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February 2002 Volume IV, Number 4
The Best of The Symposium: Reader Favorites from Years Past
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A Christmas Carol
Faith and Doubt at 40 Below
Living on the Rim
Terror at 0.0 Feet
Inventory of a Room
God at the Edge: A Conversation with Niles Goldstein
I Am Not Jacques Cousteau
Holding Breaths
Haiku
Relief
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Faith And Doubt at 40 Below (top)
August Turak This article was originally published in our April 1999 issue It seemed like a typical first meeting of a new year for the Self Knowledge Symposium. A room full of college students rigidly looking around at each other uncomfortably, nobody willing to be the first one to speak up. So as I often do, I started around the room asking each person why he or she had come. As the first student shyly told me he was "curious," I winced. I knew from experience that I was now in for a string of "curious" replies owing to the human tendency to seize on a pattern. It always mildly amuses me to watch so many self-proclaimed non-conformists so quickly line up behind a "safe" answer to the gentlest question I can ask. And so it went until I was fully half way around the room. And then I came to him. He was a healthy, well-built guy, and I could see that he was five years older than the rest. As soon as he began speaking, the atmosphere of the room shifted. He spoke softly, barely audible for a man his size. There was a seriousness, a directness about him. He looked me straight in the eye and never wavered. "Up to a year ago, I was the maintenance manager for a large plant that made ice cream. I'm from a small town out in the country and this plant is the biggest business around. I liked the job. For a kid with no college education the money was great, and I had a lot of responsibility. With this job, a girlfriend, and a new car, I thought I had it made. Then, late one Friday night, I was going over everything one last time before the weekend. Everyone else had gone home, and I was anxious to leave myself. I went into the freezer to check the stock when the door behind me swung shut and locked. The light went out. Just like that. I was trapped in a freezer at forty below zero in jeans and a T-shirt and no one around for miles. I was certain I was dead." He stopped speaking. Seconds slipped away, and he said nothing. He no longer was looking at me; his eyes seemed to have found a spot on the wall behind me, and I knew he was back there in that freezer—alone. "I panicked. The door was locked, there was no one around, and even if there had been, the noise from the compressors would've drowned out my screams. And still I threw myself at the door screaming and beating at it. I was so cold that I broke every bone in both hands and felt nothing." Again he paused. A faint smile came to his lips. "You know, I always thought I was religious. I went to church on Sunday, said my prayers, went to Bible study—you know, that sort of thing. But when I was in that freezer, there was only one thing going on in my head. A voice just kept screaming, 'Oh my God! I'm dying I'm dying I'm dying and I don't know if there is a God. I don't know what's going to happen to me when I die.' This one thought was so intense that I don't remember anything else until I found myself outside the freezer crumpled up on the floor, sobbing. Now you'd think that since I was in charge of maintenance I'd have known that a safety door had been installed the day before. But I didn't. And I don't know to this day how I found it in the dark, or how I opened it, but I did and I'm alive." "I was in the hospital for five days and off work for six weeks. When I came back to work, I walked into my boss's office and quit. I left my home and my girlfriend, and I spent the next year just wandering around the country—camping out mostly. And then I signed up for college because I couldn't think of anything else to do. Because I still don't know the answer to that last, intense thought. All I do know is that I will spend the rest of my life trying to find out." As he finished his story the mood filled the room so thickly it was visible. And for the better part of an hour one of those minor miracles I live for occurred. Thirty people who didn't know each other sat together in silence, each with his own thoughts, and not one feeling the slightest inclination to break the spell or even move. And when the spell lifted, the meeting was over, and wordlessly everyone walked out into the world. Thomas Merton, the famous author, Trappist monk, and mystic said: "Dread means that we cannot any longer hope in ourselves, in our wisdom, our virtue, our fidelity. We see too clearly that all that is 'ours' is nothing and can completely fail us." To be spiritual is to acknowledge that dread is an essential part of the spiritual quest. Aspiration is the heady inspiration that draws us to seek God, but dread is that scary feeling at