Esteemed Reader

Esteemed Reader of Our Magazine:

Love of mankind, altruism, are all very fine words, but they only have meaning when a man is able, of his own choice and of his own decision, to love or not to love, to be an altruist or an egoist.
—G.I. Gurdjieff

I have been thinking about war. About how ubiquitous and constant it is. About how frequently I wage it. It is said that each unit of humanity, each person, is a microcosm of the whole, a small world. Which is to say that you and I, who are ourselves cells in the great body of humanity, reflect what is happening in the whole. So the wars out there are identical to the wars in here.

It was just the other day that I became angry with a beloved friend, one even who shares my roof. The reaction was in regard to a disputed phone bill and who owed for what calls. Games were played—archaic, vestigial patterns revealed. We duked it out over the minutia of dialings—to Rhode Island, to California, even one to Iran (but I knew that was mine). So much was revealed in that fight, of my tendency to violence (albeit internal) and my eagerness to hide my weakness behind blame of another.

In the end my housemate and I agreed that the phone bill had become an excuse to battle over useless hillocks, to assert claim to piles of decaying matter; namely pride, vanity and an insidious inability to yield. Ironically, and predictably, the harmony gained through the adversity of our disagreement added what I sense will be a permanent richness to our relating.

How often do these events arise—these situations that ruffle our feathers, raise our hackles, cause us to tense and prepare for a fight? All the time? So it is understandable that nations and their leaders would do it in the large scale, in the macrocosm of “international relations”—particularly when the leaders are unscrupulous criminals with no urge to introspection, self-understanding or harmony.

Nevertheless, in light of the view of ourselves as microcosms, the notion that “peace begins at home” gains new significance. It is not simply that our apparent actions are significant, but looking more deeply, it is the convoluted multiplicitous conflicts within us that are that much more revealing. For we are not one being, as the unity of the bodily organism would suggest. We are many. And there are hordes of characters within each of us. Invading armies, innocent civilian casualties, deluded despots, petty tyrants, even altruist founders of leagues of nations.

We are many. This is what I have observed. There is an “I” that wants harmony; that sees the value of “getting along.” And there is another that can’t seem to resist picking a fight. There is an “I” that is generous, and another that is stingy. “I” want to be healthy and “I” equally want to imbibe large quantities of Caramel Macchiato®. Unfortunately these many “I”s have never been formally introduced. Equally (unfortunately) they change places quite secretly. What keeps them in place is the insistent claim that “I am one,” and the pride that follows to defend it.

So the home where the peace that begins isn’t my house. Or perhaps it is—in a deeper, or metaphorical sense. It is the “house” of my being, where the many “I”s reside, each like a king-for-a-day, like a cock on a dunghill proclaiming its dominion, only to be vanquished—knocked aside and forgotten—the next time the territory changes hands. As long as this conflict goes on in me, the conflict will extend to my relationships with others. And as long as we faithfully remain conflicted with one another, so too will the main of humanity be in conflict with itself.

How is peace brought to this inner land of interminable conflict (and by extension to the small—though terribly important—interactions we have with others; and by extension to the collective life of humanity)? An etymological inspection of the word human yields an interesting clue. It comes from the Latin humus, earth, and has the same root as humility—to be “of the earth.” Earth—humus—is a hugely fertile medium which gives rise to life. It is comprised of all the decomposed bodies that came before.

And this is precisely what can happen with the many “I”s. They can be introduced to one another, their barriers broken down through voluntary suffering. The many “I”s within each of us can be seen for what they are: fictitious, non-existent characters staking an unwarranted claim on the most precious of our endowments—identity itself. Finally, the power and energy that was being wasted through their counterproductive activity can be made available to something prior, authentic and whole.

The many “I”s can be introduced to one another, can become related, rendered to produce an inner medium from which harmonious new life can spring. As long as we are at odds with ourselves we are at odds with the world. As long as we are at odds with the world, the world is at odds with itself.

To bring about this harmony requires, what? Perhaps humor (same root also); and willingness to yield—to “stand down” in the face of the things that irritate. (The violence that follows internal eruptions of negative emotion serves nothing but destruction.) And it requires us to be humble, open, and face that which violates, not with fear or aggression (flight or fight), but with a resilient openness premised upon an understanding of ourselves and our reconcilable multiplicity.
A man went to the Afghan saint, Wahab Imri, and said:

“Teach me humility.”

Wahab answered:

“I cannot do that, because humility is a teacher in itself. It is learnt by means of its practice. If you cannot practice it, you cannot learn it. If you cannot learn it, you do not really want to learn it inwardly at all.”

—Jason Stern