Dorothy's Discourse No. 5, On Consultation, remember that's not the real title, the real title is that it's not good to follow one's own judgment, that it means it's not good to be directed exclusively by one's own judgment. He spends a lot of time convincing us of the necessity of consulting the elders. Because we're talking about consulting, he's not talking about just discussing our life with everybody, he's trying to get everybody's advice, but it's the elders in particular, it's this spiritual father. Like all of the fathers, he stresses the danger of following your own judgment, and he's got these two enemies there, these two problems or obstacles. One is self-will and the other one is self-judgment, or self-righteousness rather. One is selema and the other is dikayoma. He says that this consultation, this spiritual guidance, is especially for, I'd say a kind of absolute devotion to it, is especially necessary for people who come from a sinful

[01:07]

background. Evidently they're supposed to be especially vulnerable to being misled, susceptible to being misled, maybe by their memories, maybe the devil's got a foothold in their mind. But anyway, he stresses it for them. The relationship between the devil and our own self-will, and how he's spoiled by opening our heart to the elders, and simply by caution, by consultation. The need for discernment from another person, and then his principle, which is so strong in this chapter, he says, every fall comes from somebody trusting his own judgment. And when he says that, we just know that something else has to be said, that you can't stop there. I know of no fall that happens to a monk that does not come from trusting his own judgment.

[02:09]

Or rather, there's a voice that comes up in the back of our mind and says, well, you can't fall if you don't walk. But the other fault, of course, the other failing, is never to learn to walk. And it's possible for a person in a monastic life, or in any life, just to reject the need to learn to walk, and just to stay in one place his whole life. It's not that this is the only problem. There's another fall, which is a fall that you don't even notice, because you don't go anywhere. You can't fall unless you walk. If you don't stand up, you can't fall. That whole business of all of those clumsy images just means that in some way we need to make progress, and in some way we need to try to arrive at a kind of autonomy. We're being trained to liberty, not to heteronomy. We're being trained not to be perpetually dependent upon another person. What kind of training would that be? But rather to find our own center, to find our own freedom, to find a kind of autonomy and self-direction. But which is always a delicate and two-sided thing, because we're never completely autonomous.

[03:14]

But rather we're most autonomous when we're not autonomous. The paradox of Christianity. Which is impossible to make clear. We make it clear, but we can't get it down to one term. We're most autonomous, we're most free when we're not autonomous. And it's so easy to misinterpret that in terms of a kind of, what do you call it, a parental obedience, you know? That is, you're most free when you're not free at all. And you can misuse that paradox so that you can abuse people into being children for their whole life long, and persuading them that their very littleness is freedom, when it's not. There's a kind of littleness that's not free at all. And then there's another kind of littleness which is really free, and which is able to be little or great, which is able to be big or small, which is able to be in subjection or to be autonomous, to obey or to be autonomous. That's the kind of freedom we need. And the obedience and the subjection is, and the following another person's direction,

[04:16]

is the kind of needle's eye that we have to go through to get to that freedom. But it's too easy for that, for one side of that to be so overstressed, as often happens in the history of the Church and in the history of religious orders, so that the only virtue is obedience. And people end up never getting beyond sort of third grade in their personal growth. And then he talks about the peace and freedom that come from this way of consulting the elders, and once again we have that question in our minds as to the value of that peace and freedom. But as we read further, and as we read the Fathers further, we get reassured about that, that it's the real thing. And it's not the peace and freedom of a person in a hothouse, or a person who's completely sheltered from the problems of life. But it's a peace and freedom which results from a successful encounter with life, but in this particular way of obedience, in this particular way of following the direction of the elders and following the tradition. And that the real problems of life do come to us in that way, but what form do they come

[05:18]

to us in? And challenges to our faith, challenges to our obedience, especially in relationships with others. The problems are encountered on an interior level, in our own hearts, instead of being encountered so much in a kind of a variety of circumstances outside, in a kind of adventurous voyage in life. Okay, the problems of life, in other words, this peace and freedom that Dorotheus is talking about, when he says, remember, I experienced all of this tranquility and I was suspicious because I had read in the scriptures that it's through many afflictions that we have to enter the kingdom of heaven. So he said, well, I began to be suspicious of that. His very suspicion reassures us. And then he said he went and he asked Abba John, and Abba John said, no, be at rest. This tranquility and this freedom of heart that you feel is the heritage of all those who have entrusted themselves to the guidance of the Fathers.

