The Inner Experience

The second chapter of Thomas Merton's book is titled, "The Awakening of the Inner Self." Unlike the advice proffered by so many books, programs and projects, Merton claims here that awakening the inner self is not something one can do.

"(The inner self)...is the life by which everything else in us lives and moves. It is in and through and beyond everything we are. If it is awakened, it communicates a new life to the intelligence in which it lives, so that it becomes a living awareness of itself; and this awareness is not so much something that we ourselves have, as something that we are. It is a new and indefinable quality of our living being." (p. 6)

Merton goes on to say that although no one can make her- or himself awaken, there are certain conditions that favor such awakening. He says that other cultures and times have provided environments of concepts and language, symbols and experiences that favor awakening of the inner self. Now, we have to exert effort to create favorable conditions.

There is a distinction, Merton says, between what he names a "natural" awakening to the inner "I," as described in some Zen literature with which he was familiar, and the Christian realization of going beyond the "I" to "an experiential grasp of God as present within our inner self." (p. 12) Merton moves from Augustine to Tauler to St. John of the Cross to develop his discussion of how one gets to that experiential grasp of God in the inner self. It is done in part by turning away from anything that can be held onto as to an object, such as tangible things, sense experiences, concepts and thoughts, or understandings, eventually arriving at what St. John of the Cross called "essential detachment." And, the other part of getting to such an experiential grasp is clinging by dark faith and love in unknowing to the will of God.

For Christians, the awakening of the inner self will also bring an awareness of God.

"Since our inmost 'I' is the perfect image of God, then when that I' awakens, he finds within himself [herself] the Presence of Him [the One] Whose image he [she] is. And by a paradox beyond all human expression, God and the soul seem to have but one single 'I.' They are (by divine grace) as though one single person. They live and breathe and act as one. 'Neither' of the 'two' is seen as object." (p. 18)

I hardly know where to begin to examine the ideas of this chapter as my own life relates to them. I do know that I cannot know my inner self as an object. I get that. There is no internal belly button to examine. But in relation to "essential detachment," I find in myself a real struggle. There are clearly things, events, experiences, thoughts, feelings, that I like and others that I do not like. Merton says that it isn't that we ought not to notice them and our responses to them but that we should not be guided by them. There is some movement with respect to me not being guided by my attachments, but it would be less than honest for me to say I've made a lot of progress in detachment - "essential" or otherwise.

Clinging to God by "dark faith" is described not as "assent to dogmatic truths" but as "a personal and direct acceptance of God Himself, a 'receiving' of the Light of Christ in the soul, and a consequent beginning or renewal of spiritual life." (p. 15) Merton says that according to St. John of the Cross, this involves turning to God and away from God's creatures. Here I begin to get confused. I am aware of having been blessed multiple times with a renewal of spiritual life in me. Gratitude to God fills me every time I think of this, because such renewals have literally saved my life. And, I know that I can turn to God consciously and deliberately over and over again. However, I find it impossible and undesirable to turn away from God's creatures. In fact, my eyes fill with tears to even think about this. I love God's creatures; they are for me pieces of the Holy. The proper response to God's creatures is love and care, I think.

With all of this, my thoughts keep turning to Theresa of Avila's Interior Castle. The notion of making an internal journey seems to settle with me better. There is much similarity with what Merton is discussing here, with the crystal castle of the human soul as the Divine dwelling place, for example. Yet, the differences are there too. In some ways, Theresa seems more "grounded" and more accessible to someone who is not a monastic, but lives with "creatures" in very daily life. Theresa also says that although we cannot do it for ourselves, there are some things we can do, especially early on. Knowing that it has been "early on" for me over and over again, I take comfort in the idea that even if I am not directly aware of it. God dwells in the center of my soul. So, it is ok that, to put it in Theresa's metaphors, these days I spend my time lugging buckets of water to the garden and tossing "reptiles" into the castle moat.