we read merchants a section for which he is com is titled the kinds or phases of what do you call kinds of contemplation which are kinds of phases at once but notice that in that section for first of all the kind of
ladder of contemplation is is laid out for you the whole the whole scale and then he treats half of the scale which is the active or active contemplation on masked contemplation or natural contemplation all those different expressions now that's and martin has greatly simplify the
whole think there if you look at the carmelite traditional for instance you find an enormous differentiation they're all these levels of grip st teresa has her seven when she caught
it's mentioned of the interior custom and sometimes or even more i just give you a hand up from a carmelite book royal house or sanders
back on the contemplative life portrait spiritual life and he goes in considerable detail into the different levels i think you've got nine and a mixture will reach the touch on them there wouldn't be fair to skip it
those so burton is is really trying to simplify to a drink there is no doubt just come out of that
battle between opener you might call the psychological tradition of contemplative theology and the west represented mostly by cartilage and dominican dominican carmelite sort of with sentences
and on the other hand the monastic benedict and and patristic tradition which tends to broaden the scope
and you might almost think to lower it at the same time we got a kind of diagram remember that thing was i should say something hurtful was starting your boss
mother stalls and advice and then
now what this is not intended to represent a reality this is to pursue three perspectives it this is three ways of looking at mayo the sort of leaders contemplative one the one which focuses on christian experiments on a christian kind of conflicts and one of the
as universal as was even beyond that so what are all of the spiritual traditions in the world are considered as having the same the same kind of experience and then we could narrow down the that some marie stopes man
see one of the common people royal online or the writings of oh sent out across with the situation which as in most christian and to wartime you don't find any consideration non christian mysticism is simply not the world and then in within a crisp
june like you start separating mistakes of non-domestic switched on and levels of restrictions on this terrific herd of cattle but these are three perspective this is not bring up
we might we have to make our own was good say say the on the usual either
about points to settle
a christian missionary for expand the ordinary christian experience and then universal spiritual experience it's no you can't do either
could really represents those three levels or dimensions of experience levels will be better
so that was meant to be a bit of a caricature but i found it actually when i came out of it i've been found the represented pretty well as to be punched to you
okay
we gave short shrift to those alternative schemes have a great and phases best time let me just mention a few there's the old three stage is it goes back they usually say to pseudo dionysius of a purgative where the of nominative way and the unity of would right it's interesting that the called three
ways but
usually understood as three phases three grades of a spiritual life now actually that's a very good a pattern and it's it's held up for what the thousand years or something more now and with good reason because it's not simply interior it's not simply psychological is not simply experience
childhood it represents experience
and it really is in some way descriptive and it's almost universally accepted an in christian duration and it's a nice me simply descriptive of the progression of our relationship has got to the absolute
you'll find it in across a murderer himself uses it here he doesn't talk about it doesn't criticize and he just picks it up uses it number where he talks at the end of this section private about the paradox of the illuminated way you say he's accepting that tacitly without without saying it is
then there's the other
the other one from a bag or product new project as a practical which is the aesthetical light theory of music eight which is a natural contemplation as martin has it and all the jeers which is mystical contemplation our unity of experience okay
you find that him right away
novogratz is practical as you know that edition of bamberger which is very handy should read that sooner or later the introduction of right from practical some chapters on prayer by various products in the first chapters the very first chapter of back because the virus is very orderly this is what he says christian
hannity is the dog of of christ our savior and dogma he doesn't mean what exactly what we mean by dog it is composed of practically of the contemplation of the physical world and of the contemplation of god those are the three levels back to game is is what you do mature aesthetical like that you're active and larger the exterior monastic life
theory physic eight is the transparency of nature that and of the scripture that begins to happen in you as you progress as you become more spiritual and more detached less passionate and then it is the pure unity of mystical contemplation of god
at the top of the latter now that's so that joe is a very nice game because it's so simple and it's not merely experience show get it is experience so but agree that your experiment to the exterior world to go into a happened to it's really quite beautiful
