oh okay as usual looks but can view of the recovered last time also because i didn't give adequate treatment for some other things
office or russia in the last cause
we were
going through a section five on your contemplation of let me just outline yet again pointing festival a description of mystical contemplation and our list of what it calls it's essential elements a list which turned into
it's surprising the meandering treatment
of contemplation with a good deal of cogency and alone and then five texts and contemplative prayer you get the feeling throughout this section five that he hasn't he's not happy with any particular scheme and so you sort of moving around trying different perspective so it gives you a five texts and disgust
discussions each one a little bit
without a whole lot of consistency has not as
preoccupation consistency and then he gives you a three signs of contemplative for i want to talk about those a little bit and then finally talks about what he calls the paradox of the a tip way which is really the conflict the duality attention and the interior struggle that the illuminate your three games on
synthesizing those points from the eleven elements the picks up the first one is is a vague point because there's something
probably a lot of his difficulty and this action can choose crime simply on grasp ability of of contemplation and he wants to say so many things about it and then the same time realized that put your liver whatever you say about it is not it doesn't really touch it
but
he says contemplation is an experience of loving a unit of knowledge which transcend girl our activities and faculties even or knowing
it's a gift and a south communication of god secondly contemplation is a function of love and he keeps your now
thirdly contemplation requires detachment and the detachment of a low bar connected of course it's kind of priority of and forth the contemplation as a dark side it's frequently painful and also brings about an interior crisis what he calls an interior revolution the conflict within us
i'm not going to say anything that those by text but there was a close study because their key texts some of the marksman like gone from dionysius
and also they want from rice book a great central texas
these three signs these seem to be an adaptation of the three signs in saint john and across the ascent of the amount of not com a book two chapter thirteen which are the indications that somebody should give up discursive meditation and turned to contemplative prayer okay that's amazing how much place
john and across uses on that on that issue he comes back to that again and again and again i guess i guess the hard headed spiritual directors who are not willing to let it could give up their point by point meditation
the books of meditation and that you had coming from that time and essentially to gather enough to drive you into the ground unit little the methodical meticulous way in which meditation has pursued
trying to draw logical conclusions and i'm trying to squeeze out some emotion and a resolution out of your reflections what what suffering people were subjected to
you can imagine in community you know where we were taught as way reform you to do that and meanwhile your nature wants to do something else gray system is as it were attracting into something more simple
burton is three signs here
and
my bed sixty seven had this seventy three
and they're not they're pretty far from the the signs that st john of first gives you that there are obviously operating on the same principle as maybe that somewhere else and it works of john that brush there's another treatment of these three times which is different but mountains got the first one is this
in explicable and i'm drawn to the seeking
that is this desire and the movement that the desire motives
the second one is a forgetfulness of each other things and indifference to and other things other things new creating us
and the third one is difficult for me too
distinguish from the first one and percents okay it's a sense of attraction an experience of attraction which binds the soul to this interior
grace for presence even though it seems utterly dry and satisfied
let me read the three signs of saying how to address this is from kavanaugh's edition
age hundred and forty and one hundred and forty one
the first sign and remember these are for giving up discursive meditation that rational point by point
that's the
the first sign is that one cannot make discursive meditation i received satisfaction from it as before dryness is now the outcome of fixing the sensors upon subjects which formerly provided satisfaction but he says sensors here it needs imagination basically uk
as long as long as one can however make discursive meditation and draw out satisfaction one must not abandon this method meditation must only be discontinued that the soldiers based on that peace and quiet quieter to be spoken of the search time
that's clear enough
the second sign is an awareness of a disinclination to fix the imagination has sent back to these upon other particular objects exterior and interior so there's this sense of some kind of a wall between you and particular things and maybe a particular object of meditation but maybe actual things in the outer world and they'd be people's
situations the context of daily life
people frequently ever experience from sitting in a crowd or something like that that she have nothing to do with what's going on
but this is a more continuous and stronger experience
the person is disinclined to fix the imagination purposely and on fun extraneous things the third and surest sign is that a person likes to remain alone and loving awareness have gotten to that particular considerations you very much like martin's thirteen
an interior peace and quiet and repurposing where they have out here without the accent exercises
