Nov 29, 2022·edited Nov 29, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy
Thank you for all these nurturing and calming thoughts; I'm not mad, then, to share the suspicion that I'm running on a program that's not really beneficial and that it is within my power to discover the patterns and let them go. I stopped my life some 15 years ago because l found it deeply mediocre on a soul level. Divorce, ended my career, sold the house etc. But l did it alone, l read, meditate and look at the sea on my own, a hermit living in a small town in England.
Reading your post, all was well, very well indeed, l felt connected to your thoughts until l came to the last few sentences; you cannot stare into the abyss alone. You need an elder to guide you. But what if there isn't anyone there for a one to one guidance? I have looked. Do YouTube Gurus count?
I'm not stopping staring into the Abyss no matter what, but perhaps l should take out an insurance?
"I'm not mad, then, to share the suspicion that I'm running on a program that's not really beneficial and that it is within my power to discover the patterns and let them go."
No, not mad at all. In fact, your statement above is about as sane as they come. The question is how best to do this. That is less clear. -Jack
Nov 30, 2022·edited Dec 1, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy
I blame Descartes. He and the Renaissance philosophers in general really messed things up with their declaration that nature, including humans, could be understood and controlled by mechanical and mathematical laws. Even Spinoza believed that reason could control spiritual and emotional matters. That anxiety could be mastered by reason alone. Poor Pascal was the odd man out in that dubious coterie when he said that ' the heart knows reasons that reason do not' . We're still caught in the fallout of rationalism, perhaps, when we try to suppress or deny any emotion or insight that does not seem reasonable. Was it David Byrne who said' stop making sense!'.
I think (or at least hope) that a course correction is underway from the hyper-rationalism you describe. One of the deepest responses I have seen is Iain Mcgilchrist. Without this shift to the deeper waters of the human heart and mind, I have my doubts whether we will make it through the crisis (or metacrisis, really) that we have now, in my view, unmistakably and irrevocably entered. I think it will take something deeper in us than we know we are capable.
Thank you for the Mcgilchrist link. I have found his website and will study it more. Donald Hoffman is another neuroscientist whose writings I love and trip on to the extent that I am able to understand what on earth he is talking about. He wrote a book called 'the case against reality' and I have spent the last 2 years reading it. I am on page 32. :-) But this TED talk gives a great overview.
Anna- The lack of qualified elders is a real problem. There are a lot of hucksters out there unfortunately. I have done it alone for a long time so I do believe it is possible. Others will likely do better than I did. I think a small group of friends is helpful. But sometimes even that is difficult to come across. My hope is that such small groups can start to come together in a new/old way.
Absent that, we can pray for guidance and help. We all do the best we can wherever we find ourselves. And maybe I am way off. If you are making it work, then it works.
Thank you, Jack. I have no choice but to do it alone - I wish it wasn't so. But regarding distractions; I think they're good and necessary at times. I feel they are a way of pacing oneself, making sure the pace is tolerable . Perhaps that's why others have wise elders - as a way to stay grounded? Us loners will have to make do with playing solitaire on the computer or watch funny films on youtube. There's some great ones featuring kittens. :-)
I think staring in the abyss and knowing you are not alone in staring in the abyss helps a little. After all, all the wisdom traditions insist on the importance of community.
This is the season of Advent, which encourages us to reflect on the second coming of Christ, so necessary to consider in this dark world. This is the season when believers ask, "Why so long, O Lord? When will the sorrow and misery cease for your children?"
I am a little surprised that your reflection on 'infinite distraction' does not include the third agency in this world, the power of evil, the Satan, the ruler of this world. In the New Testament, there are three entities or powers: God the creator of the world, the Enemy who controls this world today, and the human beings and creatures who find themselves held in captivity. We experience distraction because we battle spiritual forces arrayed against us. "For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. - Ephesians 6:12” It is only the power and love of God who defeats the forces of evil and gives us the mystical assurance of the Lord's presence, the FIRE Pascal experienced for two hours in 1654.
Thanks for writing and best wishes on sitting. I remember a poster in high school that said, "sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I just sit." It's taken me years to realize the second may be more valuable.
Diana- Beautiful! I hope it is a blessing for you. And Advent is indeed the perfect time to look into the darkness and wait for the light. This was the spirit behind the post.
Interestingly since initially posting this I have had occasion to consider just what you say here. i.e., those who try to manipulate us and at the same time tell us they are doing so with our best interests at heart. It is insidious and alluring force. But there is, I think, a fairly simple test: does what they say sow confusion and debilitating doubt or thoughtful reconsideration/deeper conversion and a greater movement in and toward love.
Thank you for your reflections. I find them helpful and encouraging.
Thank you for this honest and illuminating reflection. This is part of the trick, isn't it? When we open to God in silence and stillness we open to both the Presence of Christ and to all that is in us that seeks something else. And thus the battle (and the revealing of our divisions, and the slow, humbling purification) continues.
Your humility is edifying. I'm not responding on the thread of some other comments here, but I do want to say that I have a greater trust in a testimony to Christ that comes out of an encounter with God in one's weakness and need than in one that comes out of a sense of triumph and being right where others are wrong. It is when we are weak that we may encounter divine power in a deeper level, and I do think that this is some of what the desert, silence, stillness and solitude can teach us. If you go into silence to encounter Christ, and in the process meet and must face many demons, you're standing alongside a long line of holy ones - from St. Anthony of Egypt on to the present. Singleness or marriage mean less than the intention of the heart to seek the Infinite One - in whatever state of life we may find ourselves. My prayers are with you - and all the rest of us as we bumble along - this Advent.
'Brilliance queried nothingness, saying: “Are you, sir, being or are you nothing?” Brilliance, unable to get a response, carefully regarded the other’s appearance—a far-reaching vacuity. He gazed the entire day and saw nothing, listened but heard no sound, reached out but was unable to grasp anything. Brilliance said: “How perfect! Who can be as perfect as this! I can grant the fact of nothingness but not the non-being of nothingness. As for nothingness, how can one realize such perfection!” '
The 'nothingness' of deep peace through solitude and prayer (whatever ur preference) is pretty damn rich for being 'nothing'. I feel like I've seen or felt it once or twice and it feels so warm, deep, holy, peaceful and eternal. (Hope I'm making sense!)
Good luck on the Pascal Challenge! (maybe i even try it myself)
Thanks, Jack. These are fruitful reflections. I have tried many times to find my chair of silence, but it always turns out to be one of those swivel chairs that spins me toward one task or another, one obligation or another. Still, I agree there is something very fundamental about cultivating that silence, both as a discipline to move away from the distractions, and (for me anyway), not just for silence, but a silence that is angled toward God within a particular context of understanding.