the whole greek tradition dealing with that kind of thing
did you get some other ones like emerged sometimes you'll find something that comes from augustana gregory the great were first to pull back from the world of yourself or up to yourself from below and then you go through the self to go okay you'll find this in various formulations you find an apartment the new man and so on in other words it's it's inside
as a biology of fall and redemption
or fall and reintegration by which you separate yourself from god and then you fall out of yourself and the typical new testament texts a has been that is the parable about or that's not a member who when he was feeding a swine woke up and said oh wow
i will return to my father my first he comes back to himself see and realize it becomes conscious of his misery and what he has lost and then he returned to his father so that to step back into self and back to took that which of course can't really be separated complete the into two steps but it's got a nice kind of
got ontological truth to it
and then you've got of course griego the cartesians ladder of with which were very familiar lectio minute accio rachio and kind of blood skin
i've been saving this for harm it's there tomorrow to most tested after the and included which are pretty catchy on desperate skills
that would you explain my staff
very much connected on that comes in between metatags you and are not here and from the desperate here comes the can happen to
that's a community make a mental smith
okay the carmelite tradition much gives some attention to that because has been dominant for our modern period and i've tried to get it on one page there in the comes from the big greenbush
a for armor we've had a bunch of these and books of aesthetical mystical theology is age to call from based on the carmelite tradition and and of course on the scholastic tradition okay because you're talking about st thomas aquinas and then change alec ross patients with some of
researchers experience and division was suffering
okay on that and of which is h eleven the numbering is out of morning
get

it starts at the top obviously and it's divided into two great categories here first of all aesthetical stages because they're talking about the they used to the definition of the course would be aesthetical mystical theology which is so they would die
divided into the ascetic a little animistic eleven and this was when i was going to send anselmo this was a kind of current thing
and the other side you have the monastic picture which was sort of opposing the uncomfortable with it and beginning to debate with it and wanting to integrate things
and especially to integrate this with what with moral theology and then was systematically origin the whole thing that to look at it all at one as an separating checked as hot liquids
now i've put a underline and capital letters the equivalents and we goes without their next year i'm in a adagio rachio and content virtue as you'll see but that's very approximate you'll notice that the carmelite tradition develop some stages much more fully than our tradition does and this is valuable and i think that carmelite under
are standing and vision of the life of for is something that you should learn okay and you'll find it a corresponds with some of your experience
and it can be very valuable we shouldn't ignore it but i think benedict tend to be to disdainful what they would go a psychological a introspection or less intro origin and self reflection and all that we can put that down a little bit too much maybe that we don't have enough of it
so first of all and quite obvious a up at attack had been vocal prayer now noticed i've put lexia their cars at parallel with it because this is verbal and but notice that the crime lighting remains within the sector of prayer all the time whereas this has broadened to include the lectio the
something which it reaches more into your exterior like your liturgical life and shot and then met a touch you now and meditation i notice what they need my meditation i think is the same thing a whigham into my meditation except by the time of the carmelites has probably got more systematic and more scientific in some way because there's also a jesuit and put julian
put a a spiritual exercises of st ignatius we you do this very deliberate program for a kind of directing a mind a reflection on to various names but notice how different this is from what we usually mean by meditation today where do we mean by meditation today and we mean basically i think the same thing that
the that as a buddhist with me or a hindu or a transcendental meditation personhood entering into the quiet the emptiness the silence the depths without words and without thought but this is thought this was thinking okay so this is a meditates touch you from
a particular sector of the christian tradition and what we mean by meditation today i think they'd be more inclined to call ezekiel or something like that are quiet so you find a lot of political diagonal lines if you try to put them side by side and a lot of fuzzy connections been a rough parallel
a between
so this is really reflection
and sometimes it can be highly what would you call a highly systematic highly scientific and very alien actually to a both the spirit and the word i think if it gets to programmatic to scientific because the natural way of reflecting on scripture for instance to to let yourself be drawn into the orbit of the word
