Christianity Outside the Box

[Nick_A]

Hi Earl

As I understand it, Christ went back to his origin outside the cave and left the Holy spirit to help us inside the cave on our journey towards awakening. Naturally then, being inside the cave, it would be naive for me to talk about my experiences with Christ. My purpose now is to acquire the psychological means in order to become free of attachments to cave life. This in turn requires a quality of detachment and conscious attention unnatural for cave life governed by unconscious reaction in order to "Know Thyself." So Christian exercises including prayer are designed to lead to awakening rather than to experience Christ. First things first. We must get out of our own way for the sake of experiential reality and the experience of life outside the cave.

Simone Weil had such experiences. At one time she was an atheist and communist but her dedication to truth allowed her to develop a quality of attention and detachment second to none. It is this I believe that allowed her to experience Christ and what Paul describes as the third heaven:

2 Corinthians 12

1I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. 5I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. 6Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.

I believe her division of infinities leads to the third heaven. She said

There was a young English Catholic there from whom I gained my first idea of the supernatural power of the sacraments because of the truly angelic radiance with which he seemed to be clothed after going to communion. Chance -- for I always prefer saying chance rather than Providence -- made of him a messenger to me. For he told me of the existence of those English poets of the seventeenth century who are named metaphysical. In reading them later on, I discovered the poem of which I read you what is unfortunately a very inadequate translation. It is called "Love". I learned it by heart. Often, at the culminating point of a violent headache, I make myself say it over, concentrating all my attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines. I used to think I was merely reciting it as a beautiful poem, but without my knowing it the recitation had the virtue of a prayer. It was during one of these recitations that, as I told you, Christ himself came down and took possession of me.

In my arguments about the insolubility of the problem of God I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God I had vaguely heard tell of things of this kind, but I had never believed in them. In the Fioretti the accounts of apparitions rather put me off if anything, like the miracles in the Gospel. Moreover, in this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my senses nor my imagination had any part; I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face.

I had never read any mystical works because I had never felt any call to read them. In reading as in other things I have always striven to practice obedience. There is nothing more favorable to intellectual progress, for as far as possible I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not read, I eat. God in his mercy had prevented me from reading the mystics, so that it should be evident to me that I had not invented this absolutely unexpected contact.

Yet I still half refused, not my love but my intelligence. For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.

After this I came to feel that Plato was a mystic, that all the Iliad is bathed in Christian light, and that Dionysus and Osiris are in a certain sense Christ himself; and my love was thereby redoubled.

I never wondered whether Jesus was or was not the Incarnation of God; but in fact I was incapable of thinking of him without thinking of him as God.

In the spring of 1940 I read the Bhagavad-Gita. Strange to say it was in reading those marvelous words, words with such a Christian sound, put into the mouth of an incarnation of God, that I came to feel strongly that we owe an allegiance to religious truth which is quite different from the admiration we accord to a beautiful poem; it is something far more categorical.

During all this time of spiritual progress I had never prayed. I was afraid of the power of suggestion that is in prayer -- the very power for which Pascal recommends it. Pascal's method seems to me one of the worst for attaining faith.

Contact with you was not able to persuade me to pray. On the contrary I thought the danger was all the greater, since I also had to beware of the power of suggestion in my friendship with you. At the same time I found it very difficult not to pray and not to tell you so. Moreover I knew I could not tell you without completely misleading you about myself. At that time I should not have been able to make you understand.

Until last September I had never once prayed in all my life, at least not in the literal sense of the word. I had never said any words to God, either out loud or mentally. I had never pronounced a liturgical prayer. I had occasionally recited the Salve Regina, but only as a beautiful poem.

Last summer, doing Greek with T-, I went through the Our Father word for word in Greek. We promised each other to learn it by heart. I do not think he ever did so, but some weeks later, as I was turning over the pages of the Gospel, I said to myself that since I had promised to do this thing and it was good, I ought to do it. I did it. The infinite sweetness of this Greek text so took hold of me that for several days I could not stop myself from saying it over all the time. A week afterward I began the vine harvest I recited the Our Father in Greek every day before work, and I repeated it very often in the vineyard.

Since that time I have made a practice of saying it through once each morning with absolute attention. If during the recitation my attention wanders or goes to sleep, in the minutest degree, I begin again until I have once succeeded in going through it with absolutely pure attention. Sometimes it comes about that I say it again out of sheer pleasure, but I only do it if I really feel the impulse.

