We experience inner tensions – desires that pull us in different directions. We want to be liked, we want to be safe, we want the power to control, we want the freedom to act without responsibility, we want food, we want sex, we want money…
All these desires pull us in various directions. If one particular desire is strong enough, it focuses our energies and drives them with the full force of our strengths towards a goal. But to do that, that desire must be stronger than every other desire.
Hence, the ancient Roman virtue of ambition and the grand ferocity of competitiveness. It is an impressive thing when all the lesser, petty trifling desires can be focused into one single ambition. It could be anything – a marathon, a job, a high score on a computer game – but these ambitions bring out the great energy in a person and they propel us into grand endeavours.
However, this introduces a new dilemma.
The stronger our inner tensions, the more we will focus on fulfilling and relieving our own inner drives – and the less we are able to focus on relating with others. The extent to which a person is caught up with their own inner journey, to that same extent, they will have difficulty sharing another person’s journey.
And therein lies the dilemma: Although strong ambition may bring out the best in a person, it may also bring out the worst – and it most certainly precludes true community.
This may express itself in various ways. It may be the ambitious individual using others to fulfil their own inner ambitions. It may be the ambitious individual isolating from people they feel they cannot use. It may be the ambitious individual competing with others who appear to be a threat. It may simply be that the ambitious individual has no inner space to enter into other people’s desires as their inner world is consumed with their own.
Although these ambitions may be and have been harnassed to achieve significant feats, they provide a very poor foundation for healthy relationships, growing families, or stable communities. The possibilities of many individuals to focus their petty desires into a noble one, then coordinating them with others to have the same ambition, without becoming competitive – and then allowing each to simultaneously, furiously pursue these goals makes this road an emotional deadend of conflict and war.
In contrast to the Roman virtue of Ambition, the Eastern teachers advocated a different path. That involved the annihilation of all desires. The truly stable human being is the one free from inner tension. They have transcended their desires. They have recanted their ambitions. They live completely at peace by virtue of the fact that they no longer desire happiness, they no longer refuse suffering. They, instead of ruling over their many desires with one greater desire, instead annihilate all desire, leaving an empty space of quiet and solace.
Their one great endeavour is to release all inner tension, resulting in the blissful state of peace and transcendence.
This, theoretically, should provide a tremendous foundation for relationship. After all, the individual with no inner tension has complete freedom to respond to the needs and desires of others. They, instead of using others to fulfil their own ambitions, can be of use to others who need help and support in releasing their ambitions. And so, they who are peace with themselves should be the ones who can best create a safe place for others.
However, not many of us have actually reached this place of transcendence – and the majority of us are not even close! Although we, at times may sense that we should not be so selfish, yet, we still have our own ambitions that will not release us.
And, recalling the Roman tradition, if our society is to move forwards, we would still want ambitions to focus and inspire our desires.
So, is there a resolution?
Christ certainly presents the both / and.
Firstly he not only releases people from the spoken code of ambition (the law), but He himself fulfils it. That is, he’s not destroying the code to set people free. Rather, he accomplishes it himself. He allows us to see someone who has already done it. It is no longer an abstract concept we need to clamber after. It is no a personal role model who calls us to follow him. He then sets the standard even higher. He calls us to even greater ambitions of perfection, Kingdom advancement, world domination, personal influence. He dares us to do even greater things than he did. He challenges us to extend our work into all nations of this globe.
Then he also teaches us to let go: to forgive, to release, to trust, to surrender, to submit – and in the most astounding act of all history, resolved the imbalanced equation by dying on the cross. His instructions to us seem to carry the same annihilistic call – take up your cross and follow me to your death.
Surely, somewhere here is the essence of not just community (Eastern support and foundational stability), not just work (Roman achievement and ambition orientation), but of team work.
Somewhere… but where?
Must we spend the first 40 energetic years of our lives chasing our individual pursuits until we either get so stressed or so disillusioned that we then submit ourselves to the long 8 fold pathway to enlightenment? Must we castrate the creative, ambitious, reproductive drive in our youth so that it won’t bother us for the rest of our peaceful, stable eunuchoid lives?
If we are to achieve a balance here, where does the fulcrum and the focal point lie?
Intuitively, in our team setting, it seems to me that we must adopt activities and allow for experiences that give us opportunity as individuals to resolve – or release our own personal tensions. That is, what bare minimums do we need in order to feel safe, to feel secure, to feel successful. Physical exercise in which we can resolve the tensions of being ‘healthy’, or achieving something and we can have an environment where we can release the other tensions of the day within an atmosphere where there is no room to keep holding on to the other issues.
A good coffee with a friend – where we can resolve the tensions of being accepted and affirmed, of satisfying pleasures of safety, of affirming achievement with one another.
Prayer, Devotions, Study…activities to fulfil our ambitions and to release our tensions. Activites where we can have some yardstick of success, some affirmation of our belonging and security, some experience of safety and stability.
Then, we are free to come together as Kingdom teams who do not meet to use each other to meet one person’s ambition. Rather, as people who are at peace and who have dealt with their own inner struggles, we can come together to join our efforts in some greater struggle. We become free agents who are not ruled by the tensions of our own personal status, survival or success, but rather we are available to engage in a greater cause for other people.
Hence, we seek first, Peace – which provides the foundation on which we can build noble, community building ambitions. This peace can be found and sustained with the aid of our disciplines. But most significantly, it stems from our relationship with our Master who inspires us and coaches us in becoming like himself.
It is life alone that can have meaning.