at least the discursive one doesn't which one progressive from point a point of the intellect memory and will and then he prefers to remain only the general loving awareness and knowledge retention without any particular knowledge or understanding
okay so it's that gravitation and magnetism that birth is turkey
and say how the crust is to leave safely the state of meditation and sense which is imagination merely imagination and feelings connected the imagination and enter that of contemplation and spirit the spiritual person must observe or than himself and these these three sides together
ha ha of course there's a movement back and forth the person returns to meditation and
the original of a pitch in a cabin on page one hundred and forty one forty one forty one k
come to get let's get this right in the hard ground configured can probably the paper boundaries the same page patient refer to check to see not to contact us because the restaurant relic
an actor

okay
now this business about the paradox of the player he's got something that the threshold of the nominative wait until relieved after what he's been talking about on page sixty eight are sixty eight his seventy four he it goes into a patient traumatic growth and suddenly comes the awakening to on
new level of experience so now you get the idea that there's actually a progression you and based in the third and fourth parts of this section five of this article there's a progression from these signs to awakening of the aluminum to boys and then to the conflict within the nominative
right now you'll notice here that merton has without saying and accepted this threefold
scheme of the spiritual life of
we have heard of it
hello
and here
but it's got me that hundred to start here
he spoke about the threshold of the other minute to stay
yeah and the illuminant of standards the stage when the consciousness expands and isn't life and the darkness
the darkness at least issue
pushed away it may come back and we'll come back but one is or were just have another dimension of key just to the new dimension of reality however these are not airtight compartments you heard that a lot already but just to prove it implications because the knights of st john in a closer prague
jason's and the application to go all the way of to the united life and what's more the phases or overlap anyhow so even in the united states is to purgation like there's still plenty of night honey darkness
we would it would be nicer if we have clear categories you can sort of graduate be doing school to be with them with the heat or moment
that portland
like some dark
you're passionate love to see
moon
that's what is getting hit to when he gets to the paradox of the aluminum tube like that that's going to come up
he gets deeper for because for him
the light is always darkness to to put a very strongly memory that quote from the dionysius which doesn't read the array of darkness the divine ray of darkness and mcrae up to find out which is an incredible praise but merton goes along with that
completely so contemplation is always a kind of light and darkness which is not simply an alternation but somehow the light is right into the darkness from the darkness light and should you find him down and a close to him
and it's the darkness of faith that you know it's their part of the experience of part of in some way ontological
the language comes largely not only that comes in our western tradition from germany close because of that language of night that uses the night of the soul of the dark knight
another vocabulary might talk about gutters as emptiness or as desert wilderness
so that's a very nice couple of paragraphs there on our page sixty eight about this and sort of honeymoon phase right but it's also one of
enthusiastic pages when he forgets about the the back and forth of it and what is a standing up
from then on a tour like this transform
a large eternally suffering sufferings intended was i was making multiply the source material like with completely simple consists of one third one preoccupation on a caravan
now obviously that's an idealization thing
especially in light of what follows we talked about the paradox of the eleven actively now this paradox that conflict to struggle but notice that merton is somehow seems to himself the undergoing more turbulence well he's writing this section than the isn't some of the other sections and so
you'll find it nothing quite settled down for it and that's probably appropriate
and he ends more of this were just the section of the struggle with
he spends a long time he's got what about four pages on that a struggle of a paradox for conflict the interior revolution as he calls it a data of the eliminated way the middle way and therefore it's obviously a matter of experience for him probably have a present
experience at that time
so the interior revolution is the transition from an exterior to an interior life and an interior yourself and it involves bewildered and bewilderment an intense interior
your warfare
he identifies this paradox
explicitly
the two ways to different ways interesting
down towards the bottom and seventy five he says the paradox of the a limited to four years and under the awakening and enlightening of the inner man goes with the darkening and blinding of the exterior man
now that sounds with very good and we just a logical in a way but it's not logical the door when you experience because you may not experience the
if awakening and enlightening of the in advance
at the same time
or strongly enough to reassure you about what's happening to the exterior
notice that in these stages the moment is from outside to inside so is the as you will incorporate that into russia from anymore
and which isn't this a moment of way isn't the middle and that's why he talks about paradox struggle with the conflict of the a of the the middle way and where or outside inside in the day of work or where the when to caught the illumination of the interior is accompanied by the propagation of the next
