What's Your Great Vow?

I.

Transformation is our theme for December. Change, of course, is inevitable. We can’t help but change.

The first task is to accept this – don’t try to fight change, and when it comes, as it is continually coming, let go of that impulse to pine for the good old days. Embrace change – that’s the first spiritual task in the category "transformation."

But transformation suggests something a little more than the random – or seemingly-random – vicissitudes of change. Transformation – in the sense of a spiritual orientation – suggests a certain intentionality. There’s changing by accident – and then there’s changing on purpose, and transformation should have some purpose driving it. That's the second task: to have a purpose and to transform yourself in accordance with that purpose. Immediately, there's a caveat. You do want some purpose, but not too much. There needs to be some intentionality, but not too much intentionality. Remember that your purpose comes out of who you are now. As you re-make yourself, leave room for new purposes to emerge. Don’t try to control the process beyond a very gentle guidance.

It’s like parenting yourself. A good parent knows, as Kahlil Gibran said:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”

Take the same approach to yourself – for you, too, are a child of life’s longing for itself. What you transform into comes through you but not from you.

Parenting a child or parenting yourself, either way, you offer gentle guidance, not control – you protect safety – make a safe space in which your child or yourself can become what life means for them, or you, to be.

This idea of control is worth looking into in some detail. The Stoic philosophers emphasize not worrying about what isn’t in your control. And that is such an important wisdom – to let go of concern for what isn’t in your control.

But what IS in your control? There is a further wisdom that recognizes that ANY perception of control is ultimately an illusion. Your thoughts? Nope. Your thoughts are not in your control. Try sitting very still and very quiet, lowering your eyelids so they are almost but not quite shut, gazing downward at a 45-degree angle and bringing all your awareness to something in the present – noticing the minute details of the sensations of breathing in and breathing out, say. You will soon notice that a thought will intrude. The mind will wander off from the assignment you have given it. "I need to do my laundry soon.... So-and-so was curt with me; what was that about?... Perhaps I’ll start a garden.... What’s playing at the theatres?...What’s for lunch?..."

You didn’t ask for those thoughts, you didn’t choose them. They just popped up. And if your thoughts aren’t in your control, then can the actions that flow from thoughts be? They certainly seem to be in our control, and it's important that they seem to be. The illusion is a necessary one – but it is an illusion nonetheless.

Spiritual deepening involves gradually seeing through the illusion of control. Sages in many times and places have recognized that we are not in control. Recently, scientific methods have confirmed it. Benjamin Libet’s experiments in the mid-1980s showed that the motor signal is headed to the muscle several hundred milliseconds before we become conscious of it. We have already begun the action before the apparatus of conscious decision-making comes on line.

For most of day-to-day life, consciousness isn’t deciding what to do. Consciousness’s job is to come along after the fact, notice what we’re doing, and make up a story about how what we’re doing is what we meant to do. All day long, it’s going: "I meant to do that. Oh, yeah, I meant to do that, too." But the meaning-to-do-it trails the beginning of doing it. Our brains create a running commentary on whatever we are doing, even though the interpreter module has no access to the real causes or motives of our behavior.

In Michael Gazzaniga’s experiments, he flashed the word "walk" in a part of the visual field that would be seen by only the right hemisphere. It’s the left hemisphere that processes language consciously, so subjects were not conscious of seeing the word. Yet many of them would stand and walk away. When asked why they were getting up, subjects had no problem giving a reason. "I’m going to get something to drink," they might say. Our inner interpreter module is good at making up explanations, but not at knowing it has done so.

My language centers and neocortex notice my behavior, and they make up a story about this character named “Meredith” who is heroic, yet with certain endearing foibles. At each moment of the day this “Meredith” can be found deliberately and intentionally acting. Whatever it is ze’s doing is a reasonable part of zir pursuit of reasonable purposes. This is an after-the-fact story. The behavior came first, we now know.