What’s your feeling about context? For example, there are people who report reaching a level of silence and stillness that is without context; one in which the individual self dissolves, monsters and all, and what’s left is a sense of being connected to an absolute All, or void, or big-s Silence (words cannot describe it, reportedly).
For me, I think there are difficulties with this view, though I understand the appeal of it. In a left-brained world, we are trying to restore a balance toward the right. (I actually think the balance is the real thing, a particular silence in a particular context, though its experience and expression may differ somewhat from person to person.)
What about yourself? Do you feel there is a place in the silence that might be reachable, and when reached will reveal only silence, or perhaps Silence? Or is there any remaining context? Can this even be talked about? (Or should we call in the Zen master to swat us on the back with a stick, just because we’re talking too much?) :)
Nov 29, 2022·edited Nov 29, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy
My thoughts on what you brought up. The highest state according to the New Testament is being an embodied human, filled with the Holy Spirit in the presence of the Living God. After all that is what Jesus is doing now, he took his body with him. Some day we will join him embodied as he is now. We get a foretaste of this even here, as sons of God walking with God filled with the Holy Spirit, even as Jesus dId years ago. Eternity is much, much more of the same, we never stop being a human individual. As regards the being one with all state, brain studies of meditators in that state indicate that the part of the brain that lets us know where our skin ends has shut down, so it is an induced neurological state, pleasant no doubt, but not a filling of the Holy Spirit. The drop of water returning to the ocean is not what we have in Christ. Not the no-self of Buddhism but an eternal transfigured self. Being a individual human being is not something to transcend or leave behind, we are to be temples of the Holy Spirit and be completed.
Thank you for your wise thoughts, Jeff. It brings up some thoughts for me, as well -
My experience in prayer has been that there is a both/and. In my experience of prayer there is a sort of living relationship with the Trinity. When I am caught up in prayer, at times I may have a subjective sense of immersion in the eternal Father that is beyond time, space, and all limits (with a sense of oneness, no-self, etc), and in other times I may be caught up in a felt sense of my individual, embodied expression as one cell in the mystical body of Christ, with the Holy Spirit dwelling within me. And, at other times, I may experience more of an awareness of my own separateness, weakness, brokenness, and sinfulness in my own bounded, individual life (and in my community, culture, and time in history) in this particular body and place. All three are gifts, in my experience - and part of my role in prayer is to open to God in surrender, and to accept all that comes, without trying to manipulate the experience into what I think prayer 'should' be like.
“…subjective sense of immersion in the eternal Father that is beyond time, space, and all limits…”
At least from an Orthodox perspective (as I understand it), there would not be a possibility of immersion into the Father with an associated loss of one’s own self, only a communion of person with Person. Obviously there are different views on this, but it seems worth pointing out. At bottom is whether reality is monist (all things are expressions of a sentient All-ness) or panentheist (not pantheist), in which the sentient Absolute is everywhere and yet simultaneously beyond space-time and therefore separate from us. I prefer the latter which, coming as it does with all sorts of paradoxes and mysteries.
I think part of Jeff’s concern, which I am sympathetic with, is that there can be powerful neurological experiences of oneness, which might turn out to be just neurological experiences. That is a very unpopular opinion these days, but there is now good neuroscientific research to support this at least as a strong hypothesis. I wrote extensively about this in an early essay on my substack https://peterofbasilea.substack.com/p/can-we-stream-god-through-an-app.
That something is neurological, of course, does not necessarily preclude it being more than neurological, so certainly there may be other ways to think about oneness experiences.
This is a highly personal and idiosyncratic subject any which way we approach it.
Thank you Peter - both for this thoughtful reply and for your fascinating post. I read it over too quickly just now, and hope to spend more time with it in the near future.
Yes, it's important to balance the subjective sense with good theology, of course. I agree with you theologically, and have no problem with the phrasing of 'a communion of person with Person' - and as a theist and not a monist in my own understanding, that might be a better way of describing the encounter.
Yet, it does also feel valuable to acknowledge the subjective sense of 'softening' of the self in the presence of the Person of the Father, who is both nearer to us than we are to ourselves, and also Infinite and utterly beyond what I can 'become' in any ultimate sense. The softening may be a felt sense rather than an ultimate reality, for sure. 'Immersion' (as a descriptor of intimacy) is not the same thing as 'dissolution' - and of course our words fail to contain all the subtleties. When I step out of my subjective experience and put on my theological thinking cap, I can see the clear necessity of both acknowledging God's immanence and God's transcendence. The panentheist approach does seem to hold this paradox in a way that resonates with orthodox (and Orthodox) Christian theology.
And yet - sometimes along the path of prayer and worship the the felt experience of oneness does come, unbidden - and it does spill over to become an aid in loving and forgiving others, and practicing the virtues. I've experienced it bear spiritual fruit in my own life and seen it bear fruit in the life of others. I'm leery both of dismissing it ('it's just neurological experiences') and also of making an idol of the experience (where one shifts to pursuing the oneness sense as a center of spiritual motivation, rather than seeking to love and serve God and one's neighbor). Is there a middle ground, where the oneness experience can be received as a gift when it comes as a part of orthodox prayer, yet is not pursued as an end of itself?
I'm also very sympathetic to the recognition that any experience that can be felt, described, or certainly induced (as your astute post articulates very well) is not the full reality of God - anything in this world of form falls far short of the Father, even a profound mystical sense of oneness. What you write about is fascinating and a bit terrifying - that people might use (or already be using?) technologies to fabricate the sensations that go along with a spiritual encounter - seems like that could even be used to 'innoculate' a person's heart against God. Why surrender one's will to Christ when you can just use a device to get 'the goods'? This seems to highlight that the necessary Christian orientation is to seek God (who is beyond all image and all sensation) rather than any of the effects, sensations or experiences associated with the path. I've known several folks who have had massive psychic openings through use of drugs - and it's quite clear to me that this is not at all the same thing as the path of Christian prayer and contemplation. The long term effects of these openings are very different....
Thanks Mark! A lot of your reflections stood out for me, including this one: “Is there a middle ground, where the oneness experience can be received as a gift when it comes as a part of orthodox prayer, yet is not pursued as an end of itself?”
Not trying to control spirituality seems paradoxically essential to becoming more spiritual. For me, part of the context of the silence that Jack talks about is precisely that: not a controlled silence, but a refusal to engage the noise (inward or out) and to be patient and to trust.