that's right
and then is also forgetting the internet
i want to go to to check a parallel but it's a movement of interiority
interior is asian as well as a movement of elimination and union
okay that's one definition of this paradox of the a limited to way
yes quite her
no yeah
the army the exterior earth me to eat you with your pantry model i need to pray love it
harder of her new position period
the issues not wrong
i think it's different in different people sometimes noticed that way that he's talking about contemplation it and the word contemplation itself as a kind of relate more to the mind into the feeling okay so we're coming from there were coming to the side of knowledge
an experience of let's take a deep intellect something like that
and moving watch the world he mentioned that it's it's also where etc they had experience of love so he's coming from that cognitive so excited for mind and so he's talking more in terms of light than of love
the different people experience these things in different ways i think that some personalities are much more open and much more but which is a sensitive and receptive on the side of love and inside of feeling than they are on the side of light or knowledge and so their experience tend to be more effective
and so some of what he's writing about the because martin has a bit of a buddhist tendency himself as a bit more inclined towards the cognitive style or on the side of town and cross rather than sanctuaries known as you never close to reach ever he always question in the crotch so he isn't that mine which is the more apathetic line themselves with the want intellectual life
whereas a person more on the feeling side would experience this awakening one that's how do and awakening of love they would speak of awakening of love and
i would say that sense also of union within them
loving union rather than of like
the department of interior like department
the time
exterior is
yeah okay okay
yeah it is confusing but i think the keto it is a the the understanding and the feeling themselves go all the way down at the center of somewhat and somewhere the trinitarian image within the human person okay so
well i don't like to use this thing with money
and
i didn't want to separate home
so suppose this is a spirit out there this is the center of the first it and then you will make the level of them upside the and my have enough depth and texture and row out here
so say we got the kind of take over here are for now
and we've got the effect that but for we've up what love
as you move edward that to come together but had it all away hundred and forty one can experience is if our experience can only be that knowledge and love they come together they converge and acknowledge other way at a level always the center
if they get less and less distinct and the cabinet of god may be totally it is probable that mean so far we can describe it it's about analysis about love because how can be experienced anything without the knowledge and experience become the same thing notice knowledge and experience at a certain level knowledge as to the
experience tells us when we're talking about this kind of knowledge and that's just something in know that are not something you know by repetition but we're talking about immediate unit to experience which has to be a knowledge as it gets more spiritual of experience becomes more of annoying
that also becomes at the same time it continues to be a feeling that it's a different career field okay so i think we have to be willing to take these two metaphors of knowing and feeling all of a down into the center of the for so far as we can experience anything at all
montauk also very good which has been unexperienced or something else i'm gonna crash will talk about talk about a union with god in the substance of the soul okay now is it beyond knowing is it beyond feeling if it isn't it's been on experience or it's another kind of x
xperience that we don't even have any language for because of it's depth to and but remember john and a girl likes to talk about you talked about this image of god and the trinity in a cycle it's a credit to the psychological images of the trinity of intellect will and memory so this is intellect will begin here
and this is will and then memories i'm not even tends to identify with the substance of stuff in the traditions and because
so knowledge that how hear something for crew can be well it can even set not have something to see as here with hostile
and there and link it submarines and psychological now and that isn't intuitive now inevitably if you're into the cloud storage than are wonderful
the book get currently
and we weren't hurting your feelings
when but he brought up the fact about memory of substance down here but it's no fun that experience so there's still of
the eli
but we get me out that work
but we have to be willing to allow those areas levels of knowing
maritime talks about that kind of thing in a great big book a page number to name a netbook
something about
degrees of time
okay he's got two definitions of this struggle of of the eliminated way one of them is that darkening and blinding of the exterior man anterior man is like and way
that's something to reflect upon i think i'm see if that ship it resonates with your own experience you know if you if you have a double experience sometimes but being in a fog outwardly and not just being what we say attracted inwardly are touched but also be enlightened if you experience that a real
products with light and darkness
he terms of exterior and interior the other definition over on that
our seventy one was seventy seven
the great paradox of the eliminated way
is that when years become serious that it gives a bewildering impression all spiritual life has collapsed and progress as an then when suddenly seems to be going backwards