And people of great spiritual awareness have recognized long before Libet or Gazzaniga came along that this story of the self was a fabrication. With spiritual development and seeing through the illusion of control comes an increased appreciation of grace (the wonder, beauty, and abundance that cannot be earned or deserved), decreased worry and anxiety from trying to control outcomes, decreased attachment to the ego's story about either "accomplishments" or "failures," a decreased interest in blaming self or others. Why would our brains be built to generate this illusion of control?

One plausible suggestion, offered by Janet Kwasniak, is that

“the conscious feeling of intent is simply a marker indicating that we own the action.... This marker is very important so that our episodic memory shows whether actions were 'ours' or just happened.” (Janet Kwasniak)

The memory of an event that came from me influences my neurons for the future -- we do learn from our actions and their results. If I get a pain from something I did, my neural wiring makes me less likely to do that again. But if the pain “just happened” – if it was apparently not a result of some particular behavior of mine -- the effects on my wiring are different. What we call “volition” is not a generator of behavior but only a perception that a behavior is ours. The illusion that intentions precede and determine action, then, is a by-product of the way the brain learns from experience.

We are not in control. And yet. And yet, and yet, and yet. Intentions matter. It matters that we set an intention for what we’re going to do today, or this week, or with this one precious life.

There’s a distinction to be made between the after-the-fact rationalizations of our impulses of the moment, versus the large over-arching story of the purpose of lives. Both, it would seem, are fabricated stories, but the over-arching story has the power to feed-back down into those subconscious places that generate particular behaviors.

In other words, conscious brain has no idea what’s going on in the subconscious, so conscious brain just makes up a story. Yet, the subconscious is listening to that story – and starts taking it into account. It listens with a skeptical ear at first, but if the story is referenced repeatedly, the subconscious wiring adjusts. Say one time you did a favor for someone. Maybe you did it for purely self-interested reasons. But you happen to have been asked why you did it, and you fabricated a story – not from any intent to deceive, but because it’s the job of conscious brain to invent rationalizations – and say your story was that you care about the well-being of others. Sub-conscious brain was listening to that story. It was not entirely sure whether to believe what it heard, but it made a note – a sort of little, “huh!” But if it so happens that you have other occasions to tell that story about yourself, then the story gets reinforced a little more. What began, as all our explanations of our behavior do, as an after-the-fact rationalization, can eventually become an actual driving force.

And that leads us to the question for today: What is your great vow?

II.

What is the promise your life makes to life itself? It’s just a story, sure, but it’s a story that can be potent.

I had a six month sabbatical back at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 – the six months immediately prior to the beginning of the pandemic, as it turned out. I spent the sabbatical in residence at a Monastery in Clatskanie, Oregon. It was called "Great Vow Zen Monastery." When we weren’t meditating, or doing the work to maintain the place, there were occasional group classes and workshops. As its name implies, Great Vow Zen Monastery facilitates reflection about the vows in our lives – the over-arching stories of our commitments and values that come to be our guiding forces.

We can have a vow of the moment – like vowing to get dinner on the table – but the underlying vow is what you get to if you keep asking, “why?” To adapt an example from the book, The Vow-Powered Life, by Jan Chozen Bays, who is the abbott of Great Vow Zen Monestery – suppose a youth vows to become the highest scoring player on her basketball team. If she happens to be asked, or ask herself, a series of why questions, there are various directions she might go. She might want to impress a certain prospective mate she has her eye on. Why? There are again various possible answers. Perhaps, "Because I eventually want to have a long, happy marriage like my grandparents had." Why? "Because I want a deep and lasting connection to another human being." Why? "To learn to love other people genuinely, and also myself." And this is where the why questions stop. We recognize implicitly that we have reached an ultimate.

The series of why questions might have taken us down a very different path to a different ultimate. She might instead have said that she wanted to become her team’s top scorer in order to get a scholarship to college, that would otherwise be unaffordable. Why does she want to go to college? She might say “to get a good job,” or she might say “to learn about international politics” and those would each lead to a different ultimate.

Whatever it might be, when you get to that ultimate that puts a stop to further why questions, that’s your great vow. When our young basketball player first formed her determination to be her team’s top scorer, there were almost certainly a variety of different urges at work. As my father once said to me: “Son, nobody every did anything for only one reason.”

