In the Louvre hangs a Rembrandt painting titled Philosopher in Meditation. The painting presents an old man, richly illuminated by golden light streaming through the window, in a room dominated by a sturdy and winding staircase leading to the floor above. If we use this 18th century title for this 17th century painting, we can interpret the scene as suggesting that the philosopher gains wisdom by decades of repeatedly climbing aloft and descending. The painting symbolizes the experience of insight in the lofty and grounded meditative thinking essential to philosophical living.
When Socrates had the chance to flee from prison, he decided to remain and drink the hemlock poison, following philosophical reason rather than emotion. He made his decision by logically reasoning about the implications of (1) the supreme value reality—goodness—and (2) the facts of his life as a citizen of Athens and the fact that he had been convicted (even if wrongly) in accord with its laws.
In philosophical living, we make good decisions by integrating the meanings of facts and values.
Any further observations about the paintings? Could you give an example of an important decision you have faced or are now facing? How would you interpret the meaning of the relevant facts and values?
I see these two paintings as a continuum. In the first painting, I see an individual seeking for wisdom, insight and understanding, and the golden rays of these qualities pouring in. Ask and you shall receive; In the second painting, I see an individual sharing these values and meanings that he has received thus completing the cycle.
The most significant decision in my professional career occurred when I was faced with the decision to leave this area of practice. It unfolded this way. During the second year of my medical education, the funding for medical education dried up. There were few choices open for financing other than hefty loans. One of the avenues open was a public health scholarship. This scholarship in addition to providing tuition, also provided a stipend. This seemed like the answer to my financial problem, and so I took it without understanding the far reaching ramification of this decision.
As graduation time approached, I began to realize the details of my obligation from receiving this scholarship. One of the important details was that I was limited in what specialty I could train in and where I could practice. I would have to pursue primary care in an undeserved area until my obligation was satisfied. At that time I was giving serious thought to becoming a psychiatrist. And so I decided that I would satisfy my obligation in primary care, and then return to the university for specialty training in Psychiatry. I was required to work in a rural area for 3 years.
But as the time approached for me to finalize my plans for specialized training, I realized that for the first time in my life, I felt like I was home. I felt needed and wanted. I felt happy. After three years of service, I was extremely effective and highly competent in the service I was providing. The patients were extremely grateful and appreciative of my service. Plus it was here that I found God. All of a sudden I was propelled into a crisis. If I stayed here, I realized that I would never get the recognition that a specialty conferred upon one . My dreams of fame and fortune would go up in smoke. All the relationships that I cultivated among these grateful people in this area would end.
The choice was to abandon what I was happy doing, or go in pursuit of something that I felt could never bring me the peace, joy, and satisfaction of serving where I was really needed. All the relationships that I cultivated among these grateful people in this area would end. It just felt right for me to continue doing what I was doing despite the intellectual forecasts of what I would be given up. But the thought of leaving filled me such anguish that I could not stand it. I sought insight, understanding, and wisdom. I then chose to remain at my duty station.
34 years of service to this area has validated the rightness of that choice.
Dr James Perry
Thank you, Dr. Perry, for this valuable record of your experience. Scientific living includes psychological honesty about our own desires. Acting motivated by the desire for human recognition and reward can block or compromise certain kinds of service. To recognize these normal desires and establish the habit of living beyond them is a goal for us all.
I see these two paintings as a continuum. In the first painting, I see an individual seeking for wisdom, insight and understanding, and the golden rays of these qualities pouring in. Ask and you shall receive; In the second painting, I see an individual sharing these values and meanings that he has received thus completing the cycle.
The most significant decision in my professional career occurred when I was faced with the decision to leave this area of practice. It unfolded this way. During the second year of my medical education, the funding for medical education dried up. There were few choices open for financing other than hefty loans. One of the avenues open was a public health scholarship. This scholarship in addition to providing tuition, also provided a stipend. This seemed like the answer to my financial problem, and so I took it without understanding the far reaching ramification of this decision.
As graduation time approached, I began to realize the details of my obligation from receiving this scholarship. One of the important details was that I was limited in what specialty I could train in and where I could practice. I would have to pursue primary care in an undeserved area until my obligation was satisfied. At that time I was giving serious thought to becoming a psychiatrist. And so I decided that I would satisfy my obligation in primary care, and then return to the university for specialty training in Psychiatry. I was required to work in a rural area for 3 years.
But as the time approached for me to finalize my plans for specialized training, I realized that for the first time in my life, I felt like I was home. I felt needed and wanted. I felt happy. After three years of service, I was extremely effective and highly competent in the service I was providing. The patients were extremely grateful and appreciative of my service. Plus it was here that I found God. All of a sudden I was propelled into a crisis. If I stayed here, I realized that I would never get the recognition that a specialty conferred upon one . My dreams of fame and fortune would go up in smoke. All the relationships that I cultivated among these grateful people in this area would end.
