Analogue 34: Discerning Progress & Stasis

 

ANALOGUE 34

Discerning Progress and Stasis

A donkey turning a millstone walks a hundred miles, but in the end, it finds itself back at the same place it started. There are humans who likewise travel hither and yon, but who have made no progress anywhere. When darkness falls they cannot discern a city from a village, artifacts from nature, a lower power from a higher power. These wretched ones have labored in vain.

SYNOPSIS

• Images of progression or stalemate.
• The work or labor of human beings. 
• Business-as-usual as a distraction and the condition of going nowhere. 
• What is the purpose of being here? What work is to be accomplished?
• Another take on Ecclesiastes, the fruitlessness and pointlessness of it all — or is it?
• Discernment as a key feature of spiritual understanding. 
• Perennial Wisdom vs. Existential Wisdom and the hermeneutics of suspicion. Early deconstruction and a positive sense of understanding. 

COMMENTARY

Early Sophistication

From a modern perspective and our own philosophical sensibilities, this is a very sophisticated text. It is in fact a critique of human culture, part of the wisdom tradition’s analysis of the world as we experience it. It is philosophically deconstructive and existentialist at the same moment. It seeks to put human affairs and our social systems in a new light, a perspective from a higher order, aware of the inability of a lower order of consciousness to make these judgments or discernments about the true nature of reality or the ultimate meaning of human activity. 

In contemporary life we talk about forward progress and its opposite, simply spinning our wheels. We also know that there is a distinction between enlightenment and ignorance, though we typically have difficulty distinguishing these within ourselves. The author of the Gospel of Philip understands the nature of the human condition and how we go round and round in our affairs and the business of life. He speaks of the awareness that with all of our “progress,” we have virtually gone nowhere in advancing the condition of the soul.  We may have fed ourselves and our family and kept civilization going, but this has brought us no nearer to true freedom from the tyranny of our primitive social agendas or just the will to survive. This analogue gives us deep insight into a great tragedy at the heart of human affairs. We are constantly distracting ourselves and, in truth, going nowhere, discerning nothing, and like the text of the ancient wisdom text of Ecclesiastes, in the end, what we have done has all been in vain—vanity, vanity, it is all meaningless and empty—a deep discernment concerning human outcomes. 

Distractions

As human beings we fill our days and nights with distractions and activities, trying to avoid boredom or to keep up with our neighbors. Stepping back and looking at these issues from the perspective of heaven, however, our affairs are like a donkey turning a mill: though useful on one level, there has been no advancement or discernment on another. The plodding monotony of habituated actions typifies a world that simply domesticates the animal’s energies, using it only for mundane purposes, however benign those may be. 

Our social systems are typically oriented toward business in order to sustain our lives in human society. We are focused on pleasure and the accumulation of wealth. We fill our days and nights with the pursuit of creature comforts based on a narrow view of who we are. This becomes the main focus and meaning of life. We go round and round, never stopping in our efforts to satisfy our constant cravings or to consider why we are doing what we are doing. Yes, perhaps our activities produce bread to eat for survival, but we fail to see, as Yeshua said, that “man does not live by bread alone.” (Mathew 4:4) The circling donkey is the perfect metaphor for that condition and takes it a step further to describe what the results are for human beings in terms of cognitive and spiritual blindness.  

Discernment in the Darkness

The issue is the ability to discern and to see, especially when darkness falls. Can human beings detect the higher and the lower realities? In darkness, can we discern the greater from the lesser? Can we make that judgment as we pass through the vicissitudes of life? Or have we spent our entire existence in a state of blindness that brings us no further toward our destiny, living lives of fruitless labor?

In our world, busyness is often used as the proof of productivity, but if the labor is pointless and empty, then the product is also of little value, at least from the perspectives of higher reality. Discernment of the surface structures of human activity from its depth appears to be key, and discernment of this kind is ultimately the test of enlightenment. 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. How do you relate to this metaphor and its images? Do you find this analogue helpful or troubling? 
2. How does this text relate to your own experience of modern society, to its values and goals?
3. What have been those experiences that leave you going round and round in life? Who or what makes that happen?
4. Where have you traveled and how far have you gone on your spiritual journey? Have parts of it been circular? How do you know that? 
5. How would you counsel yourself or anyone else who seems to be stuck on a treadmill of some kind, repeating the same behaviors over and over for meaningless reasons?
6. In your view, how and why does society create or condone this activity?
7. What discernment is needed, especially in times of great darkness either personally or in the world? Do you have adapted eyes that in some significant way can see in the dark? What gives you discernment, allowing you to step back and really see what is going on? 
8. Do you feel hopeless or hopeful as a result of studying this Analogue?

Notes for Reference and Further Study. 

1. Every living thing takes in nourishment in order to survive. Almost always we think of food in a physical sense which we clearly need to go on living. We are, however, multi-dimensional beings with many aspects and elements within us—body, soul, and spirit. Each of these needs its own particular form of nourishment, each having alternatives that will either support flourishing or produce diminished health. We spend time preparing physical food to sustain the body, but we typically do not think of our soul’s health or even more our spiritual well-being (these two, soul and spirit, being carefully distinguished in the sacred traditions) in this way. However, as we come awake, these latter two come into greater prominence, and we begin to attend to our health on these levels for our complete well being. We are aware that to be mentally and psychologically healthy we need many kinds of “food.” Abraham Maslow built a psychological profile for a whole human being based upon a hierarchy of human needs.(If you are not aware of his pyramid, do an internet search and begin by understanding his model). The realm of the Spirit is even greater and more extensive than either of the physical or the psychological realms. It is extensive, transcendent and eternal. Yeshua taught that we needed the “bread of heaven,” an acknowledgement that we need to be fed the food of Transcendence. The diet in this realm is a feast of Perennial Wisdom, and it is ancient as well as new. You might begin by being fed from the spiritual sources of one particular sacred tradition, later perhaps extending to sample and include others as well. You can deepen your feeding by receiving from sources that are mystical, metaphysical and kardial. To understand something of this, you might explore Living Presence by Kabir Helminski (a Sufi teacher), Richard Rohr’s Everything Belongs, New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton (both Christian), and/or Buddhist Pema Chodron’s Start Where You Are or Comfortable With Uncertainty. 
2. Discernment describes a form of knowing that can exist beyond the rational mind, an inner sight we may experience when we are feeling blinded by life.We have not only the physical eyes in our heads, we have as well what the wisdom tradition describes as the “eyes of the heart,” belonging to another form of cognition altogether. Learning to use those eyes and other kardial senses creates a form of discernment or an awareness beyond the physical senses or the rational mind. Developing these kardial awarenesses involves intuitive cognition, analogical imagination, and attuned intunement—each of these are capabilities of the heart’s intelligence, allowing us knowledge through discernment. These skills and abilities are initiated and honed through spiritual practice of contemplation which, like any other exercise, is best done on a regular basis. 

Notes for the Translation

1. The word ‘travel’ could also be translated as ‘journey’.
2. The list of items which cannot be discerned may be in contrast to one another, as is translated here, or simply a list of which none can be seen after darkness falls. 
3. The phrase about a lower power distinct from a higher power translates a Coptic phrase which simply says “power from an angel.” Higher and lower is implied by the use of these two terms and so is translated in a way that will make it more clear.