The phenomenon of the "Selfie" challenges the traditional notion of a humble, unselfconscious spirituality like almost no other element invented by modern technology. What are we to make of this, and how might it contribute rather than hinder the spiritual journey?
One of my wise thirty-something daughters told me the other day that she sees the Selfie as a major way the members of her generation seek to discover who they are. Out of touch with any deeper, more stable identity, they use closeup cell phone self-portraits to offer a window into their own selfhood. Those Selfies taken in a mirror seem especially to justify this kind of interpretation. You can almost see the exploratory "Who am I?" expression on the person's face in the midst of taking the shot. However, I don't think this interpretation is the end of the matter. For I believe there is also a real and genuine spirituality lying behind the phenomenon of the Selfie.
Growing up near Amish country in Pennsylvania, I accepted as gospel truth the idea that one should avoid giving too much self-conscious attention to one's public persona or image. The Quakers on my mother's side of the family supported this move toward humble self-forgetting, as did the Christian contemplatives with whom I studied for over thirty years. However, since I've gotten on Instagram, I've been introduced to a huge culture of Selfies, including photos in the outdoors taken with the help of "Selfie Sticks," and lovely models who aim the phone video camera at themselves, taking a movie from every possible seductive angle. In fact, I've gotten to where I look forward to Instagram outdoor pictures with people in them, especially since there are so many health-conscious, beautiful people recreating in the Great Outdoors these days.
As you might expect, I like to employ myth in trying to understand the spirituality of what traditionally would have been regarded as evidence of narcissism. Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche Chogyam Trungpa once used the playful image of "Empty Space putting on makeup" to talk about how spacious awareness "dresses up" as the individual egoic self and as all worldly phenomena. Poet Anne Waldman, one of Trungpa's students, actually wrote a whole poem employing this image, called "Makeup on Empty Space." Here, "empty space" refers not to a mere nothing but to the spiritual reality of spacious awareness, "Dharmakaya," which is also filled with creative potential.
In any case, I like to imagine our Beloved Source emptied out in blissful, ecstatic love into the spaciousness of our awareness, and then playing a long, long game in which He or She masquerades as the constricted reality of both yours and my ego - acting "cocky," self-important, even arrogant - but always with a sense of playfulness and a "this-is-not-really-who-I-am" attitude underlying the entire game. Here each of us might embody a certain sexy, self-important, aloof, self-occupied attitude, yet KNOW we are putting on an act and playing a lifelong game! And that precisely is what a Selfie is: the divine self PLAYING at being self-preoccupied and self-important, temporarily forgetting that all of this posturing is actually a game, yet periodically waking up to the vastness of the True Self with a pleasant sense of shock and surprise :)
Photo: Sunrise on Sprague Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, September 19, 2015
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I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page.
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