but he says the reason for that is it's not our own activated and were used to gauging our progress by your own activity
we checked the miles or so by what we've done what we've achieved
where this the sense of some kind of activity so kind of operation going on here there is pretty much the touch of guides
push your medical records to but back then
it actually bring it car that says
yes you may be paranoid that they really are application
no
okay perhaps we shouldn't spend much more time on this because they have to begin our material today let me say something about that business of the dark nights of down of the cost of because i've also a the cabinet she's got a very nice skaven outline of the a set of
out in the dark nights and the dark night of the books that go together on sixty two sixty three at the same body sixty two and sixty three
because they're are really four nights okay
those the active night of the of sense and passive neither for changes was a active night of spirit of the plaza tried of this trip
as far as i understand it all of those together or the dark knight of the soul it's the so and including integrating both posted some spirit
because also in the dark knight of stolen that book includes the best of night of the senses
so the ascent and the dark knight was two books are completely organized according to the escape of the four nights
now the active night is what we do not a word just what we renounce for wait for go what we set aside what they leave behind what we deny ourselves and the passive night is the passive purification by the very light of by the very much a invasion of gov
and this is contemplation
you might be puzzled i was present available put and had to check this out again about plenty an active night of the spirit could be we can imagine pretty well with passive night it was perfectly i would need divine light the divine fire in you is deeply bernie
ing within the within your psyche with your spirit and you feel it has pain you feel it as negativity as oppression perhaps for alienation or even condemnation and chevrolet as being totally lost totally in the doctors that's not to right
it probably all experience over what would the active night of the of the spirit the active nine cents senses fairly obvious to because you not have i i'm using your imagination and it's not as well as the exteriors and interiors and it's of imagination and feeling deprived of all kinds of delights
allowing her kind of space avoid an emptiness darker skin
the active night of the spirit human spirit for him his intellect will memory so they active night of the spirit is the denial of until i will never take
it's a simple as that of course it's it's catalog and he goes through it
quick concretely
in
books two and three the ascent of not comment
so we have to be announced our desires to understand things
and to the joy thing
he also correlates the
he's three faculties were parts of the so with sweet theological virtues face basically relates to the intellect love relates to the will and hope relates to the memory

this
story
before you go on
wish
next up here on the left those are some passages you remember that those thirteen pages they can get somewhere in binder that are coach martin quotes from other books with is about contemplation those are the pages of the numbers and those thirteen pages where he has texts that directly refer to this pure confrontation that we've been taught
king about an section five even though all of those quotes practically they they indirectly at least implicitly to the contemplation because whenever he started kind of place you got that somewhere in his mind somewhere veterans
so i put them up there so you can take a look at you want you can park from a check
on our general outline for the course we had intended to talk about ways and beach however
i'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because you get a lot of that in other places you can now all of monastic life they set up to supply ways and reads for contemplation
so i'd refer you to friendships and come out these constitutions there are three chapters and where the ways and me just shut up
you've got chapter three which is about prayer
well you've got several levels we've got new christian god divine office you've got alexia the mean and then you've got to take all the rachio privada for interior for it as exchange him
and then you've got a chapter four on monastic asceticism and in chapter four
the basis that he urged his run
which from an early economic were confirmed number which it was the to life with nominal perhaps for
the constitution the person who wrote up i can remember
where st raphael is to said to have left his disciples know a compendium of doctrine of his own but the the other st benedict and eight he left him away of solitude of silence and a fasting
she let me touch and new and in chiller women in the
something like that does three things okay so solid silent and investing are taken as davis the key aesthetical means in the the way of st raphael dimensions but behind that you're going to eliminate stick that you've got the relative magnetic and everything
poverty chastity obedience these things well as it were taken for granted
so would lead us into too big an area to try to discuss rather than them
and then in chapter five you've you've got poverty and work both of which are involved with this work may seem to be pulling on the opposite end of the rope from contemplation but now it's something also the related conflict and poverty does too
you remember that book of panic or as blessing simplicity that i often referred to he has a good grip on a contemplative orientation of monasticism
and the central monastic virtue for him his blessing simplicity
have you think about that it's amazing how many of the monastic practices and negotiations can be embraced under that term simplicity the most obvious one is poverty