Also, this: “The softening may be a felt sense rather than an ultimate reality, for sure.” More broadly, it is easy to forget that sometimes simple psychology explains a lot of what is attributed to the transcendent. Of course there is an overlap between these realms (psychological and spiritual), which is another subject.
Nov 30, 2022·edited Nov 30, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy
P.S. Here are the concluding paragraphs in Peter's post that he linked to - I think these highlight some of the important issues we're probing around here:
"For many Christians, and perhaps others, the brain is certainly remarkable, even beautiful, in its function and complexity; and the subjective experiences that arise from it are a vital and beautiful part of what it means to be human. But the objective brain is a physical organ prone to error and ultimately to decay, and our subjective experiences, being firmly rooted in our ego and our intractable imperfections, are not reliable indicators of absolute truth. The truth in its highest form—God—is always beyond us. We can turn in that ultimate direction, and imperfectly strive to keep on the path—the path of philokalia, a love of the Beautiful. But we cannot merge with God. We cannot control God’s presence. We cannot know Absolute Reality.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we can never catch a glimmer of the real Beauty. But if we do, then it wasn’t by our own power or effort. It was by grace."
I am just going to poke my head up to say this is a fascinating conversation. One I am greatly interested in. It is difficult to not get caught up in a tangle when trying wrap our minds around that which infinitely exceeds our ability to know. Yet it is the heart of the matter, and one I spend a good amount of time thinking about. Thank you all. -Jack
Thank you. Such a beautiful piece of writing and thought. I don't know how I'll find time for Pascal's challenge with a wild two-year old daughter and another child due to arrive any day now. But I know how important it is.
I'd also like to take this moment just to commend you and this substack. Everything you write rings with truth and clarity. Personally speaking, it always chimes with something that I'm facing at the same moment. A few weeks ago, I went to fast on a mountain for four days, around the time you were writing about the desert fathers. I longed for it, negotiated the time away carefully with my wife... And yet as soon as I arrived, I found myself almost immediately desperate to rush home. Undoubtedly for some of the reasons you describe here.
So keep going! You're speaking to many of us out here, Somewhere in all our wanderings we'll find a path out of this morass - for us and, maybe, our civilization too.
Edward- Thank you very much for the kind words. It is very much appreciated.
I find, as I did in this case, that my failures can be at least as instructive as my so-called successes. They can be sources of encouragement. Thank you for your encouragement.
Of course your family comes first, this goes without saying. So far there is only one other person committing to the Pascal Challenge. Maybe I will put out a general call to see who else might want to join in. But I will dedicate a session or two to you and your family, and particularly for the new arrival!
May you and your family have a blessed Advent. -Jack
Good Morning, Jack. Sounds like you are really going places on The Path. Thanks for sharing about it with us readers.
I remember that initially I was so tearfully shocked, dismayed, even crushed at the perception of my flawed and inadequate self.... but in time it wasn't that scary anymore; fresh revelations can (sometimes, on a good day) be met almost with a sense of laughing at myself. I hope you also feel bathed in God's love and fond care for you while gazing at the fact of your darker potential! I suppose it is not good to see one self clearly if not also seeing The Father more clearly.
This is none of my business, but I did have the thought that if I were spending a similar week in solitude I would have turned the internet off along with the bells.
I really struggled with this one. In one sense I had too much to say and had to cut it down. But even so I don't think I have yet gotten to the heart of the matter. I am wrestling with it. So it is a work in progress! We shall see where it goes next! I have no idea. Thank you for coming along for the ride. I have had no shortage of material to laugh at myself this week. Which thankfully I do.
In my life in the workaday world I would periodically turn off the internet for a time. During which I always felt better. Yet I keep going back. I kept it on this week because I wanted to work on writing--which with substack is done online. But it wasn't the internet really. I found other ways to avoid myself this week. Like most humans, I am highly inventive in this regard! I think given a longer period of time I would have found a way to adjust. But the larger issue for me is how I avoid the depths even as I claim I seek them--internet or not.
This morning I prayed Lectio Divina on Col 3 so am reminded it isn't all dark. There were certainly moments of peace and gratitude--and even joy-- this week also. It has been interesting to see the light and the dark both alternating and so tangled together.
And by the way, I am enjoying the links you sent on Girard... it's going to take me a while to get through it all. And I may not be able to follow it all, but so far it is truly interesting.
I don't get all of Girard either. It can be very scholarly. What I have understood has taken me awhile to get. There is something in him that has shifted my way of seeing. Which happened this week also--with the internet on, the blasted thing. I am interested in seeing how it forms the contemplative path in less theoretical and more practical ways. My little Girardian epiphany informed this post, which may be why I still need to think on it further.
for me, just hearing the preliminary explanation of mimetic desire was kind of like what (I think?) you are writing about here -- "oh yuck, is that really a big motive for me?, probably is... how shabby. How silly of me to think that I was something more noble. Well, also how much more gratitude for God's love and guidance. How much humility is appropriate for me and us all."
With this potential move to Maine I also worry that it is sort of arrogant... sort of self-willed. I feel it is entirely rational, reasonable, yet I worry that to avoid suffering and difficulty is the human way but not the Christian way. My prayers are attempts to surrender it into God's hands and trust to be led.
We made an offer on the farm in Troy but ours is the 'back up offer', so we only get to buy it if the other buyer falls through. Stranger things have happened. The location and details of this one seem just right. Other farms are for sale but none so ideal in one way or another. So yeah, just waiting, trying not to fret, and primping our house so that if our offer is accepted we are ready to list it and show it at the drop of a hat... not easy with our large homeschooling, project-making family!
I think about Canticle also, my admiration for the Abbot Zerchi (I think) at the end who stood firm for love and the sacred nature of human life in the midst of tumult, danger, and temptation. Most of all we need that quality to face the future.
Mimetic desire is really a challenge to what I think my motivations are. For example, why I write this substack. Honestly, I don't really know. The opportunity came up, thanks to Paul, but I am not always sure my motivation is always so noble. So, you are right, that is what I was struggle to express in this latest post. But I still have more to do to express it better, I think.
Clara- I think Abbot Zerchi is one of the more interesting characters in the novel. Unlike the previous Abbots he is more of a bureaucrat and not very contemplative at all. He is also far more informal than his predecessors, e.g., calling out to his assistant "Pat". He also shows himself to be lacking a bit in self-control by punching he doctor.
