{"id":783,"date":"2005-07-12T18:26:58","date_gmt":"2005-07-12T16:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch.80-74-139-101.brenda.xelon.ch\/?p=783\/"},"modified":"2017-04-30T18:28:09","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T16:28:09","slug":"when-am-i-good-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/when-am-i-good-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"When am I good enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Herein our love is made perfect that we have boldness in the day of judgement: because<\/em>
\nas he is (that is: Jesus), so are we in the world. There is no fear in love. But perfect love<\/em>
\ncasteth fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.<\/em>
\n1Joh 4,17-18<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear professors and students
\nLadies and Gentlemen
\nIt is a great honour for me to have your precious time and to have the chance to address
\nsome words to you. I feel very grateful to Prof. Tsuji, who has invited me and has given me
\nthe opportunity to share my faith and my mystical consciousness with you.
\nLet us start with a common experience! Please remember a situation when you had to
\nprepare for an exam. You have books to read, papers to write, information to understand
\nand memorize, and you have to train yourself to answer all kinds of questions about the
\ntopic of your studies. Even though you may study hard, you may keep the fear that you are
\nnot prepared well enough. With this fear you may increase your preparations to an
\nenormous amount, but yet the stress does not go away, because you keep thinking of this
\nor that which you may have forgotten or left out. The question that will show up sooner or
\nlater in such a moment is the worrying question: When is it good enough?
\nThis is the question I am concerned about. It is a question that arises in many different
\nways. You can prepare for a job interview, a difficult meeting or a competition at sport, and
\nyou can always have this uncomfortable feeling that you are not prepared well enough.
\nBesides these stories from daily life this question may reveal a much deeper problem, too.
\nDeeply ingrained in the body of a human being \u2013 at least in the body of a Western human
\nbeing \u2013 there is what we can call: the will to knowledge. Michel Foucault, the brilliant
\nFrench philosopher, who died in 1984 and who has studied the development of Western
\nrationality all his life, has written about this. The will to knowledge is obviously an old story.
\nYou might be familiar with the Biblical story of Adam and Eve and the tree of knowledge. It
\nis a story that tells us about this basic will to knowledge that we as humans seemingly
\nhave a hard time to resist. It is evident that the will to knowledge includes much more than
\nto generate rational or scientific knowledge: it is rooted in body-centred experience and
\nfocuses on extending our sensual perception to embody new information. I guess not only
\nin the Western world is the leisure time filled with this hunger of experiencing new things.
\nAnd at the same time the latest technologies offer better and better tools to gain greater
\nexperiences. Whether it be pills that allow you to dance a whole night without getting tired
\nor medical appliances to extend the time before our death to satisfy our hunger of longer
\nand longer life or electronic tools for experiencing virtual worlds that computer sciences
\noffer.
\nLet me make myself clear: It is not at all my intention to condemn these opportunities
\nwhich the will to knowledge has created. My concern is the question: When is it good
\nenough ?, or more pertinent: Is it now good enough ?, or even: Am I now good enough ?
\nI would like to bring this question into the context of the Christian metaphor of the
\njudgement. I guess you know that the metaphorical scenery of a court is deeply rooted in
\nJewish-Christian belief as it expresses there the fundamental situation of human
\nexistence. Of course, the Biblical authors when using this metaphor were thinking first of
\nall about the real, institutional court of the Jews and Romans. But at the same time this
\nexperience offers the metaphorical frame in which human existence is considered before
\nGod. The situation at court is metaphorically speaking the situation of a human being
\nbefore God.
\nUsing this kind of metaphor to express the situation of a human being before God has a
\nstrong impact. You may know that with this metaphorical background in Christian history a
\nlot of evil has been committed and still is committed. What is important to me is that the
\nquestion: When is it good enough?, Is it good enough now?, or even: Am I good enough
\nnow? is the question we are facing in God’s Judgement. When asking this question we no
\nlonger focus on the objectivity of good and evil, but draw the attention to the attitude that
\nfinds the right measure. Neither a human being nor a thing is good or bad in itself, but it is
\nthe attitude with which we deal with life that is good or bad.
\nIt is true: it is frightening to see ourselves in the metaphorical frame of a court when
\nasking: Is it\u2026\/ Am I good enough? It confronts us with our insecurity, with our fears, with
\nour doubts. And as we often get stuck in the fear that we have not found the right way, we
\nkeep thinking and acting and achieving more and more. But instead of dissolving our fears
\nwe get more and more greedy and start living out the will to knowledge. We may not even
\nbe conscious of it. It just feels that there is something pulling us to do what we cannot stop.
\nFear drives us to go on and on, but we will have to stop sometime. Nevertheless it may not
\nbe because we feel that it is enough, but because we break down. We may feel exhausted
\nand burnt out, and we do not consider it as a good ending. It is a defeat, a failure, a
\nsurrender, and we may feel ashamed and guilty. But our feelings of shame and guilt are
\nonly the other side of our fear.
