that the older experienced smokes would share their experience of contemplative per but not just as an exquisitely personal witness but time in their own experience to some kind of or what documentary tradition so you've had
had what john talking about the brief rule of romulus using that as a springboard than you've had bruno using the document of a merton on inner experience so i thought would i do would be to use a cluster of monastic writers on the contemplative life
and this because each one of them has been important to me so it's hard to to a just one that would be kind of artificial and just stick with that since at least in my own personal experience or these various sub
kind of streams that flow together it'll be principally the cloud of unknowing by that anonymous author but also others of the splendid english school and so lawrence london here can keep the summer street if i miss pronouncing it into his term check so we'll be looking at
walter hilton julian of norwich are richard role in that cluster of fourteenth century in which mistakes quite wonderful figures then we'll be looking back a bit and sedated and to his work in this area and then will be a wandering a bit into st bernard and then really wandering into someone like a
brother lawrence etc but hopefully it'll be just eclectic
and each one of these presentations john's and bruno's and mind we're hoping that father joseph dealer will be able to offer something we're hoping that father enter it will be able to offer something and maybe i say over you
ah what this is about is to challenge each one of you how would you articulate your understanding of what we're all about about this contemplative businesses all about why did you come here rather than an active order would you do when when you're in office or in solitude and are praying
i have not been someone's head yesterday and today there they were praying it was quite star treatment they said well what is that why i'm here and said was so how would you work cut out how would you give that flesh and bone to talk to others about what contemplative prayer us all about so hopefully at every point
or this would be a challenging it would be experiential immediately or more immediately we want to be practical here remembering though what chesterton said often there's nothing so practical is a good theory so
so will be looking all sorts of theology a special theology the human person kind about phenomenological theology the human person are different dimensions and faculties and powers which of these can get us into a mediated communion with god which of these can get
us into an immediate communion with god what's the safest way to go what are the jungles to the by waves in the marshlands out there are other is there so will want to look at all with that
my thesis up all the way through in an almost obsessive way will be very simple all the way through we have this central theme of contemplation contemplative prayer which is hopefully holding the unity to at all but what is contemptible what is contemplation so contemplation is
is someone had written and absurd where there's that we erase them so what would we put their
how many of you remember a poor father bruno's timothy see some contemplative prayer i'll be taking him this a kind of an enemy during it's simply the signals a kind of a pedagogical method and i've already told him that and peace could listen to the tapes and right bank find of what was his first thesis and contemplative
prayer who remembers here
no we're not going to look at up brother
see he has ten theses if you remember what is more convoluted than the next and when it's more obscure and your tank open the next up he starts out contemplation is unity of non dual knowledge
no one he remembered that i couldn't remember to dreadful it's it's wrong so if you want to just scratch that
and just say no that's not what it didn't see he's saying basically a contemplation his knowledge and then he'll follow through all the way through just dreadful stuff faith is a dark of unity of knowledge the beginning of contemplation et cetera so this isn't the english today
issue isn't lawrence we're going to take quite to for track so our thesis is contemplation is
oh we use a fancy prefer a guy
purists
if you work that out in all its implications that's all the so he needed ten these mr it was more obscure end in the beginning we should we say contemplation is a god me if you wrestle with that all the way that'll do it so my series of presentations are going to be
develop that
remember all the set is he took five or six classroom to talk about how do we tie in contemplation into scripture because we're supposed to be people of the book and where does jesus talk about notice or up to for levels of non dual knowledge isn't oh yes a means what i've gotten
good question a guppy is the new testament weren't for love why do we avoid love is that dubbed it kind of as will see it's i'm an ambiguous are
equivocal almost done tainted were hurt in english so we can say a guard bay we can use carlitos or hopefully the and have encouraged to read claim irish word of mouth
so what we're saying is natural contemplation is human love specifically christian contemplation is christian love
and up at the end we'll see that what he's saying and what we're saying is not that far apart at all but it's fun to try to up bounce the one off the other end take issue and be disdainful and it does help in remembering think so but that's our one thesis and if you unpack it art
thesis is you'll have enough to understand and so far as we can understand christian contemplation and also the practice will come out of that that's what the author of the cloud will say very emphatically home series of other mistakes
