The Struggle

It took some time to tear myself away from this painting at The Met. I came upon it unexpectedly, lost on my way to a different exhibit. First of all, it's massive, six by nearly nine feet. The size, combined with the energy of action and light all directed towards Samson's body, his face turned away, keeps the viewer focused on the physical intensity of his struggle , muscles taut, limbs pushing back against his captors. The fierceness of his fight is sorrowful, the shorn head signalling this is the one he does not win. If you know the story, you know Samson's hubris brought him to this place. He was born with a promise and anointed by God but used his strength and position to profit himself and take what he wanted. 

Samson Captured by the Philistines, Guercino 

This painting kept coming to mind while reading about the role of ego in our spiritual lives. We can all be Samson, reaching for the next justification to make us right with ourselves while keeping away from the Rightness we are not willing to surrender to.

To distract himself from facing his wrongness, man seeks out the very things that made him wrong in the first place: self-love and sensual pleasure. Gratifying himself in this way, he feels "right" again -- but only temporarily. Actually, he has only become more wrong, so that now he needs even greater distractions, and even greater shocks, to make him feel that he is right. In this way he progresses further along the path of self-destruction, trying to overcome his predicament by its very cause.

Our ego seeks any reassurance that, in fact, we are all right, that we did not make a mistake, and that we are God after all. Our conscious selves may not admit that this is happening, but that is the actual underlying aim of our ego-life: to find anything that will enable us to forget our true selves and our hideous condition, and will make us feel, if only for a brief moment of ecstasy, that we are God, that we are in control, on top of things, and sufficient unto ourselves. Such is the principal behind man's constant desire to escape into the sensual pleasures of food, sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, entertainment, etc.; his desire for "love," popularity, recognition, glory, power, group status, acceptance, and admiration for his physical appearance; and his desire to puff himself up through hatred, judgement, and condemnation of others.

Hieromonk Damascene