\nIn Christian thinking there is an alternative possible. It is the change from knowing to
\nhaving faith. To have faith does not mean: to take things for granted we cannot know for
\nsure. It means: to transcend oneself into a different level of consciousness. This altered
\nstate of consciousness is expressed by the metaphor of love. I do not say love, but the
\nmetaphor of love, because it cannot be described in precise terms. But when you really
\nlove somebody including yourself, you may get a taste of it. This is the beginning of a
\ndifferent consciousness that happens when you start transcending yourself, transcending
\nfrom knowing to having faith.
\nAn idea written in the New Testament expresses this very clearly. I would like to read to
\nyou from the 1st epistle of John, chapter 4, verses 17-18:
\nHerein our love is made perfect that we have boldness in the day of judgement: because
\nas he is (that is: Jesus), so are we in the world. There is no fear in love. But perfect love
\ncasteth fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
\nAs you see in this text, the metaphorical frame of the Judgement is set. It is clear that the
\nday of judgement is coming. But there is no need for us to let us be oppressed by our
\nfears. We can be upright and open and speak boldly there and then what there has to be
\nsaid. The power that makes it possible, is love. As the New Testament says, love makes
\nperfect in us the boldness in which our fears are dissolved. What Jesus, our master, has
\nexperienced, we, his followers, can experience ourselves. Because \u2013 this is the main point
\n\u2013 there is no fear in love. Love turns fear and its pain away. This is the offering given to us
\nwhen we transcend from the consciousness of knowing to the consciousness of having
\nfaith in love.
\nRealizing this won\u2019t make our thinking and acting more successful, more powerful, more
\nbeautiful. Love does not get rid of the question: Is it\u2026 or: Am I good enough?, by giving us
\nthe victory in the competition with others. Instead it is the spirit that enters through the gap
\nbetween yes it is enough, and no it is not enough.
\nWhenever we feel insecure as to whether we have done enough or not, there is always
\nthis difference between yes and no. Without this difference there is no perception and no
\ncognition possible. There would be only chaos. The will to knowledge is based in the
\nhuman ability to distinguish and to put a thing into a relationship with another. All mental
\nactivities start with distinguishing, with perceiving a difference. And this difference is
\nexactly the space of love I was talking about.
\nWe may experience this, when we manage to step back from asking: Is it\u2026 or: Am I good
\nenough?, and start realizing the space in between. I am not talking about escaping from
\nfacing the question. I am talking about realizing oneself in the space between this side and
\nthe other side of the question and realizing what life feels like from the power of the space,
\nfrom the power of love in between.
\nIn the house you are living in the empty space is the most important part. Of course, the
\nwalls are needed to feel the empty space. But our life takes place in the space between
\nthe walls. As long as we see the walls we feel like in a prison. It is not the house, not the
\nwalls, not the bricks that are the essence of our lives, but the spirit, the love that is there in
\nbetween the walls.
\nThat is the reason why the Bible says that love gives us boldness in the Judgement of
\nGod. Love is the empowerment to go beyond the threatening question of the court: Is it
\ngood enough?, Am I good enough?, Did I do enough for the house and walls and bricks?,
\nand it brings us into life. Realizing this, there comes a personal sovereignty into being and
\na mastery in our business. We are in touch with what we have to deal with, but we are not
\nruled by fear and insecurity, but moved by love. We may start with fear, but we end with
\nlove. This is how one of the greatest European Christian mystics, Saint Bernhard of
\nClairvaux, has taught us.
\nYou see: My message is not to forget about being good enough. My message is to ask
\nconsciously: When are we good enough?, instead of being drawn (and seduced) by the
\nwill to knowledge. Asking this question brings up the fear of failing in the Judgement of
\nGod. That is true. But this fear is the beginning of wisdom, the Bible says (Prov 9,10),
\nbecause it calls us back from our egotistical trips and shows us the space between the
\nwalls, the space between different options, the space between myself and myself.
\nExperiencing this the door is open to transcend ourselves into the space of love that
\nempowers us to become the masters of our lives.
\nLet us therefore pray and ask God to give us the necessary fear at the start, and the love
\nneeded to end. Amen.<\/p>\n

Chapel-Hour of July 12, 2005 in Nishinomiya, Japan
\nBernhard Neuenschwander<\/p>\n

PDF Datei Herunterladen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Herein our love is made perfect that we have boldness in the day of judgement: because as he is (that is: Jesus), so are we in the world. There is no fear in love. But perfect love casteth fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. 1Joh 4,17-18<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"page-templates\/no-sidebar.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mysticism-in-christs-cross-according-to-paul","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ritualart.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}