GOLDEN VERSES Step 11

ATTACHMENT TO OUR THINGS

Despite the great preparations made for the after-life by those serving the pharaoh Tutankhamun, his mortal remains all preserved for eternity, his furniture and personal possessions laid ready for his use, with little shabti figures to serve him in the afterlife, his tomb was none the less broken into in 1922 by Howard Carter and his benefactor, Lord Carnarvon. These objects along with the pharaoh’s body are now displayed in the Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza all to see. In this step we consider the attachment we have to our things.

Tutankhamun’s Tomb Discovered.

Step 11.

§ And whatever possessions you gathered once upon a time,

will be lost at another. § - Verse 18

JUST A LITTLE BAG

Over the last years, we have seen how whole cities and regions have been obliterated by wildfires that burnt houses, public buildings and farms to the ground in a matter of moments, and also the floods and mudslides that have overwhelmed whole communities as unprecedented rains fell. The people who fled from these fires and floods took with them their families and pets, their carriable documents and precious things – if they were quick or fore-thoughtful enough – but they left everything else they owned behind.

In some places, the floods that came and inundated homes were often in the same places that had been previously flooded the year or so before. While the waters eventually subsided, things could never be the same as they were. It is not only natural disasters that play out here, but also the sharp economy of our cruel times, where those unable to pay their rent or mortgage have had to move at a few days’ notice and resettle in more modest dwellings or in just one room, or else have become homeless. The option of taking things with you reduces rapidly in the face of such calamities, of course, but the prospect of death leaves you none whatever.

In my own household, having just made new wills in the last 2 years, we now need to remake them again, as many things have now altered. We both know we cannot take anything with us, and we have tried to make provision for some of our things to be curated or passed on. It is heart-breaking to have to do this over again in the face of changed circumstances. But I keep thinking of a dear friend of mine who recently did the whole Swedish death cleansing routine with her things because she was leaving her country and moving to a new one: not wanting to leave anything behind for an indifferent family to deal with, she got rid of everything except what she could carry. The courage in clearing the way for this utter break and new beginning at the end of her life is a remarkable and very chastening contemplation. We all spend a lifetime acquiring our things and, in one stroke, death severs us from everything. We cannot tell what will be removed from us by uncertain fate or fortune, indeed.

I remember 25 years ago, when I was invited to speak in Israel by the Israeli publisher who prepared the translation of my Singing The Soul Back Home book. I found myself teaching a foundation course in shamanism at Neve Shalom, the Peace Village near Tel Aviv. Most of my students were 2nd-4^th generation Israelis, but all were from a huge diaspora who have come back to the Middle East after wandering in Russia, Argentina, South Africa, North America, the Baltic states, and many other lands. We talked a lot about that return and what it had meant to their families – some of their own parents had arrived in Tel Aviv after WWII, before any jetty was built, when Tel Aviv was still just the port of Jaffa, where they literally had to leap into the water from the ship, using their suitcase as a flotation device, in order to reach the shore. These were people who had lost absolutely everything, except a few personal items, but they were the descendants of many ancestors who had to be ready to leave everything at a moment’s notice.

A Palestinian shows the keys to his lost house in Ramallah

I was very interested in this question of how you lived under the weight of that recurrent generational shadow that never quite goes away. I asked my students, ‘Just as your ancestors always had a little bag ready to go, against the inevitable next persecution that drove them out of their places, what is in your own little bag, ready to go? – I eventually set them a shamanic journey question to ask, ‘What is it that you need to take with you now?’

This was a question that could have been answered on many levels. Some students were alarmed at the thought of yet another pogrom, forced migration, or persecution, while others understood that the question was coming from a place of ancestral preparedness. Very interesting answers resulted: it seemed that ancestral providence came very readily to the surface, for most Jews are already hard-wired for this question, and how you manage yourself and your community when all your people are exiled for being who they are. Some remarkable stories arose from this question. A few students’ families, I learned, still retained the keys to houses from which their ancestors had been expelled back in 1492 Spain - houses to which they have had no right of entry for over 500 years! (Just as Palestinians still do.) Yet others had inherited precious menorahs or sacred books borne away from pogroms in Krakow or Breslov; but the things that my students needed to take with them 25 years ago were more than just objects, they were also memories, teachings, wisdom.

WHAT IS OUR OWN?

