The following is an adapted excerpt from
The Great Within
The Transformative Power and Psychology of the Spiritual Path
Exploring the Meaning of The Way
The Way, or the Path, is a universal metaphor encountered again and again in the great world religions. The term journey is used to indicate actual progress along the Way. In this chapter, we will examine what this metaphor has to tell us and how it can help us understand the psychological work and transformative outcomes of contemplative practice. We will first look at a number of fundamental aspects included in the meaning of the metaphor, as well as what appears to be the essence of the Way: the constantly changing perception of reality. Finally, we will look at the limits suggested by the metaphor of the Way.
Aspects of the Metaphor of the Way
What do we mean when we say “the Way”? How does it function as a metaphor, and what does it represent? Why is the use of this metaphor so widespread? The Way is a powerful expression; first, it serves to capture the fact that the contemplative life, or spirituality itself, has to do with our development as human beings in a certain direction. The contemplative traditions point to this direction, claiming they can show us the Way in a literal sense. Second, the metaphor suggests movement and travel as a continually changing perspective on the landscape. We will discuss this suggestion later in the chapter in terms of the “changing perception of reality.” Third, the metaphor also suggests that there are stages along the way, and that it is possible, if not necessary, to obtain guidance and guides. We will return to this idea in the chapters that follow. Finally, the idea of a way suggests a certain constraint: a way is bounded by sides, and we can wander from the path or stay on it. The two sides also suggest that we can speak of a double-sided development.
With regard to the first point, we may ask to what the notion of direction refers. Some say that life itself is a journey, regardless of whether we belong to a religious tradition or not. Isn’t our passage from the cradle to the grave a journey? The contemplative traditions, of course, do not deny this, but their message refers to yet another journey that we as humans can make—a journey whose beginning and end are different from those of our biologically determined journey through time. From the contemplative perspective, a life’s journey can lead in two fundamentally different directions—either one in which we become entangled in the grip of callousness, shortsightedness, and fear of life, or one in which kindness and insight, joy in life and wisdom, increasingly guide us.
The essence of this message of two possible life directions is that we need not, or possibly should not, leave the direction and progress of this journey entirely to chance. Moreover, we are required to navigate the realities of life—birth; sickness; old age; death; interaction with our environment, one another, and ourselves. One Way can make us gentle rather than callous, does not compel us to stick our heads in the sand out of fear, and makes us more realistic and honest. This is a hopeful message. In the following chapters, we will consider from various perspectives whether this message is realistic or not.
The Viability of the Way
From the perspective of the Way, development toward compassion and wisdom in life has to do with the development of a basic attitude to life as a whole—inclusive of both its adversity and its prosperity, both its happiness and its sorrow. It has to do with the creation or discovery of a certain mental space, a fundamental “magnanimity” or mental openness that gives insight. Because it includes relating to the realities of our life situation, it ennobles us and our fellow beings.
That it is actually possible to uncover such a space in our concrete existence and continue to develop it is the inspiration for the contemplative life. Basically, this inspiration can arise neither from what we see as a projected, faraway, final goal nor from our ever-changing circumstances in life but from each step we actually take along the Way. Such steps show us that the Way is actually viable and that the obstacles we encounter can be overcome and incorporated as part of the journey. Thus, the metaphor of traveling along the Way does not refer, as is sometimes thought, to a life in which the satisfaction of needs is delayed to the future. For the promise of future rewards is simply not a strong enough motivation for bringing about a real transformation. Moreover, it is easy for us to ignore ourselves in the present if we are fixed on a certain future goal. We tend to dream about that goal and do not keep in touch with our actual situation in life or ourselves as we are. Instead, we dream about ourselves as we would like to be. So even though the Way leads to a realization or fulfillment, reconciliation, liberation, or whatever the tradition calls it, in practice that final goal does not function as the fundamental source of inspiration. More radically, the inspiration lies in the sense of progress that we make in the way we deal with our everyday circumstances, both good and bad—that is, how we apply the methods and practices, and develop insights in relation to our lived experiences.
Some say that life itself is a journey, regardless of whether we belong to a religious tradition or not. Isn’t our passage from the cradle to the grave a journey?
This kind of inspiration does not need to be understood in religious terms. After all, it has to do with the development of something that belongs to being human. In contemplative psychological terms, we could describe this development as a liberation from all of those attitudes and views that cause us to be hard-hearted, defensive, and blind to the realities of our lives and to reality as a whole. This development is central to the great religions and thus is also the focus in the practice of the contemplative life in both its monastic and its secular forms.
We will return later to the degree to which such a development is a matter of human action or grace. Here, we will focus only on the fact that all spiritual disciplines of the contemplative life (the mental exercises, the performance of work and study) are practiced to give our fundamental humanity space to flourish and to cultivate its expression in words and deeds. The idea of the Way actually inspires us to remember that people are capable of developing these ways, as evidenced in all times and cultures, and that it involves application and effort.