And yet, he is the one that has to endure the most suffering, in the end in a quite horrible way. Through it all we suffers not only with dignity but also with concern for others, e.g., when trapped in the rubble of the church and knowing he is going to die, he still seeks to give Mrs. Grimes/Rachel the Eucharist. (her "refusal", I think, holds what I take as the thin slice of a solution to the whole endless cycle of destruction the novel portrays).
All of that is to say that it is in God's hands, and we won't avoid suffering wherever we are, I fear. My time in silence itself may be a preparation. Which is all the more reason I want to use this time well.
Keep me updated. -Jack
p.s. I just went out from the hermitage over to the monaster to take care of some tasks there. The whole place is beautifully silent. And though the wind is howling a bit, it is also still. These are the moments I do appreciate with gratitude. It doesn't take much.
Thank you, Jack. Yes, things are well with us here. Brief comment in reply, that the Modern Project in my view takes this basic flaw in our perception and makes it the fundamental ‘fact’ of our existence. There is an ‘I’ which I know, and all else is unknown and potentially a deceptive threat to my ‘I’, my precious :) Everything that can be done must be done to separate all the ‘I’s. This is of course the work of the diabolo, the one who divides and throws apart, the one who teaches you to be afraid.
Note the subtle lie which we all miss because we bought it ‘you shall be as God’ . . . Up to this point the man and the woman had no sense of not being in God. The offer suggests a lack which wasn’t there! But we having swallowed the suggestion buried in the offer of something which was ours all along, miss the deceit.
The shift to egoic self consciousness suggests we have a journey to make, except for those who do, we return to where we started, knowing it for the first time (with apologies to your countryman :) )
On this aversion to silence, prayer, reading scripture, etc etc possibly ad Infinitum as the circle never becomes a straight line however close you get :) - Something occurred to me some months ago that is a little suggestive in this regard: when the man and woman became self conscious and found themselves outside the Garden, they found the way back ‘closer off’. I mention this as it resonates at a psychological level with my own ‘blocking’ experience. Only the ego death - flashing sword - enables the return. This to a certain extent explains the paradox that God is always and everywhere present, but ‘I’ cannot discern his presence
Eric- I have been thinking about your comment here. I have a post that I hope to send out tomorrow, which is at least somewhat related to what you are saying.It relates, I think, to the whole modern project to live without God. What cannot be measured or touched isn't real. Therefore we are unable to see what is closer to us than we are to ourselves and therefore must be an illusion. How to get beyond that?
All is well here. I hope all is well with you. -Jack
I understand about distractions. It’s a battle. I think of it as a worship disorder. Our precious father wants our worship and to die to self. Thankfully our father in heaven is a benevolent, compassionate and all loving. Jesus his son is my righteousness. Do I grasp that fully? I am a wonderer, a drifter, easily distracted. There is a battle for my heart. I have to remember the good news (gospel) daily. When I don’t my worship disorder kicks in. I pray that I can be content in Christ. I can’t do it on my own. I pray for joy In Christ, satisfaction in Christ, and contentment in Christ. That is a prayer for each of you.
PB- I like your framing of distraction as a worship disorder. I think that captures it. It makes me think of the quote by Simone Weil:
"Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself."
Similar to "you are what you eat" is "you are what you pay attention to". Which given what I have paid attention to over the course of my life is a disturbing thought. But also explains a lot.
Thank you for your prayer. I hope you are well. -Jack
You and me both. But I also find hope in this idea as well. I can focus more of my attention on good things. Not always easy these days, but worth the effort.
Thank you. And thank you for the reference in your recent post. It is truly appreciated. I like where you are going with your substack, btw. A sane option where such options are disturbingly few.
You may be right. But maybe not, either. It isn't always so easy to tell. There are many paths and we both seek the Way. But feel free to keep at me if you want. It is good to be challenged. I do appreciate it.
Nov 30, 2022·edited Nov 30, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy
I would like to reply to this again, if I may - i hope I'm not hijacking your thread, Jack.
After what you wrote about suffering needlessly, Jesus Is King (sorry I don't know your name) I had a dream.
I dreamt that I instructed people (my servants? Hired help? or aspects of me?) to plant trees in pots of soil inside my flat. There was a row of hazel saplings in pots lined up against a wall in my living room. There was a lot of discord and I felt my 'servants' sniggered at me behind my back while still being polite to my face.
I sat with this dream for a bit and I trace it back to your comment about how joining Jesus (or the Spiritual life) is a leap of faith, easy and joyous.
I wonder if , in my dream, I was trying to re-create a forest indoors? Instead of opening my door and stepping outside into nature I was trying desperately to re-create nature inside my livingroom - and encountering a lot of discord (I against I)?
Am I trying to re-create a Spiritual reality/knowledge inside the confines of my mind, my body, instead of opening up to the sea of light all around me? (is there a sea of light all around me?)
This is an interesting dream. But maybe it is simpler and more straightforward than that. Maybe the dream is asking you to step outside more and connect with the wider world. The beauty of the world, the whole cosmos, cannot be reduced to our little world. Try as we might. That we can't is the good news, I think.
And you are not in any way hijacking this thread. I appreciate you being here.
It can happen to any of us. I spent 10-12 years circling in my kennel, so to speak. It is a beautiful world out there despite its frequent ugliness. It is worth it.
I must admit I find you mildly interesting. What I don't quite get is why you are continually showing up here. Particularly as you keep telling me I've got it all wrong and you've got it all correct. Spare me the "I'm doing it for your own good" nonsense. You don't know me, and I have no idea who you are. Again, you're coming to me, not the other way around. Why is that? It is a bit odd.
As a friendly reminder: the internet is vast and there is no need to focus so much on this little corner of it. And why not cultivate your own substack instead, considering all you claim to know?
I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but at least make it constructive instead of boring. If you want to be part of the conversation here feel free--you are as welcome as anyone. But you will need to tone it done a notch or two. Otherwise, we may have to amicably part ways. Your choice.
And look, I didn't even have to raise my voice. How about that?
But. What you think is a victory may well be defeat. And vice versa. The last shall be the first. And vice versa. Our brain cannot show a way out of this labyrinth that was created by our brain in the first place...or can it?
Thank you for all these nurturing and calming thoughts; I'm not mad, then, to share the suspicion that I'm running on a program that's not really beneficial and that it is within my power to discover the patterns and let them go. I stopped my life some 15 years ago because l found it deeply mediocre on a soul level. Divorce, ended my career, sold the house etc. But l did it alone, l read, meditate and look at the sea on my own, a hermit living in a small town in England.
Reading your post, all was well, very well indeed, l felt connected to your thoughts until l came to the last few sentences; you cannot stare into the abyss alone. You need an elder to guide you. But what if there isn't anyone there for a one to one guidance? I have looked. Do YouTube Gurus count?