Diogenes, who followed Cynic philosophy, made the choice of having no possessions, ajsut like his own teacher, Antisthenes: ‘He taught me what is my own and what isn’t my own. Property isn’t my own; relations, family, friends, reputation, familiar places, conversation with others, none of these are my own. “So, what is your own?” The proper use of impressions…. What is the best training for this? The highest form of training stands right at the entrance. That whenever you become attached to anything, don’t go so far inside that ownership, as if it were something that cannot be taken away, but rather (act) as if was more like an earthenware pot or glass so, if should break, you’ll not get upset… Remember that when generals are given a triumph, there’s always someone in the chariot behind them reminding them that they are just mortal.’ (ED3:24,69, 84-85)

Practising what is not our own is a method of life that is very hard to institute, especially when we have spent a long time collecting our belongings. As children, adults may well have said to us, after a sad loss, that the incident that swept away a loved object could have been much worse, for ‘these were just things.’ No-one actually died, after all. But loss is experienced by us all as a kind of demise.

Three of Cup by Margery Morgan.

Hierocles encourages us to consider the four Cardinal Virtues in relation not only to our self, but to our possessions. He reminds us that Justice particularly ranks ‘above the others virtues that it might be the measure for our proper duties: therefore, you will not blaspheme in the face of your possessions being lost… not will you steal from your neighbours…’ Wisdom, Courage and Temperance all encourage us to ‘a moderate disposition,’ as well as invoking generosity within us with the things we have. (GV A philosophical way of looking at this is to say that we are all in the same boat. If we remember the actions of the Pythagorean women, to loan things to each other as each had need, we recall that our own urge towards generous sharing is what also makes providential mercy to both friends and strangers. We do not always have to be on the defensive as ‘people to whom awful things are done’, but also people from whom many mercies can flow, inspired by the gods who inspire us.

In our own straightened times where the economy and the relentless urging to boost growth results in conditions where most people becomes much poorer; when the uncertainties of climate, work, zones of conflict, and new persecutions drive migrants further afield; when the things we have or expect to have are constrained, removed, lost or never even granted after long trial; when infrastructure break down, when the safety-net has been removed, or you are exiled from all that you know, what is it that you need to take with you now?

Hierocles makes it plain: ‘The aim of these verses is make plain the fourfold virtues and transmit them to others with a vigilant safe-keeping and a proper watchfulness in our words and deeds.’ (GV, X, 16) He tells us that this verse ‘ about acquiring and giving up possessions only when reason permits takes away beforehand the incitements to miserliness and profligacy.’ (GV (X, 17) And he brings before us the sense that all things flow from the great fountain of goodness, that we will meet later in the verses. That fountain does not cease to flow.

Putting things ‘in the service of virtue frees us from grief.’ (GV, X,9) Grief is the child of loss, but the things that we can share remain in use with a lightness and joyousness that the miser never knows.

When faced with the realities of life, and how living with generosity may mitigate our losses, we can recall the incident when Socrates was walking in the countryside with his friend, Phaedrus: they both sat down in a beautiful spot and Socrates burst out into spontaneous prayer to the gods of that place:

‘O beloved Pan, and all ye other Gods, who are residents of this place, grant that I may become beautiful within, and that whatever I possess externally may be friendly to my inward attainments! Grant also, that I may consider the wise man as one who abounds in wealth and that I may enjoy that portion of gold, which no other than a prudent man is able either to bear, or properly manage.’ (Phaedrus, 279)

And this is why, as another translation of this verse tells us: ‘It is the blessing of all wise ones to know. As to our belongings, uncertain fortune decrees That just as they may be acquired, so can they be lost.’

Maintaining our generosity can work as an antidote to fear of loss. All that is ours now may indeed be lost at different times, but the soul on whom the great fountain of goodness showers without stint may adorned by other graces that mere possession.

§Consider §

· How are the four Cardinal Virtues making you ‘beautiful within?’

· In what ways might ‘your external possessions become friendly to your inner attainments?’

· Here is a resource on Aristotles’ view of generosity as a virtue. Please find some wider points to uphold you when faced by loss. https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2023/07/Resource_24.pdf

· How does Epictetus’ famous dictum, help you maintain temperance with wisdom?‘Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.’

MEDITATION

Epictetus gives us a practice to help us with our desires and our expectation of things and people that are not within our power.

‘When you are delighted with anything, be delighted as with a thing which is not one of those which cannot be taken away, but as something of such a kind, as an earthen pot is, or a glass cup, that, when it has been broken, you may remember what it was and may not be troubled… What you love is nothing of your own: it has been given to you for the present, not that it should not be taken from you, nor has it been given to you for all time, but as a fig is given to you or a bunch of grapes at the appointed season of the year. But if you wish for these things in winter, you are a fool. So, if you wish for your son or friend when it is not allowed to you, you must know that you are wishing for a fig in winter.’ (ED 3,24, 19)

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I hope you are bearing up as we go through the difficult things that these verses examine? The centrality of our tholos of supporters is really important as we explore these, so don’t forget to stand within that circle of support first as you meditate on these things.