Unselfing

What is life when the self dies?

“Love is the space we make for that which is not me.
By opening ourselves to something bigger than ourselves, we grow.”

—Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Lent: the season of giving things up as an opportunity for spiritual reset and a sign of our willingness to sacrifice, readying our minds and hearts for resurrection and renewal. But what if the Lenten question “What can I give up?” became “What can I give?” The first question looks in while the second looks out, putting me in motion.

One answer to both could be the same: my “self.” When I think of Jesus’s interactions with people, I don’t see him urging us to stop thinking of ourselves so much as trying to fundamentally change the way we see ourselves: connected to each other, to and through God’s love. He could have carried a placard with the slogan, “No one suffers alone.” It’s both descriptive, and prescriptive, a nod to our suffering that holds a clue to our relief. Because the kind of love he was trying to teach would be a group project, requiring us to give up our careful separateness while understanding that being who we are—with individual experiences, flaws, and difficulties—is what prepares us to see and love others.  

Irish philosopher Iris Murdoch explored a concept which she called “unselfing.” She described being anxious, resentful, and oblivious to her surroundings when suddenly a hovering kestrel caught her attention, and she was transfixed. “In a moment,’ she said, ‘everything is altered. The brooding self . . . has disappeared.” After being lost in the beauty, when she returned to her thoughts whatever she had been preoccupied with seemed less important.

Unselfing happens whenever we’re pulled out of our incessant inwardness into a moment of connection with some greater whole. It’s stepping out of our own way to see what—or who—is really in front of us. We glimpse something that urges us to follow, or maybe wants us to grow.

In Matthew 22, Jesus spells out the greatest commandment:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. (NRSV)

Theologian Karl Barth taught that these two commandments are never in opposition, being inextricably linked. He explained, “No praise of God is serious, or can be taken seriously, if it is apart from or in addition to the commandment: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Praise of God must always be understood as obedience to this commandment.”

We love God by loving others—it’s as simple as that. But while it’s easy to say I must love my neighbor as I love myself, what does that really look like? I know what it is to be me, but not everyone has my desires, needs, and experiences. For all the universality of being human, there is infinite variety in our details. That’s why I’ll spend a lifetime learning to live this simple-sounding commandment. 

Every interaction in my day presents a new opportunity to practice unselfing. God meets me where I am, so the work of loving as God does requires me to meet others where they are. I’m the one who will need to move. Jesus shows us how this is to be done during his ministry on earth and calls us to follow. He connects with compassion to the poor, outcast, and oppressed. In stark contrast to prevailing culture, he extends himself to children, women, and the Other. He ministers to the physically and spiritually needy: healing bodies, restoring eyesight, eating with sinners, preaching to gentiles. His unselfing is complete as he forgives those who harm him. He is a living reflection of his teachings about the nature of God, and our responsibility to one another. By sending Jesus to live among us, God shows us who He is, and how He loves.

My mother has struggled with serious mental health challenges most of her life. By virtue of her age, she’s also been on the front lines of benefiting from advancements in treatment. I believe it’s out of gratitude that she's devoted herself to advocating for others, hands-on with the homeless, marginalized, and mentally ill, working tirelessly to change public policy and connect individuals to resources.

One day she was at a government office helping someone to fill out paperwork to obtain benefits. I don’t know whether they were dealing with unemployment, food insecurity, or disability, but they needed an advocate to navigate the system, so she was there. As she waited, she began talking to a man sitting next to her who seemed to be struggling to fill out his own forms. She asked about his story, why he was there, and what he was hoping to accomplish. She listened, then asked him: What felt like his biggest problem that day? He said he really wanted to get a job but was terribly afraid he wouldn’t be able to wake up in the morning. This was difficult for him, and he didn’t have a clock or anyone else living with him who could help. My mother said, “I can help you with that.” She asked for his address, and when she’d finished her business she went to purchase an alarm clock and a supply of batteries. She took it to his apartment, helped him set it up, and together they practiced until he was confident using it.

I’m pretty sure I would feel uncomfortable sitting in that government office. I’d definitely be wishing there wasn’t anyone sitting in the chair right next to mine. And I know myself well enough to be sure I wouldn’t consider turning to them and asking, “What do you need? What would you like me to do for you today?” But knowing what it is to feel at the mercy of her own tricky wiring, my mother is sensitive to the needs of people with similar challenges. In that particular environment, she was not only willing but uniquely prepared to meet and connect with others. She was instinctively unselfed.

There are probably as many ways to accomplish unselfing as there are moments we find ourselves lifted from our default self-focus into a feeling of connection. Iris Murdoch’s example was one small but wholly absorbing moment in nature.

I sometimes find it through art or music, an expansiveness that can be hard to put my finger on. It’s a sudden awareness that I am both important and insignificant, one single stitch in an endless fabric of everyone and everything.