so we'll be following them also st thomas' with us here so this is the primacy of love to getting into the the mystery of god
but for the i've argued and debated this over the years with bruno it's a lot of fun she finds this whole love language extremely problematical and that he says he has a difficult time loving it or something like non dual unity of knowledge this frees him up to move into the contemplative or
rio and so this particular approach just won't do it for lots of people
have you won't get a high score if you're one of those people can expect but think where are you are you more on the track of knowing and wisdom and gnosis there is a whole school and eminent school and mystics and merton tends towards that every now and then you'll bring in love language but it's almost with a cell
conscious forced of embarrassment when he does certainly bruno bruno again he's ten he sees on what is contemplation the word of god be your current house or love how many times does it occur in those ten theses
not once not once so that's our problem so if you are just for about his theses of mathematics
i just think about this is is sufficient is this constricting is this as they say reductionistic simplistic have been been a banana and as are but now of this is what we'll be exploring in these sessions
mm-hmm
what about the or combination of the to that all we want to keep them distinct shock and thickness the things environments engraved with a great
with client would protect the or anything of patient as knowledge to laugh so we have oh yeah at this might well we have to wait till the end this might well be our rug resolving way it might be indeed as will see that they weave in and out the one and the other and you can get very fan
unseen ask what what ends up at the highest and what comes out of what the chicken or the egg but this is very likely what will going to but we don't want to reveal that too quickly side so for the moment we're anti knowledge should were in favor of love because set knowledge is leaves to gnosticism and done
in any case what we want to do is get to know ourselves get to know the various faculties inside the various kind of ways we prefer to go in relating to other people and relating to creech and relating to god and get to have a discerning inner eye of what's happening
and when when stuff is happening inside what's happening when nothing is happening inside and what way inside leads to god leads to what we would want to call contemplative prayer more what ways get us off distracted up off the path
so up what the cloud offers is not a spelled out theological anthropology a whole theory of the human person
but the cloud of unknowing is written to a young man who wants to know about contemporary per so it's an eminently practical little book how many by the way here and no shame or anything else to how many have read the cloud at least once
just about everyone has anyone not
shame on you
well had you you would have remembered prevent good will pull it out and will start working with it again it's an absolute some classic for me to share personally it's what says most immediately and effectively also compared with the latest stuff that's out this for me
he speaks with the vividness and a a power it's quite unique but pull it out and then this same author and we don't know who he is we now have some real kids but we're not sure wrote four or five other treatises we have those in english or soap
what is the original language of the cloud know english good for you
and this is extremely exciting this is one of the first things written in our mother tongue so you don't have to go back to latin or greek or syriac or something and so if you're really high church and you'll go right to the source we have two copies in library of this critical edition of cloud and it's delightful
to read in the original middle english
rkc will beat her at the weekend he took a whole course at up with a professor in middle english or to read it in its middle english but it's quite charming so if you go to the cloud section in our library two men sexually at ten copies of the cloud so if you don't have one and water
check out when we certainly have been over there you'll see the different translations of most recent made the paulist press big volume has come out with a marvelous introductory essay critical edition we're going to build using william johnson translation simply because it's a
available it's cheap and he will be coming here next year to give us a retreat and he's written a delightful little mysticism of the cloud of unknowing it so if we have questions we can save them for him like the a relation of
love and knowing in the cloud but if you want to be really high church pick out the original and try to work it
yeah begin at a book of contemplation the witcher is club it to cloud of unknowing in the witcher a soul is wanted with god and yet lovely in which the soul as wand with card so when of bruno's real efforts is to move beyond dwell a team
and this is very big forbid grippers in napa she did not do all these people so he sat in our sub title did you bring the cloud yeah which translation you have the penguin shoes far inferior fact know that's actually my favorite but does it have that
what this a hole in which the soldiers wounded with god which is about the cloud within
which one is united to god
what
the cloud of annoying which is about that cloud within which one is united to god anyway it's fun to go back in rich on see what to try to do and original isn't that hard and this is the same with julian of norwich this is the same with rich
or role who precedes them all richard goal is one of the very first to write in english language is beautiful that these first texts are about mystical prayer and so to claim this heritage and each one of these writers in the fourteenth century english school is quite different from