I'm not stopping staring into the Abyss no matter what, but perhaps l should take out an insurance?
Greetings from
Worried of Smalltown
"I'm not mad, then, to share the suspicion that I'm running on a program that's not really beneficial and that it is within my power to discover the patterns and let them go."
No, not mad at all. In fact, your statement above is about as sane as they come. The question is how best to do this. That is less clear. -Jack
I blame Descartes. He and the Renaissance philosophers in general really messed things up with their declaration that nature, including humans, could be understood and controlled by mechanical and mathematical laws. Even Spinoza believed that reason could control spiritual and emotional matters. That anxiety could be mastered by reason alone. Poor Pascal was the odd man out in that dubious coterie when he said that ' the heart knows reasons that reason do not' . We're still caught in the fallout of rationalism, perhaps, when we try to suppress or deny any emotion or insight that does not seem reasonable. Was it David Byrne who said' stop making sense!'.
Anna-
I think (or at least hope) that a course correction is underway from the hyper-rationalism you describe. One of the deepest responses I have seen is Iain Mcgilchrist. Without this shift to the deeper waters of the human heart and mind, I have my doubts whether we will make it through the crisis (or metacrisis, really) that we have now, in my view, unmistakably and irrevocably entered. I think it will take something deeper in us than we know we are capable.
-Jack
Thank you for the Mcgilchrist link. I have found his website and will study it more. Donald Hoffman is another neuroscientist whose writings I love and trip on to the extent that I am able to understand what on earth he is talking about. He wrote a book called 'the case against reality' and I have spent the last 2 years reading it. I am on page 32. :-) But this TED talk gives a great overview.
https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY
Anna- The lack of qualified elders is a real problem. There are a lot of hucksters out there unfortunately. I have done it alone for a long time so I do believe it is possible. Others will likely do better than I did. I think a small group of friends is helpful. But sometimes even that is difficult to come across. My hope is that such small groups can start to come together in a new/old way.
Absent that, we can pray for guidance and help. We all do the best we can wherever we find ourselves. And maybe I am way off. If you are making it work, then it works.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Thank you, Jack. I have no choice but to do it alone - I wish it wasn't so. But regarding distractions; I think they're good and necessary at times. I feel they are a way of pacing oneself, making sure the pace is tolerable . Perhaps that's why others have wise elders - as a way to stay grounded? Us loners will have to make do with playing solitaire on the computer or watch funny films on youtube. There's some great ones featuring kittens. :-)
I agree that a leap of faith must be made - but I will leap to the center of non-duality - once I stop obsessively planting trees indoors...
Thank you for your kind words.
I think staring in the abyss and knowing you are not alone in staring in the abyss helps a little. After all, all the wisdom traditions insist on the importance of community.
I will join you in "Pascal's challenge."
This is the season of Advent, which encourages us to reflect on the second coming of Christ, so necessary to consider in this dark world. This is the season when believers ask, "Why so long, O Lord? When will the sorrow and misery cease for your children?"
I am a little surprised that your reflection on 'infinite distraction' does not include the third agency in this world, the power of evil, the Satan, the ruler of this world. In the New Testament, there are three entities or powers: God the creator of the world, the Enemy who controls this world today, and the human beings and creatures who find themselves held in captivity. We experience distraction because we battle spiritual forces arrayed against us. "For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. - Ephesians 6:12” It is only the power and love of God who defeats the forces of evil and gives us the mystical assurance of the Lord's presence, the FIRE Pascal experienced for two hours in 1654.
Thanks for writing and best wishes on sitting. I remember a poster in high school that said, "sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I just sit." It's taken me years to realize the second may be more valuable.
Diana- Beautiful! I hope it is a blessing for you. And Advent is indeed the perfect time to look into the darkness and wait for the light. This was the spirit behind the post.
Interestingly since initially posting this I have had occasion to consider just what you say here. i.e., those who try to manipulate us and at the same time tell us they are doing so with our best interests at heart. It is insidious and alluring force. But there is, I think, a fairly simple test: does what they say sow confusion and debilitating doubt or thoughtful reconsideration/deeper conversion and a greater movement in and toward love.
Thank you for your reflections. I find them helpful and encouraging.
May your Advent be blessed. -Jack
Hi Jack,
Thank you for this honest and illuminating reflection. This is part of the trick, isn't it? When we open to God in silence and stillness we open to both the Presence of Christ and to all that is in us that seeks something else. And thus the battle (and the revealing of our divisions, and the slow, humbling purification) continues.
Your humility is edifying. I'm not responding on the thread of some other comments here, but I do want to say that I have a greater trust in a testimony to Christ that comes out of an encounter with God in one's weakness and need than in one that comes out of a sense of triumph and being right where others are wrong. It is when we are weak that we may encounter divine power in a deeper level, and I do think that this is some of what the desert, silence, stillness and solitude can teach us. If you go into silence to encounter Christ, and in the process meet and must face many demons, you're standing alongside a long line of holy ones - from St. Anthony of Egypt on to the present. Singleness or marriage mean less than the intention of the heart to seek the Infinite One - in whatever state of life we may find ourselves. My prayers are with you - and all the rest of us as we bumble along - this Advent.
Thank you for this. It is greatly appreciated.
This is from the Chuang-Tzu/Zhuangzhi:
'Brilliance queried nothingness, saying: “Are you, sir, being or are you nothing?” Brilliance, unable to get a response, carefully regarded the other’s appearance—a far-reaching vacuity. He gazed the entire day and saw nothing, listened but heard no sound, reached out but was unable to grasp anything. Brilliance said: “How perfect! Who can be as perfect as this! I can grant the fact of nothingness but not the non-being of nothingness. As for nothingness, how can one realize such perfection!” '
The 'nothingness' of deep peace through solitude and prayer (whatever ur preference) is pretty damn rich for being 'nothing'. I feel like I've seen or felt it once or twice and it feels so warm, deep, holy, peaceful and eternal. (Hope I'm making sense!)
Good luck on the Pascal Challenge! (maybe i even try it myself)
CP- Nothing turns out to be a whole lot more than what we think of when we think of nothing. Funny how that works. Thank you for the quote. -Jack
Thanks, Jack. These are fruitful reflections. I have tried many times to find my chair of silence, but it always turns out to be one of those swivel chairs that spins me toward one task or another, one obligation or another. Still, I agree there is something very fundamental about cultivating that silence, both as a discipline to move away from the distractions, and (for me anyway), not just for silence, but a silence that is angled toward God within a particular context of understanding.