but it could also the renegotiations with the vouch
the other words you know celibacy chastity
obedience and so many other things so it's a very good general kind of a title like the for domestic way relating directly to what we're talking about contemplation that is as union and as unity as unity of experience and as an interior experience and also
related resonating with what we just ready to town the crotch for it's a matter of purification his whole st and all of works on the on the dark knight is purification whether it's active or whether it passive whether it's of the senses or whether it's of the spirit it's all in the same in the same direction to say
simplicity to say simplification more to say unification with the ship they the synonyms different perspectives on the same thing same way
the course at the bottom we have to place you talking about ways of vision theological virtues which are the substance of christian life as beethoven of
if we must have a diagram course

he's been nice for me
said

i think we can talk about these ways and means the same way that we go to the prayer
before the ways of
jose
at the way of simplicity that all of those renunciation renunciation world of in the purification than a prognostic
here is what the way of the word
which reflects your demeanor and also validity and everything that was from so if you're better ways and simplicity is the way an empty with radiation to creating an empty space here and then they way of the word or the category of
the where that's where you're putting something into the empty space that's where you played defeated in the graph because has like a purification of the ground likely become the leading have that's the created a space and the beginning of the filling the space which is also going to be illumination
the no radio you got the way of luck
which when you're talking about factors affecting the trip okay so it's also part of it because thirty the way to phrase
and was very much about even the rock in the conventional wisdom has been the grand lodge of the rules competitive
and of course that you have the rest of you do not have this year and of the gospel
main focus on respectively the fundamentals
and i'm i'm like what i call me either way about it
and as a way or been this is practically identical and a hero but something like just a sign of meditation
just and notice though if because because simplicity grandparents and of of other industry and a grip on is moving away from the world of business plans to visit
what appreciation and when it's moving towards god by this way emptiness which is also human here
so this is like the s journal cars upon it to this interior the
this big the way of asceticism this game away of

it's possible of course to make all kinds of correlations air within like the jewish tradition of fasting for an entree getting other the prerogative of nominative genitive wage or st john at the cross with his purgation and the nights where he talks about the of sense that the at the bottom and then a intellect
and will and finally memory to tough which he equates with substance with something like the center of the of the spirit of the human person and he's just talking about purification there now here we not only talking about verification we're talking about the nourishing the feeding with the word for instance but what it proposes purchase this
picture of our i can see you can you can always use netscape organizing things makes you think he knows nothing
you have a diagram they're also for marcus as they call them in hinduism member of the way of thought of knowledge that way of action that way of devotion
there's a
there's another one i believe which is is the way of of zoonotic in a way of the way of
of
contemplative emptiness but i don't find that
where are looking for
there's a was a book by an american over such out very nice baby and delay in terms of the for ways but the force one for him as not delay of a way of emptiness from the way accomplishment the way of yoga discipline
okay now we get to our section section we're going to have given short shrift if we want to finish today
let me first about you give you a brief outline and then we'll see if there are any questions about it and then i'd like to hang a couple of axons before we quit today before i forget it for next time please read the next section of mountain which is section six as known and
sevens and okay
and now notice were sort of past a peek of our study of a contemplative prayer and we're heading down into the with car on the peripheries the accessories

the context
other factors
no in this section six that we resign ourselves but today first of over in touch about illumination and for him a voluminous and is a kind of obsession with experience and other is going for the experience and making an idol making a god out at one spiritual experience
now the word illuminate has a lot of history of course that christianity and it's not maybe the
best word to use because it's been used very heavily and unjust they sometimes i think that
as as thomas keating writes about it but there was a prejudice against contemplation in the christian tradition during certain centuries like a sixteenth seventeenth century at seventy three her
to him in terms of illuminate that is contemplation was accused of being eliminated and to the isms get used like communism get used in a very kind of know
scattered and blanket and careless and unjust way sometimes
any what he's talking about here is going for experience
and instead of going for god
and so he's very cautious about that and here you always find a paradox because you do and check out across where it tells you to ignore and renounce all kinds of experience and he fills his his books with their spiritual experience so there are a veritable kind of candy store of
of delights and then he's telling all the time to announce it go faster
