exerting itself to direct our life.
Emerson points us in another direction, to live as an expression of our soul eternally connected to the “fountain of action and of thought”:
“Him [the calculating-self] we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love.”
The Wall We Build
There are many ways we erect a wall separating us from God. The sense of lack widens as we get lost in our thinking: If only I had a shorter commute, a better manager, a partner who is more supportive, children who are more grateful. The list goes on and on. Our suffering is self-inflicted.Notice how often you grind away at solving problems. Rather than get caught up in mental churning, Emerson advises it is better to allow the infinite intelligence of God to inspire us:
“Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity.”
When we find goodness in our lives, Emerson informs us, “we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beam.” Emerson’s ideas challenge us to examine our calculating-self, the personal power we believe is the source of our safety and goodness.
Mental Silence Tears Down the Wall
Mahler’s Second Symphony is one of the grandest in the classical music canon. Recently, my wife and I were fortunate to hear this spectacular and ethereal music.As the final notes rang out, the audience rose to their feet with thunderous applause. The conductor acknowledged individual musicians in the orchestra.
As the piccolo player stood, from behind me, ringing out over the tumult, a man called out to his companion, “The best piccolo I ever heard was at the end of the first movement of Shostakovich’s Tenth.”
Did his companion find him boorish, or was she eager to be “educated”? Who knows? I received a lesson: The man caused me to pause to remember how often my calculating-self robs me of the moment. Tedious thoughts of comparison may arise, but we don’t have to grab hold of them.
God’s voice is quieter than the voice of our ego. Are you mentally busy all day long? If so, notice how your thinking keeps God away. Notice too, how reluctant you are to relinquish habitual thinking patterns. To rely on this stream of thinking, Emerson would caution, is to choose against God.
When we willingly admit just how much of our distress is coming from our thinking, we open up a quiet space in the present moment. Our minds begin to still. In that relative silence, Emerson instructs, you will hear the “right word”: “There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.”
Emerson’s path to God requires the addition of nothing. The wall of separation from God is nothing more than a manifestation of our mental churning. Subtract the mental churning and we open a space in which we breathe in the wisdom, virtue, and love flowing from our connection with God. God’s grace, Emerson would say, is our birthright.