the other so it's not as if whether they're just kind of carbon copies but when bounces off the other and even debate among themselves and done so it's it's a wonderful cluster of marvelous spiritual masters to get in touch with anyway what the cloud is sink for heaven
sakes our primary book isn't this one that are that are primary book is our very humanity to get to know that first of all the senses that's where we start the five senses are hoping you have there are so the senses if you've read our latest newsletter of john has his
praise of the senses we can reach god through the senses and they they're constantly you can say bombarding are flooding our consciousness with data so all these colors are present to all of us through site and if i were to get in touch with these were
wonderful aromas than i go to the smell and i could get in touch with the the hearing dimension of slurped the water round and a coffee yoga the vase is hard but the leaves are soft into all this is a way of my being and aware of the world around
around me and to be up in touch with that and if you think about it one sense is quite distinct from the other i see the reds and greens and a dream colors not with my ears not with my nose and but specifically with the eyes that have that function
my eyes or i don't hear through my eyes etc
could it be the same with the higher faculties is the faculty of the intellect quite distinct from the faculty of the will for instance just as the lower faculty we may want to dispute this language later on the lower faculty of smell is quite distinct from the lower faculty of hearing thing
about this but where these people come from is yes the so-called higher spiritual faculties are quite distinct and we want to get to know them in their distinction that are we want to get to know how they interweave one with the other and especially within us again this isn't just a
a speculative thing but this is so will know that inner world so we'll know how to again go most directly to god with the end nor bob above us read that though as deepest level or the centre or whatever
a having dealt with this through the senses i can then remember that around our house in laguna where i went to high school we had all kinds of geraniums and roses like this so this can cause all those associations and i can remember back how
those roses were redder and those geraniums were whiter and things and then i might get in touch with all kinds of and emotions the joy and those years of high school and and the fears of on exams etc so all that is with happening as i go within i don't even have to be in touch with this
anymore or anything just my imagination can take over in my memory especially my emery here of those flowers as they evoke other associations in my past and then roses and roses a funeral and sadness their deep south
sadness and then the roses that we put aside and then they young
came out with a vile smell after they had dried out et cetera so i'm all that can happen with the and just triggered by this and that's in fact what usually happening we're invaded by sense and then that springs all kinds of associations and memories then we're often running is that the way
two union with god through contemplation is it through the senses
is it true the memory
then i can think boy i would really liked to up make myself more attractive there's not that many flowers out for and i could plant a whole series of roses and dream i can start to imagine what isn't even but what could be and suddenly i might be there and that might
even be real or to me rather more real than this if i've got a vivid enough imagination and that i'm imagining
i don't know about all fields of flowers as they might be in our monastery in the future of denunciation and said so the imagination and take over and as an extremely powerful faculty has you may know and have some of the schools of spirituality when their time
about meditation or particularly talking about utilizing the imagination the jesuit school so i imagined that i'm there in the grotto with the christ child and marius there and the animals and st joseph and i can smell the hey and i can hear the bane of
the cows and up for a powerful faculties is this the way to go for contemplative prayer
the comments questions of to know what we're doing is exploring these different so we've got the senses we got the emotions how they can i can be so depressed by the idea of of funerals and up it is hard for me to pray or i can be so elated even i just love for
flowers and so excited about at all but i might do in my garden of fear anger the whole area of emotions f activity diep a effect
then the imagination the memory that can take us within ourselves and we don't even have to go out again the sensors or take us outside of ourselves then i can start thinking about all this what is it all about
ha this is quite charming and beautiful and is the ropes and more beautiful flower than the geranium young are they more beautiful in their way than the ceramic vase is it an attractive ceramic base does it succeed and as a a art
statement who made it i can start asking all kinds of questions what is beauty why do i say these flowers are beautiful and then if i leave them without water for few days they dry up and they're no longer beautiful what is it that they have now that they would lose
up if the base is beautiful we debate that it's beautiful in a very different way than the flowers are what is the difference there
oh why did the personal make the this make it did he make it intending it as a base or wasn't for pencils and pens or and i can start that is engaging the intellect do all kinds of reflection and a very practical level what's the function of this thing down here
