Sebastian Moore: The Structure of Desire

Before we can see how Moore conceives of the paradox of salvation in human desire, we must first more fully develop his concept of desire. The basic distinction we need to begin with is between desire for particular things and desire as such, or, as he often puts it, the “whole context of desire” that manifests as desire for “we know not what.” He reads basic distinction through the classic theological tradition, as most notably formulated by Augustine and Aquinas, and also through the psychoanalytic tradition.

In the classic theological tradition an “exit and return” pattern is adopted from Neo-Platonic spirituality in which creatures have their particular nature because they are fallen from their original home in the divine One. Salvation is then thought to be a power that enables creatures to return to God who is the unity beyond the many particular things of creation. Yet, though our desire—having its origin in the divine—finds its ultimate fulfillment only in the divine, it nevertheless seems endlessly misdirected toward the fleeting things of creation. The love of God revealed by Christ thus enables a certain detachment from the merely creaturely dimension of reality, thus liberating love to be properly directed to the divine dimension in which all created reality participates. [1] This reorientation of one’s love simultaneously allows one to love creation in a way proper to one’s own creaturely nature, namely as an unexpected gift rather than a possession. In this way desire is moved from the known and the particular to the mysterious and eternal in all being.

Moore sees in the psychoanalytic tradition a similar motion. A central Freudian insight, which he deems to be very important, is that the child grows out of an undifferentiated “sea of delight,” a sort of “oceanic dream of self….” [2] Compared to the theological imagery we have just discussed, this undifferentiated state is analogous to the divine One prior to the fall, or perhaps one might think of it as the pre-fall state of Adam and Eve in the Biblical narrative, before the separation from intimacy with God occurred. This delightful background precedes desire as it later becomes channeled more and more into particular objects. Much like the Platonic imagery that infuses classical theology, the loss of touch with this original context of all-embracing goodness leads to a terror of death and fetishization of particular objects of desire. The process of the differentiation of desire, as we shall see later, is traumatic and dramatic. This drama plays itself out in the relationships the child negotiates with its first caregivers. Psychotherapeutic method seeks in various ways to heal the trauma that attends the birth of self-consciousness. Moore sees this most fundamentally as an effort to to reconnect the patient to the long neglected sense of self as good/desirable that largely resides beneath the surface of everyday awareness.

Out of these two traditions Moore creates his distinction between particular desires and the preceding origin of desire as such. The former, if fixated upon in the absence of a solid connection to the later, constitutes the core problematic of his analysis.

With this in view we can now see another crucial element of Moore’s thought, namely the distinctive way he relates these two modes of desire. His concept of generic desire, or “desire for we know not what,” inverts a commonsense idea of desire, namely that desire flows from an inner emptiness, or a lack. Moore objects. Desire, he wants to say, flows from an original over-abundance of goodness. To see his point, it is worth quoting him at length.

Wanting this or that cannot possibly be the start of the wanting process. It too must be preceded by a continuous condition of myself in my environment, a continuous wanting-I-know-not-what, a ‘just wanting.’ Now what is this ‘just wanting’ state? If we don’t reflect carefully, at this point, on our experience, we will say, ‘It is a state of emptiness wanting to be filled.’ But if we reflect, we see that this is the opposite of the truth. ‘Just wanting’ is a feeling good that wants to go on feeling good and looks for things to feel good about. This is very clear in the child. The child—like the dolphin—is a bundle of pleasurableness. Freud describes our original condition, moving in the amniotic fluid, as the ‘oceanic’ condition. Thus as we move, in our inquiry, from the definite, specific wants, back to the undifferentiated ‘just wanting,’ we are moving towards not emptiness but fullness. In the life of desire, it is ‘everything’ that becomes ‘this thing;’ it is not ‘nothing’ that becomes ‘this thing.’ (Let this Mind Be in You, 5.)

The basic structure is now in view. The task now is to show how this structure operates in human life.

Two Awakenings to the Ultimate Cause of Desire

Moore describes two basic ways that individuals who are living under the normal circumstances of focusing only on particular desires can be awoken to God as the ultimate mystery of desire. These two ways he calls “indirect” and “direct” awakening. The first is an awakening mediated through particular things, especially through intimate relationships with other people, whereas the second is not so mediated. In both cases a successful awakening has the same result, the liberation of desire and a reconnection with an immeasurable sense of self as desirable, that is to say, as good. Let us now briefly consider each of these ways of awakening.