The effect of this practice is extraordinary and surprises me every time, for, although I experience it each day, it exceeds my expectation at each repetition.

At times the very first words tear my thoughts from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor point of view. The infinity of the ordinary expanses of perception is replaced by an infinity to the second or sometimes the third degree. At the same time, filling every part of this infinity of infinity, there is silence, a silence which is not an absence of sound but which is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing this silence.

Sometimes, also, during this recitation or at other moments, Christ is present with me in person, but his presence is infinitely more real, more moving, more clear than on that first occasion when he took possession of me.

I should never have been able to take it upon myself to tell you all this had it not been for the fact that I am going away. And as I am going more or less with the idea of probable death, I do not believe that I have the right to keep it to myself. For after all, the whole of this matter is not a question concerning me myself. It concerns God. I am really nothing in it all. If one could imagine any possibility of error in God, I should think that it had all happened to me by mistake. But perhaps God likes to use castaway objects, waste, rejects. After all, should the bread of the host be moldy, it would become the Body of Christ just the same after the priest had consecrated it. Only it cannot refuse, while we can disobey. It sometimes seems to me that when I am treated in so merciful a way, every sin on my part must be a mortal sin. And I am constantly committing them....

excerpted from WAITING FOR GOD by Simone Weil - Harper & Row, New York, 1951, translated by Emma Craufurd (title is also translated as "Waiting ON God")

French © La Colombe Edition du Vieux Colombier, 1950
English © G.P.Putnam's & Sons and Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951, 1979
All Rights Reserved

Reading Simone I see how far I am from Christ and how important the Holy Spirit is for me to get out of my own way before concentration on Christ can become anything more than misguided idolatry.

Why is the faith of the centurion regarded so highly by Jesus?

Luke 7

1When Jesus had finished saying all this in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. 2There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, "This man deserves to have you do this, 5because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." 6So Jesus went with them.
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: "Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."
9When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." 10Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.

This is a very deep passage with layers of meaning but in relation to the point I am making, the centurion is actually a "middle" between the higher he is receptive to and the lower to which he channels help. "Presence" is really an inner psychological alignment that connects the higher and lower in our being through the middle which is the beginning of true "I". When we are "present" we are a middle connecting the higher and lower. Our trouble is that we are rarely present so in reality do not have the faith OF Christ, we have no "I".

So for me, Christianity is the willingness to become real, consciously carry ones cross for the sake of becoming oneself, rather than passing the buck onto a fantasy Christ conjured by our defense mechnanisms.

 

[earl]

OK, while being of mystical inclination, there are obviously a number of things you mentioned I'd agree with-& a ton Andrew would agree with There are discoveries and practices that tend to overlap among various mystical traditions-it was apparently Meister Eckhart who coined the adage that all mystics speak the same language, though Eckhart made his discoveries via his reliance upon Christ. It appears that what you're saying is that you make no reliance upon Christ. So, in what way could you term your approach Christian? earl

 

[Nick_A]

OK, while being of mystical inclination, there are obviously a number of things you mentioned I'd agree with-& a ton Andrew would agree with There are discoveries and practices that tend to overlap among various mystical traditions-it was apparently Meister Eckhart who coined the adage that all mystics speak the same language, though Eckhart made his discoveries via his reliance upon Christ. It appears that what you're saying is that you make no reliance upon Christ. So, in what way could you term your approach Christian? earl

Imagine a ladder between heaven and earth. The Christ came from above and devolved onto our plane we call earth. Then he opened the conscious path by which he could return to his origin. This conscious path includes an opening for the Spirit to help. The Christ evolves back to his origin and those so inclined can climb the ladder and follow the path.

A mystic like Meister Eckhart or Simone Weil is simply out of our league. So we must take gradual steps to atain some quality of faith necessary for the path. In Jacob Needleman's book "Lost Christianity," her refers to it as intermediate Christianity that has become lost in favor of imagination.

Christianity doesn't deny christ but rather suggests the correct relationship between Christ and fallen Man; truth and imagination.