rather than putting the word into some kind of machine on which you stamp out
reflections and resolution
cannon okay and then you move to effective for from meditation which are related to rachio because the rachio usually and our tradition doesn't mean the external verbal period of course gringos matter it means an interior movement a movement which has come from your a reflection on on the word
and here you moved over from one faculty to together and this caramelised skin there's a lot of analysis of faculties of are different
different appear in your will and your mind and your affections in your imaginations are all differentiated and that's something we don't do usually and the monastic tradition we don't have that analysis at differentiation it's useful at a certain point but it can really be overcome
it can be overdone so the to such an extent that the unity of aspect of what we're talking about disappears completely and then you're in trouble and that's the trouble with these big books there's so much analysis in and they get lost in the machinery and you start trying to correlate one detail in something experience and china just get lost and homework and you lose the total bill
asian so this really needs to be digested into a unitary vision
martin helps us to do they see where the pretty simple five to these snakes
okay effective for it and there's a somewhat more subtle movement from effective great to the for simplicity where this dynamic aspect has it's almost like the the flames coming up from area from that would that would is is somewhat concerned it's almost as if now you have just a glow
where a low fire would not leaping flames but of a kind of to low steady acquire
and then there's a difference in nation between this and the next guy infused recollection as a now these subtleties and can easily be ignored without losing much as an especially exactly where the contemplative vertex over
now notice that if you compare what we've been looking at up to this point of down to this point it's different from what merton did with his active
active contemplation isn't because you had a sense of more than the an active kind of place is moving more out into life there was more creativity about my sense grid you now this has something to do it his personality and his particular interior way of operating but i think it's also available
this is too compressed into a narrow channel of prayer spiritual life with mystical life and on other aspects are ignored too much and the creative aspect is very important
now we move into what they call a contemplative of mystical stages infused with collection we don't have to stay long there but this is noticed it's it's a said on the on one of the faculties on the intellect on a mine so this is something like your meditation but it's a contemplative
level of this
another pair of quiet this is important okay and this is a big threshold of experience in a contemplative life people who find themselves suddenly drawn into their interior and into a deep quiet hezekiah as the weeks would call the word has a good by the way as a lot of meetings they're all related but
there's only one of them it also meant a way of life couple of all kind of vocation
how shares one who is she has written a lot and very well about as you care about or he's gonna be kind of book of
as well as as a chasm which is a particular school of contemplative
monasticism
captivate the will and fills the soul and body noticed this differentiation you continually doing kind of anatomy here those the soul and body with an ethical sweetness and light
this is something which it is a person had what would you go will experience in that and then have no trouble and understanding what what decision on this means and maybe a little trouble i'm putting it into words but doesn't hardly a better word than than simply quiet
are a better word and quiet queers ezekiel something like that
but this is quite fits it's a leap from one level to another a giant leap to the next stage which is called by st teresa pair of union notice that is teresa who makes these categories more than john groce china cross really as a different system in which is a case of pure for cookies more of a logical he said the
kind of a worker he's interested in the technology of purification and a woman and mysticism these centuries as much more experiential in this sense than hands she makes an experiential ladder of of levels of prayer and the cross makes a letter of what
a stages of purification and stages are not a happy experience but stages of aridity and darkness the knights okay so it's a different framework moving in the same direction moving to the same territory but two different perspectives which together become a very powerful
a spirituality and that's why it's tell them the centuries jesus christ krzysztof st useless arab nations
no not quite you could you'd have no trouble and making the correlation between them but they're not they've made extra categories your a extra distinctions which you'd have to push aside for instance the prayer of
the prayer of union st teresa's fifth mansion okay
that number seven here forever union is her fifth mansion and a pro of transforming and it would be her seventh match
okay
whereas a perfect static in it doesn't quite corresponding her sixth match
and then she'd skip the the bottom of couple were okay because remember she's not just talking about life she's talking about moral life to and people who are outside the castle remember and then are subject to various kinds of sin and so on and so there's more this is
