BOOK REVIEW

Letting Go of the Ego as the Key in Quest for Spiritual Fulfillment

The Soul's Religion:
Cultivating a Profoundly Spiritual Way of Life
By Thomas Moore; Harper Collins: 297pp., $25.95

  By LARRY B. STAMMER, TIMES STAFF WRITER

In a society that honors material achievement and measurable success, to be identified as a woman of substance or a man of means is to wear laurels worthy of an Olympian god.

Reaching our goals very often means we must be turned on, tuned in and digitally connected. It means that get-togethers become opportunities to "network." Conversation becomes not an avenue to intimacy but a pick for mining the knowledge of others for what may be useful for our own advancement.

So why in our hot pursuit of income do we feel impoverished? If we suffer from information overload, why are we not filled? Whatever happened to the vaunted search for meaning by a generation of seekers? Our problem, Thomas Moore tells us, is that we are spending our time trying to fill ourselves when we should be emptying ourselves. Those in too much of a hurry may write off the seeming contradiction as so much doublespeak, an overly facile take on life best left at the hot tub. But it is a koan worthy of a Zen master--and worth repeating.

In his latest book, "The Soul's Religion: Cultivating a Profoundly Spiritual Way of Life," Moore treads a path that is at once familiar and at the same time a discovery. Jesus said to seek first the kingdom of God, and all other things would be given. Tao Te Ching observed, "A foolish person tries to be good, and is therefore not good." The Hopi pueblo people speak of a distant time when people who were adrift on an endless sea stopped paddling and allowed themselves to be guided by an unseen spirit. Only then did they find a livable fourth world.

We have a word for the impediment that blocks our spiritual path: ego. It just seems to get in the way. Moore asks us to think how emotions are transformed when one lets go of the ego. "Jealousy empty of ego is passion. Inferiority empty of ego is humility. Narcissism empty of ego is love of one's soul."

Unexpected things happen when we empty ourselves. Years ago in Mexico I remember going out one evening onto a hotel veranda overlooking the ocean. I was determined to think great thoughts. I had an agenda. Let me say it--an ego. Moore would not have been surprised to know that with my head full of self-importance I had not an inkling of insight. Nothing was coming to mind. Finally, in disgust I muttered the word "nothing." Quite accidentally, the surrender to "nothing" opened a door to transcendence. Setting my agenda aside, I stared at the incoming waves. These waves were lapping the shore yesterday before I arrived, I thought--a year ago, a century ago, a thousand years ago. Between their curl and their breaking, the waves carried intimations of perfect peace and wordless love. To my utter amazement there were no contradictions in the world at all. Even ideas I "knew" in the real world to be contradictory were somehow reconciled in a harmonious whole. That moment, not repeated since, gently influenced my worldview. It came only when I emptied myself.

Moore's use of the term "emptiness" is what spiritual traditions have long understood in focusing on the loss of self-consciousness. But, Catholic that he is, spirituality is never to be sought for its own sake, as some kind of cosmic diversion from the mundane. It is to serve others in real and concrete ways. Such is the church's heritage from Judaism. Along the way, Moore deals in short, concise chapters with such issues as love, unbelief, eroticism, suffering, ordeal and holiness.

Many authors give spiritual advice with a whiff of the marketplace, and Moore, for brief instances, seems not immune to this scent. He speaks in the introduction of those who want to be spiritual but have given up on organized religion, an observation that comes dangerously close to pandering to popular disenchantments. He speaks of redefining religion and having laid the foundation "for a new approach to spirituality." Really? A new approach finally after thousands of years of insights from saints, rebbes, divines, shamans and enlightened ones?

But Moore can be forgiven for this; one gets the impression he was put up to engaging in a little hucksterism by a publisher intent on selling books. Moore does laugh at himself and tries not to take himself too seriously.

Those familiar with Moore's previous works, including his bestseller "Care of the Soul," know him to speak from experience deeply rooted in failings and triumphs. Moore's successes came after he failed to be granted tenure as a college instructor and was forced to look anew at his life. He'd left home at 13 to join a Roman Catholic religious order and left that, too, at 26. Here, then, is a guide who is not perfect, but one who seeks to be perfected. The pursuit of that perfection has meant making himself available to others--and to otherness

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