July ‘25 1-to-1 Wiseletter (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
In July's 1-to-1 Wiseletter, we'll be looking at a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Quote
Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us
I walked by this plaque at the park the other day.
Another word for nature is earth or matter. When I think of spirit, I think of something disembodied and invisible but everywhere present nonetheless: space.
The interface between nature and spirit occurs at the line between matter and space. One is full, some-thing, the other is empty, no-thing. Brought together they make reality.
Emerson says that nature and spirit conspire together to free us. The word conspire means "to breathe with" (con means "with" and spire means "to breathe"). Our breathing is one of the few obvious body functions that sits halfway between conscious and unconscious control. It's controlled by the will (Spirit) yet also controlled by instinct (Nature). The dual-led act of breathing is therefore a fundamental expression of the union of spirit and nature.
But what does the convergence of these two forces have to do with freedom?
If we understand freedom in the right way as positive freedom, a freedom to, as opposed to a freedom from (negative freedom), then we can begin to see how the commingling of these opposites make the impossible possible: life; the unlikeliest phenomenon in the universe, the ultimate incarnation of freedom.
Both nature and spirit require limitation. They require constraint.
Spirit needs matter (a body) in order to have limitations so it can have experience. Without limitation, there's no contrast and then no experience.
Nature/Matter needs an internal spark (spirit, mind, Logos) so it can graduate from the inert to the animate. At funerals, the dead look like bodies emptied of spark. You can't put your finger on "it" but something's missing. Although the body remains, the person you remember doesn't feel to be here anymore.
Nature and Spirit oppose each other on purpose. And it is because of this opposition that they create consciousness.
They curb, shape, limit, and inhibit the other. In neuroscience, this is called opponent processing. It's what the left and right brains do to each other (although the left brain seems to do it more to the right than vice versa). And by the very act of their opposition Nature and Spirit are also secretly cooperative.
Consciousness without a body is unlimited omnipresence. Consciousness without will is inert dirt, mere quanta.
"Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground (nature, earth, matter, body) and blew into his nostrils the breath of life (spirit, mind, Logos), and the man became a living being (consciousness, freedom)" (Gen. 2:7)
By giving up omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, Being becomes free.
We are the living result of spirit bonded to nature. In marrying nature ("For God so loved the world"), spirit takes on finitude, abandoning itself. In marrying spirit, nature surrenders herself to it, willingly expressing its exactitude through the forms of her living multitudes.
In this sense, we, as conscious beings, are nothing greater than freedom embodied. Real freedom moves toward limitation, not away from it.
Think of the discipline of carpentry. You must first learn the laws of the craft, internalizing its rules and techniques. Otherwise, your tables, rocking chairs, and porch decks fall apart.
And only when the techniques of carpentry are mastered do you have any chance of authentically expressing yourself through it. You are a free carpenter (or dancer, doctor, jeweler, lawyer, electrician, piano player, mother etc.) to the extent that your design and hand are curbed by objective techniques, behaviors, habits, and disciplines set in place by the masters who preceded you.
The world is unquestionably free not because it's randomly assembled but because its ordered and limited. In the same way, our lives are free because they're ordered and limited by responsibility.
QUESTION
What’s something you could and should take responsibility for in your life?
Cheers,
John
