Inner Gleams of Light

Go into any book shop today and you will find a bulging self help section. These works claim to have an instantly transformative power upon our difficulties, whatever they may be, be it stress, low confidence or finding happiness in a relationship. Do what they say, consume their message and your woes will dissolve, you will become more successful, confident or richer, whatever they promise. Now, I am sure some of these books do help people and have lovely uplifting, positive messages and some good advice on being pro active and making lists, but please! Whole, creaking book shelves full? Have we really lost our capacity to intuit anything to the extent that a multi-million self help industry is needed? Is modern mans resolve really that diminished that reading this rubbish is necessary? Are we that incapable of knowing what is true for ourselves, of looking within? Some of them have remarkable titles such as 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' by Stephen Covey (which I confess to have once read and true to my ineffective nature have completely forgotten the message of) or Susan Jeffer's 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway' and of course the famous work by Dale Carnegie 'How to Win friends and Influence People.' I love the reduction of people to prizes to be won and possessed like objects in the title of that one. These work claim to give you information that will have a life changing metamorphic effect on you if you listen to and do what they say. Contemporary titles in this genre stick to the 'born again' theme, the prolific (and highly esteemed by Oprah no less) Deepak Chopra's new Book is entitled, 'Super Brain' and promises to 'unleash the explosive power of your mind to maximise health, happiness, and spiritual well being.' From there to the more nauseatingly entitled works, such as Rachel Bridges 'How to Make a Million Before Lunch' or Laura Vanderkam's 'What the Most Succesful People do Before Breakfast' (one presumes they go for swims in their private pools) it is clear 'self help' is booming. That is, conforming, being told what to do, what is self help, what is success, what it means to be you by society, is booming. Self reliance,  non-conformism apparently, is not. 

Recently, I came across a writer who would have shook his head at the obvious futility of these self help books. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist who though admiring the individualism of these works would have held them to be hollow and to be full of emptiness. He would have pointed to the childishness of assuming some external lessons, some advise from without oneself could truly help someone, principally because you would be conforming by using a self help book. You would be believing that truth could be found without rather than within. Indeed, he begins the essay I am going to look at here, entitled Self Reliance with the latin phrase; Ne te quaesiveris extra which roughly translates as 'do not seek outside yourself.' In a world where the consumption of 'self help' is an industry, where we are encouraged to be what society wants us to be, Emerson's message is all the more relevant. He calls us to not to seek outside ourselves, to look within, to be self reliant, to think for ourselves and not be told how to think, not be told what we need to do, or how to be. We should not acquiesce, we should not so readily accept. It's a call for us all to tell the world who we are and not be what it thinks we should be.

Emerson was a major figure in the American Trancendental Movement. The Transcendental Movement held that truth can be revealed intuitively through nature by focusing on the internal, the mental, the inner spiritual essence of being human. In brief (very brief) they believed that socio-political institutions corrupt the soul, that they are harmful to the individual and the only fix to this harm is a staunch and defiant individualism; Self Reliance. In his essay Self Reliance he argued that 'self reliance' is a defense, a remedy, against the watering down of our inner life, the corrosion of ourselves, by society. Emerson had the conviction that our minds are presupposed to conformism, that we innately and foolishly comply. Emerson felt that this was the root of much of our unhappiness and that when we yield our intellect, when we disregard our convictions, and behave and act contrary to our self, this inner disharmony, caused by conformism will only ever lead to misery. Self reliance ultimately then meant for Emerson, non-conformism. To conform to society for Emerson was to lose something of ourselves, when our intellect, our thoughts, our ideas, our actions fall in line unthinkingly with everyone our magic, our immense potential, our precociousness as individuals is lost. Therefore we should eschew popular opinion and shrug off social pressure and trust ourselves. He was a man who believed that people are inherently good, that we are all inherently unique, and each one of us has vast dormant and untapped powers. However these powers are reduced and made void by conformism. Only in non-conformism is our genius realised and indeed he maintained that each of us have huge potential for genius. He wrote;

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.”

