We know her as George Eliot, but her real name was Mary Ann Evans, author of Middlemarch, a masterpiece of English literature. Though Eliot flouted the conventions of Victorian society by living openly with a married writer (George Lewes), she, in fact, skillfully balanced an intellectual and emotional independence with the protocols governing the normative expectations of her time.
Like William Shakespeare before her and Charles Dickens, her contemporary, Eliot had a gift for revealing the motivational underpinnings of the human predicament. The work of each examines the conditions and circumstances into which we are born, the conceits to which we are heir and the suffering and discontent to which we are subject. They also address the naïve hopes, certainties and protestations by which we fixedly govern ourselves and the ceaseless ruminative longings about “how it could have been or should have been” with which we oppress ourselves.
In general, though, Shakespeare and Dickens were less optimistic about the possibility of change in one’s way of being than Eliot. “The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.” However, Eliot was pragmatic too—well aware of the intractability of the forces that imprison our thoughts and limit our range of receptivity and responsiveness.
These are forces that we, too, who study autonomy and life, endeavor to understand and to transcend. Indeed, we are committed to bring our unique promise—our deliberatively coaxed, uninhibited intelligence—to bear on the situation in which we find ourselves.
We who have chosen a contemplative approach to life have made it our business to understand the force fields that predictably limit our responses to mimicry, conformity and timidity or to an endless indulgence of negative experience and self-doubt.
As a result, we have seen how the widespread conceits, certainties, received beliefs and opinions and a generalized fear of the judgment of others—mindsets we inherit and upon which our thinking and planning rest—are problematic.
We have also seen how the prevalent failure to consider the “vast unconsidered” and the tendency to ignore the higher range of normative aims and ideals give us the leeway to be insensitive, possessive, disconnected, punitive and complacent.
Of course, we will always face difficulties when we try to resolve the issues that arise in the human drama, those that arise in the company we keep and those that arise in the company of ourselves. Still, regarding the possibilities that we stand for, we can—through contemplation, discipline and practice—bring forth an intelligent deliberative voice that projects itself over much of the force acting on it and increases the causal efficacy of our creative responsiveness to the opportunities and vicissitudes to which each life is subject.
Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and leader of its Retreat Workshops and Advanced Classes.