Evelyn Underhill: Gameof Acquisition

Compare this with your normal attitude to the world, practical man: your quiet certitude that you are well within your rights in pushing the claims of "the I, the Me, the Mine"; your habit, if you be religious, of asking for the weather and the government that you want, of persuading the Supernal Powers to take a special interest in your national or personal health and prosperity.

The very mainspring of your activity is a demand, either for a continued possession of that which you have, or for something which as yet you have not: wealth, honor, success, social position, love, friendship, comfort, amusement.

You feel that you have a right to some of these things: to a certain recognition of your powers, a certain immunity from failure or humiliation. You resent anything which opposes you in these matters. You become restless when you see other selves more skillful in the game of acquisition than yourself. You hold tight against all comers your own share of the spoils. You are rather inclined to shirk boring responsibilities and unattractive, unremunerative toil; are greedy of pleasure and excitement, devoted to the art of having a good time.

If you possess a social sense, you demand these things not only for yourself but for your tribe—the domestic or racial group to which you belong. These dispositions, so ordinary that they almost pass unnoticed, were named by our blunt forefathers the Seven Deadly Sins of Pride, Anger, Envy, Avarice, Sloth, Gluttony, and Lust. Perhaps you would rather call them—as indeed they are—the seven common forms of egotism.

They represent the natural reactions to life of the self-centered human consciousness, enslaved by the "world of multiplicity"; and constitute absolute barriers to its attainment of Reality. So long as these dispositions govern character we can never see or feel things as they are; but only as they affect ourselves, our family, our party, our business, our church, our empire—the I, the Me, the Mine, in its narrower or wider manifestations.

Only the detached and purified heart can view all things—the irrational cruelty of circumstance, the tortures of war, the apparent injustice of life, the acts and beliefs of enemy and friend—in true proportion; and reckon with calm mind the sum of evil and good. Therefore the mystics tell us perpetually that "selfhood must be killed" before Reality can be attained.”

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) in Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, LTD, 1914) 28-29.

Today marks the sixth of seven posts from Practical Mysticism. Download this classic work freely here.

Are you enslaved by the verb “to have” in the game of acquisition? Do you give yourself to holding tight to your share of the spoils?

Humor me as I tear down the veneer of your artificial world and reveal the world that is real. God sees all your bank accounts and your devotion to having a good time.

Some readers have made their tribe or their family an idol. For others it’s power, possessions, or pleasures. You are in the world of multiplicity entrapped by the seven forms of egotism.

These things serve as barriers. They prohibit your connection with reality. Only the detached and purified heart can connect and imagine the freedom and the possibility of generosity.

You must kill selfhood. Why? It keeps you in the game of acquisition and the world of multiplicity. And whatever you try to have or possess, ironically already has a grip on you.