so where it is just middle of the paradox has has is necessary when talking about something like this which is essentially paradoxical and he talked about drugs and this was just the time and memory reduced and ninety and fifty nine the drug thing was young at that point and he's talking about aldous huxley wrote a book called
the gates of perception you know about his own experience with drugs mescaline and smart
so burden is his training at this is no that the questions in the question to are still open and the evidence were not yet in so it's different now
thirty five years later when we've seen so many people ruined by courage and song
but he's extremely cautious although he admits the possibility that there may be a spiritual experience and just by dutch is i don't know we should go for it
and he saying that they think almost intuitively instinctively because he knows there's something wrong because he knows some other nutritional at circuit
and that experience and i was not it and who may be getting this experience with you know you're losing something else
it's very hard from from the point at which is speaking it's very hard to pin it down
the true contemplative is a lover of sobriety and obscurity prefers all that is quiet humble or something he has no taste for spiritual excitements they usually wearing them
yeah i think it's it's true with and you go over and you read that other page where he's talking about the great awakening to the lunatic like
there's plenty of excitement fish so once you can read the from in the paradox remember revolving door
the intersection of contemplation of neurosis
now he's sounds rather ruthless here has he has he referred to as projects got this way from being a novice ministry start
he sounds like we're very often and i produce a a contemplation
basically that he seems to be saying is that
there are two to kind of attitude one is neurotic and the airline is healthy too much contemplation the neurotic attitude is basically an editor withdraw from life it's an evasion withdrawal from reality and a sinking into a kind of trance that kind of semi-conscious state which looks very much like
a contemplative state looks very much like the third quite petition
and the other way he says is not withdraw from reality but somehow a movement towards reality
in which the person is awakened rather than entrenched
and the first one neurotic good he says
has in some way to go for the experienced and to put great value on the experience because that's the only way to justify what he's doing justify his evasion to the only way and running away from reality that he can make his life worthwhile is to say this is an abomination enlightenment whatever they can
satori contemplation so he really makes that a big deal
and ah
really what he's doing however this is somehow subconscious instead of super country so that's the thesis
there's no the neurotic cannot help but self-consciously exploit his opportunities for spiritual experience he's compelled to do this to allay his anxiety and to justify his withdraw from realities are religious sect and actual fact is contemplation as or lie and active idolatry so much as like hoses here
nine down from china and and slave you know slaying all about him
smashing the golden calf and seven and dividing them into two camps the sheep and goats and telling an arab and sons to slay the goat i don't know if it's as simple as that it maybe that we all have some of both finish know that we all have some was neurotic tendencies including murder so we have to be a little careful
about that ruthless
judgment we see nevertheless really saying is true that we have to discern within ourselves where the evasion is and where the truth is where there has been to the city is and make a choice therefore to turn away from want to control the other but data think it's not only is it a mixed matter but i think it's also
repeated choice that we have to make as were in different situations throughout our like

sometimes it's hard to tell which of those two situations year and whether you in the state of genuine say a prayer of simplicity or something like that or a kind of trance the kind of numbness but the very concerned with that keeping
your your conscience
awake and pokemon and keeping open the possibility in your mind that you're here are and an inauthentic physician and the desire for the truth is a safe car and the willingness to open it up to somebody else to get some feedback on
uk for what we decide that we're broke a we're saved for a million contemplative land and we don't have to worry about
veracity or reality checks for any longer we can really be a think
then here
goes off on the institutional contemplative life once began over on our page seventy eight so it's obviously something very much in his mind at that time
and he's talking about a rhythm of life which is hostile to contemplation that is the temple of life which is geared to the and he needed the extra person and he's thinking now of the tractor outside your window as rights in the cheese factory that he has begun to a half
am
then he's got a second there and a desire for contemplation that's kind of political an obligatory statement at one of the questions of that day as to whether you do that a desire contemplation and notice that want you can we get to the paradox paradoxically the paradox where media everywhere because take the buddhist perspective in which
in which is actually the extinction of desire that is the state of enlightenment that virtually the same here in the word nirvana what the blowing out of the flame the extinction of the so how can you desire the very extinction of desire or to put it another way
if you desire contemplation you're going away from against contemplation because contemplation is the absence determination of desire okay is the not
