A Note On Prayer

Before undertaking prayer, regardless of whatever form your prayer assumes, it is most needful to place yourself, as much as lies in your power, in the all-merciful presence of God.

To awaken within yourself the recollection of this holy presence, both internally and in the world outside, is the proper aim of prayer. It is both the origin and consummation of all prayerful activity; just as an archer must first direct his arrow squarely at the target, if he wishes it to reach that end.

For the true place of prayer is not found in buildings made of earth, nor stone, nor wood. Neither is it found in the heart of the carnal body. But, rather, in the presence of God, which is, as it were, the heart of your spiritual body, or being.

Now, all forms of prayer, provided they proceed from an intention to remove yourself from the snares of ignorance, apathy, wrath, and despair, for the purpose of drawing closer to the Lord, who is the source of all that is peaceful, loving, holy, and good, are worthy of respect, -- nay, of real honor and praise, -- as graces already bestowed upon the soul by God.

The prayer of speech is not to be denigrated beside the prayer of silence, for each has its proper and appointed season under heaven. It is true, in silence there is sweetness -- incomparable sweetness! -- yet, words fall, and often rise, into this; and fall back through, to rise again.

You must not fixate upon a rigid approach, but remain attentive at all times to the Holy Spirit, that it may guide you into whatever manner of prayer is most effective for you, at any given moment.

For the Lord has wisdom surpassing every mortal conceit, and desires to lead the soul by diverse pathways; now carrying one into the highest peaks of revelation, now into the furthest depths of contrition, and also by avenues less treacherous, more moderate, and well-defined.

Be patient and listen with a faithful heart, but without undue expectation, neither holding oneself back, nor rushing ahead before the Word that is given, and the Lord of Hosts will direct your steps.

Most important, do not succumb to complacency, or faintheartedness, but lift always your soul into the presence of the Lord with confidence, fervor, and enthusiasm in his divine gifts; for so shall you receive them, and be consecrated, in Jesus's name.

April 2014

Faith is always supernatural;
other virtues may become so.

Many things I regret, but I never regret my regrets.

The adept becomes silent through humility, and because she must. As she progresses in the spiritual life, her trials multiply and intensify. When she believes herself blessed, she is damned. At every bend in the path, she is thrown. She can no longer trust her own tongue.

There's one choice in life:
You can be a cynic or a fool.
Be a fool!

The romantic visions of idealists,
though they never come to pass,
yet contribute immensely to the larger discourse.
They are forever compromising,
and forever gaining ground.

Fearlessness is sentimental as all hell.
It isn't guarded. It's the furthest thing from "cool".
It's all you wanna do.

You're walking through your life,
and suddenly something wakes you up,
and it's not like anything else.
It's enough. Suddenly enough.
And she's so gorgeous, you can't bluff.

Of flowers, Chamomile is the Christ.

Christ was a bodhisattva, and Buddha was a Christian saint.

We can only see the world when we don't expect it.

We need fresh eyes to see the world;
knowledge is the enemy of sight,
and ignorance is anything but blind.

Truth is the highest wisdom, reality the truest teacher, and that which exists is always the good. This present moment is to be preferred, above all else; if only because anything else is a lie. All we suffer is a coming to terms. Life can tell us of nothing but herself. Let us never be fearful to hear her.

To be entertained by our own creations is a remarkable thing,
but to be content with what the Lord has made is a privilege of the saints.

Every man is a confession or defense of himself.

I am the most severe, and, yet, the most lenient of judges;
from the body, I require the spirit, but I suffer the soul to be flesh.

We are in sin like fish are in water. In sin, we live, move, and have our being. We breathe it, filter it, gobble it up with our food, excrete it in our shit; like filthy thoughts in the ink from our pens. Sin is our element, and we need it to live. Take us out of it, and we'd gulp madly for life, flop around helplessly, and die. We'd become something else.

So long as the poor cannot drink wine,
wine is the blood of the poor.

We accessorize with the flesh of impoverished peoples;
what would put meat on their bones, puts ribbons in our hair
and kerchiefs round our necks.

We should all be beggars. Charity is the privilege of God.

Possessions encourage desire for possessions,
and wants easily turn into needs.