What’s your feeling about context? For example, there are people who report reaching a level of silence and stillness that is without context; one in which the individual self dissolves, monsters and all, and what’s left is a sense of being connected to an absolute All, or void, or big-s Silence (words cannot describe it, reportedly).
For me, I think there are difficulties with this view, though I understand the appeal of it. In a left-brained world, we are trying to restore a balance toward the right. (I actually think the balance is the real thing, a particular silence in a particular context, though its experience and expression may differ somewhat from person to person.)
What about yourself? Do you feel there is a place in the silence that might be reachable, and when reached will reveal only silence, or perhaps Silence? Or is there any remaining context? Can this even be talked about? (Or should we call in the Zen master to swat us on the back with a stick, just because we’re talking too much?) :)
My thoughts on what you brought up. The highest state according to the New Testament is being an embodied human, filled with the Holy Spirit in the presence of the Living God. After all that is what Jesus is doing now, he took his body with him. Some day we will join him embodied as he is now. We get a foretaste of this even here, as sons of God walking with God filled with the Holy Spirit, even as Jesus dId years ago. Eternity is much, much more of the same, we never stop being a human individual. As regards the being one with all state, brain studies of meditators in that state indicate that the part of the brain that lets us know where our skin ends has shut down, so it is an induced neurological state, pleasant no doubt, but not a filling of the Holy Spirit. The drop of water returning to the ocean is not what we have in Christ. Not the no-self of Buddhism but an eternal transfigured self. Being a individual human being is not something to transcend or leave behind, we are to be temples of the Holy Spirit and be completed.
Thank you for your wise thoughts, Jeff. It brings up some thoughts for me, as well -
My experience in prayer has been that there is a both/and. In my experience of prayer there is a sort of living relationship with the Trinity. When I am caught up in prayer, at times I may have a subjective sense of immersion in the eternal Father that is beyond time, space, and all limits (with a sense of oneness, no-self, etc), and in other times I may be caught up in a felt sense of my individual, embodied expression as one cell in the mystical body of Christ, with the Holy Spirit dwelling within me. And, at other times, I may experience more of an awareness of my own separateness, weakness, brokenness, and sinfulness in my own bounded, individual life (and in my community, culture, and time in history) in this particular body and place. All three are gifts, in my experience - and part of my role in prayer is to open to God in surrender, and to accept all that comes, without trying to manipulate the experience into what I think prayer 'should' be like.
“…subjective sense of immersion in the eternal Father that is beyond time, space, and all limits…”
At least from an Orthodox perspective (as I understand it), there would not be a possibility of immersion into the Father with an associated loss of one’s own self, only a communion of person with Person. Obviously there are different views on this, but it seems worth pointing out. At bottom is whether reality is monist (all things are expressions of a sentient All-ness) or panentheist (not pantheist), in which the sentient Absolute is everywhere and yet simultaneously beyond space-time and therefore separate from us. I prefer the latter which, coming as it does with all sorts of paradoxes and mysteries.
I think part of Jeff’s concern, which I am sympathetic with, is that there can be powerful neurological experiences of oneness, which might turn out to be just neurological experiences. That is a very unpopular opinion these days, but there is now good neuroscientific research to support this at least as a strong hypothesis. I wrote extensively about this in an early essay on my substack https://peterofbasilea.substack.com/p/can-we-stream-god-through-an-app.
That something is neurological, of course, does not necessarily preclude it being more than neurological, so certainly there may be other ways to think about oneness experiences.
This is a highly personal and idiosyncratic subject any which way we approach it.
Thank you Peter - both for this thoughtful reply and for your fascinating post. I read it over too quickly just now, and hope to spend more time with it in the near future.
Yes, it's important to balance the subjective sense with good theology, of course. I agree with you theologically, and have no problem with the phrasing of 'a communion of person with Person' - and as a theist and not a monist in my own understanding, that might be a better way of describing the encounter.
Yet, it does also feel valuable to acknowledge the subjective sense of 'softening' of the self in the presence of the Person of the Father, who is both nearer to us than we are to ourselves, and also Infinite and utterly beyond what I can 'become' in any ultimate sense. The softening may be a felt sense rather than an ultimate reality, for sure. 'Immersion' (as a descriptor of intimacy) is not the same thing as 'dissolution' - and of course our words fail to contain all the subtleties. When I step out of my subjective experience and put on my theological thinking cap, I can see the clear necessity of both acknowledging God's immanence and God's transcendence. The panentheist approach does seem to hold this paradox in a way that resonates with orthodox (and Orthodox) Christian theology.
And yet - sometimes along the path of prayer and worship the the felt experience of oneness does come, unbidden - and it does spill over to become an aid in loving and forgiving others, and practicing the virtues. I've experienced it bear spiritual fruit in my own life and seen it bear fruit in the life of others. I'm leery both of dismissing it ('it's just neurological experiences') and also of making an idol of the experience (where one shifts to pursuing the oneness sense as a center of spiritual motivation, rather than seeking to love and serve God and one's neighbor). Is there a middle ground, where the oneness experience can be received as a gift when it comes as a part of orthodox prayer, yet is not pursued as an end of itself?
I'm also very sympathetic to the recognition that any experience that can be felt, described, or certainly induced (as your astute post articulates very well) is not the full reality of God - anything in this world of form falls far short of the Father, even a profound mystical sense of oneness. What you write about is fascinating and a bit terrifying - that people might use (or already be using?) technologies to fabricate the sensations that go along with a spiritual encounter - seems like that could even be used to 'innoculate' a person's heart against God. Why surrender one's will to Christ when you can just use a device to get 'the goods'? This seems to highlight that the necessary Christian orientation is to seek God (who is beyond all image and all sensation) rather than any of the effects, sensations or experiences associated with the path. I've known several folks who have had massive psychic openings through use of drugs - and it's quite clear to me that this is not at all the same thing as the path of Christian prayer and contemplation. The long term effects of these openings are very different....
Again, thank you for your articulation!
Thanks Mark! A lot of your reflections stood out for me, including this one: “Is there a middle ground, where the oneness experience can be received as a gift when it comes as a part of orthodox prayer, yet is not pursued as an end of itself?”
Not trying to control spirituality seems paradoxically essential to becoming more spiritual. For me, part of the context of the silence that Jack talks about is precisely that: not a controlled silence, but a refusal to engage the noise (inward or out) and to be patient and to trust.