so therefore to desires to go on and opposite direction we have to deal with that paradox here and he's dealing also a lot of stuff that we don't need to think about because it's it's history now most questions that were
what about thirty years ago for forty years ago that conclusion
so he continues distress repeated stress on some of this point to roosevelt kind of pleasure just exists that is it is effect
it's not a doubtful matter for secondly it's not something extraordinary something ordinary
that belongs in normal christian life
in the life of all the traditional religious traditions
contribution had not be exaggerated and distorted it made to see a great and saturation poor and humble
if we desire on occasion we should be desiring more than contemplation we should be desired what would you call it the union of the purity of heart that go with contemplation
an occassion identifies to accomplished
none towards the end of this section nine at the bottom of one forty six and the top of one forty seven he gets specific about the real obstacles to contemplation not so much the desire for contemplation of he says virginity and prejudicial for lunch and he thinks he knows what it is before him
and the second thing is this success orientation by would
direction you know so it's rather hard to give know that it's phillips boost america
he who thinks that contemplation is locked and spectacular cannot receive the intuition of a supreme the transcendent reality which is at the same time permanent and zone ordinary life that's quite profound reminds me of a one of my favorite random articles of the experience of god today we talked about the change
in the equality actually the experience of got a history and that today we cannot seek it in the extraordinary must seek it somehow the deaths in the imminence of our our on ordinary lives i wonder if i had read the article
and then finally he's got
a long section on the sense of sin i think there's a very important section and much work
first of all he's very ironic about modern man in the innocence of modern man
who says it's production and doesn't have any censorship and something very sinister in our culture is the kind of movement towards the extinction of censorship
what might be surprised at how the first step toward spiritual liberation not so much the awareness of what lies at the end of the road the experience of god as are clear view of the great obstacle that much it's very beginning that obstacle is consonant you can argue about which comes first and which the contemplative to
choco the attraction to god or the sense of my personal space which comes first
now what is it can be inside the other your sense of sin they have incited a touch of the presence of your gut
but burton is is
at his literary best when he's writing about t the foibles of might have been contemporary society is wickedly
sharp and ironic sarcastic as here
the hopeless innocence of modern man who is so full of said that you no longer experiences contrition
and has consumed with guilt only for what is relatively inoffensive
it is like the johann sebastian bach of sarcasm when it gets going you just displays
and then the distinction between sin and guilt guilt for him here is something social now which guilt is is being disapproved if i'm guilty that means i'm anxious because i'm afraid somebody's going to blame me
but sin is something authentic and his paragraphs they're about to genuine sensors and starting at the bottom of eighty one one forty seven and going to the next page or are quite important
not because i have violated the law outside of myself because i have violated the in most most of my own being better at the same time the laws of god who dwells within me you this is the contemplative perspective which is unity and imminent in the sense of
not this dualistic idea of you're going as an exterior live with a violation of the law which is one with you and is god at the same time
a violation of the being of yourself from being of god the to be intimately related
tavis answer soon as to realize myself to be not only morally but spiritually dead
moral guess what save a rather of guilt have been killed by the violation of a book that there is being a little bit arbitrary with his language moral and spiritual
but spiritual death is a sense of having separated myself from truth by completing in or falsity from love by selfishness from reality by trying to assert as real world and hustings once you get a literary martin is the politics of this kind of thing
the sense of sin is then something ontological and immediate which does not spring from reflection of my actions in comparison with the bronco that springs directly from the evil that is president and they note the symmetry of that with the contemplation of these countries that to say that are gonna pollution is an immediate experience unmediated by
symbolism ideas and concepts of perceptions and other things of god and this is an immediate experience for sin so it's like a negative experience with it's like a negative contemplative experience okay
and something think about i think is quite good
and then he gets sarcastic again about collective morality and the kind of society where the only guilt you feel is some kind of offensive against the common code and meanwhile you and everybody
else are ignoring all kinds of real soon table somewhere he wrote something about pikemen
and i'm not going remember where i couldn't remember was in charge of auschwitz or the whole system and give there's a tragic the whole liquidation of of the jews and is a perfectly good man and his trial and everything he appeared as a perfectly upright nantwich of the following orders and should be doing what he what he should do
as people do a disservice most people do it now working for the government or and military you do what you told them and you do it as well as you can that's when instrument exterminate millions of jews just as he was told to do that's what he's talking about him