God is born in the manger of a humble heart;
not the mansions of a richly furnished mind.

Camus would argue that a Christian has no greater ethical demand upon him than any other man, but Bloy, like Kierkegaard, would say there is no greater responsibility than the one we assume when we call ourselves Christian. For them, the name is an office, and it must not be disgraced. Camus would call that bullshit, and say that everyone is answerable to his own conscience, whether or not one aspires to be good, or to live up to a title of goodness. What is clear to me, at least, is that the man who regularly compares himself to Christ can have few illusions about himself; his conscience remains sharp, and will cut him unless he takes care.

The most important lessons are always learned too late;
we have the wisdom to appreciate only what is lost.

Greed is the mother of ills.

Mercy is our link to the Divine.

Drugs are the spice of life.

To be born is the ultimate rude awakening.

To be born is to be drafted into someone else's war.

In a corrupt society, procreation is the arresting of souls,
and parenthood is the guarding of prisoners sentenced to death.

Not everyone can be a surgeon, a concert pianist, or a tamer of wild beasts. But most everyone seems to think they'd make a good parent. It's funny how our standards of "good parenting", like everything else, have all but collapsed under the weight of history. We no longer aspire, and are content to consider our present limitations an immutable law of our innermost nature. Our family values, the cornerstones of civilization, are now left shoddy and misplaced. In such a state, the ones who most value the institution of family respect it enough not to enter into it; not without due consideration, at least, and, most importantly, due preparation. Anyone can raise a child, but to raise a man or woman is a rare talent, and a great skill.

Where adoption is an option, procreation is a travesty.

Man is a plague on the earth and on himself.

If you can still tap your feet, you're okay.

With the simplicity of profoundest insight, Marcel Proust writes, "The atheist forgets that what he is affirming is, precisely, a negation." And the case of the mystic is only the reverse; for the true mystic *knows*, with a conviction surpassing all understanding, "that what he is affirming is, precisely, a negation." To him, to whom God is not so much a thing, as a supersensual reality transcending all things, the absence of God in the world is no argument against his existence, but, on the contrary, works entirely in its favor. The world, -- that is, our world; of matter, distinction, and sense, -- could not possibly contain a reality sufficiently transcendent as to be worthy of the name of "God". It is with an eye to perfect simplicity, but, also, to the most impenetrable mystery, that the mystic speaks, when he says, "God is known by his absence; don't we all feel this presence?" So it is that the part of God which makes an appearance in the world comes not in his own name, and asks not that we believe in him, but only in the One who sent him. A messiah is born out of that nothingness, that vacuum, or void, wherein God cannot be seen, but can be known, according to the divine longing we have for him. This is a truth which cannot, and never will, be grasped by the vulgar, but only the subtlest hearts and minds.

God reveals Himself to each man
in the form in which he can see Him,

according to the power and nature of his sight.

Never let truth get in the way of the greatest story ever told.

Never let truth get in the way of a Good Friday.

A proud man cannot suffer to serve, nor give glory to one greater than himself. But he who would lead himself goes nowhere, and he who would be his own sovereign has only a fool for a king. He would make the journey of a thousand miles on foot, rather than place his trust in the river, whose course is swift. He cannot recognize the tremendous current of tradition, which has gathered together so many like-minded souls before him, and will continue long after he is gone, directing all paths into one. He seeks, rather, to map for himself a way he has not traversed. He would shake off the sure and gentle hands that could guide him, as though they were fetters of iron, and wander through dark and uncertain climes. He imagines himself first, who is last, and will heed the exhortations of no man, however sainted by decades of struggle and study. He would cast aside books containing the essence of great souls. Having no knowledge of what is written and done, he would proclaim, as if for the first time, prophecies which have long been fulfilled. He would reinvent, in the crudest form, what has passed through the hands of a million others, and been perfected long before he drew breath. Woe to that man who would be his own master and guide! Lead only by arrogance, he will surely meet a bitter end.

