Category: Spiritual Hygiene

Divine Light, Sex, Alcohol, and Kerouac

Top o’ the Stack.  Opening paragraph:

If there is divine light, sexual indulgence prevents it from streaming in. Herein lies the best argument for continence. The sex monkey may not be as destructive of the body as the booze monkey, but he is more destructive of the spirit. You may dismiss what I am saying here either by denying that there is any divine light, or by denying that sexual indulgence impedes its influx, or both. But if you are in the grip of either monkey I will dismiss your dismissal. Why should I listen to a man with a monkey on his back? How do I know it is the man speaking and not the monkey?

The Dangers of Psychic Phenomena on the Spiritual Quest

The thoughts of Paul Brunton well presented in a short video. I have been reading him for years. Like Thomas Merton, the man is at his best in his journals. I have read and re-read all sixteen volumes. For some extracts see my Brunton category. 

Idle Talk and Idle Thought

If you aim to avoid idle talk, then you ought also aim to avoid idle thought. A maxim to mind:

Avoid the near occasion of useless conversation.

This applies both to conversation with others and with oneself. The latter is avoided by internal situational awareness which is classically enjoined by:

Guard the mind.

Not easy. It is easy to avoid others, but not easy to avoid one's garrulous self.

Worldly Success and Spiritual Growth

Worldly success can easily ensnare, and most will fall into the trap. But for some, worldly success has the opposite effect: it reveals the vanity, the emptiness, of worldly success, and thus subserves spiritual advance.  One is therefore well-advised to strive for a modicum of success as defined in the worldly terms of property and pelf, name and fame, status and standing, love and sex, the pleasures of the flesh. 

The successful are in a position to see through the goods of this life, having tasted them; the failures are denied this advantage, and may persist in the belief that if only they could get their hands on some property and pelf, etc. then they would achieve the ultimate in happiness.

A corollary is that a young person should not be too quick to renounce the world. Experience it first to appreciate the reasons for renunciation.  Contemptus mundi is best acquired by mundane experience, not by reading books about it  or following the examples of others. Better a taste of the tender trap before joining the Trappists. (Have I spoiled this little homily with the concluding cleverness?)

Spiritual Mountebanks

Substack latest. Hold onto your wallets, muchachos!

The world is full of hustlers and charlatans who prey upon spiritual seekers. One ought to be suspicious of anyone who claims enlightenment or special powers. The acid test is whether they demand money or sex for their services. If they do, run away while holding onto your wallet. 'Bhagwan Shree' Rajneesh  is a good example from the '80s. 

 

Unusual Experiences and the Problems of Overbelief and Underbelief

Substack latest.

One day, well over 40 years ago, I was deeply tormented by a swarm of negative thoughts and feelings that had arisen because of a dispute with a certain person.  Pacing around my apartment, I suddenly, without any forethought, raised my hands toward the ceiling and said, "Release me!"  It was a wholly spontaneous cri de coeur, a prayer if you will, but not intended as such.  I emphasize that it was wholly unpremeditated.    As soon as I had said the words and made the gesture, a wonderful peace descended upon my mind, and the flood of negativity vanished. I became as calm as a Stoic sage.

Tongue and Pen

Top o' the Stack.

Christ has harsh words for those who misuse the power of speech at Matthew 12:36: "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment."  But what about every idle word that bloggers blog and Substackers stack?  Must not the discipline of the tongue extend to the pen?

Detachment and Renunciation

The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, Volume Two, The Quest, p. 130, #242:

Detachment from the world is an absolute necessity for the man who seeks authentic inner peace, and not its imagined counterfeit. But renouncement of the world is not necessary to any except those who have an inborn natural vocation for the monkish life.

It is not easy, but one can be in the world but not of the world. Paradoxically, however, the monastic life is an easier way to detachment. To live a life of monkish virtue in a monastery is relatively easy; to do so in the world, hard.  This is why monasteries were established in the first place.

A Contemplative Nun on Thomas Merton

This just over the transom from Karl White:

Hope you're well. May be of interest.

Hi Karl,

Your message arrives at an opportune moment. The day before yesterday I received Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation: According to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross. Garrigou-Lagrange's work is the real deal from perhaps the hardest of the hard-core paleo-Thomists.
 
While reading the chapter on infused contemplation, I thought of Thomas Merton. Merton's sense of the reality of the Unseen Order was weak and underdeveloped because of the strong lure of the secular — to which, however, he never entirely succumbed, pace the thesis of David D. Cooper's excellent but mistaken Thomas Merton's Art of Denial: The Evolution of a Radical Humanist (University of Georgia Press, 1989, 2008).  Cooper attributed the evolution (devolution?) to Merton's failure to achieve infused contemplation. As I read him, however, Merton never lost his faith. He did, however, remain to the end deeply conflicted. All the Merton commentators that I have read agree that he came to question the contemptus mundi he expressed in The Seven Storey Mountain.  As for whether or not Merton attained infused contemplation, if he had why are there no references to it in his journal? There is a paucity of spiritual disclosure in those private pages of a monk who one would think would reveal the most intimate secrets of his inner life. I have read all seven volumes of his journal several times over. He is one of those key figures without whom you cannot understand the 'Sixties.
 
Thanks for the link.  I read the Ellsberg-Sr. Wendy correspondence with interest.
 
Regards,
 
Bill

Downplay Both

If you downplay your wins, downplay your losses. The pain of defeat is worse than the pleasure of victory is good. But you have the power  to regard them as equal. In some measure the pain of loss can be lessened. The Stoic therapy is no cure, but it is a palliative. If our predicament is a splitting headache, said therapy is a couple of aspirin. Take it and them for what they are worth.