ear or to much more speculative level what is beauty the greek philosophers but lot of time why don't we see this beautiful night isn't this is a beautiful woman in that other one isn't is a beautiful piece john cage music and into a some romantic dribble listened beautiful at all what is it what what is our standard
where does beauty come from is there an original source of beauty
that somehow implicitly were using to measure all these different
expressions of beauty attempts and beauty
all that so i can get into my own intellect there and so i can think about who is the source of beauty and i can try to aspire to beauty as such may be god maybe god he is the ultimate source of beauty
the young some kind of potter we presume a guest on below this be any bruises
but ten it is it on a wheel or is it not
group but here where we're racing kinds of questions or if scooter was in your scooter wouldn't be asking these kinds of questions you were at the level of intellect scooter would see and react to the senses but probably wouldn't imagine how if there were flowers around the dog house would be quite nice
would wouldn't go into imagination when you go into memory about when it was a little puppy and most beautiful roses down by the the garage in that kind of the it would be just an immediate encountering can this be eaten or not to do but we've got all these different ways of relating to this and then different directions we can go from this
this and again which of these directions leads as most into god anyway where there in our intellect now and so some kind of potter made that
these who made them flowers
is there a creator of the flowers in some kind of analogy the way there's a creator of the base who made the creator of the base ah
what was the creator trying to do is this the ultimate expression of his or her creative ability etc or what is the ultimate deepest journey of that potter we can we can get into really rather deep philosophical questions if we take it far enough and it get here we are one
d o medieval to call what's and thomas aquinas would called exquisitely of spiritual faculty of intellect that up again that scooter or buddy or even elizabeth couldn't aspire to elizabeth cap and no time bought her majesty you will been able to do that
penticton so is this the way to got is this the chosen faculty to god intellect whose fruit is understand it may be practical understanding how is this made on a we overthrew coil or maybe much more through through speculative and
standing maybe even through the ultimate of wisdom yep you read grew know what but he seems to be saying implicitly it's not that clear unfortunately
but he seems to be think the royal path to god is true
knowledge which is what is the fruit of this spiritual faculty of the understanding now presumably he's not saying if i think hard and i forget to god well what under this he's saying and who can work and said but up the cloud wants us to ask these questions we had these different gifts faculties capacities inside
again how do we get to god so let's at this point have our first hand out and see kind of the approach of the cloud
first is the title page so you can put that him because we always want to have underestimate knowledge where things are from so this is again from this image addition to make an appearance and were of the cloud of rendered five woman thompson
swan seventy relaxing
and the first would appear so
then we'll look at this one chapter about the roof it's a first sketch different faculty use a different levels
i punched holes here so you can put this in the same binder yet poor baby she didn't you get the title page or the
do we have an extra title page have fun
yeah
i
so we've all got what we should fail
and
on
yeah
okay so we're there are age one thirty four were jumping to the middle
again it's written as a practical treatise so it's not systematic as you might find in st thomas aquinas or something do we all have a copy of up page one thirty four one thirty five
don't know he's got anything yet
no are you suggesting also the gas mileage
yeah i'm just scratch that out that's sort of distraction and anything you know
we may be able to recover to the end but only after doing a lot of
so your handouts have the three whole you can just put it in the binder i put it in front of all this other stuff because it would tend to clarify that other stuff
so let's look at chapter sixty seven
that ignorance of the spirits working powers may easily the to error in misunderstand the instruction about contemplation a person is made almost divine through grace so those are two quite different themes and will find that in each chapter there's a little bit of everything as in a letter of st paul or something
whenever you get a practical document it isn't clearly logical starting from premises and then conclusions and is jumping around according to the practical applicability but often suddenly you've got some real theology there at least implicitly and the scholars who have reconstructed who the author of
the cloud might be he was intentionally by the way anonymous he didn't want to get known you didn't want to get into the ego of authorship know that but anyway he's obviously a trained theologian and he uses the line that will culminate in a thomas aquinas for instance
thomas aquinas in the preseason so up for thomas aquinas also would agree with this as when she later that is the primacy of love over knowledge the primacy of as will see the will over the intellect so are we at the chapter sixty seven there my dear friend and guy
god so this is addressed directly to this young man but i just guess a much wider audience in mind also see what liabilities we are burdened with on account of original sin is it any wonder that we are blind and easily deceived in understanding the spiritual meaning of certain expressions
