November 3, 2019
In past essays I have highlighted a number of people who had dramatic moments of transformation, but there are also many whose transformations occurred through slow, steady, determined effort. Some of them also had very active lives in the world.
Abraham Lincoln
One of my favorite examples of gradual transformation is Abraham Lincoln. He also serves as a good illustration of someone who, rather than withdrawing from the world, underwent his profound transformation while engaged in the most intense in-the-world life that can be imagined. Lincoln’s journey began from a very low place: he had a painful early life and suffered major periods of depression for many years (almost succumbing to it numerous times—there is good evidence that more than once he contemplated and even attempted suicide). During his struggles, he became more and more conscious of what he was choosing—and why—finally making a profound choice to use whatever time and energy he had left to do something worthwhile for his country. Out of that conscious decision to focus on something besides his own difficulties came his ability to overcome the trials of the Civil War and ultimately to begin healing the wounds of the nation’s psyche. A hundred and fifty years later we still sense his inner struggles, sometimes by simply looking at pictures of his face, and realize that despite his own suffering, he was more and more able to focus his mind and heart on others and the ideals he had chosen.
We know this because, by the time he had led the Union for over 2 years in bloody Civil War (for which the felt a great responsibility for the terrible suffering and loss of life it was causing), he could still find within himself the words of inspiration of the Gettysburg Address, which some scholars believe was the defining document of the way “we the people” of the United States came to see and understand ourselves during the following century. Some of his words: “It is for us the living … to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. … to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. … We take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,” … so that “these dead shall not have died in vain;” that we “shall have a new birth of freedom,” and “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Again, it is crucial to recognize that Lincoln was able to do this while suffering the great internal pain the war was causing him, the death the year before of the person he likely loved the most (his eleven year of son Willie), a wife who was a constant source of distress, and constant, unbelievably harsh attacks from friends as well as foes. Through it all, he increasingly found an internal peace built on a lifetime of conscious effort and a spiritual connection that, although very different from the religion of his youth, nurtured his soul. Thus, in the Second Inaugural Address he could say, not long before the war ended:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a lasting peace among ourselves and with the world.”
The most remarkable thing about these words is that he clearly meant to “bind the wounds” not only of the side he was leading, but the wounds of all those he was fighting against as well. Few people in history, while still in the midst of battle, have been internally transformed to such a degree.
Not long thereafter, the war—which resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation that freed all slaves in the entire United Sates—came to an end. Lincoln’s healing vision of benevolence and magnanimity for all was now possible to implement. Although this vision was interrupted by his successors, he had paved the way for the long process of merging the warring parties back into one nation free of slavery. The two goals he had chosen for his life work were accomplished. On April 14, 1865 he said to his wife, after hearing the news that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered: “I consider this day the day the war has come to an end.” His life task had been completed. That night he was assassinated.
I like to believe that Lincoln died in peace, with a feeling that his incredible personal transformation had resulted in dramatic movement toward the bright future he envisioned for the nation he loved. Supporting this possibility is that, the night before the day on which he was shot, he had a dream from which he awoke refreshed, cheerful. It was the recurring dream that had visited him several times before, often just before great Union victories such as Antietam, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. In the dream he was on the deck of a phantom ship that was moving swiftly toward an indefinite shore, and his feelings in this dream were always very positive.
Nelson Mandela
The life of Nelson Mandela provides another example of gradual transformation. He was imprisoned as a young man because he opposed apartheid. That young man grew up with status within his tribe, so as he encountered the larger world, he chafed at the way he was being treated because he was black. His motives were clear: “It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one.” His anger led to the belief that violence was a suitable method to achieve his revolutionary aims.
But his transformation was not finished, not by a long shot. After twenty-seven years in prison, during which time he was isolated from family and friends, tortured, and mocked, he emerged a radically different man, preaching peace and reconciliation. Gradually he came to believe that, “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” In his words:
“It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity. … When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.”
How does one transcend anger and choose peace and forgiveness while undergoing horrible abuse? I am still trying to understand how he was able to do such a thing. But he did, through a deep spiritual realization, and he emerged from prison believing in the essential goodness of the human heart, despite all he had suffered. By being able to choose and implement this amazing transformation within himself, he set in motion the long process of healing the wounds of his divided nation, helping it take “the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
One criticism of Mandela over the years has been that he was too willing to see the good in other people, but he asserted that thinking well of others makes them better than they would otherwise be. And this attitude turned out to be crucial, for his generosity of heart toward his enemies allowed for a peaceful end to a terrible conflict, and has been a model ever since for attempts at reconciliation all over the world.
Henry David Thoreau
Inspired as a young man by the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau had a deep longing to experience the energy, clarity, and vitality that he sensed could come from implementing those ideas into his daily life, so he found a deserted spot by Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts, built a simple cabin for himself, and lived there for two years, two months, and two days. His stay involved a commitment to changing himself through living a simple life, spending lots of time in nature, reading, reflecting, and focusing on how to live a moral and spiritual life. As he articulated his purpose in Walden:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.”
