The Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, known as Buddha, used to say: “Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life”. Unfortunately post-modern man and woman have found themselves caught up in a materialistic vacuum that literally swept from their consciousness any appeal for the Transcendent. In this day and age a war has been waged against the human person’s interiority. The leading three enemies that continuously erode spiritual life are narcissism, pragmatism and unbridled restlessness.
Narcissism is an extreme self-preoccupation. Pragmatism is an extreme accentuation on work, achievement and the everyday worries of life. Restlessness is an extreme greed for experience, another kind of overeating in terms of one trying to consume all life’s experiences. All these three diseases of the spirit bring with them their unwanted guests. For instance narcissism causes heartaches, pragmatism headaches and restlessness insomnia. Taken as a whole, these three diseases show that we are so constantly self-absorbed in our heartaches, headaches and greed for experience that hardly do we realise the dire need to find both the time and space to be in touch with what is occurring deep down inside and around us.
According to Thomas Merton the biggest spiritual hindrance of our time lies with efficiency, work and pragmatism. We are too focused and taken up by what we do. Neil Postman criticises our culture for dragging us into an uncontrolled amusement to the point of falling prey to our witless superficiality. In the view of Henri Nouwen our greed for experience and the restlessness, hostility, and fantasy it brings about, impedes solitude, hospitality and prayer from taking root in our lives.
The common message which these writers are conveying to us is that we are distracting ourselves into spiritual void. The question is not that we are hostile to God, depth and spirit. The issue is that we are too concerned with things which are less important in life’s list of priorities. We tend to be more busy than bad, more distracted than non-spiritual, and more attracted to the movie theatres, sports stadia, shopping centres and the illusory life they project on our consumeristic psyche than we are in church.
Pathological busyness, distraction and restlessness are principal barriers for our spiritual lives. As John Owen put it, “the vigour and power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on our mortification of deeds of the flesh”. Undoubtedly, narcissism, pragmatism and unbridled restlessness are deeds of the flesh since in themselves they are vanities and lead to utter spiritual and human destruction. “Vanity of vanities, ... all is vanity” (Qoh 5, 10).
Perhaps it is prime time to reconsider what the Bible teaches us in this regard. In the book of Deuteronomy we read: “And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. (Deut 8, 3). On its own, the mouth of man produces narcissism, pragmatism and unbridled restlessness. On the other hand, God’s mouth suggests solitude, hospitality and prayer. Is it not wise to pause for a while and listen to everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord?
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
San Gwann