Jesus' Paradigm Shift in Man's Moral Foundations

The late Rene Girard saw humanity’s moral progress in its gradual abandonment of its age-old violent sacrifice systems with their victim scapegoats. He traced it back to parts of the Hebrew Bible, and in Jesus he saw the pinnacle of this development, for it is only in Him that this undercurrent becomes conscious of itself. Another reason for Jesus being crucial to this development is obviously the subsequent spread of His message, which Girard as a Christian ascribed to the work of the Holy Spirit.

On the human level this spreading moral revolution has taken on forms that are clearly discernable. And yet Jesus’ paramount message of “loving one’s neighbor as oneself” and the even more radical one of “loving one another as I [Jesus] have loved you” seem to cut across some of humanity’s  evolution-hardwired moral foundations. Jonathan Haidt, following on the research of other psychologists and anthropologists,  has long been arguing that evolution equipped us with a set of 5 (or 6, in a recent formulation of his theory) moral foundations falling into 3 main ethical categories.  They are care, fairness and liberty (ethic of autonomy), loyalty and authority (ethic of community), and sanctity (ethic of divinity). It has been corroborated by fieldwork that most of the world’s population base their moral judgments on all of these moral foundations, while progressive or liberal elites in the West ground their morality on just 2 or 3 foundations, all of them falling into just 1 ethical category, that of autonomy.

Since most Christians, including many among those who subscribe to progressive ways of thinking, consider human moral predispositions as being “evolution-based” or “natural,” these facts should give them pause. They also should let progressives better understand the moral stance of those endowed with this broader range of moral sensitivities. Moral – not immoral! Yet liberals of all kinds, including most liberal Christians, do not seem to see it that way. Neither is the other side willing to see the progressive stance as a logical implementation of Jesus’ message.

Especially in a societal setting, acting out of a reduced set of moral foundations might many a time place one in a moral conundrum, as there is no natural balance between society- and individual- oriented imperatives. But there is an easy way out resorted to most of the time: self-righteous position of moral superiority over those seeing a particular moral dilemma differently. And the other side then reacts similarly based not only on their divergent moral judgments, but also reacting to the  perceived hatred and demonization directed at them.

Yet a case can also be made, as to an extent has been, that since the broader foundations and categories produce moral attitudes standing in opposition to one another, adopting a reduced yet coherent subset of such foundations might represent or amount to moral progress. I am interested in such a case grounded on pronouncements of Jesus. What is more interesting is that Jesus seemed to set about dismantling some of the foundations, especially sanctity  (understood as avoiding pollution), but also authority (of the religious elites) standing in the way of more prominence being accorded to the foundations He seemed to cherish the most, namely those of care (or no harm) and fairness. One might see this stance as invitation to a moral transcendence of oneself as defined by humanity’s moral evolution, as invitation to universal love.

I will limit myself to basing my case for universal love on my reading of Jesus’ message. Universal love is much more than responding to what one perceives as harm done to one’s neighbor while at the same time being resentful (if not outright hateful) of those who do not see this situation the way one does. And it is obviously also much more difficult. I think it requires tolerance, a virtue that has fallen by the wayside on both sides of the moral spectrum. Seeing the position of the other side as morally-based could certainly help. It does not follow that we must necessarily agree with the other’s position. Yet if we see it as essentially immoral, we are on the way to hatred and demonization of our opponents. And that is certainly not in line with what Jesus taught.

The famous Jesus’ “love-thy-neighbor” pronouncements are well understood by all Christians, as well as non-Christians, their not being adhered to notwithstanding. What is important for this exposition is that they are necessarily shared by those Christians who subscribe to both the narrower and the broader set of moral foundations. The situation gets complicated only when there arises a perception that they are standing in the way of moral imperatives based on some of the other foundations, the ones cherished by the conservatives. What if those “neighbors” of ours do not share, and do not want to share, our traditions, culture, religion?  What if they seem not to even want to be loyal to our society? The latter suspicion might become then a self-fulfilling prophecy, when someone viewed as incapable of loyalty is acting the role out of resentment.