Also, this: “The softening may be a felt sense rather than an ultimate reality, for sure.” More broadly, it is easy to forget that sometimes simple psychology explains a lot of what is attributed to the transcendent. Of course there is an overlap between these realms (psychological and spiritual), which is another subject.
Anyway, thank you again!
P.S. Here are the concluding paragraphs in Peter's post that he linked to - I think these highlight some of the important issues we're probing around here:
"For many Christians, and perhaps others, the brain is certainly remarkable, even beautiful, in its function and complexity; and the subjective experiences that arise from it are a vital and beautiful part of what it means to be human. But the objective brain is a physical organ prone to error and ultimately to decay, and our subjective experiences, being firmly rooted in our ego and our intractable imperfections, are not reliable indicators of absolute truth. The truth in its highest form—God—is always beyond us. We can turn in that ultimate direction, and imperfectly strive to keep on the path—the path of philokalia, a love of the Beautiful. But we cannot merge with God. We cannot control God’s presence. We cannot know Absolute Reality.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we can never catch a glimmer of the real Beauty. But if we do, then it wasn’t by our own power or effort. It was by grace."
-Well said!
I am just going to poke my head up to say this is a fascinating conversation. One I am greatly interested in. It is difficult to not get caught up in a tangle when trying wrap our minds around that which infinitely exceeds our ability to know. Yet it is the heart of the matter, and one I spend a good amount of time thinking about. Thank you all. -Jack
Thank you. Such a beautiful piece of writing and thought. I don't know how I'll find time for Pascal's challenge with a wild two-year old daughter and another child due to arrive any day now. But I know how important it is.
I'd also like to take this moment just to commend you and this substack. Everything you write rings with truth and clarity. Personally speaking, it always chimes with something that I'm facing at the same moment. A few weeks ago, I went to fast on a mountain for four days, around the time you were writing about the desert fathers. I longed for it, negotiated the time away carefully with my wife... And yet as soon as I arrived, I found myself almost immediately desperate to rush home. Undoubtedly for some of the reasons you describe here.
So keep going! You're speaking to many of us out here, Somewhere in all our wanderings we'll find a path out of this morass - for us and, maybe, our civilization too.
Edward- Thank you very much for the kind words. It is very much appreciated.
I find, as I did in this case, that my failures can be at least as instructive as my so-called successes. They can be sources of encouragement. Thank you for your encouragement.
Of course your family comes first, this goes without saying. So far there is only one other person committing to the Pascal Challenge. Maybe I will put out a general call to see who else might want to join in. But I will dedicate a session or two to you and your family, and particularly for the new arrival!
May you and your family have a blessed Advent. -Jack
Good Morning, Jack. Sounds like you are really going places on The Path. Thanks for sharing about it with us readers.
I remember that initially I was so tearfully shocked, dismayed, even crushed at the perception of my flawed and inadequate self.... but in time it wasn't that scary anymore; fresh revelations can (sometimes, on a good day) be met almost with a sense of laughing at myself. I hope you also feel bathed in God's love and fond care for you while gazing at the fact of your darker potential! I suppose it is not good to see one self clearly if not also seeing The Father more clearly.
This is none of my business, but I did have the thought that if I were spending a similar week in solitude I would have turned the internet off along with the bells.
--Clara
Clara-
I really struggled with this one. In one sense I had too much to say and had to cut it down. But even so I don't think I have yet gotten to the heart of the matter. I am wrestling with it. So it is a work in progress! We shall see where it goes next! I have no idea. Thank you for coming along for the ride. I have had no shortage of material to laugh at myself this week. Which thankfully I do.
In my life in the workaday world I would periodically turn off the internet for a time. During which I always felt better. Yet I keep going back. I kept it on this week because I wanted to work on writing--which with substack is done online. But it wasn't the internet really. I found other ways to avoid myself this week. Like most humans, I am highly inventive in this regard! I think given a longer period of time I would have found a way to adjust. But the larger issue for me is how I avoid the depths even as I claim I seek them--internet or not.
This morning I prayed Lectio Divina on Col 3 so am reminded it isn't all dark. There were certainly moments of peace and gratitude--and even joy-- this week also. It has been interesting to see the light and the dark both alternating and so tangled together.
Any news on Maine?
-Jack
And by the way, I am enjoying the links you sent on Girard... it's going to take me a while to get through it all. And I may not be able to follow it all, but so far it is truly interesting.
I don't get all of Girard either. It can be very scholarly. What I have understood has taken me awhile to get. There is something in him that has shifted my way of seeing. Which happened this week also--with the internet on, the blasted thing. I am interested in seeing how it forms the contemplative path in less theoretical and more practical ways. My little Girardian epiphany informed this post, which may be why I still need to think on it further.
for me, just hearing the preliminary explanation of mimetic desire was kind of like what (I think?) you are writing about here -- "oh yuck, is that really a big motive for me?, probably is... how shabby. How silly of me to think that I was something more noble. Well, also how much more gratitude for God's love and guidance. How much humility is appropriate for me and us all."
With this potential move to Maine I also worry that it is sort of arrogant... sort of self-willed. I feel it is entirely rational, reasonable, yet I worry that to avoid suffering and difficulty is the human way but not the Christian way. My prayers are attempts to surrender it into God's hands and trust to be led.
We made an offer on the farm in Troy but ours is the 'back up offer', so we only get to buy it if the other buyer falls through. Stranger things have happened. The location and details of this one seem just right. Other farms are for sale but none so ideal in one way or another. So yeah, just waiting, trying not to fret, and primping our house so that if our offer is accepted we are ready to list it and show it at the drop of a hat... not easy with our large homeschooling, project-making family!
I think about Canticle also, my admiration for the Abbot Zerchi (I think) at the end who stood firm for love and the sacred nature of human life in the midst of tumult, danger, and temptation. Most of all we need that quality to face the future.
Mimetic desire is really a challenge to what I think my motivations are. For example, why I write this substack. Honestly, I don't really know. The opportunity came up, thanks to Paul, but I am not always sure my motivation is always so noble. So, you are right, that is what I was struggle to express in this latest post. But I still have more to do to express it better, I think.
Clara- I think Abbot Zerchi is one of the more interesting characters in the novel. Unlike the previous Abbots he is more of a bureaucrat and not very contemplative at all. He is also far more informal than his predecessors, e.g., calling out to his assistant "Pat". He also shows himself to be lacking a bit in self-control by punching he doctor.
And yet, he is the one that has to endure the most suffering, in the end in a quite horrible way. Through it all we suffers not only with dignity but also with concern for others, e.g., when trapped in the rubble of the church and knowing he is going to die, he still seeks to give Mrs. Grimes/Rachel the Eucharist. (her "refusal", I think, holds what I take as the thin slice of a solution to the whole endless cycle of destruction the novel portrays).
