Destiny and the Complementary We

“Destiny” is a word that most of us do not consider that often. One reason, perhaps, is that the idea of destiny can seem to contradict the idea that we are free, at least to a degree, to make our own decisions, choosing what we will and will not do with our lives. Yet the idea of destiny is not a bad one to consider. If we really do believe that we are in some way created in the image of God, that we have a “spark of the divine” in us, it is not difficult to conceive of our choices following a path laid out for our lives. Or, if not that, then it is possible to feel a sense that there are ranges of choices that we can make, some of which will take us closer to the best course our life could take and others that can carry us further away. Every day we choose, every day the choices we make either help us toward some unseen but sometimes intuitive goal or carry us further away from it. For that matter, even the choices that we make that would seem, at first, to carry us further away—poor decisions, missed opportunities, things left unsaid that really should have been spoken—even these can seem to follow a larger, loose-leaf pattern, working together for the greater good, particularly for those who place their trust in God. It is possible to strive toward our unseen destiny while in the same sense realizing that, to a degree, we chart our own course. If destiny be in any way true, the events of our world unfold according to a greater plan, even if many of the events are themselves tumultuous and largely unnecessary.

Within us all, I believe, is some kind of guidance system, some internal “tug” if you like, that tends to attract us to certain things while by that very fact distancing us from others. It can be a life-long quest to try to figure out what that “tug” is and to try and follow it. Yet I would venture a guess that every last one of us have felt it at some point or another in our lives. That, I believe, is the inner voice of God, not as a source of general guidance that is applicable to all persons per se, but the voice of God alive in us, guiding us toward our own completely unique destinies. If we can speak metaphorically, we may end up at the restaurant where we were supposed to be, yet we still have our choice of menus. Or we may end up at another restaurant altogether, but we still ended up at a restaurant. Destiny, I think, is a bit like that. It is open-ended, and yet it is guided by a higher sense, an internal sense, even at times when we are oblivious to that sense or momentarily out of touch with it. Our lives do seem to unfold with a sense of purpose, though sometimes that purpose has to be reawakened within us: sometimes another has to come along and give us a gentle push. Sometimes life itself is the impetus that pushes us away from what we desire and into new realms where we are momentarily uncomfortable, but later look back with a sense of gratitude. This concept of destiny may carry us to many places both dark and strange, yet there is a thread that connects it all together. We must be teachable and open to the voice of God within us if we are to find our best way in the world. And the best way in the world will necessarily involve both our uniqueness and our interdependence: destiny always involves traveling companions.

The idea of being open and teachable reminds me of a concept known to Buddhism as the “beginner’s mind.” I have heard the term “beginner’s mind” in many places, most often with the following quotation from Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.” Suzuki is not speaking of actual beginners and experts so much as making an observation about the attitude or approach that we do well to take in approaching our world. The meaning here is that the beginner is teachable, but the expert has reached a point where there is little new to uncover. The beginner is free to dream—the beginner can and does imagine many possibilities—the expert has become too narrowly focused. Now it is certainly possible that an expert can have a beginner’s mind, or that a beginner can have an expert’s mind: it is all about the mental attitude we take, not our natural appitude or skill set.

In Bary Zukav’s classic The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, a book that provides a layman’s introduction to the mind-bending world of the particle physicist, the concept of the beginner’s mind is also mentioned, citing as one such example Albert Einstein and his radical new theories that seem to contradict common sense. Certainly Einstein was an expert in one sense, yet in another, he was teachable and open to new ideas. Einstein’s approach to the world is what Zukav has in mind when he describes him as having the beginner’s mind, even though Einstein was certainly an expert if ever there was one. In fact, Zukav’s book even physically embodies the concept of the beginner’s mind. But first, an excerpt; Zukav is speaking to Al Huang, a master of T’ai Chi, in order to uncover the characteristics of a “Master”:

I said that The Dancing Wu Li Masters physically embodies the idea of the beginner’s mind, wonderfully expressed above, and it does. Every new chapter in the book is numbered “Chapter 1” and every new section is numbered “Section 1.” (Fortunately the page numbers do reflect the actual progression of pages!)

The beginner makes no pretense of being the expert. The beginner knows a few things sure—the beginner does not forget what he or she has already learned. But the beginner is open to new possibilities, new ideas, new levels of insight and understanding of both God and the amazing world in which we live. The beginner is teachable. We do not have to subscribe to Eastern philosophies to see the value in that approach.

In any case, the future is not yet written. It may very well be known to the mind of God, but in terms of our daily lives, it is not yet written; our destinies remain to be fulfilled. The future remains unknown, even if we capture glimpses of what it could be, what it ought to be. And to whatever degree, we help to write that future, either in partnership with God and destiny or toward ends that ultimately benefit neither ourselves nor others. We can re-image our world. We can learn to see reality more as God sees reality, but in order to do that, we will need the voices and thoughts of others, for destiny is not a private enterprise. Every person we meet has a voice and possesses thoughts. We can learn and grow from every encounter, however slight, if we begin to look deeper. But we have to put aside our tendency to draw indelible lines between “us” and “them.”

