Perhaps the most sympathetic, to me at least, are the "murmurers" in the crowd. You know, the complainers and grumblers who kept on and on reminiscing about the wonderful leeks, cucumbers and melons they'd enjoyed back in Egypt, when they were slaves.
The food back there was really great, they told Moses, but now all we have is this weird stuff called "manna". Why ever did we leave Egypt? It was better to be a slave and enjoy good food than to chase after a Promised Land and have to exist on "manna". We should never have left! It's all your fault for bringing us here!
The reason I can relate to these sorry individuals is that - as an alcoholic and as a human being - I too can, if I choose, look back to a mythical past and compare it with present troubles. In that imaginary past, everything was easy and fun, and life was much better.
If alcoholics think this way in relation to their drinking, it's known as "euphoric recall". The same is true for any addiction. The path to freedom is difficult and involves giving up much that we have enjoyed in the past; even though, with drugs and alcohol, the enjoyment quickly turned to sackcloth and ashes, in our own false memory we were much happier then.
It's a dangerous way to think. Persisted with, it can lead to relapse. And in everyday life, too, even if we're not tempted to drink or use drugs, we can easily live in a place of illusion rather than in the present, with all its problems and challenges.
For freedom is a challenge, an opportunity that many refuse to take up. We're so used to having our brains follow the well-trodden paths, to repeating old patterns and habitual attitudes. They're not happy experiences, but they are familiar. If we want to change, we must abandon these old ways of thinking, which means - in counsellor talk - moving out of our "comfort zones". Physically, new neural pathways must be forged. We must move into the unexplored parts of our minds to experience something new, to be free from the backwards drag of the past.
In the Work, we speak of "metanoia" or thinking in a new way, undergoing a renewal of our mind. This is possible only when we give up the old ways, but that giving up seems threatening, because when we start something new we have no assurance that it will end well, that we really will reach whatever our Promised Land may be.
Such an attitude was epitomized for me by an elderly lady I once knew. In her late 80s, living in a beautiful, comfortable bungalow with a loving husband, and with her children and grandchildren frequent visitors, she nevertheless managed to feel sorry for herself.
Her complaints would begin with anything that happened to be going on at the moment, whether it was a poor telephone connection, bad weather or a meal that hadn't turned out as expected. And she always ended with "I never should have left the island".
The "island" was a real place, the location of her mythically happy childhood. In her childhood reminiscences the sun always shone, her mother was always happy, her sister always ready to play on the beach. There was no school, no discipline; life was a perpetual holiday with no work and no compulsion to do anything except enjoy herself.
Of course, it wasn't like that at all! But such is the power of nostalgia that it can make us long for a time that never was in a land that never existed. We give up all chance of enjoying the present and of working on ourselves if we lose our bearings in nostalgia.
Yet, there's a different type of nostalgia that is actually a spiritual experience. It's the longing, the ineffable yearning that all of us sometimes experience when in the presence of great beauty. It may be the natural beauty of the forest or the sea that triggers this nostalgia; it may suddenly descend on us when we're in a Gothic cathedral complete with soaring stone arches, stained glass windows, and a choir singing hymns of surpassing beauty. I've felt it in a beautiful mosque with its gorgeous tiles, sacred architecture and atmosphere of utter peace. It may surround us when we hear Gabrieli, or Monteverdi, or Palestrina; when we look at a great, objective work of art such as Rembrandt's Prodigal Son, or pages from the Book of Kells; or when we see a beautiful, innocent child playing on a patch of grass, utterly absorbed in her dolls or puzzles.
This is the feeling that the Sufis call "the great nostalgia".
It is given to us to remind us of the fact that we do not belong only in this material world, but that our Essence comes from somewhere far above it, which is our true home.
The beauty we experience on earth - whether in a cathedral or mosque, or in a Zen temple; or whether in unspoiled Nature, or in art - is only a reflection of what our true home is like.
That place, which many people call "heaven", is where we originated. It is the place to which we shall one day return, and for which, unconsciously, we always long. The times when the great nostalgia descends upon us are spiritual experiences because they remind us to look above and beyond the material, and into the realm of the spirit itself. They are a form of self-remembering.
Then, nostalgia is not a looking back to a false past, but a looking forward to a future which is more real than anything we know on Earth.
Praise God for the "great nostalgia" which calls us home!
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