Mircea Eliade believed that the religious impulse was to foreground the sacred against the background of the profane, which for him meant to differentiate an object from within a continuous homogeneity. He gave the example of someone drawing a circle in the midst of the endless repetition of a desert landscape. The circle was a sort of marking of a sacred space, which was set apart by its divergence from the profanity of the same. But marking can be ambiguous as religious history has shown. What is marked is set apart, for better or for worse. Being a "chosen people" can be as much of a blessing as it is a curse. Those who have been foregrounded by the blessing may be different from those backgrounded by it, but this difference curses the blessed to a repetition of the same nonetheless. An identity is a much sought after boon, but once obtained, it reduces difference as it binds its receivers to the same practices and beliefs of the group. Individuation can either be a convergence on an identity or a differentiation of something new. The mystic walks into the Dark Night not for an identity but for the failure of identity that clears the way for something new.

Trying Too Hard