especially if we are also even of of our own faculties and the way they function so the royal way to get to know god in a deep way is to get to know ourselves better
explore the self there's a wonderful phrase or in augusta i seek only two things to know your garden to know myself nothing else absolutely nothing else so of this is kind of the way
those times that you are occupied with material things no matter how good in themselves you must realize that you are occupied with that which is exterior to you and beneath you in the hierarchy of nature
there's a big presuppositions here in terms of metaphysics and theology and human beings if so you might want to contest this we might want to come back to this but so i am involved with the flowers in his vase s that's out there and i gotta have my eyes open to see it and i gotta have mine
fingers out there to feel that etc that sell there
at other times you will be introspective lee absorbed in the subtle variations of your consciousness whereas as you grow in self knowledge and human perfection your spiritual faculties will be active in what affects your spiritual development this is again beyond the level of of what the flowers
consents to feel or what even the animals can censor feel this is why they call them the spiritual faculties
the good habits you acquire the bad when you conquer new relationship with others and sometimes such danger involved with what is interior to you and par with you as a oh we will say you're human person so i go back to the gift that i remember how to so
creation to flowers a woman i knew well with some other she said that her little kid woods came in and offered her this bouquet of dandelions and somehow that meant so much more to earth and this dozen roses that this other guy at central why what is it that kind of think so that kind of reflection regard
in flowers is exquisitely human and spiritual and that we can do with our eyes close that for concentration to get into that mysterious world which can take me to other places way back when they be poetry about flowers it comes out of with twelfth century etc or can project me
into the future they can project me into worlds and may never be that's the spiritual faculties but there will come a time when your mind is free of involvement with anything material or spiritual it's an incredible thing we're not even gonna be tied to spiritual themes and to
totally taken up with the being of god himself this is the contemplative work i have been describing in this book and at such times you'll transcend yourself becoming almost divine though you remain beneath god
so are there we are so to think about this let's go back does everyone except everything that's here's this this is what we're trying to suggest in this drawing he's saying i want you to ascend then ascend to the highest summit of the spirit then he
immediately says a delightful each other for god's sake don't take this geographically it's not as if i get inside night for the strain mice imagination up to the top of my skull or something tested so he says you can just as well talk about going to the deepest level of the spirit or
you can talk about going to the innermost center of the spirit that's how we can hover father bruno's rather arab design year he was so fixated on it is a matter of going from the war peripheral and outer to the center or going from the lower to the
summit or going from the merely superficial down to the depths whichever image works best for you will be working through these sessions with the mountain image it's an iconic card typical it's a classic and the mystical literature so johnny krause talks
about the ascent of mount carmel and every religion when you think about it has it's holy mountains whole idea of ascending as pilgrim you think of the holy mountains and the old testament and new so i think that's that's his favorite coming from colorado rockies that's what i like
most but if you like most going to the center that's the whole business of centering prayer
john went to sleep father john l topic homemade he said that the whole central websites for the pennington who said that there are whole thing about centering prayer is simply the cloud of unknowing repackaged they found the holy image of going to the center war help
full than the image of ascending about i find that as i say have been eroded with psycho
bomb site or something whereas this if you think of cohen peak center as much more than typical but work with what is most helpful to yourself
yes i guess or
why on
like far i think that's missing
he's the incarnational after that perhaps once one worse through all the sense of emotion imagination mean like well i actually have an to how that it would seem that on
one has one phone you can set up a transcendent why but in a kurdish way we've seen it that that ended the violence to come back
we're back at the center it's like it's almost like you're one from dollars i could walk near center into something out there that i would think that's become into the settler said so
the like the divine reach into the human human read by they're both are embracing each other in the center
that's a problem that's perhaps i'm missing and wow
going need you to define what would have helped to develop
absolutely the danger here is a kind of up for instance a denigrating of the senses you want to recover the senses you can read our latest newsletter for of brother john writes about the glories of the senses as vehicles to beauty and god we got at least one day so kind of appalled because that's not traditional
language but do we now me to recover that as we're getting a for sense of body of incarnation what about the emotions are they denigrated here he doesn't talk about the emotions i put them in to a protest extreme important dimension as we know in our whole psychological age the whole deep as
