Another Look at Existential Solitude and the Call to Authentic Humanity

[[Dear Sister, I have struggled with what you wrote about existential solitude. I am not sure I even know how to ask about it I struggled that much! But you said you had an experience of hunger, and it was a hunger for being and meaning. In another place, you said it was a hunger for wholeness. I am not sure what that means. I also don't understand how hunger for those things could lead to an experience of God and your deepest or truest self. Isn't hunger for these things a sign of their absence? You know, I never thought a hermit would have anything to offer me, your life seems so different from mine, but I have become aware that what you write about is exactly what I struggle with every day. Do you think therapists "pathologize" (your term) existential loneliness when it is really just basically human? I thought maybe you were saying that. If that's true, it could help me come to terms with my own experience of loneliness and that would mean you have taught me something I never expected to learn from a hermit. Thank you.]]

Really good questions! Thank you. Before I try to answer you, let me say a little about the most basic definition of God I use. When I speak of God, I recognize that (he) is the ground and source of all being and meaning (everything that exists and is meaningful depends upon something outside itself for these qualities). God is not a being among other beings; (he) is not even the biggest and best being among other beings, some kind of supreme being, for instance. Instead, God is the reality out of which everything that has existence "stands". The word existence literally means to stand up (-istere) out of (ex-) this reality.  God grounds our existence and is its source as well. In the same way, God is the ground and source of meaning. To the extent something has existence and meaning, it is grounded and has its source in God. I also believe that God is the ground and source of personhood, of the truly personal. This means that God is not impersonal despite not being A being. In meaningful existence and personhood, we are grounded and have our origin in God. We are, in the language of theology, contingent, and without God, we would simply cease to be.

With all of that in mind (at least in the back of our minds), let me try to answer your questions. How does hunger for being and meaning, or for wholeness, lead to an experience of God? By definition (as noted above), God is the source and ground of our existence. By itself, that says that our yearning for being and meaning is rooted in the very thing we are hungry for, that is, it is rooted in and points to God, who is the source of eternal or abundant and meaningful life. Wholeness or holiness has to do with being intimately and exhaustively related to God so that being and meaning are gifts from God and represent a share in God's own life.

Think of it this way: if I tell you that I yearn for a glass of ice-cold milk this means two things, 1) I already know what ice-cold milk tastes like and the way it satisfies certain needs and hungers, and 2) some form of void or lack has caused me to want or need that glass of ice-cold milk. There is a lack of something (in this case,the milk) that is experienced as a thirst, hunger, or yearning. When I write about yearning for wholeness or holiness and all that implies, it also points to both the presence of an intimate form of knowing (I know what it means to exist, and I know what it means for my life to be meaningful or purposeful); likewise, I am aware of some lack of these things (I can die; I need more of the life and meaning I already know intimately; I hunger for abundant or eternal life). Since God is the ground and source of all being and meaning, my very hunger for this is an implicit awareness of God's presence in my life, just as my awareness of thirst allows me to become aware of already knowing the nature and power of a glass of ice-cold milk on a hot day. (If that knowing was not there, if there was no such thing as ice-cold milk or I had never felt and tasted it, I could never have become aware of wanting or thirsting for it.)

In a similar way, when I get in touch with that profound yearning for wholeness, I become aware of what I am made for, what I have the potential for, who I am in light of these forms of hunger or yearning. I understand this as also being an awareness of my truest and deepest self, my most authentic identity and foundational humanness.  My sense is that this experience means transcending the ego self and any distorted senses of self or of God we might hold (or be held by!). One journeys to the depths of oneself and discovers both God and oneself in the process. When one embraces this true self, one becomes more whole and holy. One is grasped by God and begins to truly grasp who one is most fundamentally. That is the task of all spirituality, all prayer, and it is explicitly the goal and challenge of monastic and eremitical life.

I did allude to the fact that our society tends to pathologize all loneliness, yes. If we rule God (and perhaps the true self) out of the picture (as all forms of scientism do today), so do we rule out a central explanation for what I, Merton, and others call existential solitude. I am aware today of some really fine therapists whose spirituality (both Christian and Buddhist) allows them to avoid this tragic error, but in the main, it seems to me that the tendency to pathologize any uncomfortable experience, but particularly that of a deep and foundational loneliness and solitude still dominate the fields of psychology and psychotherapy. This means that people are often discouraged from admitting, much less expressing, their experience of existential solitude, or the exemplary nature of a search for God and one's truest identity. In such circumstances, they can even be convinced to medicate themselves against such an experience. This situation in science and therapy can actually contribute to a sense of shame that one experiences loneliness when, in fact, this specific experience of hunger or yearning is evidence of the fact that we are made to be the very image of God in our world.

I hope this makes sense to you. Thanks very much for your comments on my experience and its helpfulness to you. So often we think of the hermit life as a selfish one unless it is redeemed in terms of intercessory prayer. What I have been affirming during the last two months is that the hermit vocation is a truly significant human vocation that illustrates the universality of the call and nature of the solitary journey to God and authentic selfhood.

