Showing posts with label The Book of Privy Counseling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Book of Privy Counseling. Show all posts

Friday, March 22, 2024

the naked awareness of your self


.





... imagination and reason have taught you all they can 
and now you must learn to be wholly given 
to the simple spiritual awareness of your self and God....

he told his disciples, who were loath to give up his physical presence
 (just as you are loath to give up the speculative reflections of your subtle, clever faculties),
 that for their own good he would withdraw his physical presence from them, 
 He said to them, "It is necessary for you that I go,"
 meaning, "It is necessary  for you 
that I depart physically from you."  

St. Augustine, commenting on these words, says:
 "Were not the form of  his humanity withdrawn from our bodily eyes,
 love for him in his Godhead would never cleave to our spiritual eyes."  
And thus I say to you, at a certain point it is necessary
 to give up discursive meditation and learn to taste something of that deep,
 spiritual experience of God's love.

...  always and ever strive toward the naked awareness of your self, 
and continually offer your being to God as your most precious gift. 
 
 Inasmuch as this awareness really is naked, 
you will at first find it terribly painful to rest in it for any length of time
 because, ... your faculties will find no meat for themselves in it. 
 
 Let them fast awhile from their natural delight in knowing, 
It is well said that man naturally desires to know.  Yet at the same time,
 it is also true that no amount of natural or acquired knowledge 
will bring him to taste the spiritual experience of God,
 for this is a pure gift of grace. 
 
 And so I urge you: go after experience rather than knowledge. 
 On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you,
 but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. 
 
 Knowledge tends to breed conceit,
 but love builds.  
 
Knowledge is full of labor,
but love, full of rest.






~ from The Book of Privy Counseling
written anonymously in the fourteenth century 
art: from Arnhem Land



Wednesday, April 13, 2011

abide continually in the deep center of your spirit


.


.
You have reached a point where your further growth in perfection demands that you do not feed your mind with meditations on the multiple aspects of your being.  In the past, these pious meditations helped you to understand something of God.  They fed your interior affection with a sweet and delightful attraction ... but now it is important that you seriously concentrate on the effort to abide continually in the deep center of your spirit, offering to God that naked blind awareness of your being which I call your first fruits. 

I want you to clearly understand that in this work it is not necessary to inquire into minute details of God's existence any more than of your own.  For there is no name, no experience, and no insight so akin to the everlastingness of God than what you can possess, perceive, and actually experience in the blind loving awareness of this word, is.  ...let your faculties rest from their minute inquiry into the attributes of  his being or yours.  Leave all this behind...

With perseverance in this practice, you will grow increasingly refined in singleness of heart until you are ready to strip, spoil, and utterly unclothe your self-awareness of everything, even the elemental awareness of your own being, so that you might be newly clothed in the gracious stark experience of God as he is in himself.

For this is the way of all real love.  The lover will utterly and completely despoil himself of everything, even his very self, because of the one he loves.  This is the meaning of the words; "Anyone who wishes to love me let him forsake himself."   ...to lose the knowledge and experience of self.  This is essential...


~ The Book of Privy Counseling
edited by william johnston

.


Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Worship the Lord with your substance





.
Worship the Lord with your substance
and feed the poor with your first fruits.
Thus shall your barns be filled with abundance 
and your presses run over with wine.

Solomon said this to his son but take it as addressed to yourself, and understand it spiritually...

Thus you can see that by pursuing your meditation to the farthest reaches and ultimate frontiers of  thought, you will find yourself in the end, on the essential ground of being with the naked perception and blind awareness of your own being.  And this is why your being alone can be called the first of your fruits.

So it is, that naked being takes first place among all your fruits, all the others being rooted in it.  But now you have come to a time when you will no longer profit by clothing or gathering into your awareness of naked being, any or all of its particulars, by which I mean your fruits, upon which you have laboriously meditated for so long.  Now it is enough to worship God perfectly with your substance, that is, with the offering of your naked being.  This alone constitutes your first fruits; it will be the unending sacrifice of praise for yourself and for all men that love requires.  

Leave the awareness of your being unclothed of all thoughts about its attributes, and your mind quite empty of all particular details relating to your being or that of any other creature.  For such thoughts will not satisfy your present need,  further your growth, nor bring you and others closer to perfection.  Let them alone.  Truly these meditations are useless to you now.  But this blind, general awareness of your being, conceived in an undivided heart, will satisfy your present need,  further your growth, and bring you and all mankind closer to perfection.  Believe me, it far surpasses the value of any particular thought, no matter how sublime.


.
~ The Book of Privy Counseling

.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

stretching out toward God




When you go apart to be alone for prayer, put from your mind 
everything you have been doing or plan to do.  
Reject all thoughts, be they good or be they evil.  
Do not pray with words unless you are really drawn to this; 
or if you do pray with words, pay no attention to whether they are many or few.  
Do not weigh them or their meaning. 
 Do not be concerned about what kind of prayers you use, 
for it is unimportant whether or not they are official liturgical prayers, 
psalms, hymns, or anthems; whether they are for particular or general intentions; 
or  whether you formulate them interiorly, by thoughts, 
or express them aloud, in words.  
See that nothing remains in your conscious mind 
save a naked intent stretching out toward God.





from chapter 1 of The Book of Privy Counseling
by an anonymous fourteenth-century English author