The choice was to abandon what I was happy doing, or go in pursuit of something that I felt could never bring me the peace, joy, and satisfaction of serving where I was really needed. All the relationships that I cultivated among these grateful people in this area would end. It just felt right for me to continue doing what I was doing despite the intellectual forecasts of what I would be given up. But the thought of leaving filled me such anguish that I could not stand it. I sought insight, understanding, and wisdom. I then chose to remain at my duty station.
34 years of service to this area has validated the rightness of that choice.
Dr James Perry
Thank you, Dr. Perry, for this valuable record of your experience. Scientific living includes psychological honesty about our own desires. Acting motivated by the desire for human recognition and reward can block or compromise certain kinds of service. To recognize these normal desires and establish the habit of living beyond them is a goal for us all.
The Rembrandt painting is pure magic. The light, the shapes, the figures… I don’t feel like analyzing it. It’s like Mandelstam’s Aphrodite: both music and word, an impartible whole.
An important decision? In my life, it seems to be a never-ending story, a dilemma: What is more important – to self-realize or to sympathize? To develop one’s own talent or to help your neighbor develop their own? In an ideal words, this dilemma is non-existent, yet in my not-so-perfect present time it’s a continuous challenge.
Beloved brother Michael, thank you for sharing this dilemma, this tension that continually calls for difficult choices. You already realize that self-actualization benefits others, and serving others enhances self-realization. And you recognize that the demands on your discretionary time are such that you will continue to have choices between creative projects of your own and helping others in a more direct way. You properly refuse to go the extreme of totally sacrificing either option to pursue the other. By doing your best day by day, season by season, you are in the process of developing new virtues and a new concept that will serve you well.
An excellent decision process requires an excellent prayer process, and I invite you to contact me to set up a Skype conversation, if you like, to discuss that process as applied to this situation. Some of the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of the process will come up in the weeks to follow; but for the moment, so my comments will focus a little more on some of the scientific dimensions. In seeking the Father’s will, you recognize the facts of the situation, which you interpret through the lens of psychology and any other relevant science. In any particular case that arises, you mobilize your stamina for whatever alternative may be best: each one will have drawbacks, and you must be prepared to take on the full measure of unwelcome consequences of each choice that you think might possibly be the right one; these alternatives include creative combinations of seemingly divergent options as well as the X option–in case there’s an option you haven’t thought of yet. In doing your best to balance the legitimate duties involved, you arrive at the best perception that you can achieve of the landscape of fact, meaning, and value. When it is time to submit everything to the higher and divine perspective, you will recognize the various wishes in your mind, and the beautiful values that your soul craves–all of which may be less than what divine wisdom has for you. As you release your own ideas and desires into God, you will experience a gestalt-shift, a new way of seeing the landscape. Because of the possibility of inputs into the conscious mind coming from the subconscious mind as well as from the divine spirit, you use your responsible discernment of the truth, beauty, and goodness. The will of God cannot be other than than what we can discern at our best. Doing your best, you remain teachable and your spiritual receptivity increases.
Knowing something of your struggles and recent success as a musician, composer, and writer, and knowing your commitment to service, I can only look forward to the marvelous synthesis that is emerging in you.
Absolutely beautiful Jeff, a beautiful song played for the ears of the soul.
Dr Perry
The Rembrandt painting is pure magic. The light, the shapes, the figures… I don’t feel like analyzing it. It’s like Mandelstam’s Aphrodite: both music and word, an impartible whole.
An important decision? In my life, it seems to be a never-ending story, a dilemma: What is more important – to self-realize or to sympathize? To develop one’s own talent or to help your neighbor develop their own? In an ideal words, this dilemma is non-existent, yet in my not-so-perfect present time it’s a continuous challenge.
Beloved brother Michael, thank you for sharing this dilemma, this tension that continually calls for difficult choices. You already realize that self-actualization benefits others, and serving others enhances self-realization. And you recognize that the demands on your discretionary time are such that you will continue to have choices between creative projects of your own and helping others in a more direct way. You properly refuse to go the extreme of totally sacrificing either option to pursue the other. By doing your best day by day, season by season, you are in the process of developing new virtues and a new concept that will serve you well.
