emptiness, and investigations into emptiness led her to posit an "Answering Activity," an "inner fact" or an "intuitive sense of how to live." Through tracing this process we can gain a better understanding of Milner's growth into mysticism.
Letting go of Self: "I am nothing, I want nothing, I know nothing"
In her first diary A Life of One's Own, Milner states that she was trying to find her basis for living in what she imagined were the demands of other people rather than in her own inner needs. She writes: "I did not yet know how to obey my inner urges, I hardly knew that I had any" (Field, 1936, p. 41). She needed to realize that it was only when she stopped thinking that she would really know what she wanted. Much later in the book she writes of her fear of giving her up her desires, plans and intentions, lest she be lost: "I felt a desperate need to protect my ego by keeping the walls of my selfhood intact" (Field, 1936, p. 196). The following passage suggests how letting go of "I" helped her experience greater vitality in living:
I was afraid there'd be no "doing" if I did not say "I," brood over "I," fight for "I". Now I'm letting "I" go, but eat my breakfast just the same, and it tastes better, for I'm not impelled to hurry to distract me from the taste of my marmalade and crisp toast. And I get C.'s breakfast just the same. And as I glance out of the window I notice an apple tree, black branches against the white of frost-covered roofs - and it seems much better than brooding over my rights. (Field, 1936, pp. 196-7)
Quite early in her enterprise, Milner states, she discovered that do to things with the expectancy of happiness, or in other words to want results for herself, was generally fatal, for it made the "stream of delight dry up at the source" (Field, 1936, p. 210). It was alright to do things for other people as long as one did them for their own sake, for the act rather than the result. In particular, great delight was to be found in moments of "detached seeing," when she could recognize another mind yet want nothing from it. In this section of her diary, Milner is exploring finding joy in detachment from self. She states that in retrospect, the moments she was most happy were when she had "by some chance stood aside and looked at my experience, with a wide focus, wanting nothing and prepared for anything" (Field, 1936, p. 214). In this diary "wanting nothing and prepared for anything" became her modus operandi. She experienced happiness when she was the most widely aware.
In An Experiment in Leisure Milner again takes up the mantra "I am nothing, I want nothing, I know nothing." Saying it began as an experiment whenever she felt anxiety, particularly in relation to work. Instead of her usual pattern of straining harder, repeating the mantra "with a momentary gesture wiped away all sense of my own existence" (Field, 1937, p. 40). Not only would her anxiety leave her, but within a short time period her mind would begin to posit useful ideas on her current problem.
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