Jesus made His clearest case for universality of neighborly love in His parable of the Good Samaritan, told in response to the question “who is my neighbor?” Having related the story He actually reverses the question, asking, “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?,”  and then says, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” There is more to this reply that initially meets the eye. It is an alien belonging to a despised group that turns out to be the one showing mercy, the only “neighbor” in the story. For Jesus’ listeners this fact is supposed to undermine their conventional notions of their compatriots’ moral integrity vs lack of it in all the others.

The other famous Jesus’ parable on caring, brotherly love is the one told in Matthew 25, the “I was a stranger, and you invited [did not invite] Me in” parable. This one in turn is the most compelling in its exhortation to care for the least fortunate: “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.” For the Christian there cannot be more compelling a case for loving all of one’s fellow men than realizing that Jesus fully identified with the least ones on this earth of ours.

Girard and many others claim that these pronouncements of Jesus are the true source and the true code of Western morality at its descriptive (and mostly theoretical rather than practical) best, rounding out the best they can the revelation of the (innocent) scapegoat mechanism, which revelation makes it futile. They have laid solid foundations first and foremost of the care (or no-harm) imperative in the human soul, as they have also for any culture claiming to be Christian, and in the unprecedented manner and revelatory context, as was clearly demonstrated by Girard. It should also be underscored that this imperative is truly normative, that is evolutionary-based, as evidenced by the unease experienced on hurting others or even observing their being hurt; while relying on mirror neurons for its full range of expression, it more strongly correlates with brain activity involving evolutionarily deeper, “pre-mimetic,” parts of our brain than those sentiments reflecting man’s other moral foundations, with the single exception of that of sanctity/purity.

Today though the ongoing Western moral revolution is spearheaded by post-Christians who are taking their cues not directly from Jesus anymore but are picking and choosing from, or being driven by, as the case may be, the legacy foundations, or, rather the ruins thereof.  The dignity culture, built – many a time without realizing that – on Christian moral tenets is being supplanted by what has been named victimhood culture. Some such development has been foreseen by Girard, who nevertheless considers it moral aberration, or rather – as a logical one, though unwanted, and yet hopefully not unavoidable – an ominous sign of the beginning of descent into apocalypse. His analysis of Matthew 24 as describing an apocalypse at our own hands, rather than one inflicted by God, draws on perspicuous understanding of the recent developments in Western society and culture; to be duly replicated by the world at large, it being but a West-oriented global village.

It is not easy to navigate the moral landscape of our times. The victimhood culture is drawing on the imperative of the universality of care (as discussed above as regards the proverb of the Samaritan aiding a wounded one). But if we are not mitigated at the same time by admonitions having to do with not judging others (e.g., the speck in your brother’s eye proverb), or loving one’s enemies (discussed later), resentment is certain to get the better of us. And our acting out the care imperative will just be a caricature of itself, for, often not realizing that, we will be upping the ante in a game of scapegoating.

There is no doubt anymore that scapegoating is violence. Second-generation scapegoating, the scapegoating of scapegoaters (not necessarily our own), seems even more insidious than that of the previous generation, for it is rarely noticed even by those who are sensitive to and thus can detect cases of scapegoating in other situations. The reason is that it is extremely difficult to see oneself as the one doing the scapegoating. It seems to be engaged in more often by the progressives because it is inextricably tied to the moral foundation of fairness/justice. Acting on this imperative in a violent manner, which also includes being driven by resentment and/or hatred, cannot but become an act of scapegoating. A conservative acting on this imperative, which call for him/her, by the way, would certainly be understood differently, would many a time be mitigated by his/her other imperatives, like loyalty to the country/nation. But apart from fairness/justice the liberal has only care. And s/he would do well to fall back on this foundation, as this might prevent her/him  from violently fighting for her/his brand of justice. Violent status-quo, even if ostensibly bearing a semblance of peace, can only be truly remedied by nonviolent methods of conflict solving. The myth of redemptive violence is just that, a myth. Violence puts nothing aright, and these days even less so, as scapegoating stopped bestowing a peaceful respite on a mob of scapegoaters. Today there will always be several angry scapegoating mobs violently, that is hatefully, competing with one another. No chance anymore for the formation of an apparently peaceful or at least peaceable community, even if created by the blood/expulsion/suffering of a scapegoat. Not any more, and so much the better for it.