Divine Heresy

Divine Heresy and Heretical Faith

Divine Heresy:
shattering concepts of God
that limit the awareness of God

Heretical Faith:
shattering the awareness of God
that limits the concepts of God

Renowned Kabbalist Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook saw the challenge which free-thinkers posed to various conceptions of God as a positive phase in the development of religion. The following words are translated from the rabbi's writings. The essential thrust is that any conception of God is, in some sense, heretical, and ideas concerning God easily calcify into rigid forms of idol worship. He believed that the atheists, by attempting to tear down these concepts, were accomplishing something which the faithful had lost the ability to do for themselves; which is, to see the lack of fluidity in their conceptions about God, and how these concepts actually hinder the connection to the true source of God's wisdom, which is intuitive. The Rabbi wrote: "As the Messiah approaches, insolence will increase." The word translated here as "insolence" is hutspa, which may also be translated as "nerve" or "audacity". As the forms become more rigid, their detractors become more audacious.

excerpted from:
"The Essential Kabbalah" by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook:

“The essence of faith is an awareness of the vastness of Infinity. Whatever conception of it enters the mind is an absolutely negligible speck in comparison to what should be conceived, adn what should be conceived is no less negligible compared to what it really is... Every definition of God leads to heresy; definition is spiritual idolatry. Even attributing mind and will to God, even attributing divinity itself, and the name "God" -- these, too, are definitions. Were it not for the subtle awareness that all these are just sparkling flashes of that which transcends definition -- these, too, would engender heresy... The greatest impediment to the human spirit results from the fact that the conception of God is fixed in a particular form, due to childish habit and imagination. This is a spark of the defect of idolatry, of which we must beware.

All the troubles of the world, especially spiritual troubles such as impatience, hopelessness, and despair, derive from the failure to see the grandeur of God clearly. It is natural for each individual creature to be humble in the presence of God, to nullify itself in the presence of the the whole -- all the more so in the presence of the source of all being, which one senses as infinitely beyond the whole. There is no sadness or depression in this act, but rather delight and a feeling of being uplifted, a sense of inner power. But when is it natural? When the grandeur of God is well portrayed in the soul, with clear awareness, beyond any notion of divine essence.

We avoid studying the true nature of the divine, and as a result, the concept of God has dimmed. The innermost point of the awareness of God has become so faint that the essence of God is conceived only as a stern power from whom you cannot escape, to whom you must subjugate yourself. If you submit to the service of God on this empty basis, you gradually lose your radiance by constricting your consciousness. The divine splendour is plucked from your soul.

"Every sensitive spirit feels compelled to discard such a conception of God. This denial is the heresy that paves the way for the Messiah, when the knowledge of God runs dry throughout the world. The crude complacency of imagining God in words and letters alone puts humanity to shame. Heresy arises as a pained outcry to liberate us from this strange, narrow pit, to raise us from the darkness of letters and platitudes to the light of thought and feeling. Such heresy eventually takes its stand in the center of morality. It has a temporary legitimacy, for it must consume the filthy froth clingling to mindless faith. The real purpose of heresy is to remove the particular forms from the thought of the essence of all life, the root of every single thought... removing the dross that separates us from genuine divine light. On the desolate ruins wrought by heresy, the sublime knowledge of God will build her temple. Utter heresy arrises to purify the air of the wicked, insolent filth of thinking about the essence of divinity -- an act of peeping that leads to idolatry. In itself this heresy is no better than what it attacks, but it is absolutely opposed to it, and out of the clash of these two opposites, humanity is aided immensely in approaching an enlightened awareness of God, which draws it toward temporal and eternal bliss...

"Pure belief in the oneness of God has been blurred by corporeality. From time to time, this confusion is exposed. Whenever a corporeal aspect falls away, it seems as if faith itself has fallen, but afterward it turns out that, in fact, faith has been clarified. As the human spirit verges on complete clarity of faith, the final subtle shell of corporeality falls away -- attributing existence to God. For truly, existence, however we define it, is immeasurably remote from God. The silhouette of this denial resembes heresy but when clarified is actually the highest level of faith. Then the human spirit becomes aware that the divine emanates existence and is itself beyond existence. What appeared to be heresy, now purified, is restored to purest faith. But this denial of existence in God -- this return to the source of all being, to the essential vibrancy of all existence -- requires exquisite insight. Each day one must trace it back to its authentic purity.

"The Infinite transcends every particular content of faith."