Category: Spirituality

Pleasantville

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Eden Revisited

Pleasantville poster

https://www.frimmin.com/2004/07/05/the-matrix-saga/In film, the exploration of an unreal world is often a vehicle for exploring spiritual truths. This was most famously done by The Matrix Trilogy. However, a year before The Matrix appeared, a delightful fantasy named Pleasantville offered its own insights. Pleasantville is a wonderful story that entertains on more levels than a millionaire’s wedding cake, from being the simple fantasy of modern teens trapped in a 50s sitcom, to a marvelous retelling of the Garden of Eden which might provoke you to look again at the questions you learned to ignore when you first heard them in Sunday School.

Pleasantville tells the story of David, a nerdy high-school student (Tobey Maguire) obsessed with a “gee-whiz” 50’s sitcom called “Pleasantville” (perhaps inspired by Father Knows Best). When David gets into a fight with his sex-obsessed sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon), they both soon find themselves transported into the world of Pleasantville by a strange TV repairman (Don Knotts).

Trouble in Paradise

Once in Pleasantville, David and Jennifer find they are living the lives of the main characters, Bud and Mary Sue, complete with their characters’ families, friends, and after-school jobs. Although David is amused by living in his fantasy world, Jennifer is horrified to be trapped in a black-and-white world where no one knows a thing about sex. Not one to live by a script, she seduces her boyfriend, bringing free will and the “knowledge of good and evil,” into Pleasantville. And a rose turns red, bringing color into Pleasantville for the first time.

David is horrified that Jennifer has begun sabotaging this paradise, and warns that she’s “messing with their whole universe.” Jennifer’s answer is “maybe it needs to be messed with.”

And maybe it does. Pleasantville is a stagnant ideal of perfection—the weather forecast is always “high 72, low 72, another beautiful sunny day.” The high school basketball team never loses—in fact, the players never miss a shot. They actually can’t miss, even if they try! Firefighters have nothing to do but save cats, and mothers nothing but to cook, play bridge, and adore their families. But as Rabbi David Cooper writes, “without the potential for perfecting, perfection itself would be imperfect.” Pleasantvillers have no sin, no strife, no worries. There are no achievements because there are no challenges. There is no passion, and no love has ever been tried and proven. There is no “knowledge of good and evil”—all books are blank, all conversations vapid, and all roads lead nowhere.

Since the seed of the “knowledge of good and evil” has been planted, it begins to grow. The changes of growing awareness, of people being stretched beyond the roles of their Pleasantville characters, are shown as color. A girl’s tongue turns pink. A jukebox playing rock and roll has colored lights. A couple falls in love and cease being black and white.

picture of a couple in color

David himself changes Pleasantville, although only accidentally at first, by letting Mr. Johnson, his boss (Jeff Daniels) know that not everything has to be done the same way every time. Soon Johnson dreams of painting, and falls in love with Bud’s mother (Joan Allen). A turning point comes when David stops fighting knowledge, and starts spreading it. When he tells the stories of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, suddenly the books in the library fill up with words. And as he falls for Margaret (Marley Shelton), he becomes even more dedicated to helping the evolving awareness of the town, and he refuses being sent back by the repairman who wants to prevent further damage to the “reruns.”

But change comes with a price. Whether it’s the basketball team losing, rain and fire threatening the perfect environment, or a marriage collapsing, the changes seem most unpleasant for the many of Pleasantville’s citizens. Negative effects range from heartbreak, to riots, bigotry, and legal persecution.

New colors and new feelings

As Jennifer is somewhat of a serpent figure, introducing temptation, David becomes a Christ figure, fighting the bigotry and violence rising in Pleasantville, and urging the citizens to use their free will for beauty and good.

The Myth of Perfection

There’s a natural human tendency to resist change and long for a perfect place and time. In religion, we see it in the past in Eden, and in the future in Heaven. It’s just being here, now, that we can’t stand. This isn’t just a Christian phenomenon. Gnostics taught that the world is so evil that the Creator had to be a false god, and many in Eastern religions seek enlightenment in order to no longer be born into “conditioned existence”.