 

[earl]

And so you relate to Christ how? earl

 

[Nick_A]

And so you relate to Christ how? earl

Christ is "I AM" I am not "I Am." For me, "I am" is always followed by something. I am this, that, or the other thing. Man has the potential "to be" including me. For me to be, like Jesus I would have "to be." But I lack the inner unity to be and am either one thing or another.

Christ is "I AM" Man on earth is an aggragate. Christianity has the purpose of making a silk purse out of a sows ear. It seeks through re-birth to transform a reactive plurality into conscious inner unity. Not so easy. Inner unity exists in us as a seed but for the seed to mature to become Christ like is a profound struggle.

"The seed of God is in us. Pear seeds grow pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seeds into God." Meister Eckhart

 

[earl]

Oh, that's OK, Nick A. I'll stop jerking your chain, but in your case if Thomas would say you're way out of the box, I'd agree. earl

 

[Nick_A]

Oh, that's OK, Nick A. I'll stop jerking your chain, but in your case if Thomas would say you're way out of the box, I'd agree. earl

Thanks, I hope to be at least a bit out of the box so I'm making progress.

If you think I'm out of the box, one of my ancestors was an archbishop with a personal friendship with Helena Blavatsky. That must have gotten everyone annoyed

 

[taijasi]

Thanks, I hope to be at least a bit out of the box so I'm making progress.

If you think I'm out of the box, one of my ancestors was an archbishop with a personal friendship with Helena Blavatsky. That must have gotten everyone annoyed

Hey, Nick, did he happen to pass along anything to you about a deathbed confession and/or conversion to Christianity that good ol' HPB might have made?

You know, maybe she realized at the last moment how much nonsense she'd been preaching -- and just, couldn't stand it any longer. Oh yes, I'm really waiting on pins & needles for this one ...

sighhhh

 

[Nick_A]

Hey, Nick, did he happen to pass along anything to you about a deathbed confession and/or conversion to Christianity that good ol' HPB might have made?

You know, maybe she realized at the last moment how much nonsense she'd been preaching -- and just, couldn't stand it any longer. Oh yes, I'm really waiting on pins & needles for this one ...

sighhhh

That was in the 19th century. I'm not that old. I would have appreciated being a fly on the wall during their discussions. However, in researching him I came upon some profound Christian understanding lost to modern Fundamentalism. From a letter from the sister of Blavatsky

Next year Blavatsky went to Tiflis. On her way, at a church service at Sadonsk, she was recognised by the Most Reverend Isidor, former Exarch of Georgia, and later Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, who came to Sadonsk on his way from Kiev. He had known Blavatsky in her youth in Tiflis and he sent a servant to her with an invitation to visit him. Isidor enquired how and where she had travelled, where she was going now, etc. He very soon noticed the phenomena which surrounded her and was deeply interested in them; he questioned her about them, put mental questions, and, after receiving sensible A answers, was still more surprised. When saying good-bye, he blessed her and said words regarding her exceptional gifts, words which always remained very dear to her, as the opinion on her gift of a high priest of the Orthodox Church. He said: "Every power comes from God, you need not feel dismayed if you do not abuse this power given to you. There are many undiscovered powers in nature. Many of them are not known to man, but it is not forbidden to discover and to use them. Man will gradually obtain control over these powers and will be able to apply them usefully for humanity. God bless you in all your kind and good deeds.

Lost common sense.

 

[Thomas]

Hi Nick —

Christ is "I AM" I am not "I Am."

Interesting ... St Catherine of Siena was told in a vision, "I am He Who Is, you are she who is not ... "

But she knew that 'she is' by virtue of Him — it is He who holds her in being, and you, and me, and Earl, and ...

For me, "I am" is always followed by something. I am this, that, or the other thing. Man has the potential "to be" including me. For me to be, like Jesus I would have "to be." But I lack the inner unity to be and am either one thing or another.

I read it the other way. For me 'I am' stands on its own, like Popeye ... "I am what I am" whereas 'to be' invites something ... semantics, really, I suppose. Is it time? I am is any given moment, to be is a continuum ... ?

Christianity has the purpose of making a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Oh, fie on you Nick! God made man and saw it was 'very good' — the best day's work He'd done so far! In fact, He thought, "Well I won't top that in a hurry," so He took the rest of the week off.
I'd say it's us who've made a sow's ear out of a silk purse.