the pit of our stomach that drives us to seek God. Dread is that sinking feeling that says that nothing can satisfy you but God and yet you can't with certainty say there is a God. To be spiritual is to be at home with dread. To be spiritual is to search for God like an entrepreneur with two mortgages, maxed out credit cards, and a bunch of former friends who think you're nuts. To be spiritual is to live life each day like the boy dying in the freezer and wanting God with his whole heart and his whole soul—searching for Truth as if your hair were on fire. I never saw the boy in the freezer again. But I will never forget him, and I sometimes pray for him. And yet I don't really worry about him. Pascal once said of God: "You would not seek Me if you had not found Me." And I know in my heart that a hunger as deep as his will not—cannot—be denied. I am often asked why I founded the Self Knowledge Symposium. The answer is simple. I founded the SKS for him. I founded the SKS for that boy in all of us, still trapped in a freezer, alone, searching for God. August Turak is Chairman of the Board of the Self Knowledge Symposium Foundation
Niles Elliot Goldstein is the author of five books, including the best seller God at the Edge, which recounts his search for God in all the tough places: dogsledding above the Arctic Circle, taking the Silk Road into Central Asia without a visa, being chased by a grizzly bear, and cruising with DEA agents through the South Bronx and the jails of New York City. As National Jewish Chaplain of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, he counseled at Ground Zero following September 11th. He is the former voice behind "Ask the Rabbi" on the Microsoft Network and is the founding rabbi of the New Shul in Greenwich Village, New York. David Gold is the founding partner of Gold, Khourey and Turak, a multi-state law firm specializing in civil litigation, as well as one of the founding partners of Raleigh Group International, a software company which was recently purchased by Mutek Solutions, Inc. of Israel. He is the author of After the Absolute, a memoir of his 15-year odyssey working with the enigmatic Zen Master Richard Rose in rural West Virginia. A sought-after speaker and lecturer, Gold met Niles Goldstein through his work as an advisor to the Inward Bound conference, at which Niles will appear. The following interview is an excerpt of a series of ongoing conversations. DG: Niles, I was intrigued by the title of your book, God at the Edge, and when I started reading I was excited to find that you were writing about something which is very much a part of my experience, as well as being more or less a tenet of the SKS: God seems to find us when we get out on the edges of life. Why do you believe that people who get out on the edge seem to have a better success rate at having some kind of experience of God? GOLDSTEIN: I think part of it is rooted in the fact that most of the mainstream religious denominations don't really speak to people, and by "mainstream" I'm including both religious fundamentalism on one end of the spectrum and many of the New Age approaches on the other. So I think that the fact that a lot of Americans—particularly young Americans—are seeking out spiritual experience at the edge through non-conventional or alternative contexts or settings reflects a dissatisfaction with the spiritual status quo. And that's good because from both a personal and historical perspective it seems that God or spirituality sometimes more easily can be found not necessarily in a house of worship but in a situation that really surprises us and pushes our boundaries. DG: That's very similar to a fundamental principal of the SKS, which is that you need to get out of your comfort zone if you want to discover or experience anything worthwhile. GOLDSTEIN: Exactly. We build muscle mass by first breaking it down through workouts, and I think we build our souls in the same way. So I completely agree with that philosophy. Being in your comfort zone all the time leads to complacency and stagnation, and I think that the mystics of the various religious traditions over the centuries all understood that. DG: What is it about the edge that makes it more conducive to a transformation or a realization? GOLDSTEIN: I think the edges are more conducive to spiritual growth because they often force us to look at ourselves and the world in ways that we don't normally do. And these edges can come in many forms. As I mention in my book, for me it has included being chased by a grizzly and dog sledding in Alaska and working undercover with FBI agents, but it can also include more universal experiences such as a major life transition, going through a divorce, experiencing the death of a loved one, or anything can really bring us to that experience of the edge. I think they have a lot more to do with perspective and perception than anything else. You forget yourself and get a glimpse of something far greater than yourself—which can be quite