The genius of Pleasantville is that it gets us to look at the Eden story closely, and ask some serious questions: Was free will a mistake? Wouldn’t it have been better if Adam hadn’t sinned, and mankind stayed innocent? Wasn’t God ultimately to blame, since he knew everything that would happen?

Until I began studying Christian mystical theology, I, like most Christians, assumed the Fall was a bad thing. Even C.S. Lewis, in his paradise story, Perelandra, seemed to feel a Fall must be averted on the new world by any means possible. But an unprejudiced look at the Genesis story shows God felt otherwise: An omniscient God, knowing full well what would happen—disease, death, despair included—put two curious moral infants, completely ignorant of good and evil, in reach of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and said “don’t touch”. Just for good measure, he made sure the tree would be the central feature of the Garden and it would come complete with a cunning serpent to persuade them to eat the “forbidden” fruit.

We know what happened. and since then, we’re inclined to believe that the world is “lost”, that somehow things “got away” from God. We wonder if free will was a mistake and we mistrust it. We’re conditioned to not recognize that this was the divine plan all along.

The night I joined the Catholic Church, I remembered being surprised by the words of the Exultet, the great Easter Vigil hymn that proclaims:

O happy fault! O necessary sin of Adam,
that gained for us so great a Redeemer!

This idea is called the felix culpa (happy fault), that Adam is to be thanked for his sin bringing the divine light of Christ to the world. In C. S. Lewis’ science-fiction novel, Perelandra, the Fall is averted on that world, but there is a mention that “the greater thing” cannot happen there. Without this fall from pure innocence, there can be no redemption. Recognizing this upholds a radiant faith, that not now, not ever, and absolutely never has God lost nor will he lose control of this world, for even when we work outside his will, we cannot live outside his plan!

The fruit we deal with is not evil, but the knowledge of good and evil. As Pleasantville suggests, an innocent can have no real knowledge of good. The knowledge of good and evil is necessary to be able to choose the good. Otherwise, we are automatons, scripted characters living perfect, scripted lives. There’s a powerful metaphor for awakening here. We need to become conscious, aware of the fact that we are alive, aware of our awesome ability to choose, aware that God lives in us, and that we live, breathe, and have our being in him. Only then can we truly live as Jesus told us to, as cunning as serpents and as harmless as doves (Mt. 10:16).

Want to remember Adam and Eve this year?

St. Adam of Eden, March 10, Catholic;
Sts. Adam and Eve, December 24, Orthodox.Source: The Old Hermit’s Almanac, by Fr. Edward Hays

See also Dave Bruce’s excellent visual review!

The Power of Now

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a new classic

The Power of Now cover

We live in an explosion of spiritual writing. In addition to tons of recent books on Christian inspiration, there are breakthroughs in scholarship, archaeology, and an ocean of writings on meditation, the New Age, and Eastern religions. In the flood of information, it’s only natural to wonder—What do I read? What will help me with something I don’t already know? What will be forgotten in five years, and what will endure?

Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now is a superb book already being hailed as a classic. Although nothing changes about enlightenment itself, Tolle has a wonderful new gift for teaching it. Dramatic teachers of enlightenment have sometimes described their transformation by the Divine Presence in startling terms, saying “I am God,” and such, which might highlight the profundity of their transformation, but does little to help their disciples to understand the way in. Other teachers, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, say almost nothing about enlightenment per se, and instead concentrate almost exclusively on the way in, mindfulness. Tolle strikes a middle ground; although he places greater emphasis on the means, he does not play down the profundity of his enlightenment. And no wonder! Enlightenment actually saved his life. He was near the point of suicide when suddenly he came to the realization of the false self and the true self, and awoke the next morning to a world of wonder which he’s lived in for years now.

time is mind

Eckhart’s genius as a teacher lies in his insights which may never been as clearly worded as before. The core of Eckhart’s understanding of enlightenment is that the “mind” (in the sense of conventional thought, feelings, sense of separateness and ego) is inextricably tied up with time (past and future). The way to get out of the activity of mind—the false self—and into the awareness of true reality is to step out of time, into the Now.

