How do we change our minds about important things? What is the journey we undertake when we find a change of heart over significant existential issues? Of course, there are occasions when we find that our viewpoint has been changed over something relatively superficial – I could even be persuaded to like Mozart under certain circumstances – but when it comes to matters that relate to our self-understanding or to our sense of what is right, what is it that allows us to shift our ground?
Put another way, how do we grow in our outlook on the world and in our sense of self? In the life of faith, the process of change is rarely a matter of simple, steady progress. The reason for this is that the change we need in order to deepen in faith is not a matter of increasing comprehension, but of getting to a point where comprehension runs out. Our growth towards God, towards maturity happens when we let our ego get out of the way, when we reach a place of utter simplicity through a self-forgetting, self-emptying openness. When we let go of our desire to control all things through our powers of reason, we reach a point where be begin to inhabit the world in the way we were created to - in love. This is when we receive life as a gift rather than grab it as a prize. Sometimes this place is only reached by experiencing 'breakthroughs' that can be painful. We might find that our reliance on external things is weakened to the point that we feel insecure or uncertain. Letting go of our natural desire to achieve and succeed can be very difficult indeed. And letting go of our concepts of God can leave us feeling at sea. But the way of being that takes the place of these things can be of unimaginable goodness. Thomas Merton described a 'delicate taste of interior manna' that the contemplative may find once she or he has let go of introspective, self-absorbed anxiety. I change when 'I' get out of the way.
At the level of debate and controversy, when we are considering matters that are about a kind of conversion of outlook rather than mere winning of arguments, this example from the life of faith suggests to me that the true changing of hearts happens by letting go of expectations, simplistic outcomes or controlling anxieties. In other words, the heart only changes when it is open. This openness is a species of emptiness which is also a fullness – empty of power but full of possibility, devoid of ego but fully 'self'. This deep kind of change happens when attention shifts from 'objects' to 'subjects', from outcomes to persons. The royal road to such conversion is silence - listening, attention, wakefulness, simplicity. This is not a matter of persuasion but conversion, not a matter of power but of self-giving.
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