Indirect Awakening

Before all else, says Moore, we long to be desired. More precisely, we long to be desired by the one whom we desire. (The Fire and the Rose Are One, xiii.) This longing flows from a certainty of being desirable. This is a counter-intuitive statement, but it shows itself when we are spurned by one we love. We become angry and indignant which proves that, deep down, we really do have come concept of our desirability. (Let this Mind Be in You, 14) This makes no sense if consider this desirability as being based on a notion of self-awareness that looks at oneself as an object. Indeed, we often do not feel desirable when we reflect on ourselves in that way. This deeper concept of our own desirability flows from Moore’s idea of our unfathomable inner-goodness that we often cover up. Such desire flows from a concept of self-awareness that looks “with” the self, not “at” the self. Problems of self dis-esteem flow from looking at the self, which is a rationalization of one’s very being. (Let this Mind Be in You, 13-14.)

From this sort of psychological sleep, the experience of desire for another has a way of reconnecting one with their own sense of desirability. As Moore says, “…when you feel drawn to another person, that is your own sense of your goodness expanding. There is always, in the attraction to another, the feeling of a larger life opening up in myself.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 14.) Moore traces this movement through several steps. First one is attracted to another. In this attraction, their own sense of their desirability is awoken. But this is only the beginning, for one wants their desire to be fully exercised in having the other be also attracted them. This can only happen, however, if the other person comes under the power of the first person’s goodness and beauty. This awakening, in turn awakens the other person to their own desirability. It is at this moment that the relationship moves from a relation of dependence to interdependence. In the early stages of mutual arousal, interdependence happens with ease, but if the relationship is to grow, one’s own self-affirmation (which is the power that attracts the other) needs to persist in order to avoid sliding back into an unsustainable relation of dependence.

This new moment, of self-acceptance in a love relationship, is the crucial moment. It is the watershed in all human relations. It is what most of us most of the time stop short of. For this is the vital point at which our belief in our goodness is not strong enough to carry us forward. It is always some, often subtle, self-rejection that hinders us from believing in another’s finding us attractive and from seeing that the other does so when this happens. (Let this Mind Be in You, 27.)

When our belief in our goodness persists in interdependent relationship “…each is affirming, is accepting, is appropriating, his or her own goodness as working in the relationship.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 27.) Desire has now been transformed “…into an investment of myself in a developing shared life, a commitment of myself to the unpredictable in hope.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 28.)

It is here that we see the paradoxical nature of a stage transition. In moving from dependence to interdependence one is actually entering into a new dependence (though qualitatively different from the former dependence). As Moore says, “…it is a dependence on the total mystery that constitutes me, this unique good person, and supports my investment of my goodness in the risk-laden adventure of intimacy. The anchor of my new hope is goodness itself.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 28.) These words sound familiar as they contain elements of two different stage transitions that Scharlemann mentioned in the previous chapter.

Another thinker who has done a great deal of work on this particular transition, and who has made explicit use of Moore’s theology, is David Schnarch. As I have mentioned earlier in this thesis, Schnarch is a psychotherapist who specializes in merging the disciplines of marital and sexual therapy with a particular emphasis on the dynamics of desire. He makes use of the idea of “inherent paradox” to help his patients see that they have, in fact, become “too important to each other” because they have ceased to grow beyond a dependency relation to each other. He calls this state “emotional fusion,” and though this state has the merit of regulating the anxiety of those in the relationship, the negative result is that desire evaporates. (Intimacy and Desire, 44-46.) Because partners lack the confidence in their own fundamental goodness, they cannot stand the anxiety of upsetting their partner beyond a certain point. Difficult issues are thus left unaddressed, and the couple contents themselves with elements of the relationship that are not as problematic, but which (owing to their safety) also tend to be quite boring and lacking passion. Some spend their whole adult life in this lifeless anxiety management system, but for others, something within refuses to accept such a circumstance. These are the one’s who either leave their partner or end up in therapy. Schnarch’s tactic as a therapist is just what Moore has previously indicated: He attempts to help the couple feel their own desirability/goodness that exists prior to the validation of their partner, thus enabling the courage to face the difficult elements within themselves and their relationship. [3] Interestingly, Schnarch has found that in the process a spontaneous spirituality is birthed in such couples. (Passionate Marriage, 382.)

