Page 183 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 7

The Work and Thinking of David Benner

We may have little control over our thoughts, lightness of being.
but they bring comfort and order into our Spirituality that supports the human journey
lives. As Descartes famously said “I think, will always be rooted in a life that is open to
therefore I am”. the vitalizing and transformative breath of Spi-
However in the Biblical description of the rit and open to the mysteries of life and faith. It
creation of mankind we are told that we are
made of dust and Spirit (The breath of God) never loses sight of the fact that we never really
so that we are made in the image of God. This get spiritual matters, they get us. It appreciates
fusion of Spirit and physical matter is the that, in the words of Thomas Moore, “At best we
greatest miracle on earth, and it is you and can never be more than approximately correct
me! We are therefore connected to the earth, when we speak about spiritual matters. The part
but also to the spiritual realms that remains unknown and unspoken gives our
words and ideas the emptiness they require.”
„Lightness and Mystery Authentic spirituality leaves room for myste-
“I mentioned the lightness of being that is ours ry and thus helps us preserve the lightness of
as creatures of dust and breath but want to say being that is associated with being creatures of
more about this because it is very important to dust and breath.
an understanding of spirituality. Spirit invites
us to live in the place of airy spaciousness and The Spirituality of Being and Becoming
lightness of being that is our origin and destiny. Authentic spirituality is also a spirituality of
There is something fundamentally wrong with becoming. Being itself contains this important
a spiritual journey that makes you more sub- dynamic of becoming. The roots of the English
stantial. Creatures of dust and breath are more language verb “to be” make this clear. The Sans-
like works of installation art than something in krit form of this verb is bhu. Literally translated,
a permanent exhibition. Ego wants permanence this means “to grow into being” or “to become.”
and importance and is disdainful of anything Becoming is a foundational part of being, parti-
that is here today, gone tomorrow. But, from cularly human being. To be human is to posses
dust we come and to dust we shall return – eve- a vital drive to become – to relentlessly push to-
rything passing, nothing even to be remembe- ward the goal of fulfilling our self, of becoming
red. (Ecclesiastes 1: 11) all we can be. The quest to flourish is deeply im-
bedded in being human. From the perspective
For some, the spiritual journey becomes nothing of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, this quest
more than acquiring insights, understandings is rooted in the imago dei. The human quest to
and experiences. For others it is mastering spi- become is a spiritual reflection of our participa-
ritual practices or acquiring spiritual proficien- tion in the life of Spirit.
cies. Sadly, however, these things are all spiritual
possessions, and – like any possessions – they Becoming balances doing and being. Spiritual
easily begin to possess us. Approaching the spi- teachers sometimes put too much distance bet-
ritual life with a need for understanding or a ween doing and being, as if one could ever be
desire for experiences of ecstasy or blessing will without any doing, or do without any being. The
quickly produce a spirituality of heaviness, not point they are usually trying to make when they
lightness. A spirituality of lightness is a spiri- assert the priority of being over doing is that all
tuality of nonattachment in which we resist the human doing should emerge out of our more
temptation to cling to our understanding, our basic being. We are, after all, human beings,
explanations, our experiences, our habits and not human doings. One way to keep doing and
disciplines, and our beliefs. Real faith is roo- being in equilibrium is to keep the horizon of
ted in being willing to acknowledge our funda- becoming always in sight. The person who is no
mental inability to know much about ultimate longer in a process of becoming is a person who
things. It contents itself with what the Christian has lost something fundamental to full-fledged
mystics have described as living in a cloud of humanity. Perhaps this state of non-becoming
unknowing – and living in that misty place with is what Christian theology refers to as hell –

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