More Questions on Inner Work and Becoming Transparent to God

Sister, when you write about stricter separation from the world does the inner work you have been doing have a place in it? As I read your last post entitled, "Why isn't it enough?" I thought I got, just for a moment, a glimpse of why that would be important not only so you could live as a hermit, but also as an integral part of the eremitical life. This glimpse came and went in a flash so I can't say more about what I mean but maybe you know just what I am trying to say here. I know you have been criticized by readers in the past for needing to do such work and that you wrote it was integral to your vocation. I think re-reading your last post helped me understand this a little better because I saw you, and myself, and everyone else as having been distorted by the world and needing to do the inner work you speak of to become more clearly ourselves. That was the glimpse I got while reading what you were saying. I don't know if this is something you could write about, but my question is do I have this right? Does the inner work you speak of allow you to become "transparent to God" (your phrase) as you become more truly yourself?

Thanks for your questions. Yes, I definitely think you got it!!! The post you referred to re criticism of my own engagement in what I call "inner work" is found here: On Justifying Inner Work and it contains other links to related articles. It was also prompted by my discovery that the inner work I had been doing for a couple of years at that point might have shown me I had made a mistake in my discernment of an eremitical vocation; instead it affirmed this vocation again and again. And regarding your second question, YES!!! Absolutely, the inner work is part of what allows me to become transparent to God as I become more truly myself. This transparency to God is the very nature of what it means to be truly human, so the more truly human I become, the more transparent to God. 

We speak about this phenomenon of transparency in a number of ways. The main ones affirm us as imago dei, and incarnations of the Word of God -- especially to the extent we live in light of and through Christ!! I believe the story of Jesus' Transfiguration is a story of his (eventually!!) perceived transparency to God by the chosen disciples. Recently Sister Susan gave me a mirror medallion developed by Richard Rohr. I believe that this too reflected (no pun intended) the notion of becoming transparent to God. It also reminds us that others are, to varying degrees, also transparent to God. The side of the mirror medallion facing one's own heart/self has a symbol of the Trinity on it; it represents the gaze of God and the way God sees us at every moment; the side facing outward is a plain mirror reflecting everything as it is without distortion or judgment. Rohr had experienced the Trinity as a dynamic reality moving through him --- in and out. This experience developed into a practice of receiving beauty and breathing it back out to others. I recognize it as a symbol of transparency to God and to being the imago dei to others, one who sees as God sees and also one who is seen as God sees.

Transparency is something that happens, something we become as more and more we become persons who allow the presence of God to be mediated through and in us. Transparency is a means of revelation, but also of standing truly and honestly as our deepest selves. God seeks to reveal Godself at every moment and mood of our lives and in many ways, we occlude or distort that revelation. Part of all of that "occlusion" comes from our own woundedness and the resulting fear of allowing God (and sometimes, anyone at all) to love us and fill us with God's life and light. Sometimes we have lost so much in trying to be open and trust or love that we cling tightly to the superficial image of who we truly are, even when that "self" is but an echo of who we once were and a shadow of who we are truly called to be. Letting go to allow something so marked by newness, dynamism (change!!), and Mystery, is simply terrifying. And so, when people look at us, they mainly see echoes and shadows, scars, woundedness, and diminishment because that is all we feel free enough to allow ourselves to reveal.

Pope Francis Says Vespers with the
Camaldolese Nuns and Monks in Rome

Sometimes our failure to allow the transparency and revelation God yearns for with each of us comes from other forms of rigidity and arrogance. We believe we know who God is because we were taught about who God is in religion or theology classes. We take refuge in formulae and rituals which at least as easily distance us from the real God as they draw us closer. We have learned these things, sometimes with great effort, and we feel safe with them where the "living God" is more Mysterious and awesome even while he is also intriguing to us (mysterium tremendum et fascinans); they are therefore hard to let go of and can occlude the revelation of the living God we are meant to become. It is the "inner work" I have written about several times now that allows the necessary healing and strengthening of ourselves so that we can live from our deepest potential and love as we are meant to love.

Because God is the source of the potential I am speaking of, and we are the persons who are created as we listen to and respond to that source. We are never ourselves alone (except to the extent we are sinners or impaired by the sin that has touched us) because God is a constituent dimension of who we are. The more truly ourselves we become, the more clearly and truly present God becomes within us. We become more and more transparent to the God who is, as Tillich put the matter, the ground and source of our being. God is not alien to us, nor is God some sort of weird or supernatural parasite within us. When we speak of God dwelling within us, we are speaking of something that is most deeply and truly an essential or fundamental part of ourselves. We cannot be "us" (or even alive at all) without this presence and the opposite is also true: the more we become our truest selves, the clearer and stronger this presence within us becomes. We are truly ourselves, truly holy and truly human when people look at us and see God in everything we are and do. This is what revelation is about and it is what transparency is about. 

The inner work I and others do and that I write about here, allows this to be realized in our lives and all we touch!! It allows us to be healed of all of those forms of woundedness that cripple or otherwise limit us and it opens us to the deepest potential that is ours so that we can live from that for the sake of others. Once I thought of this work as something I could do and finish with so that I could live my vocation as I am called to do. Now I understand that this inner work is part of the "asceticism" or even "penance" that necessarily accompanies my prayer and is essential to my vocation. In other words, I will not finish it -- though I will move through different stages of this work at various times throughout my life; instead, I will continue doing it as a foundational part of my life because in conjunction with prayer, as you say, it is essential to my vocation and does indeed allow me to become transparent to God ---  which is the very meaning of eremitical hiddenness, and the goal of my call to holiness and creation as imago dei.