a surprise. DG: So part of it might be that it breaks down our habitual ways of processing and creating and looking at the same thing over and over again, which in the past has just dropped us off at the same dead ends. GOLDSTEIN: Absolutely. On the one hand, it's sensory as you suggest, but there's a big fancy graduate school word, which is that it's also ontological. It's not just breaking down our sensibilities and way of viewing things, it's also the breaking down of our selves, or what we take to be our selves. And in breaking down ourselves, we break down our defenses. And I think when you reach the edge, you get to a point of vulnerability, and by extension, a place of true humanity that you don't normally get to. And once we make ourselves vulnerable, as we've all experienced, we then are open to a very effective and powerful relationship with another human being and that's why it's scary. And the same thing goes for our relationship with God. It's only when we place ourselves in a position of vulnerability with all the risk that that entails that our relationship with God becomes more intimate and powerful and genuine. DG: That brings up an interesting question that comes up frequently at our meetings. Is this something that you can do for yourself? In other words, can people push themselves out of their comfort zone or push themselves towards the edge, or does it require an outside agency or trauma? GOLDSTEIN: I think it's a little bit of both. In the Jewish tradition there's a phrase, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?" So on the one hand, individual initiative is absolutely essential. On the other hand, if you only focus on yourself and don't put yourself into the place of humility where you learn from others, then that just becomes narcissism and arrogance. An example in my own life: I have a black belt in karate. I've studied martial arts for ten years. If I had just started ten years ago trying to teach myself, I would have learned almost nothing. I think you really have to be humble enough to recognize that you need to find a good teacher before you can really progress in any discipline, before you can take the first step. So I think one of the things that happens when you're in the 18 to 22-year-old bracket, college age, is that you learn to move beyond certain adolescent arrogance and narcissism to more of an openness to what those who came before you can teach you. So it is very important not to give up on individual initiative, but I think it is critical, especially at that age, to become more and more open to learning not just from your elders but from the traditions that pre-date you. DG: That reminds me of something that was said by Richard Rose, the Zen Master under whom (SKS founder) Augie Turak and I studied. Someone once remarked to him, "It sounds as if your enlightenment experience was an accident." And he said, "It was." And she said, "Then why is it that you have a system and why do you need a teacher?" And he said, "Well, it seems that people who live a certain type of life tend to be more accident prone." GOLDSTEIN: I like that. And I think that is probably as good a way to capture the paradox of that as you can. DG: And it seems that in your own life you have purposefully put yourself in positions where the edge would be more likely to appear, or where you would be more likely to have something happen just from positioning or propensity. GOLDSTEIN: Sure, and I think that you need to put yourself in harm's way, so to speak, if you're really going to stretch yourself. Like in the episode with the grizzly. I didn't set out to meet a grizzly and to have that grizzly become one of my great spiritual teachers. And I don't think to this day it ever obviously recognized it was one of my great teachers. But you're right, I think sometimes you need to place yourself in a position of dis-ease so that these things become more probable. DG: I believe you also have touched upon another paradox, about the type of very unusual person that it takes to get to the edge and stay on the edge. On the one hand, it seems like it takes a tremendous amount of individuality and independence and stubbornness—you know, almost resistance to external forces, in order to have the courage and the ability to hear that different drummer, but there needs to be a receptivity at the same time, a certain humility that goes with that. GOLDSTEIN: I think you're right. I think that receptivity is one of the colossal keys to spiritual development. But again, in our culture, there was a book, a bestseller in the 70s, called The Culture of Narcissism. Particularly in our culture sometimes we need that little external push in order to become receptive. That's why I think that an experience of the edge, where we are broken down whether we like it or not, is so important. Because I think our propensity in modern culture, in postmodern culture, is to not be receptive, to think that we have all the answers. So sometimes you need that