is more narrow than her more narrow and more differentiated
now this isn't this pro union is i believe quite sure
the really what would you call it completely unity of experience which corresponds to the mr contemplation that we've been talking about so much and that we're finding in merton in this part five of his interior experience okay so this is a you've crossed a special now it's like quiet for a quite as of today
i showed that this is a cross the threshold into the completely to
kingdom the the only thing is you're not there all the time okay this is an intermittent experience but estate or maybe it only happens to at once kind of pick experience whereas the transforming union and number nine has become a state okay you're established in the state it's the spiritual marriage
the equivalent of that therefore the person has been transformed who is in the grip of god to such an extent to take they don't fall back into the other stages even if the unity of experiences but would you got their full unitary experiences intermittent and they're always on the emotive plane and it's always seems to be in somehow just i think it across
was just across the partition is something the partition is very thin
so that even though that they can't have it it will perhaps it's they know it's there there's a kind of unity consciousness i think all the time in them and final stage yet twenty six and seven that accept various their tendency to get stop sometimes ah
experience a lot of extra air charity in darkness before not from the to deal
yes i think so i think the pair of quiet can have an earlier early on and you could spend like twenty years experiencing an intermittent pair of quiet before having experience of frozen and air or yeah yeah the whole night of sensors may be taken place where you're you're experiencing intermittently the the period while
it never the prayer of the for food you okay and then all of a sudden after that night of senses overtime have a burst of this is full experience with the and is a john found across stress of monolith would you say it's it's air our top out between masculine and feminine approach yeah yeah and oh yes very much
but both of them are in
another kind of probably got container and closure which another context which also needs to be brought they both accepted certain presuppositions which are too confining for us now
but they are very complementary they also represent to some extent the apathetic and catastrophic crash but not completely john as much more empathetic okay the other thing the way in which they really contrast his mind and heart which is largely masculine and feminine okay because jonathan groceries and intellectual mysticism and for him which this delectable knowledge of that
but of course when i talk about the higher stage from that knowledge of god you're talking about union and so one moment they call a union other moment they call acknowledge that one moment did they might say it's not knowledge like learn now the moment it's it's the ultimate absolute knowledge beyond knowing that kind of thing so when somebody sinks and has to speak or
right they move back into the world of knowledge and the world the knowledge some ambush all the way although internet and it was not it's not just knowledge it's yummy
so it's really the absolute limit of language
five jan the cost distinguishes between and ninety cents the i i have the spirit now yeah i liked both of those would be included in the night of the soap but the exterior out of the servers and i have two sensors may depend a little bit on translations and other and okay so a wind up ah it's not a
none of the senses the in imperative and new and then that's fair at night and so worried
i think that's roughly valid but not entirely and you can have a touches of the nominative and even of the additive way in the beginning which makes things very confusing but i think it frequently happens there's somebody may have a unit of experience and then i have to start with the bottom of the latter
so let's say individual experiences are very different from the stage on which want to standing particular but like the generalized thing when like the nine of the senses be much earlier than the stuff
and after the crowd fire if you way down there
the ten it it should be able to actually it should leave it is not in the sense that the people really experienced quiet and very early stages like plastic like okay like a novitiate i think most people out the experience of very quiet and efficient there are only beginning the night of centuries
then i know the sensors less a lot longer than we think into does it thinking it can go far overlap the night of the spirit quite a bit too
most of the ninth day because we know actually is is a night of the senses and i have the spirit that really something like yeah that's where yeah you're really thrown into the furniture so most of the night that we know as the night of the centuries it's always fun or keep the five program for the dark and so i'm the when there's quite a compliment yourself when you read
in the first chapter of book that i'm going to begin resident yeah because we observe yeah after the dark knight in the spirit i'd advise you to get the book to somebody else
or cause know it's unreal visit kind of inflation is a kind of a super and last spiritual inflation at is by which these people who are really you know that their himalayas a of the spirit
