The other night, I was watching The Last Temptation of Christ, and (probably because of the inherent religious overtones) I was having some trouble understanding the struggle between what some people call “the spirit and the flesh.” The yearning to be divine, while at the same time being all-too-human. And I finally understood it, but I understand it, rather, as the struggle between reality—or truth—and humanness. I feel this struggle now, because I know that when I feel truth, when I recognize it, and accept it, and believe in its pursuit, that is when I feel like I am being who I really am, and at the same time, I feel pain, and loneliness, and confusion, and resentment, because I am human.
It is this struggle that I feel has been with me my whole life. It is this struggle, between what is, and the human condition, the human being—with all his/her desires, longings, cravings, fears, and confusion—that is at the root of so much of my work. It is this—the human condition, the struggles we have by being human—that interests, troubles, frustrates, engages, and fascinates me.
I think that this is why I find the story of Jesus so interesting, for that is a story about the coming together of the spirit and the flesh, of the synthesis and harmony of that which has been in conflict, of that which has been wrongly (i.e., artificially, via ignorance) separated. It is this separation that I feel is at the core of most, if not all, of the problems of human life. It is the misunderstanding, the ignorance, of who we really are, of how to reconcile reality with our human desires, cravings, and needs that causes the ubiquitous disharmony and misery in the world.
The process of reconciling this struggle—of seeing that this separation is not true to reality—is the process of “awakening.” It is the process of true freedom; it is love. Beauty, truth, love, reality, is harmony; not as in two separate things resonating harmoniously, but the harmony that is seeing the way things actually are (for the former implies a duality that doesn’t really exist, and is not the harmony of which I am speaking).
True freedom is to know and be who you really are, to accept the harmony, and process, the reality of life. This is what Spinoza understood, what the Buddha understood, and maybe even what those who give us the story of Jesus understood, though in that case, I think the point has been missed, and Christianity, for many reasons, has veered from the path from which it may have begun.
For we do not create reality, we do not decide reality; rather, it us up to us to discover/see reality, to accept it, and live it. Jesus’ burden of having to accept and be who he really was is the burden of us all. That is the (true) power of the story. Unfortunately, I think that that point has been distorted and usurped by people who are controlled by their fears, egos, and illusions. I think the point of the Jesus story is that “God,” the divine, or as I see it: the truth, or reality, is not just for a “chosen” people, but for everyone. Reality, truth, awakening, is there for anyone and everyone who has the courage to seek it out.
In the movie, Jesus yells at the Temple priests, “God is not an Israelite!” The point being that salvation, the divine, is not for a select few, but for everyone. That would certainly be a revolutionary idea at the time, especially coming from a Jew (the supposed “Chosen People”).
The problem with Christianity is what was done with that beautiful, loving, very true message by those who did not really understand it (which started, I think, with those to whom Jesus himself was speaking); the problems are with the concepts of sin, of morality, of intolerance to those who disagree with doctrine—again, a demonstration of immaturity and ignorance, for enlightenment cannot be forced upon people, they must see it for themselves if they are to see it at all.
That is what the movie is about, that is what the human “temptation” was about, what the end of the movie is about, when Jesus is back on the cross and says, “It is accomplished.” That is a moment of enlightenment, of seeing reality, of accepting and being who he really is—but he needed to understand it himself. That is the point. And that is the point that “fundamentalist” Christians do not understand. You cannot prescribe or force enlightenment.
This is, by the way, very much tied to what I have said about the fact that morality does not dictate values and motivations, but that motivations and values dictate morality, for human morality is an illusion, an illusion created and fed by the combination of desire, arrogance, and fear.
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From my personal notes, 6/1/00
