So-called “reality television” keeps coming up with new slices of life.  Among the newest, a Fox Network series called “Nip/Tuck” graphically offers viewers of human flesh being sliced, along with plenty of blood.

Whether television shows like this one actually depict reality is another question. About “Nip/Tuck” the American Society of Plastic Surgeons says: “The Society wants to reassure the public that Nip/Tuck does not in any way represent a realistic plastic surgery practice.”

The series, however, does seem to have some reality about it. It may not show plastic surgeons or their work as they really are but it does show people thinking badly enough about themselves to undergo pain and suffering to change their body image.

The producer, Ryan Murphy, told a New York Times interviewer that, when he first started thinking about the program, he intended it to be “a brutal hour look at the reasons people hate themselves.” And, in the first program, shown in July, a doctor asks his patient, “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself.”

Self-dislike, self-hatred seem to be epidemic in American society.  Many of us feel badly about ourselves because we do not measure up to our culture’s ideals of beauty and success.

To combat this tendency, therapies such as the self-esteem movement attempt to turn us around toward the bright side of ourselves. Through mantras of positive thinking, these therapies try to make us feel good rather than to go deeper.

Many seekers among us, however, find in the great spiritual tradition a greater depth and more solid personal support. Monastic spirituality, for example, offers insights into reality that can inspire us to think altogether better of ourselves.

Such insight has come from Thomas Keating, the former abbot of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Father Keating, widely known for his parenting of the approach to contemplation called “Centering Prayer,” speaks as one who has moved deeply into the life of the spirit.

One of his statements about love is especially worth pondering. “If we have not experienced ourselves as unconditional love,” he says, “then we have more work to do, because that is who we really are.”

Here is a definition of reality that differs sharply with that offered by “reality” shows. Father Keating’s dynamic words, allowed to take root in heart and soul, could transform a person’s life and change his or her world.

In contemplating these words, you will discover layers of meaning. Notice, for instance, how Father Keating does not speak of unconditional love as the source of our being, a sentiment often found in spiritual writing. Rather, he sees each person as himself or herself embodying that love.

And the word “unconditional” means that no matter what, you are loved. It is not a love you must earn but rather it comes to you freely. It makes up part of you because you are you. Ultimately, it reveals the nature of the God who is love.

The word “experience” also signals something important. The realization of oneself as unconditional love does not arise from the thinking we do inside our head. Rather it flows from our daily life, the people we encounter, the work we do, the leisure we enjoy, all the activities that we understand as human experience.

The phrase – “then we have more work to do” – suggests the spiritual exercises that form part of the interior life. Prayer, reflection, silence are the work of the seeker after insight into the self as love.

The way Father Keating phrases the matter reveals a certain irony. He surely realizes that hardly any of us have experienced ourselves as unconditional love. Or, if we have at some time, then this insight has not stayed with us for very long. At best, this view of ourselves comes and goes.

The “more work to do” of which the abbot speaks amounts to an agenda for us as we try to live more fully out of the realization that we are loved. It is the work of a lifetime because all of us need to keep this vision of ourselves fresh.

And Father Keating affirms that this approach to human life would not be just play acting. “Because that is who we really are” opens up his view of us as, not merely loved or loveable, but unconditional love in itself.

Richard Griffin