{"id":1024,"date":"2024-01-15T04:59:40","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T04:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/01\/15\/the-wild-horse-of-the-mind\/"},"modified":"2024-01-15T04:59:40","modified_gmt":"2024-01-15T04:59:40","slug":"the-wild-horse-of-the-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/01\/15\/the-wild-horse-of-the-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Taming the Wild Horse of the Mind on the Road to Benares"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning's meditation session ran from 3:10 ante meridiem<\/em> to 4:00. Before that I was sketching six blog posts in my journal. My mind was on fire with ideas fueled in part by  some entries from Volume Five of Tom Merton's journal.  As flabby a liberal as he is, both politically and theologically, he is engaged in the seven volumes of his journal in a wholly admirable project of relentless self-examination. I love this argonaut of interiority with all his inner conflicts. <\/span><\/p>\n

He fled the world but was drawn back to her. The contemplative of contemptus mundi<\/em>  became a peace activist. He who preached The Silent Life (the tile of one of the best of his books) was an inveterate scribbler of journal entries, articles, poems, letters — how many volumes of correspondence? Five? –  not to mention too many books some of them good many of them not so good.<\/span><\/p>\n

His journals are a treasure trove of ideas, references, self-criticism, culture-critical observations, weather reports, whimsical vignettes, extrapolations, autodidactic and amateurish, from his reading of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Jaspers, Camus and plenty of people you've never heard of, Isaac of Stella, Evdokimov, Julien Green . . . I could go on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, my mind was racing when I hit the black mat of meditation. Now you can pull in the reins brutally on the wild horse, or let him run. Best to let him run and tire himself out while you observe his antics. After 20 minutes he settled down, leaving 30 minutes for a peaceful dive toward Silence or Mental Quiet, the first stage on the mystical descent. The German Versenkung<\/em><\/a> taken mystically* as opposed to nautically well captures the sinking below the  waves of discursivity into the depths.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now it can happen that you sink so deep that you fear that you will never come up again. The terror of ego loss grips you. At this point you need a great faith and a great trust, lest you miss the opportunity of a lifetime: to penetrate the veil while enwrapped in the mortal coil. I was offered this opportunity many years ago but the fear of ego death  sent me to the surface again when the whole point is to transcend the ego, to let it go, to give up control.  The ego must die for the soul to live. I am alluding to what may be the deep meaning of Matthew 18:3: "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The little child trusts<\/em>. Plato: "To philosophize is to learn how to die."<\/span><\/p>\n

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* (KONZENTRATION) Zustand<\/a> tiefer Konzentration<\/a>, Meditation<\/a> absorption<\/span><\/a> <\/span>, <\/span>contemplation<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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die Verbindung<\/a> zum G\u00f6ttlichen durch die sitzende, stille Versenkung: <\/span>connecting with the divine by means of seated, quiet contemplation.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning's meditation session ran from 3:10 ante meridiem to 4:00. Before that I was sketching six blog posts in my journal. My mind was on fire with ideas fueled in part by  some entries from Volume Five of Tom Merton's journal.  As flabby a liberal as he is, both politically and theologically, he is … Continue reading “Taming the Wild Horse of the Mind on the Road to Benares”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,73,72,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meditation","category-merton-thomas","category-sage-advice","category-spiritual-exercises"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}