He believed that there is something of great weight and brilliance in each of us and that conformism is what stifles our gifts to the world by robbing us of self belief in our own brilliance. To have confidence, a unyielding self trust in our own brilliance is therefore in a world of drab and bleak conformity, an act of genius. Emerson felt  'genius' is to have self belief in our private hearts and conformism gags this self belief by making us live out what is not true for us, instead of self belief, we pander weakly to the public, to society. A sturdy self reliance based in non-conformism is therefore the way to happiness for the individual, as ones self esteem is based on ones intrinsic character, ones deep self, not by external circumstances or some bullet pointed pieces of advice from a book claiming that you can unlock the power of your 'Super Brain'. For Emerson there is nothing to unlock, we just simply have to look; and look within. I am going to quote heavily and greedily from the essay, so if you have not read it I would urge you to read the essay first before reading this in order to get face to face with the man's beautiful writing before reading my chopped and hacked off sections of his work.

Non-conformism

To begin with Emerson asks us simply to be confident in ourselves and to have self trust in our own thought life. He suggests we should do this by learning to discern what is true for ourselves by being attentive to our thoughts. We should pay attention and be mindful of our mental content and sift through and disregard the unbearable thoughts, the simple thoughts and be more awake to the luminous ones we have. We should not be indifferent to the brightness and brilliance of these thoughts, just because they our ours. He writes;

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

This is interesting. How often do you read a novel, watch a film or talk to someone and hear a thought or an idea that you have had before, but perhaps not fully articulated to yourself or dismissed? For Emerson it is a lack of self believe, it is a habit of shrugging of our ideas as being weightless that holds us back. Now, here you may raise a worldly, quizzical eyebrow at the mystical language he uses, the 'gleams of light' he refers to. Our minds wander, and can often churn out simplistic, aimless thoughts. The Beatles were of course spot on with the lyrics to 'Fixing a Hole';

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go

At this point it may amuse you to reflect momentarily on the title of Chopra's 'Super Brain'. Super Brain indeed! But for all the profane thoughts about what we should have for tea we have whilst we are playing football, for all the ludicrous daydreams we have mid conversation with people, thoughts of insight, vision and wisdom do occur to us. There is of course something of great potential in us and Emerson knew it. It is the 'gleams of light' that we have to learn to tune our mind to, to discern, to prune and ultimately to not dismiss. We un-confidently reject our own ideas, musings and conclusions when we should focus more on detecting these. He felt that this lack of self trust was a habit of conformism. Emerson felt it was the tyranny of society that robs us of these gleams of light, this inner potential as individuals that we all have. He writes;

“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”

I, in my previous post wrote of the importance of solitude, of a liberating solitude, and again here we are called to trust ourselves in solitude and not let our thoughts, our power, be diluted by society or as I wrote clunkily in my previous post, 'the society others'. And for Emerson in order to harness the potential of our solitude, of our inner gleams of light, we must be nonconformist; 'whoso would be a man, must be a non conformist.' And by that Emerson means that we must not let the 'integrity of our own mind' be disturbed by society, by interactions that confuse us, or by institutions that lead us astray. By pointing to the sacred nature of the integrity of our own mind Emerson suggests how deeply vulnerable we are to conformity and how firmly we must strive to uphold self truth. It is this sacredness we must constantly endeavor to maintain. Minds can be easily unsettled, confused and deluded by society, we must therefore be vigilant and non conformist, be unrelentingly protective of self truth. Indeed, it not self help books per se that Emerson would have had a problem with. Rather it would be consuming and living by such literature if it is not true for you that he would have had a problem with. If it is true for you and upholds the integrity of your mind, he would have applauded a person using such books. It is the conformity they represent that would have irked him and it is as if in the next passage of his prose that I will refer to, he is almost writing with these books in mind. It is hard for anyone to not smile knowingly at this;

