the posture of being

"We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects but endless fire."

I just finished Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow the other day. It's a good story with a dramatically beautiful ending. In short it's about a 50 year old millionaire who has never truly understood himself, and in the midst of a last suicidal identity crisis sets out for the remote African interior in hopes of "bursting his spirit's sleep". He claims that he is sick of becoming, and wants to simply 'be', and is convinced that if it doesn't happen in this excursion he'll die before his spirit ever wakes. I think most of us could relate.

A lot of things in my life have pointed me toward the idea of 'being' lately. A few months back I tried to read a book entitled 'Being and Time' by Martin Heidegger. It took me about 100 pages to realize that I got lost on page 40, where I proceeded to shelve it. I hope to get back to it before I'm 50, maybe I'll find the time for it to make sense. It was a ground breaking book that marked the emergence of existentialism from the shadows of phenomenology, which is why it required far more intense attention than I was able to give it. The basic idea, before I got so terribly lost in the intricasies of his argment, is that human being is inevitably unified with the perception of time. Another way to say it, our concept of 'existence' is inseperable to our concept of time, and both of these precede our ability to discern our 'essence'. Existence precedes essence. Therefore we exist before we are, or "being" hinges on "existing". And existing according to Heidegger is only understood inasmuch as one understands 'time'. Thus existentialsm began to unfold for the next few decades until it too became eclipsed by many of the newer postmodern philosophies after the 1960's. The great existential questions of death and suffering, as well as those of meaning and connectedness arose. Before getting lost in phenomenological subleties, I saw Heideggers point as saying that our essence (Being) is trapped within the Western concept of linear time. We can only say what we "are" in relation to what we have "been", with our eyes set on what we are becoming.

Ahh, becoming. How sick all of us are of becoming, as Bellow's Henderson points out so vividly in the book. It seems so plain that Western society as a whole is tormented by the concept of lack. We are always incomplete, always waiting for wholeness. Always driven to the desperate pursuit of that which will let us 'be' rather than continually 'become'. It strikes me as an illness . . one which other societies don't seem to be so tormented by. And it seems that we are prepetually reminded of this, our imperfection. Consumer society lives by it. Materialism is a sponge with vinegar held to the mouth of a society crucified by guilt at the thought of its own lack. We buy cars and clothes and the latest technology to serve as a pathetic cover up, as fig leaves, for the shame of our fractured reality. We are insecure. On an existential level we are terrified by the thought of the meaninglessness of our own existence. We cringe in the face of death, as the loss of time, the loss of meaning, the resulting lack of essence or being. This is a fair summary of the continuing state of Western intellectual culture.

And from here I could take hundreds of lines of thought, based on which questions we could ask from there, but I want to talk about being. Existentialism, as well as other lines of philosophy, moved on from there. There have been plenty of answers offered that to one extent or another, offered some possible answers to the crisis of existence as well as essence. No doubt, there are hundreds of dogmatic answers provided by various religions, Christianity possibly more than all.

I think one possible answer to the problem of being, is a different understanding of being. I see being simply as an extension of one's attitude.

Attitude: comes from the Latin 'aptus' meaning 'fitness', also employed in our word aptitude, like an aptitude (ability) test. 'Aptus', was adopted in French for the word 'attitudine' which refered to one's posture which they saw as an indicator of a person's fitness. Then English came up with attitude, referring to one's mental posture. What about mental fitness? Hmmm.

In Eastern thought posture is a good indicator of 'being'. Take for instance the glorious example of Kung Fu, not so much the cheesy movies as the actual martial art. Kung Fu trains people to take on the style of various animals. Students can spend years simply learning the "posture" of whichever animal they are emulating. In their eyes they essentially "become" the animal they are fighting as, their posture as a bear, or a monkey determines what they are, how they move, how they think and react. I thought this a joke until I once had to spar with someone who had a basic knowledge of a couple of Kung Fu styles and he beat the crap out of me.

Yoga is another Eastern example. In Yoga, one empties the mind while assuming the posture of various mythic or natural realities. In a sense yoga arrose as a means of acting out the local mythology, and many believed that as they performed yoga routines the myths were actually happening in them. In assuming the mountain pose, one actually was the referred to mountain. Based on the position they were in, their existence, their being changed.

Perhaps it is not altogether different for us in the West. Even if we do so in reference to the position of our mind or our spirit, it is this posture within us that determines what we "are". Perhaps we too often listen when people speak of us as a lovely tiny gold object, and let that determine our being, when in reality we have all the potential to burn like an endless fire. It is our choice how to live regardless of what other people see, we choose the position, the attitude by which our essence is determined. We do so in the midst of existence, of time, however we manage to conceive it.

(spoiler warning)
In the book, Henderson, the true Westerner: culturally insensitive, blunt, and irreverent, stumbles through Africa into the palace of a king, who perceives the depth and possibility of his character. The king sees a becomer, and sees the heart that wants to be. Henderson wants life and life abundantly. Henderson reveals that he had been a pig farmer, and the king sees one who has taken on the qualities of a pig. And the world too has seen this, and called him as such. He has offended everyone he could. He has suffered, and wallowed in this suffering. He has worn his pain like mud and then spread it on everything in sight. Henderson is enamored with the character of this king who in essence is full of grace and power, but who declares that he too is a becomer. He is not yet a full king, and is waiting for his opportunity to become. He reveals that he had captured a lion which he kept in a den below his castle, and that his study of this lion had allowed him to take on its traits. He forces Henderson to do the same. To crouch and roar and attempt to move gracefully. He attempts to show him how to take on the attitude of a lion, but Henderson is trapped in traits of the pigs he had emulated for far to long. He is entrapped by his sufferings, he is in the posture of a pig and all he knows to do is to ruin all aesthetics and wallow in their loss.

In the end he leaves Africa still under the burden of feeling more like a pig than a lion. In essence Henderson has none of the grace of a lion, only a physical and spiritual power that shares its resemblence. He somehow knows that his friend the king would not have wasted his time with a pig. The experience of Africa jogs his memory, and he recalls that his first experience with an animal was much earlier. He had run away and worked at a carnival, where he did a show with a tamed bear: powerful, but with a body that absorbed the abuse life inflicted rather than gracefully dodging it. Henderson finds himself, freed from what others had thought and he too had believed. Fifty years old and finds himself homebound with a clean white canvas in front of him. He has finally come to "be"; his attitude has shaken off the posture of a pig, and found internally the posture of a kind and fearsome bear.

And I can't help but think of myself in Henderson's shoes, continually looking outwards to know internally what is already there, asleep, aching to come to life. It can all seem so desperate sometimes, the quest to find that missing piece that will make me whole. But are we ever whole? Wouldn't wholeness make us God? Instead maybe "wholeness" is not a state or achievement, but instead, an attitude. And I wonder in all this if maybe that is what is infinitely unique about Jesus. Perhaps he lived out the posture of fullness. He was sinless in that he took on the attitude of wholeness, he refused to carry the weight of 'lack' on his shoulders. Quite a statement considering he spent his whole life bellow the poverty line. In so far as I have ever assumed to be a Christian, this is what I realize that I have intended: I'll never be perfect, for God alone is perfect. I'll never be orthodox, for I deny there is one correct means to worship. I'll never be moral enough, learned enough, obedient enough, or disciplined enough to be worthy of 'being' perfect . . . and I doubt that's what Jesus or God would ever want of me. I think rather, my spirit awoke in the peace of knowing that in my love for Jesus, awkward as that relationship may be, I have seen past the golden facade, and more than 'becoming' I 'am' him inside, proceding outward.