{"id":872,"date":"2005-05-02T12:22:30","date_gmt":"2005-05-02T20:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/05\/02\/the-antidote\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:23:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:23:30","slug":"the-antidote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/05\/02\/the-antidote\/","title":{"rendered":"The Antidote"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p> Despair, said Thomas Merton, is the absolute extreme of self-love.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>But if we see the conscious self as a construction &#8212; a local epiphenomenon in the vast, interconnected web of being &#8212; we might attain what he describes as &#8220;humility,&#8221; the antidote to self-love.<\/p>\n<p>How do we accomplish this ? Meditation lays us bare to ourselves &#8212; sensation, thought, intention, all arise in the mind, as does the watcher, just a thought among thoughts.<\/p>\n<p>Once we&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>And, thus deflated, how can we keep hankering after stuff ? Or hating ?<\/p>\n<p>If you want to call part of this process &#8220;God,&#8221; I have no quibble with you.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Paula, author of <a href=\"http:\/\/affiction.blogspot.com\/2004\/09\/amour-propre.html\">Affiction<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8212; a local epiphenomenon in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","category-quotes"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12611,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions\/12611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}