The Now is not part of “time,” but is simply how eternity is experienced by finite beings. The time is now. It is always now; it always has been now, and always will be now. The concept of past and future is a function of the mind, recalling past Nows and anticipating future ones. The past gives a sense of identity, (and thus the sense of being separate from God), as well as resentment, regret, and other emotions. The future gives hope for better things in the future, as well as fear and anxiety. Both sides of time remove us from the present moment, which is the only place where we exist, and where God exists. Salvation can only happen in the Now.

a brilliant clarity

Are questions and objections starting to surface in your mind? Great. The entire book is arranged in a Q and A format, answering questions such as yours. And Tolle’s answers are always lucid, understanding, and genuine, with the conviction of someone who knows and is not just guessing. Furthermore, Tolle’s suggestions are practical. Although like many enlightened teachers before him, (Jesus, the Buddha, St. Francis, Peace Pilgrim) he lived homeless for some time after his transformation, he later returned to the world of work, and gaining insight on how to use the Power of Now in day-to-day life. A particularly insightful chapter is “Enlightened Relationships” which goes beyond all popular surface psychologizing, to the real issue, (almost never discussed), that underneath it all, we want others to do what they cannot: bring us into ultimate happiness, and they can’t, only realizing our own connection with the Ultimate directly can bring us into that level of fulfillment. Because of that, relationships need to be worked on from the standpoint of the present and being, but from projecting the other with impossible demands.

Another important aspect of Tolle’s contribution to the enlightenment literature is a neutral language. Eckhart occasionally uses phrases from Christian and Buddhist spirituality, but prefers to use neutral words which are as objective and clear as possible. For instance, he says “Being” and “the Unmanifested” instead of “God,” to avoid the problems caused by our conceptions of God interfering with encountering the Ground of Being. Phrases like “realizing your connection with Being” are much less likely to cause confusion than terms such as “becoming God,” from early Christian mysticism. The non-dramatic language helps us accept that enlightenment is obtainable, and its neutrality is equally accessible to people coming from different spiritual traditions, as well as those coming to spirituality for the first time.

portals into the unmanifested

Of course, simply reading The Power of Now won’t make you enlightened. As Tolle would say, only “intense presence” can do that. However, throughout the book, he gives numerous exercises to touching the Presence. (One of which, feeling the inner energy body, is very like S. K. Goenka’s vipassana method and quite similar to the practice in the short 13th-century Christian classic, The Book of Privy Counseling.) Another “portal” is to listen to the silences between sounds. Tolle gives numerous other examples of how to make everyday life, as well as meditation time, into spiritual practice, no matter where one is on their journey. His idea is to cultivate the conscious, awakened state of mind, and gradually make it your dominant state of being. Tolle knows that Awakening isn’t to be sought, but experienced. Now.

His insights are sometimes startling in their profundity. He has a succinct definition of enlightenment: “your natural state of felt oneness with Being.” His answer to whether love is a portal to the Unmanifested is, “No, it isn’t….Love isn’t a portal, it’s what comes through the portal into this world.” How true, since God is love.

Do you want to go beyond devotional spirituality? Do you want the Presence of God to transform you into That likeness? Read this book or listen to the audio version again and again, and practice the techniques continually. As of this writing, I think I’m getting a glimpse of the other shore.