what up there's nothing we can easily put up like a like i'm thinking
not if your descriptions of united senses
skimming critically that a few discussions on the nine cents okay moment as some of that and here you'll notice okay maybe we should maybe we should take it from merton and have a basis to do it on that's right at the end of his part five
advantage
my page seventy coup is page seventy eight
he give you a nice clear and concise exposition that
st john across explain okay
two levels of purification purification of the exterior to interior senses
notice exterior and interior as what would be the interior senses imagination and feeling things like kirchner things on the psychic level them although actually it's pretty difficult to correlate this whole thing with a psychic and level and psyche and spirit because it all seem
station are within the level of the psyche the way we usually speak of it because we speak of the spirit very often as equivalent to the atma and a purely unitary central level of are being so i don't have that cleared
but his his game here is pretty good
night of sense the exteriors of is purify and to a great extent are not completely destroy her on
ah
now notice what does he mean by exterior showed that's the herself of
the psychological self the self that relates to the world through feeling emotion imagination and thought
okay now that goes pretty deep they've called the exterior is so if it goes pretty deep but it's connected with the ego and connected with our ordinary
our ordinary
self image that kind of thing
and
in a dark night of the spirit even the interior man is purified he doesn't go far with it and maybe is wise not to because he hasn't been through it that as he hasn't been through enough of it to be able to talk about it with very few people have
ah
it's as if says it does a self a level of self by which we relate to the world and were determined by the world
and that is deeply purified and the night of sense and then we are left with let us say the spiritual man who himself somehow is still
contaminated by higa still contaminated by what we call
selfishness or even exterior yourself and so much very that we will keep these things distinctive and a perfect together and so that inner person has to be purified so that it can be felt completely with and completely one might go okay
and that as per item this period night of the spirit yet and the night of the soul embraces both of them women i believe
it depends on how you repay you work with a spanish church i guess that was recent to him he says spirit the i just thought i thought you can see that
since i find using spirited
so it's like the translation i am jumping passes work he distinguishes senses so okay one thirty on that case in that case that's what i mean what i mean to say a spirited yeah but we have to be careful with that because soul as such a section of vegas where as you might yes
d
yeah it's better for us not to use saw him for the evening likes city if we're talking about that this verification of the sense in our ordinary way of thinking as purification of the sole cause these these sensors are part of the soul they're not part of the spirit we may share
the part so so the terminology really tricky and murdered is not always consistent and perfect for this terminology and when he says something like destroying the exterior itself well what are we to understand by that at another moment he would
he is much gentler and more carefully on language to talk about a purification if it's a real self how can you destroy it and don't we need to win in a conference and don't we need an exterior so so this danger of gonna go into this territory with a shotgun as merton does occasion
but that the guy
but i have asked why six associated with a permanent way i get the end of the parent and way then comes back that senses which is why like like on the only trouble is a devil purification as purgative okay so even the night of the spirit of purgation so they overlap to such an extent you know
and i don't remember how st john across cartilage his system whose structure with a three-stage system a purgative laminate to unit i'm not sure that he's consistent and then simulate with herbs this makes it like a dynamic
yeah and she redraws the whole thank you so my she exerts a lot of pressure on it
have you and durations skin one of them when she does her down with kurt an obscure not serious off
strike all of that yeah i thought i have trouble with language
i think you might say that the exterior self image is destroyed and all that goes with right
or that the obsessions and compulsions and attachments of the exterior self are destroyed but to say it it a self is destroyed is very risky language
and he he'll be more careful and other places
to throw out on an empty one hundred miles second half for mysticism but might be helpful to know which she's not five stages as she draws on an original three stage yes and mrs john pawson trace of model that comes highlight and look at heart grasp that some of the other rhineland sticks and consider nice filling out
you know that's also a devil anse not a hostile hundred years all happening
she saying stuff like careful saying when you get to the end of the productive when peak this gentleman you're you're blowing yourself up there isn't an ever will be purgation goes on all of this i mean what what is guess if not nodded but as desert not a final application in substantial snow and we have to recognize also that this is human language knowledge