The basic movement of the indirect awakening of God as the ultimate mystery of desire can now be seen. From desiring another, to the exercise of desire in a relationship of interdependence, to desire become hope in the total context of desire. The self is thus moved from an experience of isolation to a “partnership in the energy that unites persons in love.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 20.) This, argues Moore, is life in the Spirit. “Spirit [is] inter-life, the mysterious energy that flows between persons”. It is participation in this energy that “opens us to God, [and is] at once the opening of our desire to God and God’s point of entry into us; our way of opening, God’s way of entering.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 25.)

Direct Awakening

Though our desire has its source in our own basic goodness or desirability, we typically sense it indirectly through the “symptom” of desiring an other. (Let this Mind Be in You, 35.) But there is another way for our desirability to be felt, and this is what Moore calls a direct awakening of desire. Here desire breaks the rules and reaches out towards “nothing in particular.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 35.) It is not a matter of “I am wanting such and such a thing,” but rather, it is a matter of “I am.” This experience of desire is simultaneously the experience of one’s own desirability. No object has aroused it, rather “its very center has been stirred.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 43.) For this reason, a direct awakening of desire reverses the order of desire as normally experienced in indirect awakening. Rather than the self coming to experience its desirability in desiring another, here the self experiences its desirability first, then, like a river overflowing its banks, other objects of desire are caught up in the flood. (Let this Mind Be in You, 43.)

One might think to ask towards what this direct awakening of desire is aimed since, as we have noted, it has no object. Clearly language is strained at this point, but the only adequate answer is that “it is with ‘what makes me desirable’ that I seek intimacy,” (Let this Mind Be in You, 35.) the cause of my being and goodness. In line with classical theology, the only reality that makes desirable what it desires is God. It is God alone that “…directly arouses my self-awareness as desirable; that which, not as object desired but as subject making desirable, causes in us that desire for we know not what which is the foundational religious experience.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 36.) The intensity of this experience is certainly lost amidst this academic prose, but for a moment consider what it would be like to experience all the various forms of your erotic engagements with friends, lovers, and even the glory of nature, at its source. (Let this Mind Be in You, 38.) This, Moore encourages us to see, is the heart of religion, even while it turns conventional notions of religion on their heads. It fact it is often the case that when people first taste this experience they feel that conventional religion no longer speaks to them. Why? Because this awakening brings with it “a sense that I am in myself and not relatively to other people and to my culture and race.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 38.)

This breakthrough is what Moore calls the discovery of luminous selfhood. It is not necessarily a religious experience, he says, but it is spiritual. For it to become a religious matter one must answer “yes” to the call of longing that emerges. This latter choice, says Moore, is what constitutes religious faith. The result is a life lived in love, for “Love is desire decided for.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 40.)

From this distinction between an awareness that is dominated by knowing oneself always as measured against the responses of others and an awareness that is dominated by knowing oneself directly as good, somehow chosen, and beloved, Moore makes a distinction between two types of religiosity: Romantic and Mystical religiousness. Romantic religiousness takes its point of departure from the first mode of consciousness. Here religious truths are spoken of “by spinning a web of speculation and beautiful thoughts out and beyond this sure base. It’s up in the air, controlled only by the person’s fancy as he/she conjures up a God who is like Grandma but infinitely better. So it’s romantic. It’s building castles in Spain.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 39.) Mystical religiousness, on the other hand, renders ordinary consciousness questionable rather than taking it as its point of departure. “Its religious thinking is not up in the air, romantic, moralistic pious guesswork whose only anchor is ordinary social consciousness, but is deeper [and] more real.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 39.)

Romantic religiousness has the great risk of painting a picture of God that “evokes an experience of being loved first by another person in whom we are not interested—which is one of the most negative experiences we have.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 45.) Mystical religiousness is not about “loving others,” but about “turning them on.” What we desire most is to be desired by one who excites us, and in a religious context this boils down to being Christ for people. Jesus did not “love people,” rather, “he allowed God to show him to people as his beloved, desirable because desired from all eternity. As each of us is.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 46.)

Those who experience direct awakening become means of grace for others. And what “we call grace, or the new creation, is that movement within people whereby the infinite desire which constitutes them in being (the ‘first creation’) happens for them, happens in their consciousness, happens as a new empowering of the heart.”[34] Thus, whether first mediated through human relationships, as is most common, or awoken directly, the goal is the same: the liberation of desire by making contact with desire’s ultimate cause, the love that courses through the entire universe.

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This post is a continuation of a series in which I make use of the blogosphere to motivate my dissertation free-writing. For context, read the short summary of my work here. There you will also find a table of contents with links to all the posts in this series.

