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- Jul 2022
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ernestbecker.org ernestbecker.org
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For what purpose? So that the process of what Becker calls “self-transcendence” may begin. And he describes the process of self-transcendence this way: Man breaks through the bounds of merely cultural heroism; he destroys the character lie that had him perform as a hero in the everyday social scheme of things; and by doing so he opens himself up to infinity, to the possibility of cosmic heroism …. He links his secret inner self, his authentic talent, his deepest feelings of uniqueness … to the very ground of creation. Out of the ruins of the broken cultural self there remains the mystery of the private, invisible, inner self which yearned for ultimate significance. …This invisible mystery at the heart of [the] creature now attains cosmic significance by affirming its connection with the invisible mystery at the heart of creation. “This,” he concludes, “is the meaning of faith.” Faith is the belief that despite one’s “insignificance, weakness, death, one’s existence has meaning in some ultimate sense because it exists within an eternal and infinite scheme of things brought about and maintained to some kind of design by some creative force (90, 9 1).” This, then, is what we might call good faith, not a flight into some immortality system. And clearly, some Christians, some Buddhists–at least the Zen Buddhists Becker himself mentions!–have faith in this sense, a faith that Becker characterizes as growing out of tasting one’s own death, embracing one’s own nothingness, and affirming–not a known ultimate meaningful–but an “invisible mystery” of ultimate meaning.
Embrace the mystery, the sacred - accepting that one will be gone forevermore is a mighty task as our culture teaches us to seek recognition. The last thing we want to be is unrecognized, a nobody. And yet, when we are dead and dissipated back into the rest of the world, that is exactly what we will become.
But we have to accept that reality before we can build and think beyond it to a deeper possibility of meaning. Reality brought us forth to begin with. Every moment is already sacred.
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