stuff is in this of is artifacts okay and we have to with it doesn't go as deep as it should to go really deep we probably have to go to the bible and then we lose these did we lose our boundary lodging and wherein a new world but we relating to ultimate truth and away which these distinctions and categories stop
i have a great love for it to janet costing us or canada and the side but i tend to think of that in terms of this dynamic process to become there comes a vacation elimination and the unit and then just like ascending spiral like yeah they got three hours three i think stages that every
stage of the way of purgation and elimination it's probably true and also
yeah i think that's true you could say that that every experience if you like us three count but i'd rather say three sphere and one would be united at its center one would be a moment to and then one would be perfect the exterior one okay that every sort of divine spark that hitches
as these three concentric spheres to it and does all three i'm okay so that we really have unit of experiences of god at a very early level but most of their energy has to go into the purgative level probably ok and his last therefore and therefore the don't have experience can
that can unfold itself can blossom and then later on when there's more purgation done more of that energy can go into illumination and finally it can all be experienced as union something like that that to on the a model an image yeah i hear him
but out yeah it's ten of and in a self i think we will were judged him referring to your talks about the third verse idea passing away of the first south and the first of the second cell yes at
s interesting to her out your own talks about a third of the digital age third birth and know what doesn't what's the second one as for the first they did the effect okay and as at puberty oh our initiatives as targets yeah yeah good an okay and that would be the idea of
losses in the last of the first episode would be the birth to interiority would not yeah yeah so so we're just and referred to passer bys
dining hall passing away of off the best self past the the south we actually found out that well yes i the first part alive and but that's also give herself with thing which wants to to emerged yet so access to an article
be like you should ask their classes strong experience conversion experience so let go of pass out you not as elected people sell real the troops out to to emerge to be to be bought yes he he was expect image
you know i have i think young has a lot of wisdom of that kind and and the young and pattern is very good this and so basically the first half of like being the life of the exterior yourself when it has been to function as expanded scope sort of build his kingdom and then that dies and the second half of life is the the growth of the interior
we are so none of course he doesn't say what happens after that
and then he talks about the commercial excuse to accept that had and young young's kingdom as he is the second half of life
and yet
we can't say much about our psyche and spirit relate to one another and in his vision as a very complex question
okay any other questions before we leave this the carmelites can be and we could spend a you know you could spend a year on that because it's complex and also relates deeply to experience
you have another hand out about which i need to make more reservations and that is from ken wilber this phone book called no boundary ken wilber is sort of the einstein of the transpersonal psychology and what he's done guess to
sort of make a unified field theory of economic growth and what he does is to take psychology psychotherapy spirituality and put them together on a single ladder now the latter is a ladder of downward movement in which your move you might say from small conscious
mister big consciousness k
so if you want references i've gotten plenty of references is there's also one fairly concise article appears in which you get an idea of what he's doing i can't expect really to get it from this diagram the date diagram obviously is is here twice once at the top way or the simple spectrum of consciousness as he calls it
there's a wonderful expression and a wonderful vision and down at the bottom where is correlated the spectrum of consciousness with different as he calls them therapies but notice that the ones at the top first yoga t the two thousand and five dollar therapies and thirty five dollars zero prison then you're getting down into the seventy five dot an esl intern
puppies never getting under the one hundred and twenty five dollar an hour therapies and find one
after as only fifteen minutes it is not even a full hour it's an esoteric this year
you know if you can find it handy
and they actually achieve cheapskate people now
now that on wales
turn only large mammals in fact
the thing is simply marvelous and i've gotten
a lot of enjoyment out of this and yet you've really got turn to sort of pulverize it and criticize it and and hammer and then break it apart and put it back together again otherwise it will
a kind of over and press there's a terrific synthetic power here like one intuition which those engagement pull together but how much reality is okay
i won't point out all the problems
the the basic problem for me is that he's coming from or would you call it an eastern metaphysics in which there's only one absolute reality and attempts to that consciousness there's no such thing as is degraded in the uncreated and there's no personal