[06:19]

Now, you could say still, well, maybe that's simply the peace and freedom of a person who has been sheltered from all of the problems of life, okay? Because he's in a monastery, and the big problems of life, the problems of sort of making your own way in the world, the problems of supporting a family, the problems of just the conflicts and the storms of life, he's sheltered from them because he's in this little greenhouse here. And somebody else is worrying about everything for him. All he has to do is tend his own little garden and his own little interior life. But it turns out that these problems of life in a monastic life, the same conflicts of life are supposed to come to us, but in another way. They come to us in a concentrated form and sort of head on in having to encounter our lack of charity in the relations that we have with others and in the things that we're asked to do under obedience and the resistance that our own self-rule offers to those things, okay? That's the way in which we encounter.

[07:21]

They're the same challenges to faith and to hope and to love, but they're in a smaller and somewhat specialized environment. That's what I was trying to say. That's the theory anyway, that you're not sheltered from those conflicts, but in some way they're supposed to be concentrated because you don't have so many ways to evade them. That's the theory. That's the way it should work. That you sort of aim head on into the storm, as it were, into the conflicts of life, directly heading towards this problem of self and self-rule, rather than sort of being all over the place and mixing in a little of that struggle with a lot of diversion and going at it, you know, sideways and sort of obliquely. In a monastic life it's supposed to head on, go at it head on in a concentrated form. Of course it's very easy for that not to happen at all. It's simply too easy for me. And also we don't want to overestimate that, because remember we say monastic life, and not just monasticism. We don't live monasticism, we live monastic life, which means that we live first, we live

[08:24]

life first, and then we live life as monks. We don't want to pretend that all of our life is heading head on into some kind of storm. All of our life is a spiritual struggle. That would be false. First we live, then we struggle. First comes the positive, then comes the conflict. It's hard to know who is leading this thing, how much one should apply one's own self, and then some objections to a particular problem that comes up, and how much you should send it over to the superior. That tends to get worked out in experience. If the spiritual father of the superior is really on the job, he should help you to find the boundary line, how far you should go with your own initiative, and then at what point you should just obey, or whatever. He should help you. It shouldn't be left to the individual to figure out, perhaps with some perplexity, some confusion. And it tends to work itself out.

[09:24]

Certainly, we run into a couple of borderline cases, and maybe the next conference you should say, well, these are the borderline cases, and you clarify them, and just give a sense of the boundary. Yes, you clarify it in dialogue. And if a person has gone too far on one side, and he did something really that he should have asked for, he should be told. On the other hand, if he's not taking enough initiative, if he's in his work, or even in his own spiritual life, and if he's waiting for somebody else to tell him what to do all the time, especially in his own spiritual life, because certain initiatives are to come from the individual. Nobody is going to tell you what to do for life. Nobody is going to suggest all the time what you should be reading, or what you should be thinking. Those things have to come from inside. And then there's the consultation. Then we have a curious vision of Dorotheus, where he's all troubled. He's going through this kind of dark night experience, and the bishop appears to him going into the sanctuary, and recites the psalm verses about the trial and the liberation

[10:30]

from it, taps him on the chest and disappears. And Dorotheus is flooded with light and joy. And evidently, since that time, he has this inner security. He talks of... And we had a problem interpreting that in the light of his argument, because it is kind of ambiguous. Then he says that faith is the thing that counts in your relationship with the spiritual father. It's not the qualities of the spiritual father. It's not that he's the most charismatic character in the world, but even if you go to a child with the right kind of faith, the right disponibility, you've got an enlightened child to tell you what to do. I've never tried that. I've come close to it sometimes, but I never tried it. Whereas, if you go to a prophet with a crooked heart... And who hasn't got a crooked heart? But if you go even to a prophet, you'll mislead the prophet. You and the prophet will go in the ditch together. Although that quotation from Ezekiel refers to false prophets, not real.

