The Plight of Self-Trust and Seeking the Divinity Within
Teachings from Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wrote this essay for a literature class in college a while ago. I was looking through old files today and thought this might be worth sharing. All quotes come from his essay “Self-Reliance”. I absolutely love his work. I hope you enjoy!
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” is a call for mankind to regard what comes from their own mind as sacred and true and as genius as any idea that the great men before us have brought forth. Emerson held fast to nonconformists’ ideals and encouraged individuals to seek wisdom within themselves and learn to discern the divine voice within, which he believed was inherent in all humans, before we take another religion’s, or teacher’s, or sage’s ideas and conform to them. He references some of the greatest luminaries of the past, such as Socrates, Copernicus, Galileo, and Luther, as exemplars of this self-reliance to demonstrate the power of self-trust. Some scholars argue that Emerson’s prominent use of referencing great historical figures is a direct contradiction to his message of disregarding the highly esteemed and widely accepted ideas and belief systems of the past, but Emerson is not suggesting we adopt the ideas or belief systems of these historical figures. He is simply using them to exemplify how this practice of self-reliance has worked in the past to make clear to us the fact: within each of us lay dormant the same greatness and vastness of wisdom that we bestow upon these self-sufficing people of the past.
Emerson’s work suggests that we not only refuse to blindly adopt the belief systems and laws of greats from the past, but that we should refuse to blindly take advice from anyone, whether that be your mother or your priest. Emerson is not suggesting we ignore these people, but more accurately that we take the time to dig deep within our own unique minds and hearts and decide for ourselves what is true and sacred to us. He simply encourages us to trust ourselves first and foremost.
There is a strong theme of self-sacredness and self-trust throughout Emerson’s works. He promoted the practice of listening to the divine and true inner voice of the soul, which he believed everyone innately had within them. He wrote, “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages”. He strongly believed in original thinking and seeking wisdom and answers from within one’s self rather than seeking guidance from a “qualified” leader or religion or saint from the past. He wrote, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind”. He believed that each person had an inner wisdom and truth that was sacred and that should be treated accordingly.
Emerson was also very much an anti-conformist and encouraged anti-conformity in his works. He thought conformity to be one of the greatest tragedies of mankind. He felt that conformity held society back from any type of positive growth because it is simply taking old concepts that modern society has most likely outgrown, and forcing them into the present, in which they have become irrelevant. There are certainly many laws and principles that are timeless and will never cease to serve society, but the lion’s share of old ideas are no longer serving us. This is because the world is ever evolving and shifting. It is essential for modern people to be able to have original thoughts and be open to new and innovative concepts that may contradict the old ways and laws set by former masters or religions. Emerson disapprovingly writes, ”…our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us”. He believed each person should be the master of his or her own life, and he felt that imitation was a form of suicide. Emerson writes about imitation:
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself, for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till”.
He felt that the only way to nourish the soul and to become satisfied with what we have is to do the work ourselves, without imitating our neighbors or teachers or anyone who came before us. Emerson believed the only way to contentment was through doing an original work and staying true to your unique nature.
Emerson also speaks of the resistance that is imposed by the mainstream conformist American worldview, he writes:
“…truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and had ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others”.
Emerson recognized how difficult it can be for people to start living a life that is true to their individual nature. Living an authentic life and cultivating that sense of self-trust and individuality often calls people to reform their old ways of living and thinking completely. He recognized that this type of lifestyle is sure to attract some haters. So he provides some encouragement; he writes, “Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing”. Basically, stop being a baby and keep doing your thing — don’t worry about the haters because the proof is in the pudding and the smart ones will eventually come around. The people that stay true to themselves and live out their sacred truths in a genuine and unashamed way will often be misunderstood and ridiculed by their peers and community. But the concerns and warnings of conformed minds become futile and irrelevant to the minds that hold fast to self-trust. For the mind that trusts in itself is its own master, priest, and teacher, it does not require validation from anyone or anything other than the divine voice that is intrinsically present within its sacred self. There is a quote by William Drury:
“When your views on the world and your intellect are being challenged and you begin to feel uncomfortable because of a contradiction you’ve detected that is threatening your current model of the world or some aspect of it, pay attention. You are about to learn something”.