“It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it...It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Indeed, why should you develop 7 effective habits, if it is not a true for you as a person, if it does not resound with your soul? Why on earth should you want to make a million before lunch if that's not really what you want? To that I would also add if the book doesn't at any point mention having a cup of tea before lunch at some point then it truly can be dismissed as complete and utter pish posh! The power of solitude is again showed here, he maintains that only a firm resolve to uphold ones true self among society will lead to an enriched, enlightened and happier life. Conformism wastes your time and makes the essence of yourself unclear, or as he wrote more succinctly it 'blurs the impression of your character.' If we are honest, how often we do concede or hide our true opinions, or do we meekly let someone assert something we know to be wrong. I'm sure we are all guilty of doing so. Now, sometimes it is of course a matter of manners to let someone have there say, but how often do we find ourselves nodding along to someone talking absolute rubbish. We are lazy and take the easy option and just let things go, we cant be bothered to contest opinion, or to fight for truth. However Emerson knew that this attitude ultimately leads to a weakening in the confidence of our own self, it diminishes self trust and it leads to a crumbling of our capacity to hear the 'voices we hear in solitude' the 'gleams of light' that are our own genius; it 'scatters our force.' We lose our self trust by not seeing the value of truth, we let our self truth blow away in the wind and in the midst of the crowd, conform. He goes on to give a description of the awkwardness, the deep unease the lack of peace we feel when not being self reliant. The description frames vividly the foolishness of pandering to people's idiocy, of mindlessly conforming;

“There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping willfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.”

We have all, I am sure been there. And isn't it the most obvious picture of our common inclination to conform? At first glance the example seems trivial and unconvincing, of course we should be polite and look interested even when it the conversational content boring, makes us uneasy or is disagreeable. It's only manners, only common courtesy.  Rather for Emerson, this is not a question of manners, of politeness, it is to be 'hindered by goodness.' When your face sets, your muscles tighten, you are made that uncomfortable why do we just let it slide? Why do we even begin to attempt to suffer fools gladly? Manners and politeness, could conceivably hinder us and be the 'good face' of the tyranny of society upon us. Maybe we should not let social etiquette hinder us, cause our minds to become muddled (and our face muscles to stiffen) and obstruct us from the truth-'the rude truth'! He goes on;

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.”

Emerson urges us to take a robust and radical stand against conformism, for the sake of truth and our ultimately our own happiness. Emerson knew that to constantly subdue our self, to yield to others, to society and easily capitulate is to not live in peace. The example shows how we naturally respond to not living in self truth. Our faces set, we internally squirm. We cannot totally suppress our 'low usurping willfulness.' Our will, our desires, our truth cannot be entirely muffled or silenced.  The example shows how to not conform is our true nature, where we find peace;

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

If we are unprincipled and live mildly giving people the face aching 'foolish face of praise' we wont be standing up for what is true, for what is the truth for ourselves. We should not be affected, we should not be swayed, we should not conform, even if the face of what we refuse, is  'decent' and 'well spoken.' We should have no qualms about refusing anything that threatens our truth, the integrity of our minds. The name of goodness must therefore not limit our principles, what we hold to be fundamentally true from being lived. Emerson new that even in mild mannered, kind, decent society there is no peace to be found for us if we are not living in truth, if we are relenting to conformity. Only in non-conformity can we triumph, find release for our willfulness and find peace.

The Corpse of Your Memory

Emerson also knew of the problem of living in the past, of being dragged from the moment to past happenings, recollections and memories instead of being in the here and now. He felt that our readiness to conform is so ingrained that even our memories instill in us a fear of 'inconsistency'. We remember what we have previous said, done and believed and the fear of acting contrary to this he thought can stop up living in what is true for ourselves now. He writes;

“The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place?”

Ultimately we must not dilute ourselves solely in order to be seen to be seen as consistent, to never contradict ourselves. Emerson is correct in his assertion that if we are rigidly consistent we wont grow, consistency leads to a life in which we wont challenge ourselves, in which inner truth is stifled. There is a famous quote by the famous boxer Muhammed Ali that sprung to my mind when first reading his essay, “the man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” It is important in life not to box ourselves in too much, not to shackle ourselves to who we have been. Our personality, our character, the truth of who we are is not to be wedged on fixed tracks like a train going solemnly and sedately to its sole destination. Kahlil Gibran put it better; "the soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals." The truth of who we are should be unfixed and free to roam, to unfold, without terror of inconsistency or disappointing anybody.