It seeks through re-birth to transform a reactive plurality into conscious inner unity. Not so easy. Inner unity exists in us as a seed but for the seed to mature to become Christ like is a profound struggle.

Yes that sounds awfully difficult ... I'm not even sure I understand.

In trad. Christianity, The Lord is at the heart, or rather is the heart, of everything ... to become like Christ all we have to do is relate to things the way He does, and that's in love ...

It's as if God said, "Do yourself a favour and ignore yourself ... You look out for your neighbour, and I'll look out for you."

Look at the Weil quote again ... the epiphany for her was when she saw Christ looking at her from someone else (the radiant glow of the communicant?) ... no mental process there, no transformative discipline, no reason, no logic, just bang! Something right out of the blue ... it seems to me that chasing the mental processes just interferes with a natural process and gets in the way of things ... as long as you're watching for it, you're in the way ...

Love is not an intellectual exercise. It's an exercise of the will, it takes effort.

The intellectual exercise is to stop doing what stops us loving ... and that's loving ourselves too much. As Eckhart said, the prince among virtues is detachment ...

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

... but in your case if Thomas would say you're way out of the box, I'd agree. earl

Careful, dude ... you seem a 'go with the flow' kinda guy ... but you're gettin' perilously close to this here riverbank ...

Thomas

 

[taijasi]

There is a Christ Self to which Christ Jesus referred ... as the "Temple not made with human hands." He did not say, however that the Temple did not require constructing.

Does a Buddha become a Buddha overnight? Do we move from second grade to third, or from third grade to college overnight?

Hmmmm ...

 

[Thomas]

Does a Buddha become a Buddha overnight? Do we move from second grade to third, or from third grade to college overnight?

Hmmmm ...

Hi Andrew —

That's an interesting idea, and transposing it into a Christian context ... the question then is how, or indeed what, are we measuring?


The exchange with the robber on the cross would imply it can happen in a moment:
"... for we receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man hath done no evil. And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee: This day thou shalt be with me in paradise." Luke 23:41-43

So it would seem yes, it can be instant and immediate. In the Christian paradigm, this involves simply becoming one's true self and acknowledging the source of that self is outside of self, in Christ — this is the 'putting on the mind of Christ' — once the heart is open and receptive, then the Holy Spirit can get to work perfecting what has been wounded.

So the interior conversion ... metanoia ... putting on the mind of Christ, can happen in an instant, and involves one's actual state of being.

Thomas

 

[earl]

Careful, dude ... you seem a 'go with the flow' kinda guy ... but you're gettin' perilously close to this here riverbank ...

Thomas

Rivers flow in channels. earl

 

[earl]

Hi Nick —


Interesting ... St Catherine of Siena was told in a vision, "I am He Who Is, you are she who is not ... "

But she knew that 'she is' by virtue of Him — it is He who holds her in being, and you, and me, and Earl, and ...


I read it the other way. For me 'I am' stands on its own, like Popeye ... "I am what I am" whereas 'to be' invites something ... semantics, really, I suppose. Is it time? I am is any given moment, to be is a continuum ... ?


Oh, fie on you Nick! God made man and saw it was 'very good' — the best day's work He'd done so far! In fact, He thought, "Well I won't top that in a hurry," so He took the rest of the week off.
I'd say it's us who've made a sow's ear out of a silk purse.


Yes that sounds awfully difficult ... I'm not even sure I understand.

In trad. Christianity, The Lord is at the heart, or rather is the heart, of everything ... to become like Christ all we have to do is relate to things the way He does, and that's in love ...

It's as if God said, "Do yourself a favour and ignore yourself ... You look out for your neighbour, and I'll look out for you."

Look at the Weil quote again ... the epiphany for her was when she saw Christ looking at her from someone else (the radiant glow of the communicant?) ... no mental process there, no transformative discipline, no reason, no logic, just bang! Something right out of the blue ... it seems to me that chasing the mental processes just interferes with a natural process and gets in the way of things ... as long as you're watching for it, you're in the way ...

Love is not an intellectual exercise. It's an exercise of the will, it takes effort.

The intellectual exercise is to stop doing what stops us loving ... and that's loving ourselves too much. As Eckhart said, the prince among virtues is detachment ...

