Life is a journey.
All journeys quests.
Every quest has the same purpose–that purpose is to deepen the self-knowledge of the quester.
Self-knowledge is never merely additive; it is always transformative.
Maybe?
The Spirit intends to investigate our whole life history, layer by layer, throwing out the junk and preserving the values that wer appropriate to each stage of our human development . . . Eventually, the Spirit begins to dig into the bedrock of our earliest emotional life . . . Hence, as we progress toward the center where God is actually waiting for us, we are naturally going to feel that we are getting worse. This warns us that the spiritual journey is not a success story or a career move. It is rather a series of humiliations of the false self. (Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer, 82-84).Which begs the question, of course. If I actually feel good about my progress am I truly making progress? Should progress actually feel like I'm getting worse?
I guess I buy this idea of upside down progress--of wisdom through suffering--in literature. The alarm bells go off in my head whenever I read of things going "well" for Katniss Everdeen, because it is just about the time when things seem to be going well for her that the Capital sends some misery and devastation. I want to believe that for her, these miseries are humiliations of the false self, and are in fact ultimately moving her toward the real purpose of her quest (self-knowledge), even if they may appear to take her further from her stated purpose. What the Enemy doesn't seem to know, then, is that in their efforts to destroy her, they may actually be moving her "toward the center" where she finds her true self.
What about me? Just this. In the midst of calamity it never feels like I'm making progress. While I rather like literature that makes this point about life's journey being a series of humiliations to the false self rather than a success story, if I had my choice, I'd write my own story--and the stories of those I love most--some other way.