there are no personal stocks on the spectrum you slide you should all away from the top to the bottom without stopping entry uniquely human person with the tone consciousness center of volition and without stopping at a personal creating loving acting interacting relational speaking god okay
so it's it's not smooth shoot it's got this terrific power of the asian non dual metaphysical perspective okay which tends to swallow everything
but we have to do an awful lot of reconstructing actually to bring it back to something that would be unacceptable version arrives i give it to you just because it is valuable and because i do believe that the unity of reality is the ultimate reality which contains your luggage and towards which we go
but it needs an awful lot of subtleties and distinction to things like that
i don't take he intends the on the bottom diana i don't think he intended to be a meaningful border between ni
different things together on the left notice other words when that to a hinduism is not intended to be the shallowest of those an esoteric judaism the deepest anything like that that's brilliant
he had taken a sign like even then it shall we talk so much doubt about the cycle of psychology and speeches and on my own that navy is seo is an age when things are gonna so complex interpersonal relations
that
you really can't get in to
can begin to understand the spiritual work through so much of the second package
i think there's some truth to that could otherwise you must take your psychological struggled for a spiritual struggle yeah even though the spirit is working through the psychology of just isn't what a eight or twelve steps or anything like kind of the spiritual right there you are working through all the psychological stuff
and yet really the their different levels and then later later on what would confront a spiritual head on the psychological moralists aside at that point
okay
which we haven't gotten very much still to
today's specific material

last time we talked a lot about someone at least about those two levels of contemplation or two levels of you
spirituality and martin talks about to level of gonna play an active and image whatever
mystic of
and i wanted to point out at least that they relate their parallel to codified and apathetic okay and that those of two dimensions of our life and we can't go just for one be left the other they have to be brought into a kind of balance if you're just for its economic growth you'd probably go prefer on the apathetic side
and not and you might unduly star say your imagination your heart your psyche all of those things without which we simply can we simply can't appreciate we are but we are
i've had a pleasure of don't do at night
here's a report from the apathetic
thank you
well i think that's pretty classical like if even the bullet innocence did you know but money when he went to aesthetical and on too much denial
it is an apathetic what would you go to experience hypothetical prayer and there's an mysticism is an apathetic life which is a monastic life but monastic and life and if if the word monastic is permitted in bold type and the word life is printed in say draft or light brent you can be in
trouble because basically it's gonna be affirmative basically it's gotta be alive if the know the negative takes predominant essential negative dominates over the essential a primitive and trump watch matthew of doing it's not to reassert the essential affirmative the essential yes that underlies all the notes while the relative know
knows of this article tradition and me critics

okay let's take a look at this section of martin were duty bound to do that we've already looked at the end of it
before we quit today and then for next time i'd ask would be the next section on okay section six
you notice we've got a systematic leg and our twitter
now merged to is already talked about active contemplation and now he's going to go about mystical contemplation of what it called passive contemplation and according to him the distinctive
dividing line there is about festivity and also about transcendence to the passivity and the transcendence go together because which characteristic of this experiences that it transcends our activities okay so that it becomes a passive as he says experience of good and i word it is a dangerous word that were pass a business because
passivity has a very negative connotation for us but it comes from across from the latin and comes from the classical tradition
petite tour davina he suffers to suffer means to experienced or to be passive
what what does it party or i guess is the latin word out here is to
experience to suffer and only the the passivity the notion of passivity in our language has gotten narrow down to something else which is like inertness okay rather than being an interactive thing as and other being receiving so here it means receiving it's a receptive experience rather than an
active experience
he's got a wonderful quote from dionysius the area up guide
and you notice the expression cloud of unknowing now which presumably is where the us the cloud of unknowing editors his idea of an array of divine darkness is marvelous do a several expressions and which has become absolutely classical for a tradition
and this experience was a question of the union before it's a question of knowledge and so the union is the core of it somehow in the knowledge is like it's mediation to us in our experience her