[1] Augustine stressed that this is a process that is never completed in this life. As he says in the City of God, “For to be quite free from pain while we are in this place of misery is only purchased, as one of the world’s literati perceived and remarked, at the price of blunted sensibilities both of mind and body. And therefore that which the Greeks called ἀπάθεια, and what the Latins would call, if their language would allow them, ‘impassibilitas,’ if it be taken to mean an impassibility of spirit and not of body, or, in other words, a freedom from those emotions which are contrary to reason and disturb the mind, then it is obviously a good and most desirable quality, but it is not one which is attainable in this life.” (The City of God, 410.)

[2] Moore will later be critical of Freud because Freud called this desire that precedes the desire for particular things “the unconscious.” Moore sees Freud as having “made the common mistake of thinking of self-awareness as having oneself as object of awareness”, thus, “he had to call the fundamental condition that precedes all our [desirous] activity the ‘unconscious’.” (Let this Mind Be in You, 6.) For Moore this fundamental sense of desire is not unconscious, but instead, is a mode of consciousness that, though seldom present to us, can be reconnected with though meditation. (Let this Mind Be in You, 10.) Indeed it is this fundamental desire that is the deeper stability that all therapy directs itself toward. (Let this Mind Be in You, 14.)

[3] For Schnarch this basic idea is interpreted through the idea of “differentiation” as first developed by Murray Bowen, but expanded upon in Schnarch’s own work.

One Foot on the Gas and the Other on the Brake: Kegan, Laskow Lahey and the Immunity to Change

Over the last few posts we have witnessed Ernest Becker propose that all or our cultural activity, even our very self-identity is a massive effort to stave off our natural fear of death (here, here, here, and here). In that context, psychological growth was identified as developing an enlarged capacity to face these self-protective strategies without going mad in the process. In the previous post Robert Kegan’s five orders of consciousness were introduced as a more detailed framework for understanding psychological growth as a progression in relative degrees of un-repression. In view of this, growth is marked by moving psychological realities that “have us,” to elements that we are able to “have,” that is, look at with some degree of objectivity. In this post we will explore the structure of our resistance to growth as developed in Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey’s book Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization.

The Use of Inherent Paradox in Psychotherapy

The need for growth arises from the fact that life has a way of never quite leaving us alone. No matter how much we may try to avoid them, impossible problems tend to find us. Such problems are what psychotherapist David Schnarch calls inherent paradoxes. Such paradoxes are naturally occurring inconsistencies in our culturally mediated beliefs and values which, under the right circumstances, can from problems that we can neither solve, nor avoid. Here inherent paradoxes become crucibles. They occur at the edges of our developmental thresholds. This is the reason they cannot be “solved,” for our attempts at a solution come from within our developmental limits, but the problem is a problem because of our developmental limits.

Pointing to the work of Weeks and L’Abate, Schnarch describes how “the solution to inherent paradox is to promote a quantum leap in the complexity of the solution.” Such a “solution,” he says, really amounts to a “paradigm shift in the process of going to a higher level of functioning.” This is essentially what constitutes a stage transition as identified by Kegan. “When the paradox results from embedded cultural values and beliefs, it is necessary to establish a viewpoint outside the culture form which the implicit cultural information can be viewed and examined.” I would add to this that such a point of view is not only, in some sense, “outside of culture,” but in the context of personal growth it must be a view from outside one’s developmental limits, in other words, from outside of oneself as one knows it.

My aim at this point is to introduce how Kegan and Laskow Lahay have put the idea of inherent paradox to work as a therapeutic tool to 1. help people see the paradoxical inconsistencies that their own lives are manifesting from a standpoint one remove beyond their usual point of view and in so doing 2. help people learn to test the hidden, self-constituting assumptions that form the limits of their current self and world understanding. In reviewing this we will gain insight into some of the dynamics of psychological death and rebirth which can occur numerous times throughout one’s life.

Inherent Paradox and the “Immunity to Change”

Doubtless the beliefs and practices of our life are filled with paradoxical inconsistencies. For practical purposes, most of these can be safely ignored in our day to day interactions since nothing critical hangs on them, nor do they force any deeper self-confrontation. Typically, we do our best to avoid this latter kind of inconsistency, but, by process of elimination, life has a way of driving us into scenarios where avoiding the situation becomes impossible without sacrificing our integrity. For example we might consider again the young person who was taught “know that you believe” and to courageously love truth like Jesus did, only to find that their love of truth led them to doubt the historical reliability of the image of Jesus, and therefore, apparently, the foundation of their love of truth itself. A paradox of this sort cannot be comfortably avoided. It has now become a crucible which, if endured, has to potential to stimulate psychological, even spiritual, growth.

