OVERCOMING SEPARATENESS*

NANCY ROODENBURG

 

I was a newcomer to the Friends’ Conference on Religion and Psychology. I came prepared for a pleasant weekend on a college campus, which by its very atmosphere stirs one to thought. I returned full of vigorous stimulation and with a rapidly expanding psyche. I was scarcely prepared for the moving quality of this particular group experience, nor for the earnest search and sharing that took place.

Most people at a conference sit back and expect to receive pearls of wisdom from their leaders, anticipating that the mere swallowing by ear will improve their condition. Their questions, if they participate, are frequently neat phrasings of some intellectual point, often not really felt as a question but rather spoken to display to the assembled multitude their own intellectual precocity. We are all familiar with individuals who use other people in an audience as a vehicle for their own egotistic self-expression.

Not so at the Friends’ Conference. I have rarely encountered a group which was willing to work so concernedly together for exchange and mutual understanding. Having worked with Dr. Progoff for some years, I was familiar with most of his ideas and am a firm believer in the originality and validity of the work he has undertaken. Nevertheless, I was amazed at the manner in which the group reached out to meet and wrestle with these concepts. A good part of this, I am discovering, comes from the very nature of Quakerism, whose members, more than any other religious group I know, work at their religion and seek out other minds and hearts to make common cause.

Most of us want answers to our perplexing problems, whether we call them psychological or religious or simply the sometimes frightening awareness of being human beings in an enormous universe. The material with which we were dealing in The Cloud of Unknowing is difficult at best and doubly difficult for people who live in an activistic, materialistic culture such as ours. This very culture has led us to a sense of separateness and isolation from each other which makes the ground under our feet much more precarious. Many fear to strive for a solution to the emptiness of their lives for lack of human companionship and sanction. The inner venture is, of course, the personal responsibility of every individual who wishes to commit himself to it; it is of great benefit to have fellowship in the undertaking.

Throughout the Conference I felt a considerable effort to overcome separateness, and it was my impression that many people discovered that there was much support and sympathy to be had in reaching to the common ground in the depths of all human beings. This is, as I understand it, one of the basic principles of the Society of Friends; during the Conference it was enhanced and deepened beyond the ordinary limits of mutuality.

To give up disputation is already a step forward in cooperation. Whether it was the material in The Cloud of Unknowing which had prepared the group to give up disputation as useless for such a project, I don’t know. I do know that people spoke to the point, and they spoke to each other, mostly with humility and openness and a willingness to be changed by what the other fellow said.

As a result of this attitude, the very atmosphere became charged as we went along with a sense of power that should be revealing to all of us as to what we can accomplish if we seek a common goal through group experience.  

   

* Reprinted from Inward Light, Vol. XXII, No.56, Fall/Winter, 1958-59, pp. 29-30.