okay now he sets out to summarize the essential elements of mystical contemplation and then i don't know what hit him at that point
whether he was called out to milk the cows or to check hey into the barn and what
she's she's he was called and you can the cheese factory is coming out at the end where he talks about the institution suppressing and crushing the tender spirit the tender sensitive soul of of the contemplative as the cheese factory
cause he he sort of that goes into a world here and he started he's going to make a list and were happily looking forward and onto one two years before him the thing starts drifting and looping and i'm coming around back and then turning on itself digressing and so on so
anyway he's got it all in there i tried to summarize the eleven points
first of all one transcend sense and intellect okay to
it's annoying and unknowing light and darkness and then once you get transcends feeling and concepts three love and detachment
baby a comeback old time say something he said in a paragraph just before
for it's passive that is god's initiative is decisive
five it's a knowledge which is not a one faculty for instance of the even the deep intellect but it's unity so none of the paradox there have a knowledge which is unity which means it basically to union of the whole person and a union in god which unites the person in itself pulling their faculties ticket
essentially a transaction of love and some way a matter of love
seven love is sufficient to itself so it gives a paragraph to st bernard
eight contemplation of passive the already said that
and
reflection on one felt that should have been useless and obstructive
point we have to get out of a way am i to nine
contemplation is often a painful experience
because the light of god seems contradictory to are very our very being and someone to our exteriors show
ten which is carries this further it brings about what he calls a terrible interior revolution that expression i'll come up here and there and and martin's writing a crisis
and then finally
he's come back sweating too trees factory and he's a samurai's number eleven
that the testing of the individual may be intensified by institutional circumstance now this is not just have it bugs but this is the liberty and everything else that is the the tendency to prefer that the common and a communal and collected and the institution of and the the common sense things
over the delicate inspiration of the spirit and the attraction and orientation of the interior like okay now this is sort of the number of former talking and other places you'll see that the kind of tough
martin the number one martin i suppose
ducking and saying cut out the nonsense on let's get kind of work and then it's all good for you

so we rushed through that i'm able to you around reading it but it's very difficult actually true
try to straighten it out and systematically that's not important
and then he ends up on page sixty two with this article assertion and had is why and so many contemplative monastery there are few or no real can hamper
i followed that with my orange felt pen
because of the amount of truth that there isn't it
however we explain that i think we have to start at that point by realizing that okay and you better what you mean by contemplative and we don't want to stand in a position of the parents who and draw a circle and elitist circle around that way and if we do that we should put ourselves
outside of the circle not inside
but the fact is we do not have a strong contemplative tradition hook hardly anywhere in our our christian tradition of prison so that's where we start from them that's where we embark from
then he's got five texts about contemplative prayer from january drugs from blizzard rice book from the cloud of unknowing has a money goes back to st bernard with a debt of loyalty
ah
before it sets out on a taxi as well how can you be sure about muslims were kind of blatant has been very hard to identify we've gotten into subtlety chair and and that kind of seemingly difficult criteria know he says you don't have any doubt about it might have happened and it's very simple and very obvious he said even though it's very
interior and at some and somehow it fills you somehow it's it's like seeing your mother or something like that it's completely completely spontaneous and obvious experience innocence it's not at all subtle in that sense even though it's interior
almost like a recognition and now they lived in the old days to talk to them
and then he talks about the three signs and i think it gets these from think john the i'm pretty sure it does but i haven't checked it out and
just because i believe those to be signs down the customer and the center at canape and then finally about the paradox of the alone native way which is the fact that the interior man is set at war with the exterior of men and then your your restaurant not only with god but god is wrestling with you that you're wrestling with yourself is seem to be
and the other side of the paradox is at a certain point you feel when you're going most forward is going to be going backwards
that is all of the signs and assurances of progress seem to drain away from you and you seem to have lost everything and that's simply the further test of faith to get going
okay now i've rushed through that in order to
the able to quit on time we can we turn on some of this material last time if anybody would like to discuss it privately
i'm please do read the next section and will try to get part way through it