All of that is to say that it is in God's hands, and we won't avoid suffering wherever we are, I fear. My time in silence itself may be a preparation. Which is all the more reason I want to use this time well.
Keep me updated. -Jack
p.s. I just went out from the hermitage over to the monaster to take care of some tasks there. The whole place is beautifully silent. And though the wind is howling a bit, it is also still. These are the moments I do appreciate with gratitude. It doesn't take much.
Thank you, Jack. Yes, things are well with us here. Brief comment in reply, that the Modern Project in my view takes this basic flaw in our perception and makes it the fundamental ‘fact’ of our existence. There is an ‘I’ which I know, and all else is unknown and potentially a deceptive threat to my ‘I’, my precious :) Everything that can be done must be done to separate all the ‘I’s. This is of course the work of the diabolo, the one who divides and throws apart, the one who teaches you to be afraid.
Note the subtle lie which we all miss because we bought it ‘you shall be as God’ . . . Up to this point the man and the woman had no sense of not being in God. The offer suggests a lack which wasn’t there! But we having swallowed the suggestion buried in the offer of something which was ours all along, miss the deceit.
The shift to egoic self consciousness suggests we have a journey to make, except for those who do, we return to where we started, knowing it for the first time (with apologies to your countryman :) )
A wee ramble :)
I look forward to your post!
The deceptive offer can be likened to offering water to an infant fish
Or selling people fresh air . . .
Hi Jack
Do hope you are well
On this aversion to silence, prayer, reading scripture, etc etc possibly ad Infinitum as the circle never becomes a straight line however close you get :) - Something occurred to me some months ago that is a little suggestive in this regard: when the man and woman became self conscious and found themselves outside the Garden, they found the way back ‘closer off’. I mention this as it resonates at a psychological level with my own ‘blocking’ experience. Only the ego death - flashing sword - enables the return. This to a certain extent explains the paradox that God is always and everywhere present, but ‘I’ cannot discern his presence
Grace and Peace
Eric
Eric- I have been thinking about your comment here. I have a post that I hope to send out tomorrow, which is at least somewhat related to what you are saying.It relates, I think, to the whole modern project to live without God. What cannot be measured or touched isn't real. Therefore we are unable to see what is closer to us than we are to ourselves and therefore must be an illusion. How to get beyond that?
All is well here. I hope all is well with you. -Jack
I understand about distractions. It’s a battle. I think of it as a worship disorder. Our precious father wants our worship and to die to self. Thankfully our father in heaven is a benevolent, compassionate and all loving. Jesus his son is my righteousness. Do I grasp that fully? I am a wonderer, a drifter, easily distracted. There is a battle for my heart. I have to remember the good news (gospel) daily. When I don’t my worship disorder kicks in. I pray that I can be content in Christ. I can’t do it on my own. I pray for joy In Christ, satisfaction in Christ, and contentment in Christ. That is a prayer for each of you.
PB- I like your framing of distraction as a worship disorder. I think that captures it. It makes me think of the quote by Simone Weil:
"Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself."
Similar to "you are what you eat" is "you are what you pay attention to". Which given what I have paid attention to over the course of my life is a disturbing thought. But also explains a lot.
Thank you for your prayer. I hope you are well. -Jack
Yikes, we are what we pay attention to! Lord have Mercy, A sinner I am.
You and me both. But I also find hope in this idea as well. I can focus more of my attention on good things. Not always easy these days, but worth the effort.
As you know, Jack, I loved this piece.
Mike-
Thank you. And thank you for the reference in your recent post. It is truly appreciated. I like where you are going with your substack, btw. A sane option where such options are disturbingly few.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Lovely 🙏🏼
JiK-
You may be right. But maybe not, either. It isn't always so easy to tell. There are many paths and we both seek the Way. But feel free to keep at me if you want. It is good to be challenged. I do appreciate it.
I hope you are well. -Jack
I would like to reply to this again, if I may - i hope I'm not hijacking your thread, Jack.
After what you wrote about suffering needlessly, Jesus Is King (sorry I don't know your name) I had a dream.
I dreamt that I instructed people (my servants? Hired help? or aspects of me?) to plant trees in pots of soil inside my flat. There was a row of hazel saplings in pots lined up against a wall in my living room. There was a lot of discord and I felt my 'servants' sniggered at me behind my back while still being polite to my face.
I sat with this dream for a bit and I trace it back to your comment about how joining Jesus (or the Spiritual life) is a leap of faith, easy and joyous.
I wonder if , in my dream, I was trying to re-create a forest indoors? Instead of opening my door and stepping outside into nature I was trying desperately to re-create nature inside my livingroom - and encountering a lot of discord (I against I)?
Am I trying to re-create a Spiritual reality/knowledge inside the confines of my mind, my body, instead of opening up to the sea of light all around me? (is there a sea of light all around me?)
Anna-
This is an interesting dream. But maybe it is simpler and more straightforward than that. Maybe the dream is asking you to step outside more and connect with the wider world. The beauty of the world, the whole cosmos, cannot be reduced to our little world. Try as we might. That we can't is the good news, I think.
And you are not in any way hijacking this thread. I appreciate you being here.
Be well. -Jack
Thank you, Jack. And thank you also for your thoughts about my dream. That is a very helpful interpretation. I have gotten very pot bound!
It can happen to any of us. I spent 10-12 years circling in my kennel, so to speak. It is a beautiful world out there despite its frequent ugliness. It is worth it.
You are always welcome here. Be well. -Jack
I must admit I find you mildly interesting. What I don't quite get is why you are continually showing up here. Particularly as you keep telling me I've got it all wrong and you've got it all correct. Spare me the "I'm doing it for your own good" nonsense. You don't know me, and I have no idea who you are. Again, you're coming to me, not the other way around. Why is that? It is a bit odd.
As a friendly reminder: the internet is vast and there is no need to focus so much on this little corner of it. And why not cultivate your own substack instead, considering all you claim to know?
I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but at least make it constructive instead of boring. If you want to be part of the conversation here feel free--you are as welcome as anyone. But you will need to tone it done a notch or two. Otherwise, we may have to amicably part ways. Your choice.
And look, I didn't even have to raise my voice. How about that?
I hope you are well. -Jack
But. What you think is a victory may well be defeat. And vice versa. The last shall be the first. And vice versa. Our brain cannot show a way out of this labyrinth that was created by our brain in the first place...or can it?