The reason that such crucibles are so difficult for us to negotiate amounts to what Kegan and Laskow Lahey refer to as our psychological immunity system. The metaphor of an immunity system is apt, for the function of an immunity system is to protect an organism from foreign bodies that pose a threat to its integrity. In this way, to have an immunity system is a good thing! But as those familiar with organ transplants knows, this good thing can prove fatal in situations where a foreign organ is necessary to save the life of the individual. In the same way our system of repressions, or psychological immune system, is designed to keep us safe from realities that threaten our psychological integrity, but, at the same time, life sometimes makes it necessary to transgress the boundaries of our psychological immunity system if we are to avoid death of a different sort. As can be seen from Kegan’s five orders of consciousness, each level will have an immunity system that picks out a different set of targets as possible threats to its integrity. To the socialized mind, losing the approval of one’s tribe is the ultimate threat to be guarded against. To the self-authoring mind, the ultimate threat will be failing one’s personal ideology, and so on.

Kegan and Laskow Lahey frame the possibilities and limits of our equanimity (our immunity to change) in the following way. The heart of their book is helping people to construct an “immunity map,” which is a sort of snapshot of their inherent paradox. The immunity map consists of a four column table. In the first column goes an improvement goal. An improvement goal is some area of one’s life that has shown itself to be an developmental rather than technical problem. For example, one might feel the need to either learn to delegate more tasks in a new role as supervisor. In the second column one lists all the concrete activities that one does instead of the improvement goal (i.e., “I pass off tasks to X, but micro-manage how they approach it.”). For many people this is as far as conscious awareness goes. For such people the next step can feel like a magic trick. With the first two columns in place, one is asked the question: “What do you worry would happen if you did not do the things in the second column?” In the case of our example, “What do you worry would happen if you did not micro-manage how you subordinates approach the task you have given them?” The goal here is to surface a hidden commitment that is driven by a fear. Thus our subject might respond, after a bit of reflection, “I worry that if I am not directly involved I will be viewed as merely administrative dead weight.” This fear is then translated into the commitment: “I am committed to not being administrative dead weight and thus I will work to be directly involved with all work that I am responsible for.”

Once we step back and take a look at the shape of our three columns so far, it is easy to see that column three is in direct opposition to column one. One foot is on the gas, while the other is on the brake, as Kegan and Laskow Lahey like to say. The inherent paradox that our immunity system has created is now in full view. Getting this in view helps us see clearly why it is that change, even passionately desired change, is so often impossible from the standpoint of our current mental complexity, that is, life as we know it. What is needed, then, is a new way of knowing, a new order of mental complexity. Kegan and Laskow Lahey help people begin to take this step by moving to the forth column. Here one works on identifying a set of “big assumptions” that makes the fears that make one’s column three commitments inevitable. Such assumptions form the protective limits of one’s mental complexity. These assumptions are like “danger do not enter” signs at the edge of one’s current mental world. They may well be true and should therefore be heeded, but they might not be. The only way to know is to first see them, and then to test them.

In the final section of this chapter we will bring together what we have learned from Becker and Kegan and apply these insights to the question of the paradox of salvation. What have we learned about the meaning of Jesus’ claim that those who seek to save their life will lose it? What of those that lose their life, and yet find it?

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This post is a continuation of a series in which I make use of the blogosphere to motivate my dissertation free-writing. For context, read the short summary of my work here. There you will also find a table of contents with links to all the posts in this series.

The Adventure You Are Called to

How much of life do we miss simply because, though we are bodily present, our minds are worrying away in either the past or the future? How much do we miss by being beyond even those mental stirrings, placing our minds on auto-pilot? It’s hard to blame us, really; this life is often an anxiety producing experience. We carry guilt for our actions in the past. We worry about the possibility of a fulfilling life in the future. And often times all this worrying and longing strikes us as so fruitless that we’d just rather drown it all out with mindless noise. Notice, while alone in the car, how quickly we move to fill the silence with the radio. To be alone with ourselves is often a painful experience. And yet, to lose yourself by tuning out is boring. Life becomes little more than another trip to work, a sitcom, a beer, and bed.

