Human contingency (ICA)

This is the realization that no amount of self-sufficiency deals with the fact of one's eternal dependence; when one sees that no disengagement from things can deal with the question of detachment as a spirit discipline. It may be compared to the main character in Eric Newby's book "Love and War in the Apennines", when he escapes from a prisoner-of-war camp only to discover that he is absolutely dependent on the local people to hide and assist him.

In the ICA New Religious Mode in the arena of knowing one's disengagement (the life of poverty) the fourth formal aspect is the experience of spiritual denial or of the sacrificial offering. At the first phenomenological level, this occurs when one is no longer content with one's customary habits, but see in them a futility never before discerned.