15 The Hermit must be Fearless
Today we are going to look at the relationship the hermit has to God and to the life of God within him. The first thing we should notice is that the hermit has this relationship, and that is remarkable in itself, because most people actually don’t, they seek not love or truth, but pleasure and security. Most people are looking to protect themselves from the uncertainties of life, but when you are responding to this call to give birth to God, then you have to be looking at self-deliverance as a first step in that journey. I feel that life can only find fulfilment when this becomes a reality in our lives, this is what all life is coming to, it’s the meaning of creation, which is why the Incarnation itself is so important, but it doesn’t end at the historical Incarnation in the person of Jesus, to understand the Incarnation, we need to see the importance of giving birth to God, to truth, to love, now in our own lives.
The hermit is most interested in seeing an end to suffering and an end to fear, so I feel if we can look at this, just to see how fear arises, in relationship to what it arises, and how it continues, if we can see the whole structure of it and how unnecessary it all is, then maybe we can bring it to an end. When you are full of fear then there is no place where love can abide in your life. In his first letter St. John says: ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear’ (John 4:18), but it also works the other way round, and if you are full of fear that casts out love so I think it’s very important that we get to the bottom of this.
When we’re thinking about fear then we should distinguish between psychological and physical fear; the latter is a good and appropriate response in the face of present danger. If you’re walking in the woods and you come across a wild animal you get a shot of adrenalin and hopefully you are able to deal with the situation. But psychological fear is not of that kind at all. Psychological fear always exists in regard to the unknown. The mind is the organ of self-security, and in and of itself it is performing a vital function in life, which is to maintain the integrity of the organism. This is obviously necessary, but if it’s not kept within strict limits then we end up sacrificing life itself, in any meaningful sense of the term, in order to secure ourselves from any pain or disturbance. Psychological fear is a construction of thought, and we can put an end to it, because we are responsible for it; and I feel we need to take responsibility for it, because we fear not reality but a projection or a shadow, so in the end what we fear is our selves, and it’s a self-perpetuating trap.
We fear anything that is unknown, precisely because it is unknown, because we are not able to control it, we have no power over it, and therefore it is, at least potentially, dangerous. First of all we fear the present, meaning the present moment of living, because it contains so many unknown factors, therefore we are always trying to understand the present in terms of the past, we are interpreting the present moment trying to make it conform to a pattern which is known, but in doing so we miss the uniqueness of what is before us, and we miss the beauty of it also because we are not attentive to what is there, it’s as though we were always seeing with double vision, there’s the reality of the moment and superimposed over it the shadow of the past.
The other thing we fear is God, who is by definition unknowable, and I’m sorry to say that religion, for the most part, is simply an attempt to bring the unknowable into the realm of the known, where it can be made safe. Most of what we’re pleased to call ‘religious’ practice consists of no more than the self-seeking to control the most unknown and incomprehensible factor of all, which is God. No one can see God and live (Exodus 55:19ff), as Moses was told; for the self to come face to face with God means death to the self. In the light of the truth about self the darkness of self passes away. Fear is the very movement of self, because it is the movement of the past looking for security and conditioned by pleasure and pain. To cast out fear is to cast out the self and its accumulations, which really keeps us from fulfilling our call to holiness. To be empty of self is to have made room for God, which is why faith is so important. Faith – which is not belief – enables us to live our lives with some degree of openness. If you trust in God and His creation then there is no need to live in fear.