The Borders of the Way
The metaphor of the Way also includes the idea of certain borders or constraints. After all, a path has two sides that serve as borders on the left and right. In contemplative thought, these borders point to the contemplative practices that place certain restrictions on us, a certain form of discipline that influences the cultivation of both the mind and actions. With respect to the mind, it is chiefly the development of insight into life or wisdom that is involved; with respect to actions, it is the cultivation of mercy, compassion, kindness, and love. Mercy and compassion refer here not only to feelings but also to actual mercy, that is, mercy in speech and actions. Thus, we might interpret the left- and right-hand sides of the Way as the “side of insight” and the “side of loving-kindness and compassion” respectively.
This interpretation also emphasizes that in our actual progress along the Way, there is simultaneous growth in insight and mercy. We cannot travel the contemplative path without having these two sides. We need them both to stay on course. In concrete terms, growth in genuine insight is accompanied by growth in our dedication to our fellow human beings, and conversely, genuine caring is bound to give us insight. The reason for this is simply that caring turns us toward reality; we are open to seeing everything more clearly and turning toward rather than away or wishing to keep reality at a safe distance. The converse is also true—insight leads to understanding, and understanding leads to loving care and compassion. It has been said that to understand everything is to forgive everything. It is striking that we find both aspects continually emphasized in the great religious traditions—but not as opposites. We cannot practice one without the other.
Yet some people view insight and loving care as opposites and even sometimes pitted against each other, as if they were two distinct ways: a purely “mental” way of finding insight and, in contrast, a practical way of caring, loving thy neighbor, and charity. Sometimes both ways are linked with the idea of a vertical religiosity (directed toward God) and a horizontal one (directed toward human beings). Social action (working toward a better world) is then viewed as distinct from—and therefore placed on a plane other than—the transformation of our profane perception of reality. At most, the practitioner is urged to balance these two dimensions. But the image of two perpendicular dimensions suggests a false opposition. The lines are not perpendicular but parallel. Many years ago, the famous Dutch theologian Harry Kuitert made a number of comments well worth our consideration on the danger of the Christian tradition going off the rails if it ignored “the fundamental question of the perspective in which that work of making our world worth living in is to be placed.”1
In concrete terms, growth in genuine insight is accompanied by growth in our dedication to our fellow human beings, and conversely, genuine caring is bound to give us insight.
It is this pairing of insight and loving-kindness that makes us capable of actually dealing with situations when we must courageously intervene, even if the intervention is painful to the other or to ourselves. If we attempt to cultivate both aspects independently of each other, we run the risk of developing shortsighted care as well as callous insight. When we act out of shortsighted care, or blind compassion as it is called in the Buddhist tradition, we often only help people go from bad to worse. We may behave in a friendly and tolerant way, but we do so at the wrong moments, with the result that we cause rather than prevent suffering. While callous insight may help us to see more clearly the shortcomings, sins, and other negative things in ourselves and others, we are not capable of dealing with them in a caring, compassionate way that leads to their amelioration. We can, in fact, become enmeshed in an increasingly aggressive struggle against evil in ourselves and others. Insight without compassion is like a sharp sword wielded by an uncompassionate hand.
Thus, even though loving care and insight develop simultaneously just as the two sides of a path run parallel, there is still a difference between them. Insight is something that grows within us and, in a certain sense, is concealed from others. Conversely, the growth of caring or compassion is visible to others. It is through this visible growth that it is possible to perceive indirectly whether the inner flourishing of insight is real or imaginary—a tree is known by its fruit. Effective charity and care are the visible fruits of genuine insight as part of a flourishing within.
The Way as a Changing Perception of Reality
Another aspect of the metaphor of the Way is that it entails a continually changing perspective on the landscape. Of course, it is not only our perspective that changes. The landscape itself changes, whether we are traveling or not. Here, the “landscape” is a metaphor for the events in our lives, the continually changing situations in which we find ourselves. Thus, we have two sorts of changeability: the (external) changeability of our concrete situation in life and the (inner) changeability of our shifting perspective on it.
The contemplative traditions are primarily concerned with the inner shifting perspective on our situation in life, for this perspective determines how we perceive the events of our lives. Moreover, this perspective and the way in which it shifts differ with every individual. Two people involved in the same event each experience it in their own way. We know all of this from our daily lives, although we still do not know how consequential this fact is from moment to moment.
If we now look at what actually “travels along the Way,” we could say that it is our perception of reality. This concept is a basic notion of contemplative psychology. What makes the term perception of reality so useful is the fact that the word perception highlights the subjective side of what is happening, while the word reality emphasizes its objective side. It gives a good indication that what we perceive as real is subjective but is experienced as objective. On closer inspection, the reality in which we live is actually reality as we perceive it personally. This reality is relative to us, although in terms of our daily lives, we regularly lose sight of this fact. We perceive our situation as if it were not relative but absolute in the sense of being objective and independent of us. This is why, instead of using perception of reality, we could also use terms like relative, subjective, or personal (in the sense of individual) reality. The articulation and communication of our personal reality to others may give rise to an intersubjective perception of reality that people share; however, it remains dependent on the individual and, in that sense, relative.
