Dialogue 6: The Spiritual Canticle

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:12)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, we're here to talk about session seven, your session seven, Lexio, Jim, on the Mystic, John of the Cross. And thank you for being here.

James Finley (0:36)

Glad to be with you again.

Kirsten Oates (0:39)

So, we thought we were in deep, but we're just, we're just, I was, it's like a brain teaser we're in right now, which is to say that we're trying to understand something that our finite self can't understand.

James Finley (1:01)

Exactly, it's exactly right. We'll see how it goes.

Kirsten Oates (1:05)

I was gonna suggest that we just have our infinite selves have this dialogue and then it would all become very clear. But I guess it-

James Finley (1:14)

To the infinite self, yes.

Kirsten Oates (1:16)

That would just be silence for everyone listening.

James Finley (1:19)

You know, I think another way, in a way you're touching on something important through this too, is that we're talking about a certain experiential oneness with God in which there's an inner certainty regarding it in your heart and you can't explain it. You can't explain it. That's like Teresa of Avila, the beginning of the Fourth Mansion, that you realize you're in a realm where the time has come to love. The trouble with Third Mansion people is that it's entirely too reasonable.

And this becomes kind of divinely unreasonable, and that it's an overflow of oneness. You've experienced it in your heart, but you can't begin to explain what's happening to you. And he's offering guidance on how to conduct ourselves in that kind of subtle state.

Kirsten Oates (2:21)

You said in the podcast itself, actually, we're not sitting with this to understand it. So what you said just now is the kind of understanding we're looking for, which is more like a certainty in our heart. And when we hear the words, we don't understand them.

We might not understand them, but there's a sense of the truth in our heart.

James Finley (2:43)

Yeah, exactly. And that's why when we talk about two people who have tasted it, talk about it. Neither one can explain what they're talking about, but they mutually recognize what they're talking about. You know, the intimacy. And then he's offering guidance in this, how that deepens and develops a certain kind of mystical understanding. It's transconceptual.

It's not an understanding of a concept, you know, but of an obscure clarity in your heart that's transforming you into this love.

Kirsten Oates (3:18)

What's amazing about John of the Cross, given what we're saying right now, is how many words he was able to write. He was a prolific writer, and particularly around the Dark Knight and this unity of experience.

James Finley (3:34)

Yes. You know what I think it's like that reminds me of? It's like saying two people that have been married, who've loved each other for a long, long time.

And when they speak of their love, they say many things.

Because it's a many-faceted thing, you know, it turns this way and then that way, and it offers this and it offers that. And so you get the feeling of the endless kind of music of it, you know, it's because it's infinite, really. And he's, you know, it's very lovely, actually.

Kirsten Oates (4:07)

Would you say, Jim, that someone like John of the Cross would be, would be writing from that certain certainty in his heart? The words would flow with that, that heart certainty in the mix.

James Finley (4:21)

That's exactly it. You know, I told how he wrote this, this poem when he was in prison. It's when he was going through that dark night.

And it just burst forth like as a flow of poetic love.

And so when he got out of the prison and they asked him to comment, like, what's it mean? He was always explicating what was poetically giving to him and the flow of it itself. And when he starts the living flame of love, this mystical marriage, he said, I waited until the love reached such a depth, an overwhelming depth, which was even possible to say such things. So it's like a flow, you know, like it's putting words to things that words can't say. Well, it was putting words to things that's like music, that when you listen to the musicality or the rhythm of it, it draws you into the beauty of it. And it gives you some sense of it, that you're participating in it.