Many people rely on yoga, meditation, hiking, running, or other physical activity to regularly pull them out of their own heads and help them step into a larger place.

Prayer can do it. As Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber describes it, “These prayers we send up for our beloveds are like gossamer threads connecting us to them through God, and we become connected to God through that person. And I believe that it is in these connections God gets stuff done. Maybe these gossamer threads of prayer, woven through the space and time of our lives, are one of the networks through which God sends out God’s own love for the world.” Whatever might be accomplished through prayer for the one prayed for, at the very least it benefits the one praying by shifting our focus and creating that thread of connection.

Anything that wakes us up to what is outside ourselves—or helps clear space inside to make a place for others—is a step toward unselfing. The shift may be subtle, and the accomplishment is never final, but these glimpses of connection soften our hearts, instruct, and invite us to move differently, to manifest God’s love in the world.

Luke 18 contains a small story from Jesus’s life that provides a pattern in just a few simple details:

As he approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard a crowd going by he asked what was happening. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” Then he shouted, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those who were in front sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he sounded even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and ordered the man to be brought to him, and when he came here, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him, glorifying God, and all the people, when they saw it, praised God. (NRSV)

This story shows me what it might look like to move through the world unselfed. Despite being followed by a multitude, when entreated Jesus stopped what he was doing, asked the man what he needed, and then healed according to his desire. There’s a sting in the fact that Jesus's followers tried to prevent the man from being noticed—they were caught up in what they were doing, which they were sure was important. And maybe it was, but it got in the way of their willingness to see the person sitting next to them. It got in the way of the great commandment. 

The essence of Jesus's service was to lift others, whether through healing, forgiveness, or physical and spiritual validation that people around them failed to grant. Approaching the world unselfed gave him ears to hear one voice begging for mercy within a multitude. He stopped, he looked, he asked, and everyone was lifted by the miracle that occurred. In story after story, we watch him change the way people see themselves. That is something we can do too. We can’t perform miracles of physical healing, but miracles of the spirit may begin as we simply acknowledge the Other.

When we stop and see those who are unseen, ask what they need, and listen for them to tell us how we can help, we may fundamentally change the way they think about themselves. And suddenly we are connected, to and through God’s love—which changes us.

Jesus embodied that love, offering physical and spiritual healing in response to suffering. He restored people’s identities as children of a loving God, offering them a truer light in which to see themselves. He lifted not just the hands, not just the feeble knees, but the whole person: mind, body, and spirit.

As God sent Jesus into the world, a living example of His two great commandments, so Jesus sends us, charged with loving in the same way. Our baptismal covenant in Mosiah 18 is straightforward:

. . . and now as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort . . . (Mosiah 18, 8–10)

Notice the phrases “those that mourn” and “those that stand in need of comfort” describe others’ experiences, not our own. It’s not our job to determine how people feel or should feel, nor what they need. Unselfing allows us to let others tell us those things about themselves. 

Meanwhile, we have our own infirmities to deal with, our own need of healing, our own longing to be seen, and these needs are our most essential key to unselfing. Our pain is the well from which we draw compassion for others. How else would we learn to mourn with those that mourn?

I once heard artist Maira Kalman say in an interview, “My heart goes out to everyone who—” She took a long pause before finishing, “My heart goes out to everyone.” For me, that pause described the moment of unselfing, the difference between instinctive empathy vs. the deliberate unselfing of compassion. Her shift is the required movement I mentioned earlier, a willingness to erase the distance between myself and another. I become present with them when I seek to connect the way Jesus did: pausing, seeing, asking, and listening. 

Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr describes it even more simply when he says: “Jesus’ loyalty is to human suffering.”

Jesus had to know our suffering before he could become our savior, living a mortal life so he could understand what it is to be human. Perhaps we suffer infirmities so we might understand how to nourish and lift others in theirs. When we are willing to step aside, to see and move to meet others in unselfed love, no one suffers alone.

What do you need? The same things others need.

What do you want? The same things we all want.

Who do you see crying out for relief around you? Everyone.

My mother’s sensitivity to the needs of the stranger sitting next to her wasn’t because of some inborn goodness or special disposition to compassion. It was an intentional response, informed by deep awareness of her own suffering and therefore of his. She was unselfed in ways that prepared her to see things others did not, and respond with healing. Because of our unique challenges, we can each cultivate our own version of this gift.

Jesus answered the question about which commandment was greatest by spending his life showing us the form our love should take. During this time of Lent, I too can embody God’s love by seeing and responding to others as he would: with attention and care informed by my personal acquaintance with loss and suffering as a human being. He asks us to see every person we meet the way heavenly parents see us, restoring the true identity of others while reminding us of our own. His invitation is to unself, so that we may follow him.

Susan Hinckley is the co-host of the “At Last She Said It” podcast and creator of Gray Area comic. She is a storyteller in words and pictures.

Artwork by Carin Fausett.