Duality, Self and Order

Most of the time when I write anything, it seems to me that it is only myself who understands it, and even then I wonder whether there is any coherence at all. So, it is the case now. I am still struggling with these thoughts that find themselves rummaging in my mind and causing all kinds of firings and misfirings on a daily basis. So if you do find yourself somehow reading this, have patience.

I only speak for myself when I say that I am experiencing a kind of duality in my mind. I don’t believe that the duality is of Manichean species. My understanding of who God is (however extremely partial) is not disordered and I don’t think it deviates from the order of things. I firmly believe (I think that it is a spiritual and intellectual fact) that order of things exists and on top of that order is God. Period. This is something that I am not willing to negotiate simply because God’s existence is non-negotiable.

The duality that I am experiencing is of existential kind. And even within that one duality, there are many more but in this case, I will only focus on one. I am thrown into a universe that is “post-modern” and that relies on the exploration of one’s “I.” For someone who reads the medievals regularly and spends her time trying to understand the Church Fathers, I am conflicted between the lack of “I” (known to us today) in these works. And yet I am a “product,” or better yet, a traveler of today and I cannot suddenly immerse myself into the naïve or stubborn anachronism.

(Although, Saint Augustine has a deep sense of developing personhood, more so than any other early Christian theologian and philosopher. I am just throwing that fact out there.).

I don’t want to sit here and tell myself or others that we need to live like medievals; that would impossible and quite frankly silly. But I cannot deny the ordering of the mind that these people have experienced that we can see through the writings. Middle Ages are hardly the Dark Ages.

The experience of “existentialism” (the kind that we see in Camus, or might I be bold and recommend Kierkegaard in this grouping as well) is strong in my mind. It fuels the “divine madness” that is present within me, something that must be accepted. I walk between two worlds: one that contains the Faith in the Divine Mind, another that is slightly off-chord. And yet, I don’t think that they are that separate. In this world of “existentialism,” I find that I ask questions that are connected to art and find myself slightly “mad.” Faith in God centers me but it is not some warm and fuzzy feeling. I think that this is what it means when we say that God has no time; that God is unchanging. The point is that even if I tend to move my mind into the universe that is labyrinthine, and at first glance, disordered, the “I” that I inhabit is STILL moving towards the “Yes” of life. The will to be.

If any one of us read Camus, who writes about the hollowness of human despair, or Kierkegaard who chose to tackle dread, we know that these two great minds, moved their being towards something, which is higher than themselves.

Faith is a tough “thing.” It is always accompanied by doubt. And let us not forget those days of darkness. One only has to think about Georges Bernanos’ work “Diary of a Country Priest” (brilliantly made into the film by Robert Bresson). To me, this work is a perfect manifestation of someone who wants to know the answer to that question “who am I?” Who is this person that I am faced with every day of my life? Am I taking a true and “sincere inventory” of my life? Are there layers to this “I” and which “I” am I experiencing day to day? And yet, the priest in all of his existential knots that have him tied, still looks up to God. The priest still gets on his knees and prays. In all of his uneasiness and “European anxiety”, the priest is still committing himself to the act of being.

These questions that I mention above have the potential of becoming neurotic. And if they do, that is when we know that we have left the realm of possibility of being, and are being governed by the excess of ego. So, balance in questioning is something that we ought to pay attention to.

These questions are important to ask. Well, at least for me, they are.