Glimpsing God

I'm just coming out of the black hole of this summer, which was very writing- and research-intensive, between participating in the Summer of Protocols program, some private research work, and a couple of other projects that I hope to be able to share with you soon. Over those months, I accumulated a backlog of things I wanted to write about. Now that I've found myself with more time again, I've returned to that log and felt sort of conflicted about how to approach it. Here are some thoughts on why that is.

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This summer, I read C.S. Lewis's spiritual memoir Surprised by Joy, which chronicles his journey from being raised Christian, to becoming atheist, to rediscovering Christianity on his own terms as an adult. As the title suggests, Lewis repeatedly returns to the theme of Joy, which he describes as "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction." He is careful to distinguish it from both Happiness and Pleasure, likening Joy more to "a particular kind of unhappiness or grief"..."but then it is a kind we want."

Joy is the first signpost that helped Lewis understand what God truly is. While he initially chases the irresistible sensation of Joy itself, eventually he realizes that it's the fact that there is something outside oneself to seek at all – rather than his ravenous pursuit of it – that finally becomes his proof of the divine.

I've often thought of writing, and creative work more generally, as a way of glimpsing God – of touching the ineffable. But until reading Lewis's account, I wouldn't have described that sensation as “Joy” so much as an abyss, which Venkatesh Rao echoed recently at the Summer of Protocols research retreat in Seattle this summer. Venkatesh described the researcher's pursuit of truth as "staring into the abyss," which he likened to his experience of witnessing a total solar eclipse. Staring into the abyss induces a revelation that there is much more out there than we previously realized, even if the abyss can't yet be described.

Staring into the abyss sounds a lot like Lewis's Joy, but it doesn't usually carry the same connotation. The abyss is a recurring theme in Lovecraftian horror, where there is a dread and uneasiness, rather than euphoria, that comes from encountering something that resists definition. Nietzsche famously wrote that gazing into the abyss will cause it to gaze back at you – a warning of the dangers of spending too much time chasing the secrets of the void.

Divine and demonic temptation, then, look very similar. And so while I've thought of writing as a form of spiritual practice, when I consider what that experience has been like, I can't unsee that it looks much closer to the demonic than the divine. I've indulged a lot of vices to get there, numbing myself to reach a certain emotional state. When I'm not writing, I get antsy, anxious, and irritable. I have to fight not to see everything else in my life – time spent with loved ones, travel, even wandering and contemplation – as an annoyance or inconvenience, because it’s time spent away from whatever I’m chasing around in my head.

It's hard to describe my creative process without concluding that writing just isn't very good for me. People assume I'm joking or being hyperbolic when I describe writing as an addiction, but I mean it seriously. I might be a high-functioning addict, but I've never really had a positive relationship with writing. Over time, writing has managed to crowd out other parts of my life that might have been better for me. And yet, as Lewis said, “anyone who has experienced it will want it again.”

But here's the plot twist of Lewis's spiritual journey. The endless pursuit of Joy (or the abyss) mistakes the signpost pointing to the "outer" for the outer itself, like those who do too many psychedelics and call it divine worship. Joy itself is not God; it merely suggests that there is a god. In the final pages of Surprised by Joy, Lewis remarks that after converting to Theism, he didn't think very much about Joy at all anymore. He’d finally found relief from that relentless ache and pang, whose symptoms resembled a death drive more than a life of harmony.

In recent years, I've begun to suspect that a life consumed by ideas will not bring me closer to the divine. The freedom I seek, it seems, doesn't lie in my laying about, steeped in my own brain, but rather in the stillness I've found in the more mundane moments of my life. In these moments, there is no euphoria, nor even any active reflection on gratitude or happiness. Rather, it's the sense of just being – the absence of introspection – that brings me peace.

Lewis, too, came to realize that his pursuit of Joy had in fact been "a futile attempt to contemplate the enjoyed," rather than simply enjoying it. And I worry that being immersed in a world of hungry, gaping maws, grasping for ideas – any idea – to gobble up; to compulsively transact in ideas for status, money, and friendship; pulls me further away from the divine somehow. Chasing ideas can be just as materialistic as chasing money or power.

This, of course, puts me at an odd crossroads when it comes to what I do for a living. Writing requires that one dabble in ideas, which is felt all the more if one does it professionally: a tension I've become acutely aware of as I've gone fully independent in the last couple years. I’m haunted by the number of bloggers I know who stopped writing because they started being happy.

I, too, have considered not writing anymore, but this seems as nonsensical to me as no longer speaking or breathing. Writing is a sensory appendage, like having a nose or set of hands, that I use to experience the world. So in recent months, I've thought about how to reconnect with writing in a different way. I’m still a curious person who likes to sort out the world and tell stories about what I see. I just don't want to chase God anymore, escalating my discomforts in a vain attempt to manufacture the circumstances that produce beauty. Nor do I want to be chased by the demonic, allowing myself to be passively steered into chaos like a wide-eyed passenger on Charon's boat to the underworld.

Instead, I think of my relationship with God more as a stable foundation that enables me to explore the world at my own pace. Life is still filled with novelty, but it doesn’t live in front of or behind me. Rather, novelty is what buoys me, like bobbing on the surface of a glass filled with champagne, and provides me with endless surprising moments to draw from.

I'm not exactly sure how this changes how I work – though I’ve started to see it influence my writing style and output – as I still feel at the edge of it, but I felt I needed to chronicle it here, as it also explains some of my hesitation around writing these days. I want to be more present in my work, just as I would be fiddling with the grass on a warm sunny day, instead of chafing to be somewhere else. There's a certain timelessness about this feeling that I really enjoy, and I'd like to see where it takes me.