Fairness, the second moral foundation of Jonathan Haidt, is truly a problematic one, especially if it is viewed in conjunction with or mostly through the bigger lens of justice. It is apparently shared by both the progressives and the conservatives. Yet both groupings differ diametrically in their understanding of it. What is one side’s justice many a time is the other side’s injustice. Suffice it to recall here polemics of the advocates of “egalitarian” positions, and those affirming “equal opportunities.” Even Jesus’ position on justice-related  issues did not escape being questioned while He lived on earth, or anachronistically criticized by later commentators.  Some of the Sermon on the Mount passages are often cited as examples of a seemingly cowardly renunciation of any striving for justice: the famous “do not resist evil,… turn the other check,… let him have the shirt also,… go with him the second mile” themes. Yet, as Walter Wink so convincingly showed in his last books, these words, on the contrary, are a summons to nonviolent resistance to evil, not at all to virtual complicity in it by forgoing resistance. Such a stance requires actually much more courage and wisdom (as exemplified by the martyr Mahatma Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela upon ascending to power) than adrenaline-driven rage that seems to be the normal mode of pursuing justice in our time. Jesus unequivocally renounced that, knowing that there is but one small step from that to an evil no lesser than the one that the justice advocate is fighting against. That evil is scapegoating, the violence of its outward forms and/or inherent in the motivation underlying it.

If fairness/justice as a moral foundation tends to be problematic – and very difficult to pursue in a way that is not self-defeating – care seems only difficult, sometimes exceedingly difficult. But it is well worth pursuing. It is the one foundation that cannot – for any reason – be given up, if one is to stay moral, and not just occupy the moral high ground, as is often the case with “seasoned” justice fighters. It is also evidently the one foundation that Jesus’ earthly life evinces preeminently. This is the truest embodiment of Jesus’ ethic, ethic of uncompromising love, inclusive of one’s enemies. And for a man whom such neighborly love makes incomparably free at heart, it also logically embraces nonviolent-only resistance to evil and nonviolent-only pursuit of justice.

As far as the moral foundation of liberty is concerned, it goes without saying that Jesus would fully embrace it and it must be considered as basic for Him. Yet, as with fairness-justice, there are shades of liberty that seemingly stand in almost total contradistinction to one another. Jesus certainly was an advocate of positive freedom, and opposed to seeing liberty as just a libertarian-type negative freedom from whatever it might be, oppression, slavery, excessive taxation, etc. He urged us to use our inherent freedom to pursue our true humanity, which necessarily includes charity-based morality, and which is solidarity-based. Now such a brand of liberty obviously can only be seen as standing at the junction of the ethic of autonomy and that of community.

Jesus’ position on loyalty was a nuanced one, and certainly not one to be emulated if one were to ask any local zealot of His time. His brand of true loyalty seems to have been rather narrow but authentic: it was community-focused, or communitarian, and based on solidarity. And it was active. Had He lived in our times, He wouldn’t have moved, like most “lip-service” paying liberals, to the suburbs, away from the underprivileged, i.e., the people who they ostensibly care about. No, He would have stayed with His community, just like our contemporary Little Brothers (and Sisters) of Jesus do, modeling their lives on His. So, He was loyal par excellence, but to those He was in contact with (obviously this could be anybody, no one was denied access), not to the “idea” – of a nation, of a temple tradition – as cherished by the scapegoating elites and used by them to control their fellow countrymen. His loyalty, or respect for His nation’s traditions and laws was actually something out of the ordinary, if not revolutionary. He set about subverting those traditions as to their literal meaning and instead delved into an unexplored before richness of the hidden spirit of those traditions. He was vehemently criticized for that and accused of being a subversive, a rebel – certainly not a loyal member of society. Yet His loyalty was authentic and much deeper, to boot, but not to those in a position to pass judgment on His brand of it. Instead, it was to the Ultimate Lawgiver, on the one hand, and to those exploited by those quick to pass judgment, stemming, as it must have been, from  their uniformed understanding, certainly not imbued with charity, of a tradition ostensibly shared by the whole nation, on the other hand. I am afraid, judging from the above description, that Jesus’ loyalty measurement from a contemporary conservative perspective would come out horrible.