where the only
the only guilt you feel the only senior it's possible for you will experience in michelle is summon up breaking the common code is somehow
offending your society getting out of step with the the common thing that's going on this is a very important awakening not only for somebody that nazi germany the for americans as well you because i think the time of vietnam for instance for the time of are beginning to wake up to that when people would riot in the streets about what was happening to be at
dumb that's this kind of awakening
we did i put the whole thing is wrong to hope the all things go wrong direction we have to give your daddy so many there's a profit and instruments
take for instance the willingness of the majority of believers you need to religious people to accept a hydrogen bomb with all that it implies with no more than a shadow of theoretical protest
elsewhere he'll talk about the whole just for kids from but
it has been remarked that the more totalitarian society is for example out of russia had this germany and less it's members feel initial inception so the society absolve you from sin does it is a subtle very powerful psychology operating as endeavors propaganda by which anybody who japan
member of this thing to say such step just feel that and go to senegal no problem though you just go on it's like an artificial gotta to complete the idolatrous kind of empire
so then in contrast with that he says on a three it's the application admission of the contemplative to keep alive the spirit of man and to nurture at least in himself personal responsibility before god and personal independence from collective irresponsibility hence part of
mission of the contemplative is to keep alive in the world this meant substance
so here merton joins answer with somebody like berrigan and you know how about how active written was are vocally was about things like piece and nuclear weapons and so on
this relates to avert and identifying a monastic movement the desert fathers with the first axial period where the time of the emergence of individual consciousness and such an individual responsibility against the background of collective and tribal societies back and fun even the bc time time of
wouldn't someone and around tradition in the desert coach
that one more point here before we quit
and that is he says because of the horrors of our time the experience of contemplation itself is different today than it was an ancient times now that's something i'd like to come back to and our final session and a couple of weeks but is they connect with have experienced really different nowadays and it was in the
fifth sanctuary and the eleventh century time of st raphael on the sixteenth century the time of seventeen time of china the personal situation and sixteenth century there's a different today
is there any explanation as i'm reading that we can take from that martin says there is he says that the experience of contemplation itself is somehow related to the spirit of the times and therefore the evil a particular evils that are present in our world of today are trying to
a factor where be reflected in your own contemplative experience
and he implies you that the experience of light which has characterized the contemplative experiencing in earlier times is not going to be so predominant in our experience today
but rather an experience of darkness and an experience of emptiness
so he says a lot there that he doesn't he doesn't pursue it doesn't develop afterwards but to the implications of that are very great enormous implications for all that has been shame because it puts everything in it may change that contemplative prayer competitive experience in a different perspective and different life so you'd like to see that more developed
it puts it observed parentheses
a contemplative life when our time is therefore necessarily modified by the sims of our age they bring down upon us a cloud of darkness far more terrible and the innocent night of unknowing
now you know that you have to take that relatively to because there were able to those ages two and those evils were no doubt somehow part of the of the contemplative experiences this doesn't begin today to begin just know there's something to it it is the dark knight of the soul which is
descended on the whole world contemplation and the age of auschwitz and dachau salafi and karaganda is something darker and more fearsome the contemplation of the age of the church product well the age of the church fathers the devil was around to that there were no hers in the world and then charters
maybe there wasn't much christian complicity in the orange the in those pictures of for wanting somebody think about because i think it's important for the whole the whole subject
until on next page the final page of this section are page eighty four
he says that we can expect to have dramatic contemplative experiences in on time we could expect our contemplative life itself to be a life of emptiness have been a sense of dollars
leave nothingness as it is it is present
her contemplative life today must be alive for deep sorrow and contrition
and remember that martin is
when is a poet he's an artist and he's the kind of writer who will at one on the move with the intuition and the feeling of that moment say something and yet another moment move with the intuition and the feeling of that moment and say something receives completely different was on a completely different tone and innocence that's good because it allows him
the to move closer to the curvature of truth and he would if he was working from hard and fast principles and was a completely illogical
get any questions before he quit today
why being unfair to the material we've actually gotten up to the end of chapter
okay next time i'll attach our part seven
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