We simply don't know what the future will bring. That's a basic fact of life. I was reminded of that today when I rummaged through a drawer where I keep blank notebooks and notepads, making room for a new supply I'd gotten from Amazon.
Down at the bottom of a bunch of rarely used stuff was an envelope. On it I'd written "Will (open -- obviously -- only if I die)" It was a one-page document dated March 2, 1991 called Last will and testament.
I'd written it in a period between my marriage to Laurel in 1990 and whenever we got around to having an attorney draw up wills for us, which ended up being living trusts. My motivation was stated in the first paragraph:
Before I leave on a trip to California, I want to set down my wishes regarding my personal property which would be inherited by my beloved wife, Laurel, and my beloved daughter, Celeste.
While this informal will now has no effect, I found it interesting to read. Especially this section:
While I unconditionally give all that I have to Laurel, I hope that she will do her best to carry out these two wishes:
(1) It would give me great pleasure to be able to donate 10% of the value of my property to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas in India. This probably should be accomplished through the comparable association in America. Some of the satsangis could help you determine how to do this. But I only want you to make such a donation when and if your financial situation permits it.
Please think of your needs first, and please make this donation over a period of ten years or so. In other words, figure out what the 10% equals, and donate 1% a year, if this is comfortable for you. For twenty years I have given 10% of my time to my Master in meditation, and it seems only right to give 10% of my assets to this Path which has provided me with so much love and satisfaction.
Well, about fourteen years later I'd stopped being a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, having decided that pursuing other forms of spirituality made more sense to me.
But just as getting divorced from my first wife didn't negate all of the love Sue and I had for each other during most of our eighteen years of marriage, leaving Radha Soami Satsang Beas didn't negate all of the wonderful experiences I had during the thirty-five years I was an active member of the organization.
Recently I wrote about transformative experiences in "If an experience promises to transform us, it's difficult to decide about it." The basic notion put forward by philosopher L.A. Paul is that if an experience (such as having a child) is transformative, the person we will be after we go through that experience is different from the person we are when deciding whether to undergo the experience.
So which person gets our allegiance? This is a tough question with no easy answers. The best answer Paul comes up with in her book, Transformative Experience, sidesteps the question by approaching it from a different direction.
In her "The Shock of the New" chapter Paul talks about the decision whether to try a durian for the first time. This is a tropical fruit that I'd never heard of before seeing Paul's mention of it. Wikipedia describes why tasting it involves a bit of a gamble.
Some people regard the durian as having a pleasantly sweet fragrance, whereas others find the aroma overpowering and unpleasant. The smell evokes reactions ranging from deep appreciation to intense disgust. The persistence of its strong odour, which may linger for several days, has led some hotels and public transportation services in Southeast Asia, such as in Singapore and Bangkok, to ban the fruit.
Here's a passage by Paul that describes one way out of the transformative experience dilemma.
Instead of constructing the decision in terms of whether you will enjoy the taste of durian or whether you will find it revolting, you can choose to try durian based on whether you want to have a new experience for its own sake, that is, solely for the sake of the value of having the experience, whether what it's like to have that experience is subjectively good or bad. That is, you decide to try a durian for the sake of the revelation the experience of tasting a new kind of fruit brings.
The relevant outcomes, then, of the decision to have a durian are discovering the taste of durian versus avoiding the discovery of the taste of durian, and the values attached reflect the subjective value of making (or avoiding) this discovery, not whether the experience is enjoyable or unpleasant. If you reconfigure the decision this way, your choice can be framed as a choice of whether to try something new solely for the sake of having the experience that is, for the sake of the revelation it brings.
There's problems with this approach, though, as Paul discusses in other parts of the chapter. For example, in trying something new, like the (mythical) experience of becoming a vampire, we not only have a revelation of what it's like to be a vampire, but we likely will end up giving up preferences we had before becoming a vampire -- like being a vegetarian.
Still, there's a lot to like about looking upon trying new things as an adventure into the unknown that, while the specific outcomes are hidden, we can be sure that we'll learn what it's like to experience that thing -- whether this be pleasant or unpleasant.
When I was initiated into Radha Soami Satsang Beas in 1971 by the guru at that time, Charan Singh, I had no idea how this would end up transforming me. For about thirty-five years I was devoted to the RSSB teachings, though I had doubts about them. Then, those teachings stopped appealing to me and I changed my spiritual course.
But I have no regrets about the time I spent with Radha Soami Satsang Beas, just as I have no regrets about the time I spent with Sue, my first wife. In both cases, I had many good times, and also some bad times.
That's the nature of life: you don't know what will happen or where you'll end up. All you can do is make your way through the twists and turns of life as best you can, making the choices that seem right at the time.
Recent Comments