Buddha

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by Karen Armstrong,
© 2001 by Karen Armstrong
Published by Penguin Books 205 pp.

an insightful biography

book cover

Karen Armstrong, the author of the best-sellers A History of God, The Battle for God, and Islam: A Short History, is known for her reputation as a lucid and insightful historian of Western religions, with a particular expertise on Islam. Leaving the interplay of monotheistic history might seem like a departure for her, but it really isn’t. Even in A History of God, Armstrong referred often to happenings in the Buddhist world to give an even wider perspective to Western religious history. Apparently, she has an inside connection; she dedicates this book to Lindsey Armstrong, her Buddhist sister.

There are many excellent biographies of the Buddha available, especially coming from a faith perspective, such as Thich Nhat Hahn’s Old Path, White Clouds. However, Armstrong predictably applies her historian’s ability to capture the sense of the time and presents Siddhatta Gotama (aka Siddhartha Gautama; Armstrong uses Pali forms consistently in this book) in the context of his time and culture. She begins with a frank assessment of the difficulty of a historian’s work in capturing Gotama’s life. Although the massive Pali canon bursts at the seams with his conversations and accounts of events in his life, they are conspicuously stylized for recitation, and they deliberately avoid revealing his personality. Furthermore, they were not committed to writing until hundreds of years after his death, so a historian must use them judiciously. Nevertheless, Armstrong dives into the accounts, separating the oldest accounts from later ones, and embellishments from history. Her style might seem somewhat repetitive to someone familiar with Buddhism, but she wants to build a clear understanding with a reader who knows nothing on the subject. Generally, her style is clear and fresh, only occasionally does her perspective get in the way, for instance, in psychologizing Mara the tempter’s appearance as Buddha’s subconscious “shadow.”

looking around the buddha

Armstrong’s greatest accomplishment here is in looking around the Buddha to give the reader a sense of the social and political situation in upper Ganges basin, the family life of a prince of a major tribe, and the interweaving threads of his family and companions throughout his life. For instance, we find that becoming a sanyasin, a renunciate monk, was not at all uncommon. Armstrong shows us that thousands of young people throughout the region were sick of the structure of their society and resolved to “go forth” as renunciates, rebelling against a world-system that seemed evil and meaningless by dedicating themselves to finding the key to total liberation from it. For them, total liberation meant never having to return to this realm where ultimately sickness and death prevail. So pervasive was the dissatisfaction with the state of things, that Armstrong says these mendicant monks were seen as “heroic pioneers” and were “honored as rebels” by society as a whole.

The account of the six years between Gotama’s “going forth” to becoming the enlightened one is particularly fascinating. We learn surprisingly specific information of the teachers he had, the philosophies they upheld, the disciplines he practiced, and why he ultimately found all of them lacking. From there, we learn of his dedication to the practice of mindfulness, the discovery of the Eightfold Path, and his enlightenment.

Much Buddhist writing is simply dreary. Unenlightened Buddhists not only lack the experience which they seek, but they may not have the environment of joyous enlightenment around them to fuel their quest with joy. Non-Buddhists who write on Buddhism routinely misinterpret vital but difficult concepts such as nirvana, anicca, and anatta, sometimes even believing them to signify a quest for annihilation! (Amazing the persistence of such ignorance.) Armstrong is the first writer I’ve come across who successfully communicates the incredible joy the Buddha radiated, which drew tens of thousands of people to his radical way of life. People saw something passionate and compelling in him! In short, this book will certainly give readers new insight into the Buddha, and might give many new insight into Buddhism itself.

Saint Francis

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an amazing encounter with the “alter christus”

It’s always best to drop your baggage and approach each book you read with a fresh, expectant state of mind, but undoubtedly, many people will find that difficult with Saint Francis, as I did, with an aversion to wordy translations. No matter. By the time I was fifty pages into the book, that “baggage” was history, and I was entranced by Kazantzakis’ incredible retelling of this man’s story, the man whose life was so radically distinctive in purity, poverty, and peace, that he created one of the most lasting and far-reaching reforms in Church history.