Emerson felt we revere the past too greatly due to a failing in the way we see each other. He argued that when we see someone we only have eyes to compute 'no other data' than past acts. We have a limited perception of people that only focuses on the past. Perhaps then, when we see people we should bear this in mind, and we should be mindful of how our minds deceive our eyes by bringing up an undue reverence for the past. It may us better than to have a crisp focus on the present when we see people. Emerson writes further on the past and inconsistency,  and what follows next is one of his most infamous lines; 

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”

It it important to note the qualifier that it is a 'foolish' consistency he is speaking of, not consistency in general. He is not suggesting we bullishly change and contradict ourselves, he is not suggesting our integrity should go out of the window, rather what he is saying is that our pursuit of truth, of what is true for us should not be fixed and defined by a fear of being seen as inconsistent. We shouldn't sheepishly apologise for who we are, we shouldn't be sorry for what we believe, what we think, for what we hold to be true even if that is different to what we used to hold to be true. We should have a  self trust forged in the present, in the here and now, and as he writes, we should be the 'centre of things;'

“Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events.”

We find that we should strive to live in this moment, for we 'belong to no other time or place.' We should not let our self reliance be limited by our past and we should not let the prospect of our future mould or define who we are and what is true for us now. He advises us to life in the present moment. Precisely because that is where we are grounded, that is where the roots of happiness lie, where what is true for us is. Simply put, that is where we are. 

“But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He  cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

If we do not live in the present, we will be blind to the 'riches that surround us' as the integrity of our  minds will be jumbled by thoughts of the past and future. There exists a German word, a word for which there is no direct parallel in English; 'Waldeinsamkeit.' It translates as 'the feeling of being alone in the woods.' However it means much more than that, it describes the infinite, free, meditative, 'at one with the universe feeling' one has when totally engulfed in nature. If we then resist conformity and are self reliant in the here and now, 'above time' in nature, in our true nature, perhaps the mysterious German word begins to grasp, to hint at, what we may feel when we heed the riches around us.

The Conspiracy of Society

Emerson wrote that 'society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.' This is clear to see today. Society tirelessly conspires to make us conform, for example, self doubt is a common symptom of living in the so called 'information age'. How can we be sure of anything when there is just so much information out there? We feel we can never be informed enough, we always feel a sort of nagging information deficit. This leads to a tendency to gorge on information, to endlessly consume the thoughts of others rather to to think for oneself. Our critical faculties are sidelined and instead a 'conformism of thought' becomes prevalent in us whereby we tend to just absorb the thoughts and ideas of others instead of being the author of our own. Knowledge has become about discerning your way through a soup of information rather than developing your own thoughts, conceptions or beliefs about anything. Our inner gleams of light are undetectable in the gloom of this conformist tendency. 

Emerson was a great defender of individualism, however perhaps not the individualism of today. We live in a society of heightened individualism where the individualism of our time is cheap. The crass emphasis on individual 'exceptionalism' on shows like the X Factor show how light and empty, how weightless, the individualism of our age is. Today's individualism is not based on looking within, it is an individualism based on consumption, not on seeking person truth or on the development of character but it is everything to do with conforming to ideals of talent, of success; of being, thinking acting and looking a certain way. And to add to that the previously mentioned multi-million pound global self help 'industry' shows how we have learnt to lazily look without ourselves instead of within. To look within is a radical message in today's world of I Phone Apps, HD television and 3d cinema where we are constantly discouraged to look within, to seek what is true for ourselves. Rather we live in a world of constant distraction, of endless entertainment, of superficial, rampant conformism. I feel Emerson's writings are massively pertinent to our age, the conspiracy is clear to see. We must therefore fight to cast of the repressive chains of conformity for the sake of our happiness and  maybe, we might find that from the dimness gleams of light may begin to emerge. 

An unshakeable, unyielding Self Reliance based on a quiet, radical solitude, rooted in non-conformism perhaps may be the answer to the conspiracy of society against us. By carrying with us a solitude that is not watered down by people, by being confident in ourselves having a brave self trust and not conforming we may begin to feel happier and more fulfilled; at peace. If we can perhaps learn to not be shackled to consistency, to not live in the past or future but in the here and now, in the present we may begin to live in, to experience, the peaceful, mystical  feeling of 'being alone in the woods.' And finally, if Emerson offers us anything, it is the relief of knowing that we can only ever be ourselves in life and that  being ourselves, ultimately is our greatest gift.

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation.”

If his message was relevant in the 1830's it seems it is all the relevant now. Emerson cannot be read like a 'self help' book because he is not telling us to do anything, rather his message is, that really, self help, is our job. I will end with this final excerpt;

“The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul.”