push. DG: And I think you captured the paradox both in your book and in your life because there is a need for seemingly contradictory personal characteristics. GOLDSTEIN: And this is nothing new. This is a truth that has been around for millennia, and that's why I think humility is such an important spiritual virtue. I think that is another one of the keys that unlocks the door to spiritual perception, to quote Jim Morrison. DG: Right, and part of it is just to lose the arrogant belief that you already know and to create some space where things may not be the way you think they are. GOLDSTEIN: Exactly, and I think that process of unlearning is also part of the spiritual quest. There is a book called The Cloud of Unknowing, as well as a recent academic book called Knowing the Unknowable God. Maimonades said, "We can never know what God is, we can only know what God is not." I think that unlearning what we know or what we think we know is just as vital to our inner life as positive knowledge. There's a whole school of thought called negative theology. Kierkegaard is a part of that, and a lot of the mystics are part of that. DG: My teacher was from that school. His whole system was what he called a "retreat from untruth." He said "You don't know where God is, you only know what garbage smells like." GOLDSTEIN: That's very Zen. DG: You step away from more and more garbage, and before you know it, you've stepped into a true state. GOLDSTEIN: Exactly. DG: In fact, he said that what he was trying to do was to age a few young people. The process of maturation and growing up will eventually disabuse you of a lot of your illusions, but generally by the time you're disabused you're too old to do anything about it. And I think that's what you also do very effectively, which is to find young people and inspire them to accelerate this process of humility or recognition of unknowing. To find strong-willed people who are able to do that is a very difficult task. GOLDSTEIN: Yes, absolutely. DG: This brings up another question. A lot of people go through unlearning, or an experience of finding out they are not who they think they are but there is not a spiritual breakthrough or maturity or realization that accompanies that process, only a deep depression. Why is it that a trauma can serve to open somebody up to God, but in other situations only serve to break that person down without a corresponding realization? GOLDSTEIN: I think a lot of it has to do with what we bring to the situation. If we are so hardened in our hearts like Pharoah in the Book of Exodus that we can't even see God's hand in our daily lives, then I think no matter how powerful or potentially transformative the experience is, it is just not going to have the effect. DG: Perhaps it gets back to the idea of "accident-proneness" and what we bring to the experience. If someone has already developed hunger and yearning and courage and a certain amount of ability and receptivity, that person is more likely to see the spiritual fabric than someone who is going out with complete arrogance. GOLDSTEIN: I agree, and the only addition I would make is that I think we all have that deep yearning whether we know it or not, and one of the challenges or tasks of life is to uncover that yearning and to make it naked. Augustine in the Christian tradition says that is the proof for the existence of God. He doesn't have one of these fancy theological arguments like Maimonides or Thomas Aquinas. His proof of the existence of God is the yearning that all of us feel that no human experience can ever satisfy, not even love. For him we all have that yearning. It is just a matter of whether we uncover it or not. DG: That ties into two traditions; The Biblical Christian admonition that "you would not seek me had you not already found me," as well as the Eastern mystical observation that the seeker is the sought, that that which yearns is already the God inside of us. GOLDSTEIN: That's good. There's also the Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich, and she talked about God pursuing us as much as we pursue God. DG: I find that to be one of the most inspirational references you make in your book. What is your personal thought on that? How does that play into the experiences that you've had? GOLDSTEIN: There is that episode where Samuel as a young boy keeps hearing the call of God but doesn't recognize it. It is only in the third attempt that he recognizes that God is calling him. I think a lot of us are just too deaf to the spiritual voice. For me, thinking about why I decided to become a rabbi, there were all these signals and signs and I just didn't listen to them for a long, long time. The idea of God pursuing us is an idea that really resonates with me because as hard as you try, and we all try awfully hard, for me spirituality is about hard work. It's not just being dented by a narcotic as was Marx's criticism of religion. Religion and spirituality are about hard work, and who wants to work hard? And