The title of today’s reflection hit me with a certain amount of horror! “Whoa,” I thought. “I never considered disillusionment as a gift.” Sometimes, I think I should just quit reading. I should quit hanging out with thoughtful, interesting people. I should just associate with guys who watch and talk about sports all day long. That way, my understandings of myself and my life would not have to be challenged. I would not have to change. What a relief!
But no, I keep reading and interacting with interesting people. And it happened again. A group with whom I am involved is currently engaged with Parker Palmer’s book, The Active Life. I have confessed to liking Palmer. In fact, I have tried to hire him to teach a couple times. But good people are hard to entice. They always have options.
I suppose his book could be summarized as a look at how people who live the active life can also share some of the benefits of the contemplative life. But it is the contemplative aspect that recently caught my attention. I have read a good bit of contemplative spiritual literature. But I have never run into the point Palmer was making---or at least, I never heard it put quite like this.
He has a helpful line when he says, “the function of contemplation in all its forms is to penetrate illusion and help us touch reality.” Fair enough. That is not a novel thought. Many contemplatives write about getting in touch with reality. That seems easy enough to most of us. In fact, I suspect most of us would say we are grounded in reality. I don’t know many folks who would say, “sure, I am living an unreal life; it is much more preferable to reality.”
So I am reading along in Palmer…thinking, “yeah, I know this stuff!” And then comes his sneaky phrase: “Contemplation is difficult for many of us because we have invested so much in illusion.” That makes illusion sound like a banking option!
He is sneaky because he begins to call illusion what so many of us call reality! For example, he suggests we consider “the illusion that violence solves problems, that both rich and poor deserve their fate, etc.” It is at this point I begin to get a little nervous with my confidence that I know what is illusion and what is real.
Palmer’s sneakiness continues because he does not lay a bunch of highly spiritual disciplines on us so that we can distinguish illusion and reality. Instead, he opts for what he calls “moments of unintentional contemplation.” Typically, these are gifts. And one gift he identifies is the gift of disillusionment. A friend betrays us and a vision turns out to be a hoax are two he cites. We are disillusioned. And he calls this a gift.
To be disillusioned is “to be stripped of some illusions about life, about others, about ourselves.” It is precisely at this point that I am had! I realize that our culture tends to talk about disillusion as disappointment, failure, or depression. We do not see it as the beginning of truth. It is the beginning of truth because we are now being placed in reality. The illusion is un-reality.
I don’t have a better way of explaining what this feels like to me, except to say it feels like unlearning. And this is Palmer’s aim. He wants me to see that I and my culture spend so much time spinning the illusion that it becomes “real.” If I “see” myself as perfect, then I begin to act like a perfectionist. And so the spin goes.
I admit I am only beginning to adjust to the idea of disillusionment being a gift. I hope it is not like Christmas---many gifts at once from many different people! If disillusionment is a gift, I need them one at a time. And I need time to hear, to process, to cry, and then begin to accept. I have already accepted I am not perfect.
So I guess I can take another “gift.” Thank you, Parker Palmer, for preparing me for gifts I would never have asked for. And I cannot be spiritual any other way. It has to be real.
But no, I keep reading and interacting with interesting people. And it happened again. A group with whom I am involved is currently engaged with Parker Palmer’s book, The Active Life. I have confessed to liking Palmer. In fact, I have tried to hire him to teach a couple times. But good people are hard to entice. They always have options.
I suppose his book could be summarized as a look at how people who live the active life can also share some of the benefits of the contemplative life. But it is the contemplative aspect that recently caught my attention. I have read a good bit of contemplative spiritual literature. But I have never run into the point Palmer was making---or at least, I never heard it put quite like this.
He has a helpful line when he says, “the function of contemplation in all its forms is to penetrate illusion and help us touch reality.” Fair enough. That is not a novel thought. Many contemplatives write about getting in touch with reality. That seems easy enough to most of us. In fact, I suspect most of us would say we are grounded in reality. I don’t know many folks who would say, “sure, I am living an unreal life; it is much more preferable to reality.”
So I am reading along in Palmer…thinking, “yeah, I know this stuff!” And then comes his sneaky phrase: “Contemplation is difficult for many of us because we have invested so much in illusion.” That makes illusion sound like a banking option!
He is sneaky because he begins to call illusion what so many of us call reality! For example, he suggests we consider “the illusion that violence solves problems, that both rich and poor deserve their fate, etc.” It is at this point I begin to get a little nervous with my confidence that I know what is illusion and what is real.
Palmer’s sneakiness continues because he does not lay a bunch of highly spiritual disciplines on us so that we can distinguish illusion and reality. Instead, he opts for what he calls “moments of unintentional contemplation.” Typically, these are gifts. And one gift he identifies is the gift of disillusionment. A friend betrays us and a vision turns out to be a hoax are two he cites. We are disillusioned. And he calls this a gift.
To be disillusioned is “to be stripped of some illusions about life, about others, about ourselves.” It is precisely at this point that I am had! I realize that our culture tends to talk about disillusion as disappointment, failure, or depression. We do not see it as the beginning of truth. It is the beginning of truth because we are now being placed in reality. The illusion is un-reality.
I don’t have a better way of explaining what this feels like to me, except to say it feels like unlearning. And this is Palmer’s aim. He wants me to see that I and my culture spend so much time spinning the illusion that it becomes “real.” If I “see” myself as perfect, then I begin to act like a perfectionist. And so the spin goes.
I admit I am only beginning to adjust to the idea of disillusionment being a gift. I hope it is not like Christmas---many gifts at once from many different people! If disillusionment is a gift, I need them one at a time. And I need time to hear, to process, to cry, and then begin to accept. I have already accepted I am not perfect.
So I guess I can take another “gift.” Thank you, Parker Palmer, for preparing me for gifts I would never have asked for. And I cannot be spiritual any other way. It has to be real.
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