We would benefit greatly were we able to develop a more ascetic approach to our lives. As with all manner of spiritual discipline, we gain most when we are willing freely to choose what is difficult. To include the ascetic as a vital dimension in our daily life would deeply enrich us. It would gain us a sense of space. It would help us make clearances in the exponential growth of banality, sensation, and exteriority that leaves us so distracted and overwhelmed. It is interesting that much of the modern fascination with mysticism is more self-indulgent than ascetic. We like to filter out the appealing insights or ideas and often choose to forget the ascetic demands of the mystics. Yet it is only through inner clearance of the ascetical that the insights can take root and grow in the clay of our lives. The writings of John of the Cross have the severance of asceticism at their core. The practice of ascetical longing clarifies all belonging.
To reach satisfaction in all
Desire its possession in nothing.
To come to possess all
Desire the possession of nothing.
To arrive at being all
Desire to be nothing.
To come to the knowledge of all
Desire the knowledge of nothing….
To come to be what you are not
You must go by a way in which you are not.
When you practise even some small asceticism, your experience gains a new sense of focus. Consumerist culture is not simply an outer frame that surrounds our lives. It is deeper and more penetrating than that. In fact it is a way of thinking that seeps into our minds and becomes a powerful inner compass. Consumerism and its greed are an awful perversion of our longing; they damage our very ability to experience things. They clutter our lives with things we do not need and subvert our sense of priority. They reduce everything to its functionalist common denominator. In contrast, the ascetical way clarifies our perception. It helps us to see clearly and sift the substance from the chaff. The fruit of even limited asceticism is clarity and discernment; you begin to recognize as chaff much of what you had held for the grain of nourishment.
Consumerism leaves us marooned in a cul-de-sac of demented longing, helpless targets of its relentless multiplication. The ascetical approach is selective and subtracts from the feast of what is offered in order to enjoy, explore, and celebrate. The functionalist mind only multiplies everything. It fills its own house to the brim. Within its creed of acquisition, it becomes a helpless victim of the insidious multiplication of things until there is such a false fullness that the natural light of life cannot get in anymore. Milton says in Book 8 of