Thomas

"As long as you're watching for it you're in the way." Hmm-I like that point. Interestingly, though Buddhism posits a wealth of transformative disciplines, in a way they, too, are all just forms of metanoia in that Buddhists teachers have repeatedly said for millenia that no meditative form will ensure one gets to awakening/enlightenment and, in fact to the degree one "grasps on" to enlightenment they can ironically hold themselves apart from it. Ultimately, they seem to be saying enlightenment, though needing some form of discipline/effort-a turning toward as in metanoia- the outcome of enlightenment(theosis) will somehow just happen with no apparent steps by the follower-a sort of "grace." They might say the metanoic steps they take make them more "enlightenment-prone." earl

 

[lunamoth]

"As long as you're watching for it you're in the way." Hmm-I like that point. Interestingly, though Buddhism posits a wealth of transformative disciplines, in a way they, too, are all just forms of metanoia in that Buddhists teachers have repeatedly said for millenia that no meditative form will ensure one gets to awakening/enlightenment and, in fact to the degree one "grasps on" to enlightenment they can ironically hold themselves apart from it. Ultimately, they seem to be saying enlightenment, though needing some form of discipline/effort-a turning toward as in metanoia- the outcome of enlightenment(theosis) will somehow just happen with no apparent steps by the follower-a sort of "grace." They might say the metanoic steps they take make them more "enlightenment-prone." earl

Sounds like a matter of training the vine...but the production of fruit requires other elements.

 

[Nick_A]

Hi Thomas

Interesting ... St Catherine of Siena was told in a vision, "I am He Who Is, you are she who is not ... "

But she knew that 'she is' by virtue of Him — it is He who holds her in being, and you, and me, and Earl, and ...

I'll stick with St. Catherine. What you call "you me and Earl" is our personalities which have no objective existence but are just established behavioral patterns. The seed of the soul is the beginning of Man's potential "I AM." It's life is what we have to lose our lives, (our dominant personalities) for.

I read it the other way. For me 'I am' stands on its own, like Popeye ... "I am what I am" whereas 'to be' invites something ... semantics, really, I suppose. Is it time? I am is any given moment, to be is a continuum ... ?

It isn't semantics. Where Buddhism asserts no soul and Christendom professes a fully developed soul for everyone, Christianity is in-between asserting the seed of the soul with the potential to become a soul.

When we say "I am" it is the expression of one part of an aggregate that collectively we call self. The wish "To Be" is for inner unity: our potential.

Oh, fie on you Nick! God made man and saw it was 'very good' — the best day's work He'd done so far! In fact, He thought, "Well I won't top that in a hurry," so He took the rest of the week off.
I'd say it's us who've made a sow's ear out of a silk purse.

Regardless of the cause, the effect has been for Man's devolvement into this unnatural state we call normality. This is the sow's ear. Christianity still has the purpose of restoring the sow's ear into the silk purse so that "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" can become possible rather than fantasy.

In trad. Christianity, The Lord is at the heart, or rather is the heart, of everything ... to become like Christ all we have to do is relate to things the way He does, and that's in love ...

Christ is a silk purse and we are a sow's ear and yet you assert we can relate to things as he does?

Where Christendom is concerned with what we DO, Christianity is concerned with what ARE. Meister Eckhart expresses it with great understanding:

"People should not worry as much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works." Meister Eckhart

It's as if God said, "Do yourself a favour and ignore yourself ... You look out for your neighbour, and I'll look out for you."

Have you ever considered the essential difference between secular and Christian love? Very few ever do but it is a striking contrast.

Love is not an intellectual exercise. It's an exercise of the will, it takes effort.

Yes, but what kind of effort?

The intellectual exercise is to stop doing what stops us loving ... and that's loving ourselves too much. As Eckhart said, the prince among virtues is detachment ...

But again detachment is a property of a silk purse and not a sow's ear. Part of the process of attaining self knowledge reveals that we have neither conscious attention nor detachment. Simone was highly developed in both these qualities but only a few such people come along in a generation. With us, we have to gradually develop these abilities and it begins with the recognition that we don't have them and just are creatures of reaction in Plato's cave.

The exchange with the robber on the cross would imply it can happen in a moment:
"... for we receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man hath done no evil. And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee: This day thou shalt be with me in paradise." Luke 23:41-43

This is not so simple. We don't know this robber. What did he rob?

Luke 23

39One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!" 40But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? 41We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong."

