Jesus and Maslow--how does the hierarchy end up?

So I listened to a NPR discussion centered around several TED talks last night and found it intriguing as I usually do.  Our water heater went out and, since I work in plumbing supply, conveniently (or inconveniently as one's perspective may change) found myself headed to get elements and thermostats.  Of course, as almost all repairs require tools, and I seem never to have the right one for these jobs that come along every 5-7 years, I also had to buy a socket to remove the elements.  That is important because I had to go back to get the socket which allowed me to hear most of the show about further studies around Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

It was interesting for me then to ponder Maslow's hierarchy of needs as I sought to restore the luxury of hot water to our home--and a luxury I've never been without.  I once stayed with a family in Costa Rica who had an electric shower head that warmed the water before it came out.  Even there I didn't go without.  Needs, wants, and luxuries are all things we get confused.  My children tell me they need chocolate chip cookies or their games on a trip to the store.  I feel out of place, disconnected, and a little anxiety if I don't have my phone in my pocket.  Convenience and luxury have diluted our perspectives.  But Maslow did have some good things to say in this area.

Everyone knows about Maslow but, for those who may not, he essentially was one of the first psychologists to approach all people as working toward improvement.  Previously people were either sick or healthy and psychologists focused on the sick.  But Maslow instead began to show that people had needs and that they could progress along a continuum (what he called a hierarchy of needs) toward more and more health.  He began with things like physical needs at the most basic level, food and shelter.  Then he said we needed security, followed by belonging, followed by esteem, and finally self-actualization.  If we weren't properly having our lower needs met then we couldn't move onto our higher needs.

The TED talks went through each need in the hierarchy with case studies and experts talking about what it was like for people achieving or not achieving the needs in each category.  All very good things to ponder.  But I became most attuned to the last gentleman discussing the self-actualization category.  His name is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, gracefully letting us know we can call him "Mike," and he started talking about what he had found in people who were truly happy.

They apparently begin work at a task, really any task, and start to practice and improve at it.  One of his examples is piano, but it could really be anything--swimming, mowing grass, studying the Bible, changing elements in a water heater.  In his example, he talks about working at the basics in that activity until you master them.  In piano, we start with scales and basic songs.  As we practice and practice and practice some more we develop a proficiency until we look for greater challenges.  We then began to practice those higher lever accomplishments until one day we have mastery over the piano.  It is then that things really get good.  "Mike" says there are times when truly "happy" people, people who seem to report the highest amount of happiness, lose themselves in activities that they have mastered.  It is during these times that he says they achieve "FLOW."

According to Csikszentmihalyi (Mike), this happens when our brains cap out on what they can process in the moment and we forget about our own needs.  We cease to exist, forget about being hungry or if the kids are ok, and become immersed in whatever activity we are engaged in.  I can't remember the numbers but he said something like we could process 160 bytes/sec and once we hit that level in a single activity we go into that place of self-actualization, what he calls flow.

We can't sustain this type of activity forever.  In our humanity, we cannot live in the flow, and always come back to earth and our weakness, but we can get there.  Maslow said that we can't live in heaven but we can get there for 5 minutes.  I hear of athletes being in the zone where it seemed that everything just clicked and they could make anything happen that they decided to do on the field or court.  I've always liked Maslow because he valued humanity and helped us find common places with one another.  But I've always struggled with his self-actualization principle and the humanistic focus it has.  It always left me wanting more.  And here's why.

The activity, the proficiency, is not the answer.  But finding ourselves lost is.  Let me explain.  Maslow believed that we could become better versions of ourselves by constantly improving, moving upward through the hierarchy of needs toward happiness.  It's a very self-dependent focus, entirely reliant upon our own capabilities and infused with a modernist humanism that has happiness as its final goal.  But Maslow realized neither how far nor how close he was to the truth.  If we equate happiness with holiness, or at least make them concurrently proportional, then we are getting somewhere.  Holiness is happiness, or should be.  Becoming more like God and losing ourselves in the pursuit is pure bliss.

Jesus said (Luke 9:23 as one of several examples) "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it."  In the second half of St. Francis' prayer he echoes the sentiment:  O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.

What if losing ourselves itself is the goal and not just losing ourselves in an activity?  And what if losing ourselves is what makes us truly happy, not just the temporary forgetfulness of a mastered proficiency.  Even as I write this I am trying to think of activities I could begin to love and master.  I believe God gave us talents to be mastered, expressed, and enjoyed--so why would he not embed blessings of joy in doing them?  Those glimpses of heaven, of 'flowing' into what we are created to be are beautiful things to enjoy.  But let's not settle for happiness as the goal.  Let's settle only for holiness.

Holiness is, to me, defined as a complete loss of ourselves in submission to God.  I forget what is owed to me, what I deserve, and what I want to accomplish.  It is "not my will, but thine...."  It is an unworking of the curse of Adam's and Eve's sinful pride that sought to be like God.  I must admit that I have sought to be like God and have manipulated, cajoled, and taken what I wanted.  But life is losing life.  When I serve my family, my wife, my friends, my coworkers, and the people I meet in everyday life I forget myself and I find happiness.  When I focus on what I'm not doing and what I'm not getting I get angry and frustrated.  It's an inexplicable principle of truth.  When I serve God in humility I am elevated to having a place with him.  So, I finished up the water heater and enjoyed seeing my family in hot water again.  Tomorrow, I will need to let something else go, something else die.  This old body is passing away and I might as well let my pride and selfishness and ambition go with it. Jim Elliot had it right.  "He is no fool who loses what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." Maslow's self actualization has nothing on that.