Yearning frees us from Hubris

Photo: Lorna Sim

Hubris, or the drive in humans to assume control and power over Nature and to play God, is as ancient as Nature and life. The Greek word implies that such confidence in one’s ability is dangerous, unsupported by reality and by ability.

Hubris has inevitably coloured even our spiritual aspirations. We demand to “know” the Divine. We describe the unknowable and conquer it with words. We plunder cultures and ceremonies that respect mystery humility and wonder, to flatten them out and serve our comfort-seeking versions of spirituality.

We are supremely confident of our ability to convert reality into thought and word.

In our hubris we have also accepted that the suffering that is attendant upon such an attitude to reality and Nature, including our own nature, is inevitable. We even story spiritual experiences in traumatic terms as shadow and darkness. Or we bypass the attending, stamina and energy that is required by pastel-coloured stories.

Yearning is the ancient antidote to hubris. The invitation to hold Yearning includes within it the assumption that there is no destination or resolution. We do not “achieve” what we yearn for.

We do not master our Yearning or make it comfortable with escapism. Neither does it offer us the martyrdom of suffering. Because Yearning is always an artistic expression. In fact, it is the source of artistic expression in many traditions.

Yearning becomes dance, song, poetry and ritual. The poignant beauty of this Rasa or sensation is transformed into a movement of artistic offering. When we move in this Rasa, we feel how Nature expresses Her Yearning through the beauty of trees, flowers, insects and birdsong. It is exactly the absence of resolution or destination that allows us to taste the ineffable soul of Nature/Reality/Divine.

We can only move Yearning when we can leave our hubris at the door of the ceremonial space. We come into the presence of elders free of acquisitive greed. We are prepared to never “know” because knowing is the process of owning. The elders take us to the river of Yearning where we flow with their Yearning and the great waters.

Yearning is a great leveller. In this sensation we are not extraordinary but a part of Nature and of Her expressions of Yearning. We become the birdsong, the housefly struggling to fly out of the window, and the plant in our garden that has accompanied us through many years of our life.

When Yearning becomes a danced incantation, everything in Nature blazes with sentience. The truth of how our life is only as precious as the life of the housefly is a visceral sensation. This radically changes us from within.

Yearning is not austere, rather it is a celebration of beauty and the senses. We dance, sing, write and paint our Yearning and in so doing we resonate with the dance of Nature which is Her sentience.

When we Yearn we free ourselves of hubris. Rather than missing our so-called power and control, we experience the expansive freedom of unconditional mystery, expression and beauty. Learning to Yearn unconditionally is to participate in the dance of Reality rather than spending our precious life trying to conquer and master that dance.

When the ancients invoked Reality as Shiva’s dance, they wisely suggested that this dance is unconquerable. Freed of our hubris, we can dance with Shiva, and with Reality.