The first robber is asserting the usual secular approach that when the going gets tough, run like hell. The other robber obviously understood. Perhaps he robbed to feed his family? Breaking secular law may be a reality that doesn't deny our connection to higher consciousness. Perhaps he was trying to consciously carry his cross as well. If this is the case, of course being next to Jesus would be a great help.

Just because a person has a period of awakening doesn't lead to the kingdom. There has been a lot that has attached itself to the seed of the soul that holds it down and feeds on it because of the quality of a person's unconscious reactions. That must be purified and requires more than thinking "wonderful" thoughts but instead carrying ones cross..

 

[Thomas]

Hi Nick —

I'll stick with St. Catherine.

OK ... but remember she's a mystic, a saint, and a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, so what she says is precisely in accord with the doctrine she has received. If you're going to interpret Eckhart, or Catherine, you have to do so in a Catholic manner, as they would not have it any other way.

What you call "you me and Earl" is our personalities which have no objective existence but are just established behavioral patterns. The seed of the soul is the beginning of Man's potential "I AM." It's life is what we have to lose our lives, (our dominant personalities) for.

That's not how Christianity understands it ... Pope Benedict sums it up admirably: "Christianity is not a moral code or a philosophy, but an encounter with a person"

The example he uses is the Pauline epiphany:
"The risen Christ appeared as a splendid light and addressed Saul, transforming his thinking and his very life ... The splendour of the Risen One left him blind; presenting also externally what the interior reality was: his blindness in regard to the truth, to the light, which is Christ. And then, his definitive 'yes' to Christ in baptism reopens his eyes, and makes him truly see."

and further:
"... this change of his life, this transformation of his whole being was not the result of a psychological process, of a maturation or intellectual and moral evolution, but it came from outside: It was not the result of his thinking but of the encounter with Jesus Christ. In this sense it was not simply a conversion, a maturing of his 'I,' rather, it was death and resurrection for himself: A life of his died and a new one was born with the Risen Christ (metanoia) ... We are Christians only if we encounter Christ ... in the reading of sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ's heart and feel him touch ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we really become Christians. And in this way, our reason opens, the whole of Christ's wisdom opens and all the richness of the truth."

'Personalities' are indeed ephemeral and chimeric, subject to accident and contingency ... but what dominates is a disorder of the will that seeks an immediate good rather than a distant goal ... but the person, the soul, is an objective and concrete reality ... we might talk of rebirth and new being, of transcendance and transformation ... but we do not become another person, another soul.

If we die to sin, we're still the same person.

Christianity is in-between asserting the seed of the soul with the potential to become a soul.

Christianity asserts the potential of anything lies in its capacity to be all that it can be — its good and/or its end ... St Thomas Aquinas shows that this end and good is in God. I'll dig out the references for you if you want.

When we say "I am" it is the expression of one part of an aggregate that collectively we call self. The wish "To Be" is for inner unity: our potential.

Depends on who's speaking, I suppose ... I am can indeed come from the most superficial part of ourselves "I love Mars Bars" ... or it can come from the very depths of one's being in the soul ...

... but our potential is not in our own inner unity, but in the unity of all ... the comm-unity. That's what Church symbolises and makes real.

Regardless of the cause, the effect has been for Man's devolvement into this unnatural state we call normality. This is the sow's ear. Christianity still has the purpose of restoring the sow's ear into the silk purse so that "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" can become possible rather than fantasy.

Oh yes, in that sense, yes.

Christ is a silk purse and we are a sow's ear and yet you assert we can relate to things as he does?

Yep. It's axiomatic in Catholicism that human nature is wounded, but not incapable ... I know in some Reformation denominations, they view it otherwise, that man is incapably corrupt and utterly helpless. If the answer was otherwise, there'd be no point in trying, would there?

Where Christendom is concerned with what we DO, Christianity is concerned with what ARE.

Indeed ... hence the emphasis on the person.

Trouble is, who we like to think we are is rarely matched by what we do. When it is, we're saints ... when it's not, we're sinners.

The discreet ignoring of the 'do' bit covers a multitude of sins ... but there's no getting away from it:
Matthew 7:15-16
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. By their fruits you shall know them."
I spent too many years in an Heremetic Order which did a lot of good work ... but we were led by wolves.