Emerson also speaks on being misunderstood, he famously wrote, “To be great is to be misunderstood”, and used some of the most influential minds that ever existed as exemplars. He writes, “Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood”. When something truly and profoundly great is first discovered, often the discoverer is going to be misunderstood in the beginning, because it is new. The common conformist mindset is not willing or able to conceptualize and understand this profound revelation and therefore they will often resort to mocking or disregarding the discoverer as either mad or even a threat if what the discoverer brings forth is something that challenges one or more of the conformists’ current belief systems. Emerson wisely said, “What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think”.
Emerson had a lot to say regarding being your own teacher. He did not subscribe to the idea that one must follow in the footsteps of another more cultivated or intelligent person so that they could absorb their knowledge and adopt their beliefs without digging deep into their own truth and seeking wisdom from the sacred truths they could discover inside themselves. He wrote, “Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique… Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare”. He did not believe in the traditional student-teacher relationship, in fact he disregarded most traditions. He challenged to one of his valued religious advisors from his youth, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?”. He only regarded an idea as sacred if it came from within himself — he said, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature”.
The argument that Emerson is contradicting himself by referencing historical figures as support in his essay is invalid because he does not suggest that anyone should look to these historical figures’ teachings for guidance in their own life but only look to them to see how they became great leaders and luminaries. Emerson believed they were able to become great thinkers and luminaries by practicing original thinking, seeking from within, and remaining true to their divine selves and the sacred ideas, which arose from the divine self. He wrote, “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents”. He truly believed that every individuals’ thoughts should be sacred to themselves and wrote: “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, —that is genius”.
Emerson writes, “Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, then old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made scared by relation to it…”. Emerson is suggesting that the divinity within oneself is not coming from the individual, but is a gift from the one omnipresent divine Spirit. This is not to say that Emerson believed God to be separated from mankind, but that God lives inside each of us and is intrinsically and eternally bonded to each of us.
He encouraged people to never stop questioning their worldview; he encouraged people to continue to seek their truth and express their truth even if they ended up contradicting themselves. This is because humans are always learning and evolving and the only way to grow is by maintaining a mind that is open to our current beliefs being thrown out or revised any minute. He believed that consistency was “The other terror that scares us from self-trust… a reverence for the past act or world, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them”. Emerson encouraged the practice of being in the present. He writes on nonconformity and living in the present:
“Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature.”
Emerson thought the only use for remembering the past was to reflect and learn from mistakes so that we may live better in the present; he wrote, “…bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed future and live forever in a new day”.
Emerson worked to describe the power of the human will and the infinite power of the capabilities humans can derive from the will. He believed each individual human existence to be uniquely limitless with infinite potential. But Emerson valued God and Nature (not humans) as the highest divine expression. It is well known that Emerson had faith in an omnipresent God and that he also believed nature to be omnipresent or inescapable. One of Emerson’s most famous quotes (and one of my popular go-to Instagram captions) reads, “Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere”. This statement makes clear the fact that Emerson did in fact believe in an omnipresent God and that you could come to realize God for yourself by simply looking to nature.
Ultimately, Emerson’s intention in writing “Self-Reliance” was to challenge mankind to create their own world. He whole-heartedly believed that each of us contain divine wisdoms within ourselves that we needed to connect with in order to live fulfilling lives. He believed that by connecting to this divine source of wisdom, we would become emancipated from the social and emotional constraints of society; we would be free to create our own reality by reforming every aspect of our current conformists’ lives that are not in harmony with our own sacred ideas. We would no longer need an institutionalized society because once we practiced his method of self-reliance there would be no need for institution. I believe his wish was that we would become our own masters and create the most rich, beautiful, unique, and authentic existence possible.
I’d love to know how you feel about my post! Please leave a comment &/or recommend if you enjoyed it!
