Guigo II: Session 3

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more, visit cac.org.

James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to our time here together, turning for guidance to the wisdom found in Guigo II's classic work, A Ladder of Monks. In the previous session, the focus was on the fourth run of A Ladder to Heaven, Contemplation.

And we saw how, by contemplation, Guigo means that point in the path that all the mystics are concerned about, at which the ascending up to the rungs of the ladder of Lectio, meditation, and deep longings of prayer become mystical. That is, contemplation is here infused contemplation. It's God accessing us with a taste of God's knowledge of God and a knowledge of who God eternally knows and calls us to be hidden with Christ in God forever. And this taste, this celestial taste, of course, is not in the full light of glory. It is our eternal destiny in God. Because it's very subtle and innermost and delicate. And we sense within ourselves, too, that it is trustworthy, vast and true and ultimately divine. And so the question of Guigo is how to help us discern that this is happening to us.

Because the onset of this state is, sometimes it's accompanied by extraordinary things that go along, like overflow into it, hearing inner voices or seeing visions and other things can happen to us as a psychological overflow. But in its essence, it's innermost, hidden, subtle and delicate. So how do we calibrate our heart to a fine enough scale to discern the stirrings of this state? And then how do we learn to cooperate with it, to not get in the way of it? And as that's where we began to see then the theme of the path. That is, there is the path that leads up to this awakening. But in this mystical awakening, this quickening, there is the path that follows from it that the awakening itself, the light that shines off from the awakening, illumines the path along which we learn to be healed from all that hinders us from being habitually stabilized in the luminosity, this incarnate infinity, this divinity of our life, and so on. And we saw that what we saw last time starting the path at the end of our session is that when it ends, when this grace moment ends, whether it be just a flash, like a taste, or it might last a few hours, it could last several days sometimes. It's very hard this happens to people. But as it passes, we're understandably, as it dissipates, we were so amazed and taken by the fullness of it, that as it dissipates, we feel a certain sadness that it's gone, and his word, tears, that is, there's this longing to abide in that which was so fleetingly glimpsed.

And so he suggests the first step of the path is to begin to sense that God's presence, that God is present in and as our tearful longings. That is, it isn't just that we're longing to abide in this kind of open oneness, this communal presence, but as it dissipates, as our capacity to experientially abide in it, that it abides in us as the sincerity of our longings to abide.

And it's like refining our heart to such sensibilities as these, we begin to get a feel of the path.

The next thing here to talk about the path, this is in the 14th section, page 96, and Guigo writes, But let such a man, such a person, such a one who is so graced by this awakening, beware, lest this contemplation in which he was lifted up to the very heavens, be aware that he plunged violently into the depths, and after such great graces turned again to sinful pleasures of the world and of the delights of the flesh. Sense, however, the eye of the human heart, as not the power to bear for long the shining of the true light. Let the soul descend gently and in due order to one or other of the three degrees, by means of which it made its ascent. Let it rest now in one, now in another, as the circumstances of time and place suggest to its free choice. Even though, as it seems to me, the soul is the nearer to God, the farther it climbs from the first degree. Such, alas, is the frailty and the wretchedness of human nature. In this way, then, we see clearly by reason and testimony of the scriptures that the perfection of the blessed life is contained in these four degrees, and that the spiritual person, the spiritual man, ought to occupy himself in them constantly. But is there anyone who holds to this way of life? Tell me who he is and I will praise him. There are many who desire it, the few who achieve it. Would that we were among the few? I would say here are the few who achieve it in its fullness. But all of us are recipient to the degrees to which this fullness is growing within us, as evidenced by the fact that we are drawn to the beauty or resonances of these teachings, of these mystics. I would like to reflect on this as I understand this and experience this. See, let's say there is a moment of awakening. We saw in each of the mystics in Merton and John of the Cross trees, and so on, these quickenings. And when the quickening passes, it's true that we sometimes feel we can plunge, like fall out of heaven somehow, like a precipitous falling out of the fullness. And he cautions us from... By the way, sometimes that happens. I mean, it is experienced that way, and then you have to get your bearings and move on. But he's suggesting another sense of it. I think this comes closer to how this is most often experienced. It's like this. It isn't that... Let's just say this moment of oneness happens. And as it dissipates, my... How I have experienced this is like falling backwards in slow motion.