An excellent decision process requires an excellent prayer process, and I invite you to contact me to set up a Skype conversation, if you like, to discuss that process as applied to this situation. Some of the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of the process will come up in the weeks to follow; but for the moment, so my comments will focus a little more on some of the scientific dimensions. In seeking the Father’s will, you recognize the facts of the situation, which you interpret through the lens of psychology and any other relevant science. In any particular case that arises, you mobilize your stamina for whatever alternative may be best: each one will have drawbacks, and you must be prepared to take on the full measure of unwelcome consequences of each choice that you think might possibly be the right one; these alternatives include creative combinations of seemingly divergent options as well as the X option–in case there’s an option you haven’t thought of yet. In doing your best to balance the legitimate duties involved, you arrive at the best perception that you can achieve of the landscape of fact, meaning, and value. When it is time to submit everything to the higher and divine perspective, you will recognize the various wishes in your mind, and the beautiful values that your soul craves–all of which may be less than what divine wisdom has for you. As you release your own ideas and desires into God, you will experience a gestalt-shift, a new way of seeing the landscape. Because of the possibility of inputs into the conscious mind coming from the subconscious mind as well as from the divine spirit, you use your responsible discernment of the truth, beauty, and goodness. The will of God cannot be other than than what we can discern at our best. Doing your best, you remain teachable and your spiritual receptivity increases.
Knowing something of your struggles and recent success as a musician, composer, and writer, and knowing your commitment to service, I can only look forward to the marvelous synthesis that is emerging in you.
Absolutely beautiful Jeff, a beautiful song played for the ears of the soul.
Dr Perry
In my experience fact and value intersect to cause “meaning”. Meaning made incarnate – tangible – is an iteration of wisdom.
I’m not sure that the decisional nexus is the most congenial place gor wisdom. In your example of Socrates’ choice for death, the wise anticipation of that very choice had been, I suspect, made iteratively many many occasions previous to that “crucial” final declaration. Personally, I rarely find the circumstance of “choice” a surprise. It is only when I fail in attentiveness that I find myself “choosing” haphazardly.
This is not to say that I plot the course of my life in minute terms. Quite to the contrary, I believe that an attetive habit of “mind” and prayer, allows for a much fuller existentialism for me. I find that I can be delighted by the unexpected, chance, or unforeseen occurrence almost every day without having to “choose” the context within which that happens.
The wisdom of this mode of living is, I believe, a balance unchosen but nevetheless active. It is a fact/value mindfulness.
Unlike the wise Rembrandt scholar seated in the golden light, I imagine myself leaving my desk and ascending the stairs that lead away from my study and into the flesh-and-blood interaction with other souls in this heaven-on-earth life that is such a blessed gift from God.
I love your first paragraph! Incarnation is a concept that shows up in most of your comments, and you are stretching my thinking by your conversation.
I’m also sympathetic with what I take to be the drift of the rest of your comment, too. To me, the point of a philosophy of living is to prepare us for intuitive, liberated, and spontaneous interaction in response to the multi-dimensional and ever-changing environment; prayer is a continuation of that responsiveness. I believe that our great decisions where we do go through a thorough process form a foundation for that spontaneity. I also agree that repeated decisions strengthen a person for the time when one’s life is on the line. I have no doubt that Socrates was not thinking through his decision to remain in prison for the first time when Crito appeared with the funds to bribe the guard and get his friend out of there.
In my experience fact and value intersect to cause “meaning”. Meaning made incarnate – tangible – is an iteration of wisdom.
I’m not sure that the decisional nexus is the most congenial place gor wisdom. In your example of Socrates’ choice for death, the wise anticipation of that very choice had been, I suspect, made iteratively many many occasions previous to that “crucial” final declaration. Personally, I rarely find the circumstance of “choice” a surprise. It is only when I fail in attentiveness that I find myself “choosing” haphazardly.
This is not to say that I plot the course of my life in minute terms. Quite to the contrary, I believe that an attetive habit of “mind” and prayer, allows for a much fuller existentialism for me. I find that I can be delighted by the unexpected, chance, or unforeseen occurrence almost every day without having to “choose” the context within which that happens.
The wisdom of this mode of living is, I believe, a balance unchosen but nevetheless active. It is a fact/value mindfulness.
Unlike the wise Rembrandt scholar seated in the golden light, I imagine myself leaving my desk and ascending the stairs that lead away from my study and into the flesh-and-blood interaction with other souls in this heaven-on-earth life that is such a blessed gift from God.
I love your first paragraph! Incarnation is a concept that shows up in most of your comments, and you are stretching my thinking by your conversation.
I’m also sympathetic with what I take to be the drift of the rest of your comment, too. To me, the point of a philosophy of living is to prepare us for intuitive, liberated, and spontaneous interaction in response to the multi-dimensional and ever-changing environment; prayer is a continuation of that responsiveness. I believe that our great decisions where we do go through a thorough process form a foundation for that spontaneity. I also agree that repeated decisions strengthen a person for the time when one’s life is on the line. I have no doubt that Socrates was not thinking through his decision to remain in prison for the first time when Crito appeared with the funds to bribe the guard and get his friend out of there.
