Despair, said Thomas Merton, is the absolute extreme of self-love.

If we believe in the self, and cling to the self, how can we not despair ? The self faces certain obliteration. It arises from and returns to nothing.

But if we see the conscious self as a construction — a local epiphenomenon in the vast, interconnected web of being — we might attain what he describes as “humility,” the antidote to self-love.

How do we accomplish this ? Meditation lays us bare to ourselves — sensation, thought, intention, all arise in the mind, as does the watcher, just a thought among thoughts.

Once we’ve seen this, how can we return to all those heady boasts and claims ? I am this. I am that. Oh, really ? Tell me more.

And, thus deflated, how can we keep hankering after stuff ? Or hating ?

If you want to call part of this process “God,” I have no quibble with you.

–Paula, author of Affiction