Leaving behind many of the expectations of the crowd, he began to “follow his own drummer,” and in so doing he discovered:
“If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, and endeavor to live the life you can imagine, you will meet a success unexpected in common hours. You will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, laws will begin to establish themselves around and within you; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in your favor, and you will live with the license of a higher order of being. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”
One of the main lessons he learned is that in our ordinary consciousness we mostly perceive “petty fears and petty pleasures” which “are but the shadow of the reality. However: “When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,” And when we glimpse those great and worthy things, it is “exhilarating and sublime.”
Once having this glimpse, the expanded self sees that the ego has been organized around “petty fears and petty pleasures,” that it has been focused on the “shadow of reality.” With this understanding, and with sustained effort, the clouds in the mind begin to clear and we can see other possibilities sparkling and shining in the distance. If we will let ourselves open to these possibilities, the ego will realize that there is more to life than it has so far understood, and that it has the opportunity to commit to a goal larger than itself. Those who can do this will be able to experience with Thoreau that when our “vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.” In this expanded awareness, “It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.” We have then awakened “to a poetic or divine life.”
Experiencing this “poetic or divine life” is not an experience of the ego, however, but of a larger or higher self. Moving into this higher state means that a larger “I” has become the center of identity. The role of the ego in this is to recognize that there is a greater purpose to which it can commit its abilities—it can help shift our identify to this larger self. If your ego will accept that this goal is of great importance, it will help organize the whole of you in a way that will, more and more frequently, let you experience a state that is “exhilarating and sublime.”
Thoreau learned much during his time at Walden Pond, but he had many ups and downs after that, and his transformation continued throughout the rest of his life. This is how he thought about his journey: “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper.”
To drink deeper, we must “learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake by an infinite expectation of the dawn,” because we each have “the unquestionable ability” to “elevate our lives through a conscious endeavor”—through a sustained and determined effort. Thoreau continues:
“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which, we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
Thoreau was not saying this was easy; on the contrary, he knew just how hard it was. His advice was simply to remember that you have a choice about the direction in which you will move, starting from wherever you are now. You do not have a choice about what you did in the past, so it does little good to beat yourself up over past actions and decisions. (You can learn from them, but you cannot change them, so the healthy path is to learn what you can, accept, and move on.)
The thing you have the power to do right now is to choose to move toward the highest possibility you can envision and then do the best you can to go in that direction. You do not need to be perfect in this, which is a good thing, because if you expect perfection from yourself, it will be more a hindrance than a help. (Needless to say, expecting perfection from others is even more deadly, for what part of you but your ego, with all of its agendas, thinks that it knows what perfection is for others?) Therefore, the only demand to make on yourself is to make the best choices you can and then to pursue them with as much will and determination as you can muster.
If you feel discouragement along the way, just keep doing the best you can. As T. S. Eliot said in the Four Quartets: “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” The encouraging and humbling fact is that you cannot judge how far you have progressed, nor how far you have to go, for such judgments come from the ego’s perspective, and the ego does know much of anything about this journey. No matter how much discouragement the ego might feel, at this very moment you might be on the cusp of a great breakthrough, a great realization, so just keeping going. All the great wisdom figures had moments of crises—even deep despair. They persevered; so can you. What the outcome will be you do not know; just go on. The outcome will take care of itself. I think this is what Thoreau had in mind when he wrote these words in his journal (part of which he used in his book):
“I do not say that John or Jonathan, that this generation or the next, will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn.” Now that could be the anthem for anyone seeking transformation.
Emily Dickinson
Emily was born into a prominent family in Amherst, Massachusetts, lived a quiet life, and in her last fifteen years did not leave her parents’ home. But inwardly she was growing and transforming, rejecting the religion and other early enculturations she had been given. As her spirit soared, her poems depict a person gloriously free, but at the same time someone in the midst of a growing and profound spiritual experience, a person who was feeling intimacy with the Divine. Her poems convey a sense of freedom, confidence, and a deep knowledge of truths far beyond what she had been taught. Through her radical inward freedom she ultimately delivered a profound message to millions of readers, and through her transformation a new style of poetry emerged. But Emily’s words themselves speak of this much better than anything I can say:
BUTTERFLY
My cocoon tightens,
I’m feeling for the air;
A dim capacity for wings
Degrades the dress I wear.
So I must baffle at the hint
And cipher at the sign,
And make much blunder, if at last
I take the clew divine.
From other poems
I’m ceded—I’ve stopped being Theirs—
The name They dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I’ve finished threading—too—
Baptized, before, without the choice,
But this time, consciously, of Grace—
…. Called to my full ….
Existence’s whole Arc, filled up,
… My second Rank—too small the first—
… A half unconscious Queen—
But this time—Adequate—Erect,
With Will to choose, or to reject,
And I choose, just a Crown—
Each Life Converges to some Centre—
Expressed—or still—
Exists in every Human Nature
A Goal—
Embodied scarcely to itself—it may be—
… Adored with caution
To reach
Were hopeless, as the Rainbow’s Raiment
To touch—
Yet persevered toward—sure—
Reflection: If you would like to have the benefits of transformation in your life, what practices might you adopt, or increase? What do you need to let go of? Can you be open to the possibility of transformation, noticing the “hints” and “signs” that offer guidance, both past and present?
Have a good week,
David