activity realm if i'm so into depression or fear anger i can't serenely a scaled up above what about imagination not is suddenly something to be gone beyond and the same with memory etc and intellect etc so now the problem with this is it's hierarchical ghetto
brush like the ladder it can be up glorified kind of the fuck expanded ladder image where we have to get from the lord but i are leaving the lower behind we get ever more tests incarnate kind of fuck purely spiritual
that's the danger and it would seem to want to locate the divinity and this mysterious fog the site but if god is love not down here out as here near here everywhere so it's an image that if and i think the cloud will be the for
first series if you take it too literal heuristically your twirly or around
you get into real problems
we had a friend a young long period years ago read the literature about suppressing the senses in the imagination so he sat down and grit his teeth and he was just trying to destroy have any imagination with a under any thought within so that then god will just swoop in etc and he almost stuff
thank god he shared what he was trying to do so repeat repeat to ask him to mellow out that can be very dangerous way but yeah this this could be implicitly neoplatonic and all that how can we recover the possible validity of this or can we
yes or did you want to speak to other food and related to be a problem on premier about the air
the cloud is somehow efficiently new incarnation of aspect it's not me yeah it's as awesome as its merit and you might hope you are they gonna say and everything you stressing when fine but he honestly stressed out of point
for example are a serious effect put it a summer's eve at the end the place up t-shirts the kind words
he doesn't mean nine the s politics and travel your cheeses but also the same time the sims is view subsea so on fire the place of christ as and appears are really essential these businesses so desperate have criticized by some authors and had
thing being jasmine six i'm trying to discuss that of and defend that new at the case that defense of the cleverness of the collapse happened from
gasping
so i think as so sad people like me a bassam and promoting centering prayer and they say would be a count how i'm doing in a new package as as some other spiritual master with act and other traditional classical mascot
combined combined with the car name the jesus prayer that's a monastic tradition putting the two together to weekly staff a
a away off and kept them to prayer to our to the contemporary uncomfortable and now people and i think the the jesus prayer certain you have a very strong inclination posing the sense of the human person the whole body volume soul and the bistro now
asian jesus christ doing much present they did have to get com ventured new methods can be mentioned when i think your point certainly dovetails with his a if you want an anthropology that's also respecting the sensors were that's also as he said based on incarnation
it's not that we you know climb up there through it said god comes to us and comes to as specifically as a human being who suffered and grieved and was tired and neil to across et cetera so that whole very could this just be buddhist traditions is is christian
and some have argued that act of prague as a book where he says
the or the cloud isn't intrinsically christian it can be produced it could be you do then who's the famous benedictine rabbit who says jonathan ross isn't intrinsically christian is like a sponge you can squeeze chapman you can squeeze out the christian water and absorbent with the good
just water swimming it just an outer structure so i think all the objections raised here against the cloud i think would even more emphatically have to be raised again say to the ascent of mount carmel that work or to pseudo dionysius or to what a that whole
current of apathetic mysticism in its writing about what where to do and who we are and where we go etc
can we defend this is not necessarily
can we insist that this is interests sickly christian that this does safeguard and affirm the fully incarnational and sensors know that wants to defend this well and what are they doing
he does say you start with even sure if you starve herself knowledge know it just that he he sort of like raises and goes above that you know you start with it
at the comfortable circle know or even were accustomed to stage me to stop guys that is wasn't who i am so it's like
where do i can spread up with to started drinking again reached ireland
although just the image basic gives you know that matter of them
he said one-stop which is worth
no does the author
a
have a very strong notion of condescending race though it guides really guys were in us it's doing now that's absolutely and also at the insistence of the privacy of love they know itself was array of incarnation of thing it's not a nasty thing
i think we can recover it also these terms the young explicitly christian character of this this is why people like william johnson center were appalled at the thesis of broke off it's inconceivable that the author of the cloud could have been kind of the new age chap who is a tacking on a
view christian terms was basically sanders somebody know he was off with a christian contemplative monk i think or say no probably a cartesian but he presupposed old sacramento life and presuppose body be suppose the beauty of nature as certainly does john of the cross and trees etc etc
what they're talking about is in this specific moment of what burton and bruno sometimes talk about as
the moment this most mysterious moment of direct experience then it goes on to say oh