[11:35]

Okay, we were talking about the whole spiritual father tradition. How it opens that enormous field of the spiritual father tradition, which actually we're just getting right in touch with nowadays. It's something that's been lost, curiously. And why does it get lost? Because since the patristic time, a lot of things have happened in our Western spiritual tradition. Now, the spiritual father tradition retains a pretty good continuity in the Eastern Church and the Orthodox Church. For instance, in Mount Athos, the stars, the Abba, the Gera, whatever you call him, the spiritual father, still has that role. And there's still this kind of a mythology. There's a mythos, there's a legend of the spiritual father, which sometimes is really exaggerated. And I think sometimes the old men, they sort of court that kind of thing, too. I mean, they play it up a little bit. They act the part. They try to do little marvels and so on. I mean, marvels of knowing things, you know.

[12:40]

There's another one over there. There's a postcard in the Hermitage, you know. He said, there's water there. It was over on the corner of the park. It was very close to the Pacific Ocean. He was right, you know. But at the same time, a person like that can be genuine, can be important. There's a mixture of fairytale and reality. It's very much a charism and theatrics, too, because the mythos, the legend of the spiritual father is so old and so solid. Whereas what happened in the Western Church? Well, a bunch of things happened. First of all, you've got the rule of St. Benedict and the fact that almost all Western monasticism has come through the rule of St. Benedict. But what does St. Benedict do to the spiritual father? He turns into something else, doesn't he? As he turns into the abbot, he becomes less the person who's in an individual personal relationship with the monk.

[13:44]

And he becomes more the father of a family or more somebody who's in charge of a bunch of people and who becomes something. Well, the family father is a little different. The relationship is not quite as individual, as intimate, as personal. The discernment becomes more, at least the way you find it in the rule, the way also you find it, I think, in St. Gregory, who's so close to the rule. Remember that Gregory, he's a monk, and when he becomes a bishop, he's the pope. So he looks at things from the point of view of government, or not exactly administration, it's too cold a word. The point of view of the pastor. The pastor is a little different from the spiritual father in the depth of Eastern spiritual father tradition. He really knows the heart of the individual. The relationship between the two is a very close and tender one. The picture that you get of St. Benedict is different. That he knows people, knows just how to temper, you know, rigor with tenderness or love or compassion or whatever, that kind of thing.

[14:45]

But it's as if he's doing it from the outside, rather than having that close personal relationship with the individual. That doesn't really matter in St. Benedict. There's a love, there's a compassion, but still there's a kind of generality about it, not that intimacy. Then other things happen in the Western tradition. As you go into the Middle Ages and you get these big monasteries, the role of the abbot and his relationship with the individual monk becomes somewhat lessened, still lessened more. And the Benedictine structure helps it to become more remote. And so the notion of spiritual father sort of begins to peter out. And it's mostly because of the particular character, I think, of the Benedictine role. And also the disappearance of the Aramatic role. Or it's being pushed out, really, to the fringes, rather than being in the center of monasticism. And then something else happens, and the spiritual father thing begins to turn into something else. It begins to get split between religious superior,

[15:48]

between confessor, and between something else which comes out in the world and which is a spiritual director. I don't know when you first get that notion, but it's probably about the time of the Virgin in the 16th century, the Counter-Reformation. When you have a spirituality for people in the world, and you're going to have a priest as your spiritual director. And he directs a kind of sector of your life which is a spiritual life, but which is a little cut off from the rest of your life. It's a funny thing. It's like you've got this monastic garden, and he's in charge of helping you to turn that, and then the rest of your life is something else, which is different from the wholeness of the monastic life in an earlier time. And the relationship is different, too. It's like you go to... It's like a piano playing. It's like some kind of specialist that you go to to get that particular part of your life. I'm being a bit sarcastic about it, but it doesn't have the wholeness and the depth of that original relationship at all. It's more of a... Yeah. Well, the spiritual director thing could be pretty effective sometimes, too,

[16:57]

but it didn't... It's not really the same thing as you have in a monastic scene, where the person's whole life is together, and the spiritual father sort of is relating to the core of the person and to the core of that life, and relating to the whole thing at once in a certain way. There's not that totality and that simplicity in the relationship. And so you can't call the person a father in the same sense, because his relationship is too limited. It's too much along one line, in one sector of the person's life. And then it becomes kind of a professional thing, with certain rules, and especially rules that come from the exercises of examination. You know, most of the theory of discernment in the past four centuries in the Western Church has come from the exercises of examination, which is a pretty slim basis, and yet it's a good basis, too. And it doesn't start there, but what he has in the exercises comes from an earlier tradition. It's good stuff, but we're poor in that respect. We don't have a lot. We don't have a solid tradition of discernment. Yes.

