Self-Transcendence - No. 31
Man’s greatest battle has always been the battle to overcome himself. This simple truth has been all but forgotten in modern society. Before we dive into man’s greatest battle, let’s look at how we forgot one of the most important themes of human life and societal health. Scientific thinking has led to incredible advancements in tools, technology, and medicine that have completely transformed the quality of human life. It is best defined as a systematic, evidence-based way of figuring out how the world works. It has been the key to overcoming cognitive bias and its effects on our understanding of ourselves and the natural world. The unfortunate side effect of scientific thinking, however, is that we have disregarded and forgotten about wisdom that cannot be measured and empirically proven. Most truly important questions are beyond the reach of quantitative research. If we took the qualitative approach, then it would be overwhelmingly clear that God exists and the experiential spiritual life is real. Unfortunately, the scientific community has a hard time accepting qualitative testimony-based research. We have reduced truth to the numbers and data of hard science.
Scientific thinking is not a modern religion, although, like religions, it seeks to answer the big questions: “where did we come from and how should we live?” For many people, it has become the only form of religion they have, and it has supplanted the role of religion in modern society. Along the way, its effects on our cultural thinking have been unimaginably significant.
Our rapid advancements have led us to see ourselves in many ways as altogether different than our ancestors. They didn’t have the knowledge and technology we do, so they were essentially living in the dark. We assume a level of intellectual superiority that allows us to disregard the hard-earned wisdom that was passed down through generations for thousands of years. This doesn’t seem to be a conscious decision, just an unintended consequence.
I do not idealize the past and am very thankful to be alive now. It is painfully obvious that life has been much harder for people in every previous time period. While we understand more than ever about the human body and the natural world, we still do not understand who we are and how we should live. We treat humans like machines and societies like complex computer programs. We look back at practices like blood letting and doctors that didn’t wash their hands, and we are horrified by their ignorance. Likely, many years from now, our descendants will look back on our approach to life and be horrified at how little we knew. When someone is depressed, we give them drugs to make them feel better; when someone is lonely, we offer them entertainment; when someone is searching for wisdom, we offer them information. We live in isolation, glued to devices that aren’t good for us, trade our health for wealth, and increasingly view the nuclear family as an archaic institution. In some ways, we are already beginning to recognize the consequences of our arrogance. Increasingly, people are realizing that the way we live is costing us more than we can imagine.
We desperately need to overcome our thinking that allows us to believe that we are so different from our ancestors. Of course, we have adapted to a technology and information-rich society, but we are not fundamentally different. In the same way, we must overcome our assumption that only what can be proven through controlled experiments is real. Like Plato's Allegory of the Cave, we are the prisoners in the cave seeing the world as shadows through a keyhole; there is so very little we can actually see and truly understand. When it comes to the mystery of human life, we would be far better off if we had more respect for the timeless wisdom of generations past. Spiritual things cannot be proven, only observed and experienced. Even the scientific community now recognizes the vital role that spirituality and religion play in mental health, resilience, and social cohesion. Yet in doing so, it reduces religion to the level of yoga, meditation, health, fitness, and social clubs. We have made spirituality another form of self-care. We have reduced something that was the centerpiece of most cultures throughout history to an optional lifestyle hack, and there is only one reason; science tells us that’s all it is.
The central theme of wisdom
Every timeless wisdom writing in the world has centered around one common theme, self-transcendence. Simply put, self-transcendence is the process of overcoming self-obsession. Interestingly enough, this is the one core theme our modern culture stands directly opposed to. In the name of science, we have removed God from our cultural beliefs, and in place of a deity, we have set ourselves up on a throne as the center of our own universe. We have made self-gratification the central purpose of life and the primary act of worship to the god that is man. We aren't the first people to do this in human history, it's actually a pattern that repeats itself over and over again. The question of whether there is a creator ruling the universe or if man is the center of his own universe is the central question every individual person and society has been wrestling with since the beginning of human history. Every wisdom tradition and religion has been a response to this great question. The answer is always fundamentally the same, man must overcome himself so that he can step off the throne of his life and recognize that he is not God. Instead, he is a very small part in a very big story. When he can step off the throne and embrace his small part in the big story, he has become a man who has transcended himself.
The fundamental difference between the gospel of Jesus and the teachings of every other wiseman and prophet is not self-transcendence, it is the Holy Spirit. Because now man was not overcoming himself by himself, he was surrendering himself to the Spirit of God who came into him to aid him in overcoming himself and then coming alive to who he was truly created to be. The point of the Holy Spirit isn’t what He can do through us, it’s what is now possible in us. We must see the Gospel through the lens of man's great battle, the battle to overcome himself.
Every wise man whose teachings have stood the test of time continually brought us back to this singular battle. It's so important that we recognize this because it changes how we see the invitation of Jesus in the gospel. Jesus wasn't telling us we needed to overcome ourselves, we already knew that. He was giving us the only way to truly overcome ourselves. He showed us that the true battle is not a battle to overcome our behavior. It's a battle to change our hearts, and that's a battle we have no hope of winning on our own. Suddenly, self-transcendence took on a whole new meaning through Jesus’ teaching. Instead of belief in God, being an invitation to battle ourselves until we die and enter the afterlife, Jesus invited us to be filled with the Holy Spirit now. His death on the cross tore the veil so that sinful man could have a daily experiential relationship with God. It is painfully clear that we have forgotten man's greatest battle and the need for self-transcendence. When we remember it, we will finally begin to understand the incredible power of the Gospel of Jesus.
True religion is not beliefs about God, it is a journey to overcome ourselves so that we can play our small part in the very big story we are born into. If we remove the process of self-transcendence from the teaching of Jesus, we have missed His message completely. If we do not have the Spirit of God within us, transforming our hearts, then we cannot truly overcome self-obsession, and we naturally become the Pharisees that do everything right but do it for ourselves. If we cannot overcome ourselves, then what we are left with is a life of pain and disappointment, where our central focus is pursuing the things and experiences that we think we want.
Proverbs 14:12 - “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”
Galatians 5: 19-21 MSG - “It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.”
There is no other path to freedom and life than self-transcendence, and that is only possible along the path that Jesus invited us on. The invitation is always the same, “Come and follow me.” It is not a theology or set of beliefs and practices, it is a journey we walk on, filled with and led by the Holy Spirit. Jesus walked into the biggest question in all of human history and showed us the answer. Now we have forgotten the question, so we don’t value the answer. Once our self-obsessed religion or self-obsessed hedonism lets us down, then we find ourselves wrestling with that great question once again. Unfortunately, for most people in this age of distraction, it can take an entire lifetime to rediscover the battle we are actually fighting, it is not a battle outside of us but a battle within us. Just like the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, we must venture into the labyrinth of our own heart and mind to find the animal within, slay him, and find our way back out. That is not a journey we can go on and a battle we can win alone; we need the Spirit of God to guide us and strengthen us. On the other side of that battle is the identity and way of life we were made for.
- John Walt
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