If subjected to the pressure of why questions, she’ll select rationales that sound good at the time. Yet the subconscious is listening to what the conscious brain makes up, and if the story is one that she sticks to, it will gradually become a true guide.

The great vow is your personal mission. Most of us are used to mission statements for institutions -- companies, congregations. But do you have a mission statement for your life? If you do, you have articulated your Great Vow.

If we are never pressed for ultimate purpose, then we can spend our lives pulled this way and that by forces of the moment. So it’s important to pursue that series of why questions, get down to an ultimate that feels right, and stick to it. Keep repeating it – especially as an explanation for something you are doing, to strengthen the link between your words and your action. Each time you sincerely say it, you reinforce your orientation toward realizing that world that you dream.

As you think about how you would articulate your Great Vow, it’ll be helpful to reflect on your sources of vow. There are three sources: inherited, reactive, and inspired.

What is your inherited vow? As you were growing up, what were you given to understand by your parents or primary caretakers was the primary function of a life? They may never have articulated it to you, but if you had to now articulate what your parents’ great vows were, what were they?

My parents were both professors, as I’ve mentioned. Mom’s field was chemistry and Dad’s was English. In the early years of my life, they were grad students, then they settled into teaching positions. So my inherited vow from both of them was: One, learn stuff. Two, teach it to others. These vows made sense to me, and they guided me through young adulthood as I became a professor myself.

You might, however, have reached age 18 feeling that your parents showed you more about how you wanted NOT to be than how to be. So that leads to the second possibly important source for your vow: reactive vows. As Jan Chozen Bays explains:

“Reactive vows can ricochet through many generations. For example, a child raised by a military father who is precise, strict, authoritarian, and conservative may become a hippie. The hippie’s child, tired of dirty clothes, living out of a van, and not having predictable meals, may decide to become an accountant who lives in the same house for forty years and hoards food, toilet paper, and paperclips. The accountant’s child becomes a rock musician perpetually on tour; the musician’s child, a buttoned-up stockbroker; and so on.” (Bays 36)

Alternatively, reactive vows can be a response to a situation faced while growing up.

“People who become physicians often have had an experience with illness or death in their early years, either in themselves or their family. Their choice of profession may be due to an unconscious desire to gain control over the helplessness and vulnerability they felt as they faced sickness and death at an age when they had no defenses or coping skills. Incidentally, many lawyers seem to be impelled into law after an early experience of injustice” (Bays 12).

A reactive source of vows is not a bad thing. It COULD be over-reactive, but it might be just-right reactive.

What makes it reactive is that’s it’s driven by a desire to avoid something – avoid being like your parents, or avoid a kind of experience, such as sickness or injustice.

A third, and the last vow source I’ll mention, is inspired vows. We pick up inspired vows – often in adolescence or early adulthood – when we learn about someone we admire. We aspire to be like them. Martin Luther King Jr’s vow of nonviolence came from an inspired vow – inspired by the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. Athletes often draw inspiration from a particular athlete they admire.

Who are your heroes? So these are three sources of vow to reflect upon: the inherited, the reactive, and the inspired. Ultimately, though,

“You cannot discover your vows by thinking. Your vow lies within you” (Bays 5)

To bring it out, to consciously articulate and thereby strengthen it as the orientation of your life, it helps to explore those three questions:

1. What did you learn from parents or primary caretakers about what life is for? What are your inherited vows?
2. What negative lessons did you learn – lessons about what you wanted to avoid if at all possible? What are your reactive vows?
3. Who are your heroes? What are your inspired vows?

So here’s what I’m asking you to do – do this today – when you get home this afternoon, before you forget. Write down your answers about your inherited vows, reactive vows, and inspired vows.

Then sleep on it.

Some time tomorrow, please look again at what you wrote – what you put down about your three sources – inherited, reactive, and inspired. And then, in that light, draft your Great Vow.

You can share your Great Vow with others – I would love to hear what you discern – or you may prefer to keep it to yourself. But let it transform you into who you are.

Amen.