I really resonated with that message that no matter how hard we try to run away, like the prophet Jonah, like Samuel, like many other people in the prophetic tradition, God is going to find us. DG: I don't know what your peak experiences have been, but when I have something like that, I always feel that I have just stopped running, that all I needed to do was just stop running away. GOLDSTEIN: You have to surrender. Not giving up but giving over is another important virtue on the spiritual path. DG: And that's where yearning comes in. Your desire for God overwhelms your desire for self or your desire to be right or your desire for whatever it is that keeps you running away from that. GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, it takes time. It takes time and work. DG: Being on the edge seems to suggest or almost require a certain amount of danger. Is that true? Is there a safe or safer way to bring yourself to a point of receptivity, a point on the edge? GOLDSTEIN: I think so. Kierkegaard talks about taking a leap of faith. For him spirituality is not about how much we know, it's about how courageous we are. It's an act of the will, not an act of the mind, and I think that spirituality, like anything of substance, involves an element of risk. You yourself are entrepreneurial. I think being an entrepreneur involves a certain amount of risk, hazard, or danger. I think life is an adventure. If you look at the etymology, all adventure means taking a daring or exciting undertaking with an element of risk and hazard. That's what an adventure means. And I think if you view life as an adventure then you're going to quickly realize that there are dangers and hazards and risks all around us, but that's what makes life so exciting. And by the way, the flip side of danger is reward. DG: There is a certain elitism to this as well. Everyone probably has the capacity, and you don't want to rule anybody out. GOLDSTEIN: There is a little bit of that, but I'm not so sure we need to shy away from that. The art movement has its avant-garde, and I think there's nothing wrong with the concept of an avant-garde in the spiritual journey. There was the Jewish mystic in my book who talked about the complexities of trying to understand an incomprehensible divinity and he said, "A God that any little old man could understand is a God I couldn't believe in." And what he's trying to say obviously is that this is hard stuff, but the people who don't run away from it are the people who get closest to the truth. DG: One thing I have seen on campuses a lot is that students think that if they get into the search for God it's going to cost them adventure, it's going to cost excitement, and they're going to have to settle for something boring in life. That obviously isn't the case for you. GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, well as I said earlier about adventure, I think the religious journey, the spiritual journey, makes life far more exciting because you're opening yourself up to a whole. I mean, think about how exciting life is when you open yourself up to a whole other dimension of it. I think it becomes much more exciting. It becomes fraught with much more ambiguity and mystery. DG: We've come full circle to the idea of spiritual elitism and people getting out on the edge because of dissatisfaction with traditional religions. You don't seem particularly enamored with the New Age movement. GOLDSTEIN: No, I'm not. I appreciate it, but—look, there are aspects of the fundamentalist movement I appreciate as well, but what I don't like about the New Age movement, and I know it's a big movement with lots of different strains, is its over emphasis on the self. I think a lot of the retreats and the workshops and books that I see make spirituality seem too easy, with ten rules for this and twelve steps for that and guardian angels and chicken soup. It's a little disingenuous about how hard this thing is. I also think it focuses too much on the self. I respect the New Age movement's willingness to experiment, but I have problems with the narcissism. In the fundamentalist movement, I respect its passion and its zeal, but I think they have the opposite problem. I think they tend to diminish and denigrate the self. We've seen the fruits of that. They are not pretty. DG: What you said about the New Age movement brings us back to the idea of yearning. In one of our earlier conversations you said that one way to stay spiritually hungry is to not eat junk food. GOLDSTEIN: Exactly. And the New Age movement can give you so much complacency and so much assurance and so much of a buzz that you just lose your edge of wanting to go out and find something more genuine. That's why you need groups like the SKS. It really helps if you can find sincere people who are not going to just give you assurance, but recognize their common humility and yearning. That's what impressed me about your group, the people are both compassionate and challenging. A rare combination. |