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I’m not sure I’d describe our inborn nature as ‘egoistic’. I say this because our inborn nature is vastly greater than our ego at any point in our development. In Jungian terms, the self is far greater than the ego. Our ego is simply what we experience our self as being, and yes, it has ideas of what’s good for itself that never really coincide with our self’s intrinsic self-interest. And even our self-interest doesn’t entirely coincide with what our self is purposed for – procreation for example. Sex is purposed at our species level of existence, for procreation, and our self-interest is subordinated to that. Our sexual desires have nothing to do really with self-interest, but with our species-interest. They capture us so to speak, through their pleasurableness, so that we enjoy them and feel that they’re goods. They are, but not for ourselves as selves, but as selves of our kind which we naturally love. When we love our children, we’re already called upon to include them in our self-interest, and we teach them to do the same, especially if they have siblings. So the principle of self-transcendence is there all the way through, even at the most basic level of socio-biological existence.
I’ve found the framework explained here, of the evolution of desire through the satisfaction of desire leading to lack of desire, really fascinating and thought provoking. It leads to the realisation that when our natural desires are satiated, we tend to start looking to enjoy natural pleasures purely out of desire for pleasure in place of the boredom or flatness of desirelessness, which can also lead to the higher spiritual desires. Seems paradoxical that the same state of something like boredom can lead to both healthy higher desires and unhealthy desires that are also higher (strictly speaking) but self-indulgent or evil.
I find the idea that the human being’s original state can adequately be described as one equivalent in form with the Creator, experiencing unbounded fulfilment, eternity and perfection, one that doesn’t seem to properly reflect the crucial difference between the creature and the Creator. Creatures are not by their own natures eternal or perfect in the way that the Creator is. Creatures’ natures have to be caused to exist by their Creator’s creativity. They don’t exist intrinsically. The Creator necessarily does naturally exist without having to be caused to. So there seems to be a very big difference between worldly, let’s call it transcendent ecological perfection that naturally emerges in natural worldly conditions, and the state here described as equivalence of form with the Creator, which is described more like having a share in the Creator’s experience of ‘his/her’ Absolutely Perfect Being.
Hello. I’m Fred. I’m English and I live in England’s beautiful South West. I’m 72, which means I was 15 in 1968. Some of you may have an idea of what that means. I was brought up an Anglican, lapsed, became a hippy dropout, did every job imaginable until I became a garden designer and builder. Became a Tibetan Buddhist for 7 years before reverting to Christianity as a Catholic. But pretty much everything I value in Catholicism originates in Judaism. What doesn’t, I tend not to accept. I’ve known about Kabbalah for a long time but never trusted what sources I knew about. I’m looking at KabU with great interest as it looks authentic and not just another pop culture counterfeit. Glad to have taken this step.