Jesus’ stance on authority is well evident from His relations with the Pharisees and religious scribes. When speaking of those critical of His position on loyalty to traditions, reference was obviously made to the formal authorities of the Jewish nation, the chief priests of the temple, the religious hierarchy collaborating with the Roman Empire, the scribes, even the sect of Pharisees. It is clear that there was no unquestioning endorsement of their authority on the part of Jesus, quite the contrary, for His certainly was not a position of acknowledging anybody’s authority just because that person/group was holding a  formal position of power/influence in society. In other words, His example is certainly not one of acting from the authority foundation on the model that conservatives of any time would.

Now fear and revulsion or disgust cast a long shadow on morally legitimate sentiments of care for the integrity and tradition of one’s community. Consequently Jesus set about dismantling the sense of sanctity understood as it was in His times in negative terms as pollution avoidance, which position is the easiest springboard to scapegoating among the foundations. There is no denying that this dismantling was truly an outright attack wherever He went on the mentality of advocates of sanctity understood as pollution avoidance. It was accompanied by a wholesale paradigm shift, whereby sin was defined in metaphorical terms as debt, as a transgression against both love and sense of justice, and not as being contaminated. Jesus never tired of inviting to His fellowship those who were stigmatized as impure or polluted or “unclean” in the eyes of society, based on their profession (tax-collectors) or behavior (sinners), or anything else. He even went so far as to touch and heal people considered polluted based on an instinctual fear of contagion (lepers, or those possessed by an “unclean” spirit; generally those bearing victim marks and consequently truly victimized). A Pharisees’ attack on His disciples for their eating with “unclean” hands occasioned the full formulation of His position on what is clean and what is unclean. And it obviously went totally against the grain with them, just as it does with many latter-day conservatives, though their “pollutants” might be different.  It is worth adducing His words here: “…whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated... That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.” This statement followed His accusation leveled at the Pharisees (so concerned with His disciples’ impure hands) of failing to be charitable or even fair to their parents. In effect Jesus was saying to them: the old paradigm of scapegoating based on perceived non-cleansable pollution or indelible victim marks must be done away with and replaced with a new one based on transgressors’ redemption informed with sentiments of caring and justice; and love. In trying to follow Him we may as well start by doing away once and for all with all the pollution-based metaphors for lack of sanctity. Or, for that matter, in the employ of denying humanity to those “unclean,” as is more common nowadays.

It has been shown in neuroscientific studies that pollution avoidance highly correlates with brain activity in deep regions of our brain, those that were shaped early on in our biological evolution, rather than in more malleable regions reflective of later sociocultural evolution, or emerging from our brain neural networks’ whole-system organization when interacting with the world. And yet Jesus wants us to transcend these apparently hard-wired activity patterns, to move into the realm of a love capable of embracing those from whom we would cringe in disgust if we let our old brain dictate our behavior. Some people are not ready to concur, their disagreement being based on their reading of holy books or on mindboggling (to them) proliferation of wholly new categories of those demanding that they be considered pollution-free. For others it is easier said than done, sometimes they cannot help it no matter how hard they are trying. Consequently those who have managed to transcend those hard-wired inhibitions must not indulge in scapegoating those who have not, for this if not for any other reason. Otherwise they might in fact be worse than those whom they would be targeting. This would certainly be the case with those aware of these mechanisms and still engaging in second-generation scapegoating.