Effective charity and care are the visible fruits of genuine insight as part of a flourishing within.
For many people, including philosophers and psychologists, the story ends here. They view the unmistakable relativity of our perception of reality as a fact that cannot be tampered with. Their final conclusion is, “All perception is interpreted experience.” In other words, the fact that we live in a relative reality has become an absolute given, an indisputable fact. At most, we can attempt to understand one another’s relative realities to some degree, to grasp them by means of what is called hermeneutics, the science of explanation and interpretation. However, the possibility of a stance or, better yet, a mental space within which our perception of relative reality is completely exposed so that its relativity is visible to us is rarely acknowledged as a possible experience. As a consequence, the possibility of training in mental development that would allow us to recognize and see through this relativity is not acknowledged either.
This, too, is a crucial difference between the contemplative traditions and the discipline of psychology. The former not only acknowledge this relativity but also assert that humans possess and are able to develop a discriminating awareness that allows them to discover and completely eliminate the blinding effect of this relativity. For the contemplative traditions, this relativity is not an absolute given to which we should resign ourselves but a factual characteristic of the blinded individual. Many disciplines of the contemplative life are therefore directed at developing a clarity of mind that enables us to discover where and when this relativity happens and how to free ourselves from it. Thus, the recognition of relativity neither leads to a “worldly” despondency nor remains an intellectual relativism. Rather, it is an incitement to travel along the contemplative way.
Perception of Reality along Our Course of Life
Let us attempt to make this rather abstract concept of perception of reality more concrete by means of some examples that look at an earlier phase in life—childhood. If we look back at our perception of reality when we were children (in as much as we remember it), certain aspects gave our perception a sense of reality—trusted and familiar (though not necessarily always pleasant) aspects that acted as buttresses for our childish perceptions: the way our house smelled; certain corners in the room where we played; the open door to the garden; special objects such as the large vase with sunflowers on the dresser; our mother’s box of buttons; the bear we took to bed; and last but not least, our parents, the sound of their voices, the way they moved and held our hand. All of those were immediately surrounded by the physical building with the sidewalk as a boundary beyond which we were not allowed to go by ourselves.
Together, these aspects formed the reality in which we lived. Some of them were so important to us that our reality would have collapsed if they had disappeared, so they also formed the object of our anxieties and delights, our hopes and fears. If Mommy or Daddy stayed away too long, we were scared they might never return. Then we felt that our existence was threatened. Or we could not sleep if our teddy bear was missing. All these certainties and uncertainties formed the world that we perceived then as reality: our childish perception of reality.
Let us look at our perception of reality on the basis of a classic North American example. As children, most of us believed in Santa Claus. This produced a certain perception of reality around Christmas. Everything was permeated by it and directed toward it. This perception no longer exists for us because we no longer believe in Santa Claus. We are no longer impressed by him because we see that he is simply a man dressed in a costume. Our awareness of what reality is—that is, what is real and not real—has changed. The person dressed in a costume is more real to us now than Santa Claus is. In this respect, at least, we have become more realistic, and this can be seen in our behavior toward the man in the beard when we no longer play the game with him.
Some of them were so important to us that our reality would have collapsed if they had disappeared, so they also formed the object of our anxieties and delights, our hopes and fears.
The question asked by contemplative psychology is, how many Santa Clauses have we held on to in a metaphorical sense? Perhaps we still view every day as December 25, with illusions that are different but just as powerful as those that played a role in our childish perceptions of reality surrounding that date. For example, what illusions might we hold about birth, parenting, society, sickness, old age, and death? Nor should we forget illusions about ourselves. Even if we are academically trained psychologists, theologians, or philosophers, there is no guarantee that we do not have all kinds of illusions—as taken-for-granted perceptions—in our daily personal and professional lives. These illusions determine our perception of reality with all their emotional reactions and the behaviors that follow in their wake.
In any case, we know that our childhood world is gone. We no longer live in that world. Yet when that world did exist, it was absolute reality for us. If we look back now, we realize that it was a relative reality—relative to our mode of perception as children. The elements to which we clung to maintain our sense of reality have lost their function. A teddy bear no longer comforts us, and our mother’s hand has long been replaced by other buttresses. When we look back to puberty or young adulthood, we see that the buttressing elements, the building blocks of our perception of reality, have been changing constantly. Those realities were relative as well.
Of course, we have not yet reached the end of this development: what we perceive as reality now will be gone in the course of time. There will be other aspects from which we will derive our sense of reality and orientation. The reality in which we live from day to day now is also relative to the way of experiencing that is peculiar to us now. The problem is that it is difficult for us to see at this time exactly where that relativity is, how extensive it is, and how pervasive its hold on us is.
Notes:
- H. M. Kuitert, I Have My Doubts: How to Become a Christian Without Being a Fundamentalist, trans. John Bowden (London/Valley Forge, PA: SCM Press, Ltd./Trinity Press International, 1993), 216.
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