We Are All Self-Absorbed

The basic problem is what those in the world of psychotherapy and spiritual direction call “self-absorption.” Self-absorbtion is the basic human problem of being trapped inside your ego-organized self. But this is a funny thing, because to be trapped inside yourself (your ego-organized self), is, in another sense, to be separated from yourself (your fuller self, the self that is deeply integrated and connected with the world around you).

Often, we prefer life this way. The reason is that life within our ego-organized self has at least one thing going for it: It’s predictable. And to that extent, it’s safe. But the catch is that it’s predictable only because it’s the mental world we’ve personally crafted or bought in to. It’s filled not with the world that emerges as mystery, around us and from within us, but with our concepts of the world around us and with our concept of our own identity. It’s not the immediate experience of this moment, this light, this smell, this texture, but instead it’s “another tree,” “another trip to work,” another “white evangelical.” We’ve constructed this world since birth to deal with the chaotic unpredictability of life. To a certain extent, it even works, but its limits begin to show themselves in a brooding sense of dissatisfaction, boredom, and self-loathing. Underneath it all is the sense of a fuller life, of excitement, of a desire for that which we know not what, of adventure.

Wanting What We’re Scared of

The trouble is, getting in touch with that fuller sense requires courage. We need to learn to leave, at least occasionally, the relative safety of our ego-organized self, of our concepts. A tolerance for an encounter with the unknown, the unpredictable, the chaotic in life, must be developed. In short: We must have a capacity to endure the danger of adventure if we are to embark on the adventure of life that calls to us. It is for this reason that spiritual directors William Connolly and William Barry suggest that “Self-absorption is a concentration on weakness. The effort to help a person to look beyond herself is part of the appeal to strength that is the task of the spiritual director. [emphasis, mine]” (The Practice of Spiritual Direction, 51.)

Quit the Neurotics of Normalcy

The good news is that you don’t need to go to a therapist or a spiritual director to begin to develop this capacity for the unpredictable, and therefore to more easily take hold of the fuller life that is so often buried within you. Here’s a few things I can recommend.

1. If you are the outdoorsy type (and perhaps especially if you are not!), consider Alastair Humphreys’ philosophy of “micro-adventures.” The genius of his thinking here is that he helps you to get past giving excuses for never living adventurously because of the daunting nature of large-scale adventures.
2. Unplug. We’ve all heard this before, but it’s true. Do it. Every now and again, try to drive, walk, or just sit without a steady input of artificial stimulation. If you looking for a serious challenge, attempt to take a detached stance to the mental train of thoughts that will immediately rush in to fill the void of silence (for a bit more on the benefits of silence, see my recent post here).
3. Take Leo Buscaglia’s advice and jump out your bedroom window (at 37:03).
4. Work on moving your relationship with your spouse from a relation of dependency to interdependency. Nothing will force you to endure the unpredictable than actual intimacy with another human being. And nobody is better at helping committed relationships on this journey than David Schnarch. His book “Passionate Marriage” is revolutionary (Note: not for the prudish, Esp. Chapter 10).
5. Quit your job (self explanatory).
6.  Consider contemplative prayer or a practice of meditation: Think number 2. on steroids. If the problem is being trapped inside your ego-organized self, contemplative prayer is the daily discipline in encountering God not in the known contents of your mind, but in the unknown mystery that comes before and stretches beyond you. Thomas Keating’s classic “Open Heart Open Mind” is a great place to begin.
7. Ride your bike across Europe and Asia.
8. Raise chickens in your backyard. The interactions you’ll soon have with your neighbors will alone bring all kinds of fun unpredictability.

The Spirituality of Adventure

Whatever you do, be gentle with yourself. All of us, simply by being born and growing up into this world, regularly live within the safety of our constructed worlds. And to a certain extent, such living is normal, natural, and healthy. But on the other hand, we also live in an era where our technological grasp on reality has given us the ability to fashion our very environment according to the whims of our mental constructions. It has become ever more easy, by virtue of the rapid changes in social and mass media, to mistake our constructions for “all that there is.” It is a rare thing for the natural world to break in upon us and force us to wake up to the unpredictable mystery in which we find ourselves. As a consequence, we find it ever easier to live merely within the limits of our constructions. We are bored. We are vaguely dissatisfied. But it needn’t be so. Life itself is danger and adventure! Sometimes all it takes is stepping outside the role culture has crafted for us for that feeling of wonder, awe, and an aching desire for that which we know not what to come rushing back to us.

May you live the adventure from which you flow and to which you are called!