Saint Francis starts slowly, with Francis’ companion Brother Leo mourning the death of his friend and bemoaning the years of self-denial he suffered in following Francis and his life of self-imposed deprivations. He begins to write of the life of Francis, at first erratically, and then, chronologically, remembering how he met him, and how God began changing Francis. From this point on, (about the fifty-page point) Leo’s recollection becomes a seamless chronological narrative, inevitably progressing from fascinating to gripping to utterly captivating. I read the last seventy or so pages in one sitting, and felt I was not in this time or space, but with Francis himself at the incredible close of the earthly phase of his life.

Unlike The Last Temptation of Christ, Saint Francis is much more biography than fiction. The main fiction Kazantzakis uses is making Brother Leo the constant companion to Saint Francis, and thus an eyewitness to all the miracles in his ministry. (In reality, although Leo was one of his first brothers and biographers, he did not accompany him on all the journeys.) Leo also conveys the irresistible charisma of Francis, and the contagiousness of his vision of abandoning all worldly desires to pursue and serve Jesus through boundless love for not just every person, but everything, with determined peace, and perfect simplicity.

This book is dangerous, in the same way the Gospel is dangerous:If you are satisfied with your spiritual life and want no challenges, don’t read this book, because it might blow you away.

Am I exaggerating? Soon after I began read Saint Francis, I seriously began to consider formally becoming a Franciscan. While I’ve since realized that I don’t have a Franciscan vocation, something of the spirit of St. Francis has stayed with me to this day, years after encountering this wonderful book.

Don’t read this book at all, unless you want to fall more deeply and passionately in love with Jesus Christ. But if you do, run to a rare bookstore or library and get it! And as Francis would say, may Peace and Good rain upon you.

The Alchemist

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a spiritual gem

With nearly two million copies sold around the world, this wonderful fable is becoming recognized for what it is—one of the truly great charmers of the late twentieth century. It’s like a surprisingly cool sea breeze coming over the desert in the evening. The innocence and charm of this fable are comparable to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but The Alchemist is more humorous, more spiritual, and wiser. This is the story of Santiago, a wanderlust shepherd boy in Spain, who decides to act upon a dream he has one night—of discovering a buried treasure at the Pyramids of Egypt.

Santiago’s journey is not easy, but his humility, faith, and simplicity are simply unshakable. In fact, he is so naïve (in the best way possible) that it does not seem to occur to him that he could be shaken. Reading it, I was reminded of something Søren Kierkegaard wrote regarding spiritual warfare:

One thing there is which all Satan’s cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise, and that is simplicity.

After Santiago has his dream, he is soon visited by Melchizedek, the mysterious King of Salem, who tells him that soon after someone embarks upon the path of their destiny, all the Universe conspires to help them, but only for a little while. Soon after embarking upon a trip to Africa, his money is gone and he must struggle, as almost all of us do, with precariously balancing his material needs against not losing sight of his dream and his destiny. I don’t want to give too much away, but Santiago does a much better job than most of us. He never confuses the good for the best, in spite of all temptations to fear, anger, hardships, contentment, pride in achievements, and other distractions that successfully derail most of us from pursuing our callings. Santiago’s weapons are not “determination,” but trust, not willpower, but fascination, and not strength, but wonder.

One of most poignant passages comes after Santiago leaves a comfortable oasis in Egypt, (and his new love) to attend to his dream once more. As he pauses in the desert, a horseman dressed in black rushes him, with a scimitar raised to kill. Instead of fleeing or or attempting to fight, Santiago bows his head for the blow, ready to accept even death as a gift of the adventure. His steadiness has become what St. Francis of Assisi called “perfect joy,” a joy that is totally independent of any kind of circumstance on earth, being rooted so strongly in faith.

The Alchemist is profoundly spiritual without being preachy in any way. Anyone who reads it will be impressed that this is a spiritual metaphor, an extended parable about searching for our true heart’s desire, the gold that lies buried within our own souls. It is interesting to compare this book with the more popular Celestine Prophecy. I see Coelho’s little gem as being everything the latter book should have been, but wasn’t.