Luke 13:26 "By their works ye shall know them. And every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire."

Eckhart's point is that a good man who believes in Christ, and a good man who doesn't, both do the same good works, but the quality of the soul will be substantially different — it's only the former, the good man who believe in Christ, who sanctifies the work. But keep that to yourself ... see below ...

Have you ever considered the essential difference between secular and Christian love? Very few ever do but it is a striking contrast.

I know, but my advice would be to keep mum on that point, as it annoys the secularists immensely and invites accusations of elitism, etc. It has become part of my didache, rather than my kerygma.

This is not so simple. We don't know this robber. What did he rob?

It's immaterial. You say "Perhaps he robbed to feed his family? Breaking secular law may be a reality that doesn't deny our connection to higher consciousness. Perhaps he was trying to consciously carry his cross as well. If this is the case, of course being next to Jesus would be a great help" ... but I would suggest you're trying to rationalise the point to fit your argument ... to make it fit into your box?

There has been a lot that has attached itself to the seed of the soul that holds it down and feeds on it because of the quality of a person's unconscious reactions. That must be purified and requires more than thinking "wonderful" thoughts but instead carrying ones cross..

And yet Christ 'justified' those very people who wouldn't understand a single word of what you're on about ... the widow, the publican, the thief, the harlot ... all he said was 'love' ... He'll do the rest.

I'm really not so far from you Nick, but as a Tiberman, to me it's axiomatic that God works all this, we don't. All we have to do is want it.

Of course we all want it, but what sacrifice are we prepared to make? We stumble along in the dreadful inertia of our sin...

Thomas

 

[Nick_A]

Hi Thomas

If you're going to interpret Eckhart, or Catherine, you have to do so in a Catholic manner, as they would not have it any other way.

But what is the Catholic manner? Are you referring to the manner Simone rejected and why she remains the Patron Saint of Outsiders and the manner that accused Meister Eckhart of heresy. We only know of him because his writings were preserved in private and released by some that understood more than hypocrisy.

"Despite Meister Eckhart's distinction and popularity, indeed partly because of it, in the political and ecclesiastical turbulence of the fourteenth century, the Meister found himself accused of heresy. Some passages of his work were posthumously condemned as heretical or dangerous and a shadow was cast over his reputation. His works were influential in late medieval spirituality but later were almost forgotten. With the growing interest in Eckhart today, both inside and outside the Church, it needs to be made clear whether he is acceptable to the Church as a Christian theologian and spiritual master."

We are Christians only if we encounter Christ ... in the reading of sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ's heart and feel him touch ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we really become Christians. And in this way, our reason opens, the whole of Christ's wisdom opens and all the richness of the truth."

I'm the first to admit that there are very few Christians and a lot of pre-Christians claiming to be Christians

If we die to sin, we're still the same person

.

This is where we differ

2 Cor 5: 17

Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

1 Cor 15

42So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"[e]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we[f] bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

This change of being seems like evolution to me.

We don't realize that we are governed by sin so do not see how difficult it is to let it go. Consider how Simone Weil puts it:

"That is why we fly from the inner void, since God might steal into it. It is not the pursuit of pleasure and the aversion for effort which causes sin, but fear of God. We know that we cannot see him face to face without dying, and we do not want to die."

We don't see how deep we are in imagination and how it rules our lives. Yet it is our life and doesn't want to die which it must when the light of consciousness shines on it.

... but our potential is not in our own inner unity, but in the unity of all ... the comm-unity. That's what Church symbolises and makes real.

Romans 12

3For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his[b]faith. 7If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

What is the function of the church? To create the New Man. People unite to help each other towards their mutual goal The external church represents levels of spiritual development within our being. Father Sylvan describes it:

We must seek the bishop within ourselves. Only when I experience the natural hierarchy of Creation within myself, only when I directly experience supplicant, priest, archbishop, and Divine King within myself do I consciously become part of the sacred Wholeness. Only when my lower nature is naturally attracted toward obedience to the higher, can I, as a human being, in a worldly society, voluntarily obey the community of the teaching, or-as they used to say-the Elders of the Church. Through awareness of the attention of the body it is possible to see how even the instinctual desires obey the higher instantly, without violence. They have only needed contact for this natural obedience, this innate love of the Higher to become active. Ego prevents contact between the various sources of attention within the human organism; that is its evil and it is only that about it which needs to be destroyed. it is however, a very difficult task.