it's not just isolate experience but some are able to be present in every part of our life in a participatory way
so it shared out in other moments certainly there can be a contemplative to mention of my encountering the flowers can see in the spirituality of a st francis of assisi or my thinking into the past the she'd
yeah memories of putting all your name spruced it up where this incredible capacity you even from an aroma to go into the the intimacy of the love of the mother for the taste and mobility you're so all of this in
the divine because god is everywhere but is there a special moment it's kind of moment that we give expression to after vespers when we go in there absolute silence then we're not saying words we're not doing things that just seated they're usually with eyes or not
presumably doing discursive stuff as he says it's about that work
and then as that becomes hopefully participated through the day than we recover and we rejoice in the senses
the and he goes into the cloud not been causing should just the people on the base year he doesn't like moments of celebration with up with the food and the dance central but somehow you need to go into that area of just silence and the inevitable and the apathetic
and you don't do it by putting up the sensors and singing and shouting doubt and up doing all kinds of funk emotional stuff but by silencing this is the whole thing of the larger rios this is the one thing of origin member of the are know that business so this is
exquisitely christian and in a specific moment but then wants to be and for all the rest wants to become incarnate in all the rest
can that make it acceptable
and this is what jesus does when he when he goes into the top of the mount weather it's mount carmel or the amount of the ascension somehow that are typical of and but the salt
so then from the summit as moses descends as jesus cents at the below that that's what i'm trying to grow for remember that the mount of transfiguration and suddenly they're just zapped by overwhelming white
and they want to stay there not i had to descend and they have to give back in a whole thing and suddenly the whole thing is different is now open houses pascoe light from within but shouldn't need that mount tabor experience that transfiguration experience with our a true fathers and mothers who brought up
the to bring light to organization so that we can be for a human
so it's not an either or of so we wanted and as he stresses is it just one moment it's not that throughout the whole day were straining to not have anything to do with the censors nothing to do with interpersonal relations and sacraments and service of the poor all these other dimension
said need to be added
but this can be again a moment of heart of the matter or the summit where the deepest level of out of which all the rest are receives a new life and a new light etc
is that acceptable tentatively
all right let's go on from there then for are we any other questions about this quote
so it's a nice sense of up with his hierarchy of being he's talking about
if i'm walking down the road and there's a dirt clod there i can start kicking it and duck for fun and not feel authentic scruples it slightly different if i go over to father a red such most boy should start kicking back than just destroying it something up i made a different level would have been and then if there's a little push
cat in their own i start kicking that that's much more serious
and if there's a little baby in the road and i start kicking that accident so we just presupposes good catholics this chain of being this hierarchy of of true says howard new values and if we want to go very contemporary ten yard of recovers the
this hierarchy and turns just a revolution there are higher levels of of neurological complexity of consciousness of self consciousness etc so that any scientist will talk about lesser levels of evolution and higher levels of evolution so we're not getting into a
kind of an alienating hierarchy here maybe this could be defended but we're realizing that god isn't this pot and i can i can do a lot of this pot by feeling that it seeing and hearing that kind of but god is at a i need to
use this language higher level maybe we'll say goddess encountered through the part in the heart of the pot and in the encounter with a pot that's fine but if i want to encounter god precisely as mystery infinitely other than that pot there might be something to guess contemplative practice that
will then enable me to them again go back to the park and go back to the pussy cats and the of the flowers and the whole thing in a new way and discover the divine dimension in all of them
so in that sense can we accept this model
for your homework think about all the sacred mountains in the old testament and the new
and in other religions if you're into that we have some beautiful books over the library about sacred mountains fascinating stuff or i meant to bring a quote from the native american indians about the sacred mountain noise look to the summit the mountain achieve on twitter
so that's one that's what homework is so i think this is one of the images we should claim as we get into also if we want to go visual and archetypical and compete your the i think it's a beautiful and were just on the edge beer of the a los padres mountains and the
the other archetypical image which is a very complimentary to claim as the ocean that's got a surface and you go down down down a deeper deeper levels whichever works best for you but we've got both they say the cloud just assumes a the mountains which might also see
summary buttons the place of the cloud others would use water imagery to go beneath the surface to the deep silent or depths greece kind of thing but think about this again think about what image most nourishes you and then again as homework because i get in touch with these different faculty