My argument here has been that the morality Jesus advocated and practiced when abiding on this earth of ours should be understood as a paradigm shift described in terms of throwing in bold relief some of man’s natural moral foundations while others are reinterpreted and/or made to recede into the background. Yet basing one’s judgments and behavior on a reduced set of moral foundations coincident with those highlighted by Jesus does not make this human moral agent morally superior. It is not a game of proving one’s superiority. Rather it is about humility. Such humility as would allow man to see his/her fellow human beings through Christ’s eyes in order to be able to love them as Christ does. To love all of humanity: oneself, one’s brothers and sisters, neighbors, and even enemies. So that Christ’s love spreading through us as its agents might be universal and thus complete. 

One Christian's Girardian Meditation on the Paris Tragedy

Dom Thomas Keating, founder of a contemporary Christian contemplative movement, is wont to say that God’s first language is silence and everything else is but poor translation. How I wish we all remembered that when desperately trying to hear His message among the garbled voices of man-created idols purportedly speaking  to us from the pages of sacred books, demanding from us first and foremost (this is their trademark) absolute obedience and loyalty. Or, for that matter, from “sacred” nationalist propaganda circulars showing no mercy to those disloyal and of impure blood, or from “sacred” revolutionary manifestos consigning those doubting or espousing the wrong ideas and, again, those disloyal, to the guillotines of all times, or from...

Yet when we stop drowning ourselves with those pseudo-divine self-hallucinated utterances, in the ensuing utter silence, we are all the more forcefully driven by our primal appetite for meaning and purpose. And as our “conscious” selves are groping for ways to quench this thirst in order to regain their bearings, we apparently have no alternative but to turn to others to have this emptiness filled out. We are, as Rene Girard says (prophetic present tense!), interdividuals. And though I claim with many others that this primal desire (or drive or appetite) is not discovered or created only in an encounter with an other, the manner it is going to be satisfied certainly is.

We are blessed with the body of knowledge Girard has imparted to us, also because it creates a space of freedom for and within us. When applied with meditative mindfulness, it gives us a choice whom to follow and whose promptings to avoid, though many a time it is easier said than done. We very easily undifferentiate from an initial disagreement, often over differences in our sacred books or their meaning, but also when interpreted as apparently showing an intolerable lack of respect, into the unanimity of mutual resentment or hatred. This leads us into verbal or physical violence, or that consisting in exclusion or expulsion; or killing.

Yet Girard not only has revealed this mechanism for us, but also himself pointed to the One whose imitation, nay, mimesis is valid and worthwhile. It is Jesus Christ whose witness and revelation of God actually let him stumble on it and formulate his theory. Christ’s voice continues to speak to us across the intervening centuries, many a time distorted by those who claim to be His followers, yet again made crystal clear (at least to us Girardians) through Rene Girard’s prophetic exposition. May it be given wings of the Spirit just as it was undeniably the case with the underlying Jesus’ revelatory message of nonviolent self-sacrificing love spreading far and wide and unstoppably despite initial cruel persecution.

Then knowing all of that, and if we feel inclined so, let us support one another through mutual mediation of Christ-centered mimesis. He is the only true model, and innermost mediator as well, for He is Truth incarnate, all other truths are but mere reflections. Many a time did He withdraw into the desert to commune with God. May we then one and all be interdividually led by Him in a contemplative hush of our “inner room,” the private desert of our hearts, into the source of Silence, into the-seen-of-none God whose appellation in His words is Abba or Father. To encounter Beauty to which to abandon ourselves upon the silent loving touch of Abba’s Presence.

Surely there are apocalyptic tones in Jesus’ message, pointed to also by Girard in contexts resembling that of today as we are teetering on the verge of an apocalypse at our own hands. Yet this is in Christ-modeled-and-mediated communities of contemplative prayer that we must address today’s despair and pursue our task of reconfirming our commitment to Christ’s message. So that we may courageously face the apparent absurdity of our continuing hope as we pray that the grief may be assuaged and that those aggrieved may be able to forgive in due course. So that we all may know how to stand firm for peace and dignity and mutual respect, and not succumb to undifferentiation of mutual hatred. So that we may witness our unfailing hope that love shall prevail yet.   