Speaking of putting aside our tendency to draw indelible lines, the discussion in Better Liked and Better Liking of “us” and “them” as mutually complementary generated a fair amount of response, suggesting that for many of us, the subject is of practical concern. Any number of factors can complicate taking a more open approach to life, and that fact is unfortunately often further complicated when we have unclear expectations of what we should or ought to be doing in the world. The faith communities of which many of us are a part can exert a great deal of influence on us both positive and sometimes negative. There is much more that can be said about the implications of a life lived in which our differences are not merely tolerated but as much as possible celebrated, not least of which are real conflicts brought about by our differing views of the world. Nevertheless, even as we admit that differences can and do create conflicts even for those with the most generous and open of hearts, the same inevitable conflicts can bring clarity if we allow them to—even our conflicts do not have to wall us apart and divide us. Our conflicts serve as fodder for future growth, if we open to the lessons they are capable of teaching us. The most visible growth often takes place precisely because of the vistas opened to us by conflict. As the classic parable of the man who felt sorry for the butterfly struggling in its cocoon suggests, the easy road does not always lead to life: in the case of the butterfly, it resulted in the unfortunate creature’s death. It is most often through the tensions in our lives that we develop strong wings to fly on our own, finding levels of inner strength and fortitude we did not previously know existed. The fact that real conflicts can and do characterize diversity should not deter us from taking a much more open-ended approach to the world where we are willing to listen to others and learn from them.

Every encounter with another is a chance to learn. It may involve conflict because we are all completely different and unique individuals and our differences can sometimes clash as well as complement. We can transform that conflict into new opportunities for growth. Sometimes we recognize that in the interest of everyone, the best course of action toward unity is to simply move on. But there is a great deal of difference between coming to that honest realization and acting on it and thinking of ourselves as somehow walled off from others, inoculated from them in no need of anything they have to offer us.

There is more that we can say. Learning to live in harmony with others—“us” and “them” forming a new “we”—does not mean that we do not set healthy boundaries for ourselves, it means that we choose to embrace the world without creating undue barriers. There are times that in the interest of peace and harmony, the very best thing that we could possibly do is simply move on, going our individual ways. What we really need to consider, though, is that it is possible to reconceptualize our entire approach to the world.

Broadly speaking, the spiritual quest is interested in both the vertical and horizontal layers of life. Vertically, the quest is to fully know God, to cultivate an intimacy and transparency with him as best we know how. Of all relationships, this one is center, keeping us grounded in a higher plane of being, keeping us grounded to our essence as human creatures. Horizontally, we learn to live in union with others, with other creatures, and with the whole of nature, being good care-takers of our bodies, our time, our relationships, and our resources, both natural and material. We should note that “horizontal” and “vertical” are merely conceptual categories—as soon as they have helped us conceptualize an idea, we do well to discard them. Our desire is to live life fully and “in the round.” There is no real top or bottom, no left and right to life in the round, but rather one continuous canvas upon which are painted all the elements of our world. We keep these various elements in balance by remaining true to God and ourselves, striving to live in and practice honesty with ourselves and others and to show compassion to all creatures, whether human or animal. We do not know what road another has traveled and we therefore cannot be their judge; we know only as much as they reveal to us, and they can only reveal such things to us as we are open to them, entering into dialogue and fellowship. Being open and honest is the nature of trust, and it is built upon honesty: mutual honesty both inward and outward.

If we consider for a moment that in a great many ways the spiritual quest is about harmony and fellowship, and when we further consider that harmony is not possible without relationship (there is no such thing as the harmony of one without another), all that we have been saying about the “complementary we” begins to make sense in a new and larger perspective. It is what Jesus taught with the golden rule, and it is the same note a great many other great teachers and prophets have sounded as well. We would expect that when a thing is true, it will often be repeated by those of note: it should not surprise us that a great many worthy voices from many diverse paths have sounded their own voices in song.

Returning again to our well-paired man and woman, the paradox of true individuality as well as true interdependence takes on a clearer light. He is himself, she is herself, both are fully what they are and together they are greater than either one individually. They are truly individual—they are what they are—but they are also parts of a much larger whole. Or, a metaphor that I return to often is that of the jigsaw puzzle where each piece has value precisely because it is at once both entirely unique as well as interdependent, interlocking perfectly in the composite canvas for which it is made and custom fitted. It is at once both truly individual (in the fullest, richest sense of that term) as well as fully interdependent, its individuality offset and complimented by the larger puzzle of which it is a part. Its value would be compromised if it either were not entirely unique on the one hand or on the other, if it attempted to define itself exclusively apart from the other pieces of the puzzle. In both cases—the man and woman and the jigsaw puzzle—neither apologize for being what they are; they rightfully celebrate life in their own skin, comfortable with who and what they are, able and willing to celebrate the true uniqueness and freedom of others as well, to extend to others the same space to both breathe as well as connect. They do not celebrate their own skins alone, but rather they celebrate with other completely unique and complementary parts to the mutual enrichment of all.

When we speak in spiritual terms, we speak often of ideas like peace and reconciliation, forgiveness and love. Again, these are elements that draw together, they are not elements that force apart. They depend on honesty and trust to keep their cogs oiled and interlocking freely, and they realize the highest goal of honesty and trust in mutuality, relationship. Honesty is a character trait that comes from inside of us, and trust is its natural outward manifestation in relationship with others. Honesty and trust are ways of interacting with the world in which we are honest first with ourselves and God and secondly with those others who travel the path of life with us. That is what it looks like to live in a world where “us” and “them” come together to form a “complementary we.”

“We” do not suppose that we are experts, though we know what we know and are comfortable in our own skins. And when we encounter another “they,” we do not see them as such, as impossibly other and potentially threatening, but rather we view them through through the open, teachable eyes of a beginner who sees in that genuine difference an opportunity for mutual growth and benefit. Most especially of all, we learn to pay attention to the still, small voice of God inside of us—what at times is a gentle “tug” or a “nudge”—remaining always true to that voice and to ourselves. That is where the beginner’s mind starts, within ourselves, alone with God. With God at the center, approaching the external world with a beginner’s mind becomes an exercise of trust: we are honest and trusting with God, and therefore we are freed and enabled to be open and honest with others. If we stay open to the voice of God, we have nothing to fear. If we stay open to the voice of God, we will then have discovered destiny.

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