An insightful and inspirational reminder! I would only modify Dr. Benner's fine message by accentuating one important nuance, which is that the memento mori of St. Benedict and other great Christian and non-Christian spiritual guides always implied the death of the "flesh" (by which term the ancients meant what we call the "ego"). This gesture served to relocate one's identity from the body and the five senses to the true source of biological life: the supersomatc Life in God. The reminders of death that saints and holy ones upheld - usually in the symbolic form of skulls, bones, sleeping in coffins, etc. - pointed not to death as some kind of implacable counterforce to Life, but only as an illusory mortality represented by ego-death. This is a point that Ernest Becker overlooks as as well, as the cultural and social institutions, which he rightly identifies as large-scale attempts to derail memento mori, seek to usurp the Domain of Complete Being - the Greater Life in God - as the central organizing principle of identity. Plainly, Becker was absolutely correct in his analysis of society and culture as being the chief mechanisms of the "denial of death," which pervades our collective thinking. However, where I believe Becker failed was in his missing account of the fact that a Greater, Higher, Better modality of Life summons all souls back to its ever-present origin, and that this Higher Life is only dimly reflected in the biological life of the body, and by extension, the ego.
Very good. Have purchased about 6 or 7 of David's books lately. Starting to explore them. So far.....have to say, some of the best stuff I've ever read. Amazing how a girl on tiktok can go infront of a camera, and say nothing, or do nothing, but strike a pose in self adulation, and get millions of views, but someone like this who has something to really say only gets hundreds of views.
An insightful and inspirational reminder!
I would only modify Dr. Benner's fine message by accentuating one important nuance, which is that the memento mori of St. Benedict and other great Christian and non-Christian spiritual guides always implied the death of the "flesh" (by which term the ancients meant what we call the "ego"). This gesture served to relocate one's identity from the body and the five senses to the true source of biological life: the supersomatc Life in God. The reminders of death that saints and holy ones upheld - usually in the symbolic form of skulls, bones, sleeping in coffins, etc. - pointed not to death as some kind of implacable counterforce to Life, but only as an illusory mortality represented by ego-death.
This is a point that Ernest Becker overlooks as as well, as the cultural and social institutions, which he rightly identifies as large-scale attempts to derail memento mori, seek to usurp the Domain of Complete Being - the Greater Life in God - as the central organizing principle of identity. Plainly, Becker was absolutely correct in his analysis of society and culture as being the chief mechanisms of the "denial of death," which pervades our collective thinking. However, where I believe Becker failed was in his missing account of the fact that a Greater, Higher, Better modality of Life summons all souls back to its ever-present origin, and that this Higher Life is only dimly reflected in the biological life of the body, and by extension, the ego.
Very good. Have purchased about 6 or 7 of David's books lately. Starting to explore them. So far.....have to say, some of the best stuff I've ever read.
Amazing how a girl on tiktok can go infront of a camera, and say nothing, or do nothing, but strike a pose in self adulation, and get millions of views, but someone like this who has something to really say only gets hundreds of views.