The Metaphor of No-Self in Contemplation

What is the “true self” of contemplation, or its subject, according to claims of many experienced contemplatives? Is it not simply God, or for the Christian (as assumed throughout this text), the Trinity or Jesus Christ, indwelling within the contemplative’s heart, as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of the Cross, and some others would have it? Such a self is actually “no-self,” a “self” that is not ours. (Contemporary mystic Bernadette Roberts resorts to this term when she relates her experience of moving beyond the unitive state.) Or is it Christ plus some intersubjective yet seemingly worthy accretions, or maybe “spiritual” leftovers, making this rather spurious whole a plausible subject of the “love thy neighbor as thyself” Old and New Testament injunction? Or maybe we are actually just grasping for guiding metaphors able to direct us to and along two distinct stages of the contemplative path, the former being (one of) the last, the latter, some early one?

But if there is anything intersubjective in the “true self” construct, how then can it be universally “true?” Well, if Rene Girard is right it actually cannot be “true” in that sense, and on more counts than just its being intersubjective. It is about how this intersubjectivity is constituted, and apparently cultivated, instead of being let go in a final swoop toward “no-self,” when all the accretions are melted away and there is nothing but Christ left at the center. Center of what? Of the desire and love constitutive of the energy that is “no-self.” Its center is anchored nowhere, so that when actuated this desirous love can be the “love [of] one another, just as I [Christ] have loved you.” Only then is there no mutual borrowing of the other mortal’s  earthbound desires in an intersubjective game of building interdividuality (a Girardian term) rather than what the world is wont to call individuality, be it “true” or “false.” 

Is this “final swoop” purely grace-bestowed, or is it somehow also mediated by our apprehension of our goal, by the shape of our deepest intentions and drives? Despite the espoused abhorrence on the part of  mystics such as Thomas Merton of even discussing the contents of pure contemplation in positive, rationalizing terms, on claims that it is entirely apophatic, unavoidably this is what is happening. Moreover, if Girard is right it is reasonable. If mimesis is such an overpowering constitutive human experience, then the content of contemplation (at least of the denied by some “acquired” variety, if not of the infused one) should certainly evince our contemplative path’s initial beliefs as embodied in our purest intentions, not only in our rather mixed broader motivations. They would certainly account for the direction of our spiritual path. Also, the stronger the mimesis (e.g., of the guide or teacher), the more fervent and competitive our pursuit of the spiritual goal tends to be, while external mediation of a saintly figure might make for a more balanced, faithful and patient quest. Not surprisingly then there have been in-depth analytical studies performed (e.g., Daniel Brown, 1986) that have proven that the contents of our faith, or initial beliefs and perspectives, are mapped onto the contents of the contemplative’s illuminative state, while the pathway leading there is more or less similar across various mystical traditions and largely independent of both.

On the way to contemplation there might be practiced various forms of meditation, some of them worthy rungs on the ladder of our spiritual journey. As structured practices, much more strongly than those purely contemplative, they are liable to reveal what we are really made of. Whether our “spiritual” path is about ourselves or about God, what our true intention actually is. Let us take a look at popular forms of breathing meditation. One might be visualizing inhaling light and love, then while exhaling, spewing sin and suffering, thus testifying to caring only about oneself, be it the rarified true self presently undergoing purification, or any other variety. Such practice is actually egotistic while professing to be about readying oneself to be “true” and truly loving. Yet for the latter to be true, meditation would have to be done in reverse order: inhaling sin and suffering of humankind, having Christ in one’s heart forgive and transmute them, then exhaling loving-kindness and love to and for the sake of the very humankind whose sin and suffering one has inhaled and asked Christ to transform. Neither would mindfulness of things coming within one’s purview do, even if anchored in breathing to secure the present moment, if it were not imbued with loving-kindness, with Christ-like attitude.   