this insight we didn't even discuss much as final one which is the will after i've worked i determined knowing where to focus on my seeing this spot and that i determined with i will now i'm going to think about feeling it and i'm going to think about getting a sound into know that
a very of interesting deep level of my personally which is the will and now i've started focusing on the emotional what does the rose do again in terms of the perfect and now with my will i'm going to get into some memories and my will i'm going to do some imagining my work and start doing some
theology now
as the act of the senses is to break in the sense data as the act of the memory is to bring back a specific recollections from the past the act of the imagination is to imaged the future or what might never even be flying horses and things
things as he added to the neglect is this understanding that so the act of the will i can have very practical x i'm gonna pick up this language of take these steps of a theology the highest active will list of what a look at whatever that means
and the that act again will get us deeper into the ineffable will help us to cleave to the unknowable god when the intellect fails
so that again the love and we're not talking here about love and a sentimental bible or up of or neurotic level or romantic level we're talking about love and kind of a tough new testament garlic level so we need him to do a whole theology of launch will
for not just be a thing but which will be wanting to bring us into the heart of the club think of all the different dimensions of of there is romantic love but there's also few me about the love a child the parent this is obviously very important image of scripture as we pray our father everything and
the paternal love it's presuppose their the feel your love it i want to express it's a relational thing this was absolutely central for jesus the other love experience anyway want to look at the whole range of possible love experiences of each one of them can be a way of going deeper into
to the cloud and then experiencing my relation with others friendship love oh how does solid as he can be around july truncating performance of human life by the celibacy thing or is there a way that the son of it as of getting him to the cloud it's really angry birds pressure
will
anyway all this stuff is so will work assignment for next week and will pass out also a tentative outline not we're going to do everything on this outline for the class
but this if we had three years to give to this topic and guess see some some of the dimensions of our themed that we would like to look at three
and it can add this is to charge him i will you out by more last fall acceptable awkward but this is obviously quite a different approach the bruno says is quite better and solid are a safer but to see the difference and to one
do it what what approached guests helped you amen
many last discussion problems
yes he and
good question we often mean by love you drove a puppy love and talk about oh well i just love that person is that what we mean if it's an emotion of were down there are sorted speak so presumably he said on
jesus is talking about michelle so loved god with all your heart soul mind and street love your neighbors you so then when it comes over the outrageous demands to love your enemy
of my enemy is someone up with my perhaps have lots of emotional problems but i'm to love them
but are we going to just
root out law from any emotion what are we going to do there so a big things what is relation of both three emotions to arrows tula imagination and memory like et cetera
you know
think go
i will pay
love in itself giving that gasping
arabic gospel
that in sounds like a rabbit
removing hair
says
i afraid that out for him
there's a famous lutheran theologian dreadful guy and i drill
and on his book and live
and why and what be traded for me
i don't know what he's worse than going on like he's to work arrows and gotta be
that he opposes them
the precisely most choose
so emotional love is actually it's gonna meet non christian law which is it got the else is be loving the other for what i get out yeah scott meet man is no longer once that other person for a run all the pleasure i can get out of minutes and as an absolute
opposite of regarding though
which isn't using pure give a cure sacrificial it's jesus on the cross in slugging your enemy etc for so i never under fan of know an arrow definition of arrow that's right but he goes miles woman is horrified by the own many more mystical tradition because will be
got something like the power we back to augusta etc is a confusion in a mixing up the wall is so he wants the pure modeled monologue opposition
ah so it's it's empowering pieces and you can make a lot of argued that there is a radical radicals to dropping it's quite different from up for she turns me on twitter thing so one look at all that
what do we mean by valve here it might turn out to be something entirely other than what we normally mean by the word on it may mean that is arrow supposed to about a or this era it's performed and copy that these are all the questions you've been out as not just as edge
tough but so can do this
so then we can help a a loving and cleaving to god is truly christian and not tell the pavement the sniper would be concerned when catholicism strings always trying to drag the gospel and the pagans indigenous arabs what you can get out of it
work until produced because there's more ratio or closer to god and given the demonised has nothing to do with the gospel making me sick
it's just for christian and non-christian
oh so and so big issue so work out well the next class which i think won't be tuesday but wednesday of next week and then pv will ship used thursday