P.S. (I know you like concrete examples:) Here I am sitting in my garden under a very old Maple tree surroubded by the many pots of flowers I planted recently. Shall I: 1/ weed the fence line paych of garden flowers; 2/ read my fascinating new Polish murder mystery set in 14th century Bavaria; 3/ continue my study of Dante’s Comedia (now in its 7th month); 4/ sand the deck while the wearher is nice? What an abundance of choices today?
On a less trivial note and with a more pointed nexus, what course shall I now take in helping to direct someone who is depending ony council? My “choices” seem to be: silence, subtle direction (I know from my point of view what should be done), or unambiguous counsel. Fact and value don’t necessarily intersect here – both being murky at best. Yet I am bound to act. As with many of this kind of decision more typical in life than not, I’ll continue to pray and trust that the balance of discernment and response will lead to a wisdom path. God-willing…
Regarding the first choice, where many activities beckon with equal appeal, it may make no difference.
I’d now like to take the opportunity to remark on your more important matter in a way that continues my reply to your comment on the previous blogpost. I realize that you were not asking my advice. Most of all, I pray for the success your prayer process, and I rejoice that the other person has such a marvelously care-ful friend!
Regarding the choice of how to respond to the one who looks to you for counsel, there are the facts of the other’s situation: the maxim, “Don’t give advice unless it’s asked for” is not relevant when someone is about to do something disastrous: that would be warning, not advice. Good teachers and friends do give warnings. On the other hand, silence (valuably, lovingly attentive to the other’s factual process) has the benefit of allowing the other person to learn (the meanings of fact and value) the hard way, which is often wise (valuable). There are also the facts of the other’s maturity. In general it’s best to facilitate discovery and help the other exercise her freedom rather than to leap in and short-circuit the other person’s prayer/decision-making process and growth opportunity.
Here’s the wider point relevant to my purpose in this weblog. Picking up on fact, meaning, and value is something we intuitively do all the time. This philosophy of living proposes that we spend some time cultivating our powers of intuition, to get better at it, so that the intuitive process gets better, and we are also better at realizing and responding to situations where we need to establish facts with more care, reflect on meaning, or prayerfully seek a greater realization of the value in question.
Thank you for your clarifying comments and for being a trustworthy friend and a pillar in the conversation.
Ah, “the facts of the other’s situation”. That’s the rub, indeed; so difficult to discover, so often. Of course it’s attentiveness and sceince that give us any hope at all. Thanks for this wise reminder, Jeffrey.
P.S. (I know you like concrete examples:) Here I am sitting in my garden under a very old Maple tree surroubded by the many pots of flowers I planted recently. Shall I: 1/ weed the fence line paych of garden flowers; 2/ read my fascinating new Polish murder mystery set in 14th century Bavaria; 3/ continue my study of Dante’s Comedia (now in its 7th month); 4/ sand the deck while the wearher is nice? What an abundance of choices today?
On a less trivial note and with a more pointed nexus, what course shall I now take in helping to direct someone who is depending ony council? My “choices” seem to be: silence, subtle direction (I know from my point of view what should be done), or unambiguous counsel. Fact and value don’t necessarily intersect here – both being murky at best. Yet I am bound to act. As with many of this kind of decision more typical in life than not, I’ll continue to pray and trust that the balance of discernment and response will lead to a wisdom path. God-willing…
Regarding the first choice, where many activities beckon with equal appeal, it may make no difference.
I’d now like to take the opportunity to remark on your more important matter in a way that continues my reply to your comment on the previous blogpost. I realize that you were not asking my advice. Most of all, I pray for the success your prayer process, and I rejoice that the other person has such a marvelously care-ful friend!
Regarding the choice of how to respond to the one who looks to you for counsel, there are the facts of the other’s situation: the maxim, “Don’t give advice unless it’s asked for” is not relevant when someone is about to do something disastrous: that would be warning, not advice. Good teachers and friends do give warnings. On the other hand, silence (valuably, lovingly attentive to the other’s factual process) has the benefit of allowing the other person to learn (the meanings of fact and value) the hard way, which is often wise (valuable). There are also the facts of the other’s maturity. In general it’s best to facilitate discovery and help the other exercise her freedom rather than to leap in and short-circuit the other person’s prayer/decision-making process and growth opportunity.
Here’s the wider point relevant to my purpose in this weblog. Picking up on fact, meaning, and value is something we intuitively do all the time. This philosophy of living proposes that we spend some time cultivating our powers of intuition, to get better at it, so that the intuitive process gets better, and we are also better at realizing and responding to situations where we need to establish facts with more care, reflect on meaning, or prayerfully seek a greater realization of the value in question.
Thank you for your clarifying comments and for being a trustworthy friend and a pillar in the conversation.
Ah, “the facts of the other’s situation”. That’s the rub, indeed; so difficult to discover, so often. Of course it’s attentiveness and sceince that give us any hope at all. Thanks for this wise reminder, Jeffrey.