Gabriel Marcel: Listener Questions

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 (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to season 11 of Turning to the Mystics, where we've been turning to the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. And I'm here with Jim to answer the listener questions that have come in for this season. Welcome, Jim.

James Finley (0:37)

Yes, as always, glad to be together with these people, yes.

Kirsten Oates (0:41)

And I just wanted to start off by thanking everyone who took the time to send us a question. It really just helps to round out these seasons and to help Jim and I know that the seasons are landing with people. It's such a help, isn't it, Jim, to get these questions?

James Finley (0:58)

It is. And also, in reading them, I'm always moved by the sincerity of the questions because you can tell that it's coming from the very place that these teachers would hope that we would listen from, which is the depth of our heart, like the attentiveness and our sincerity. So, it was very moving to sit with these questions, and yes.

Kirsten Oates (1:20)

Lovely. And rather than categorizing the listener questions into themes like we've done in the past, we're actually just addressing them under the session they came under, because a number of the sessions had a theme, fidelity, hope, or love. They categorize themselves based on the sessions. So, you ready, Jim?

James Finley (1:39)

I'm ready, yes.

Kirsten Oates (1:41)

Excellent. So, our first question is from Jack, and he says, as I listen to you discuss Marcel's beautiful goal to reveal our essence, I reflect on my own journey. After nearly seven decades of searching, I discovered what is the answer to me in one simple reflection. The essence of my being is peace. However, the profoundness of what this means to me is completely lost when I try to share it with family or friends. I think this touches on your statement that I myself thought may deeply reach one person but not another. Maybe you can help me explain the power I comprehend in the statement better. Here is how I try to explain it. In moments when I have no pain, anxiety, or fear, I am keenly aware that my very essence is an incredible feeling that we would define as peace. Then I began to realize that peace is more than a feeling. It actually defines my essence in those moments. Once this essence was revealed to me, I thought about it when the inevitable pain, anxiety, and fears would come along, and I realized they are temporary. And even more importantly, I realized peace was alive and well, existing still beneath the temporary states of pain, anxiety, and fear. It is the only part of my consciousness that is eternal. Because I am in this temporary human state, pain, anxiety, and fears will occasionally cover my peace. But now I know the peace is always there, and that tempers those temporary human conditions. The beautiful thing is that when I am released from my temporary human form, my pure essence will continue to be eternal peace.

James Finley (3:28)

Yes, you know, I sat with this, and here's what came to me, how I find this helpful, what you're asking here. The first is this, it's again bringing to mind what's at the heart of Marcel's teachings. That is, the nature of the self, myself, extends out into the nature of consciousness, the nature of love, the nature of reality, ultimately the nature of God. And it does so because my self extends out into God, because the infinite presence of God is extending itself out into me as the very self of myself, which is the divinity of myself. My nothingness without God. And that's our very ontology, our very being. The gift of the thou is when it shines through into consciousness, as we experience it. And how we would experience it is a kind of a, it's a metaphorical word. It would differ from each person. And certainly one word is peace. By peace I give to you, not as the world give do I give to you, Jesus says, which is the peace of God. So I think it's that. I think it's the gift of a word. It's a kind of a sacramental way of expressing this unit of mystery of God's infinite self being given to you as the depth of yourself. The next thing is this, is that when we try to explain this to people, they don't know what we're talking about. It's a gift to be sensitive to this. Not everybody has that.