What is then this call, long heard but rarely made good upon, to imitation of Christ? And again: who is to heed it? The true or inner or higher self, or rather Christ Himself at last encountered when the Christian has stripped himself bare of a self, true or false? True self – or no self? But aren’t they both really just metaphors whose referent is the same? Or are these metaphors trying to capture different states of consciousness, thus making the distinction valid if not necessary? I strongly feel that if one is really set on imitating Christ only, then paradoxically the metaphor of “no-self” should be the starting point, the springboard to contemplation. Then the hoped-for-final-curve of contemplation, with its very destination point looming ahead in mystery, would have a better chance – as the study quoted above indicates, but also intuitively – of approximating or reflecting or even actually “being” the indwelling Christ, this “no-self” of one’s own. This metaphor, when imbuing also one’s active life, would go a long way to contributing to one’s true imitation of Christ in deed, attitude and, potentially, character rather than in words only.

To see why this should be so, let us compare the dynamics of envy and regular jealousy. The former is obviously not driven by our appetites that make themselves known regardless of the existence of a model mediating our desire, as jealousy is when it starts to fight the other who is getting ahead of us to a common appetite-begotten goal.  Envy is different, much more insidious: we did not know that we had a need or desire until we had encountered it in the other. Then and only then is this desire created and becomes truly ours. But with a close human model it tends to gain undue energy and to be wholly internalized so as to collapse sooner or later into desire of the model’s being, which development is almost always accompanied by resentment if not outright hatred. That obviously is tantamount to also entirely losing sight of the initial desire.

Yet desire as such certainly exists, our consciousness is desire-primed. In what sense can it then be real, or true? If you strip yourself bare, unto no-self – not just true inner self – in grace-bestowed infused contemplation, and desire, now experienced as pure yearning, still exists, it has certainly proven itself real. Moreover, it has shown itself then as the truly supreme desire of man. It actually has all the qualities of primal appetite. It has no need of a human mediator but Christ, man and God, the only mediator whose abundance is able to quench mimetic envy. It is not outside you, neither is it inside you, for there is no self anymore. It is Christ imbuing this no-self (and everything pure and naked) that is the fount of this desire. You are this desire inasmuch as you have become Christ-like. Inasmuch as you have bared yourself unto the emptiness of the utter unreality and transitoriness of anything but love that Christ is. This desire actuating you that you found out you have been all along is the love permeating the universe, the love that has created and is constantly creating it anew. Your all-embracing heart has now become one with that of the universe.

Contemplation in order to be fruitful needs to be complemented in action done in freedom, humility and purity of heart. Here the issue of “true self” versus “no-self” is again thrown into sharp relief. Who is the doer? The metaphor of “true self” is the guiding light for the old-law injunction of “loving thy neighbor as thyself,” while metaphorical “no-self,” or rather, in a Christian setting, “Christ in place of self,” is the principle operative in Christ’s new commandment, “that you love one another, just as I [Christ] have loved you.” Just as the new commandment has transcended the old, so has “no-self” transcended the “true self.” The tenth commandment seems the hardest, always operative in us contrariwise, no matter how hard one tries to make ineffective one’s covetousness of things belonging to (or of desires or even the being of) one’s neighbor. The “true self” in action, even more than in contemplation, is always a false self, inasmuch as its “love of oneself” is actually always driven, nay, mimetically constituted by the “loves” or desires of others. And thus so is one’s self, regardless of whether it is considered true or false. “No-self” as guiding light is a veritable blessing, metaphorical rather than experiential though it must be for most of us on most occasions.

Yet it is only total depletion of the self, to the point of its disappearance in the emptiness of no-self, where “one [may] lay down his life for his friends,” as stated by Jesus in His exposition of what his new commandment entails, that enables one to truly follow Him. To have Him as the only model and mediator of the only mimesis that befits His followers. The apex of the mimetic triangle is then at the same time in God’s transcendent realm and coincident with the divine spark of our hearts, whose center is where love actuates us to be at any given moment, and whose perimeter is as large or as small as this love requires. Also, the logic of scarcity that governs mimesis of a finite human model will have been then replaced by that of abundance. An Abundance beyond compare that is God’s all-forgiving love, fully reflective of Christ. He is our only worthy model, whose imitation, while never fully attained to on earth, is being pursued and at the same time “being undergone” by no self of our own but by Christ Himself in our self’s stead, in and through His “perfect love [that] casts out fear,” including that of death of self-identity or self as such in a Christ-like kenosis, in order to be that love that He is.