It's immaterial. You say "Perhaps he robbed to feed his family? Breaking secular law may be a reality that doesn't deny our connection to higher consciousness. Perhaps he was trying to consciously carry his cross as well. If this is the case, of course being next to Jesus would be a great help" ... but I would suggest you're trying to rationalise the point to fit your argument ... to make it fit into your box?

Maybe so but it makes more sense to me then to believe anything else.

And yet Christ 'justified' those very people who wouldn't understand a single word of what you're on about ... the widow, the publican, the thief, the harlot ... all he said was 'love' ... He'll do the rest.

And since we cannot love and do not have faith, it is kind of hard to do the rest. It is a gradual process becoming able which is why we need the Holy Spirit.

I'm really not so far from you Nick, but as a Tiberman, to me it's axiomatic that God works all this, we don't. All we have to do is want it.

Of course we all want it, but what sacrifice are we prepared to make? We stumble along in the dreadful inertia of our sin...

I'm sorry but I don't know what a Tiberman is. Could you explain?

This is like saying if you want to fly all you have to do is grow wings. This is our problem. As a plurality, only a small part of us wants it. All the rest of our animal nature and acquired personality does not want it. How to become open enough to really "need" is a real question.

 

[Thomas]

Hi Thomas

But what is the Catholic manner?

According to the Faith of the Catholic Church.

As both Eckhart and Catherine would insist ... both of them challenged heterodoxy and error, Eckhart reformed monasteries throughout N Germany, whilst Catherine took Pope Gregory XI to task for long-overdue reforms to the clery and papal administration.

Are you referring to the manner Simone rejected and why she remains the Patron Saint of Outsiders ...

The Church hasn't rejected Weil, she rejected the Church. Her theology is far more pessimistic than Catholicism ... The title of 'patron of outsiders' is from Andre Gide — hardly one to offer comment on Catholicism.

... and the manner that accused Meister Eckhart of heresy.

No, rather the manner in which his name and works are preserved.

Eckhart was accused more than once, and defended himself admirably. The last time, both he and the Pope died before the matter could be brought to court. Whilst the question of his understanding of the Trinity remains open, he has never been condemned.

Had he been writing theology, I'm sure there'd be no problem, but he wasn't, he was preaching to Dominican students, and thus assumed a certain degree of orthodoxy as given ... read in that light, there's no problem, but take that away, and he's open to all manner of speculation, such as panentheism, nihilism, etc. — often the very things he sought to put right in his work.

+++

Thomas said:

If we die to sin, we're still the same person

This is where we differ ... This change of being seems like evolution to me.

We would reject 'evolution' as being too vague a term, or rather a term more common to a scientific linear view of the world ... We prefer the original term 'rebirth' ... even the terms 'salvation' and 'redemption' suggests the old continues, but made anew ... not that the old ceases to exist, and something different, some other person, some other soul, has taken its place.

After his epiphany, Saul or Tarsus was known as Paul, but he nor anyone else suggests that Paul was not the man who hunted down Christians just a year or two before ... even though many will shake their heads in amazement and say "He's a different person!"

I'm sorry but I don't know what a Tiberman is. Could you explain?

In England, someone who converted from Protestant to Catholic was referred to, or accused of, 'crossing the Tiber'. In reality, I swam across the Tiber in my youth, wandered around a bit, then swam back again.

This is like saying if you want to fly all you have to do is grow wings. This is our problem. As a plurality, only a small part of us wants it.

The 'plurality' is because the will which is one, is subject to the apetites, which are many ... in fact legion ... so what is required is to bring the errant flesh back under the discipline of the soul, which means giving up many of the things we like, so we find reasons or excuses not to.

the All the rest of our animal nature and acquired personality does not want it.

Quite right.

I read an interesting homily the other week, I forget where, by someone who said all of us, if asked by God, should answer 'my name is Legion' (cf Mark 5:9) because we all suffer this internal fragmentation or disorder ...

How to become open enough to really "need" is a real question.

In the Christian model, which aims at all men and not just the ascetic or the intellectual, love cures all. Of course we don't know how when we start, but make a start, and then the Holy Spirit does the rest along the way ... the big problem is letting go of ourselves first ...

Thomas