[18:00]

At least the spiritual director relationship and the notion. That's when you have a secular life out there, okay, and you have priests who have a special mission, office, of being spiritual director for people in the world. I think when you get somebody like St. Francis de Sales, too, you're getting into the spiritual direction, where he's outlining the spirituality for people in the world. That's a necessary thing, too. Since I wasn't spiritual, the exercises came along as a result of the loss of true discernment. It's not like a deduction. It's like a reality. Well, there's a criterion. There's an interior criterion, too, in the exercises. There's an experience of peace and so on, and the rules for discernment. Those are pretty deep, pretty intimate. But the application, the methods of meditation, are pretty exterior. It's not like eating a word and just having it simply flow through you.

[19:04]

It's a more methodical, operational, rational, systematic... Also, there is the expectation that after a certain date, meditation doesn't come out of the brain, or the mind. That's right. Because, you see, that's imposing a rhythm, isn't it? It's a technique of sort of saying, well, the Holy Spirit is going to cooperate with this little process that we're going to put you into. Now, we've arranged with him, as if God did that. But God has rhythms for our life. So one thing is to have an external setup like that, a process which is supposed to work. This is pretty modern. It's almost got the scientific kind of thing, the scientific prejudice that we can make things work if we set them up in a certain way. Rather than obeying the rhythms of the human person and the rhythms of the action of the Holy Spirit in interaction with the human person, that's another rhythm. The organic interior rhythm is different from the structure of any set of exercises that you can be put into.

[20:07]

That's right. And see, that just takes a section of your life, a chunk of your life, and tries to do a rapid, intense job on you during that time, rather than having the whole of your life to deal with, as you had in the monastic tradition. That's another sense. That's the time dimension, that totality we're talking about. The whole of your life, rather than a portion of your life, trying to make a decision in view of the rest of your life, which is what the exercises are often asking. I would like to use some instances of events that happened that I would have been with at the time, and in the first place, this is a contemplation on the prolonged childhood or child-like environment. Yes, please do. On the manner of going from the perpetual awareness of one of the Roshis, the most trusted secretary of the Foundation in the country.

[21:14]

One day, I was discussing with another woman, and I asked her, what would you do if Roshi told you that after nine years of Zen practice, I think that you cannot get enlightenment in this life. You don't have any chance. Believe me. Way, way below. What would you do? She looked at me astonished, and she said, I'd die. And then a process of tremendous turmoil began in her. And I said, you see how dependent you are on his judgments? And that's not an unusual thing, especially Zen, or even religious, because then you don't have the countervailing figure of Christ saying that he is the teacher. The only way to that other dimension is through this teacher that according to what he says, your faith is decided.

[22:17]

And it's a ladder, a structure. You have to go up. There's no other way. But in Christianity, you're already there at the beginning. That's my instance. It's not true. As I said, it's not that he's not coming. There is this thing. He is my faith. My spiritual profession depends upon this. But you know, in the early church, in early monasticism, in Christianity, you had a lot of the same thing. In the Eastern church, the faith and the spiritual part of the life is the same. It's incredible. Of course, if you have an enlightened spiritual body, I don't know how to use that and guide it into it. You won't keep the person in that state. It doesn't go with today's sermon, though. No, no, not at all. No, that's the other side of the thing. It can only be in a transitory role. I wonder if that's a good example, because it seems to me she's not necessarily, I mean, it doesn't seem to be necessarily a bad dependence. She doesn't understand what it is. But it's someone she trusts very much and who knows her very well and who is also physically holy.

[23:19]

If he says something like that, I could see it would devastate anyone, it seems to me. Just quite naturally. You've got a real contradiction if he says that. Well, if he does, right. If he says that, that statement almost, something has to crack at that point. Well, and he said that statement by another person, so that's the way I think. As she heard that, I'm not a very young mature girl, but she would never make me say something like that. No, to us, to the secretary and myself. Then I said, OK, if you heard that referring to you, what would you do? I don't know. Die? He said. So that's the thing. And with charismatic teachers, Eastern teachers, that's what happens. Somehow or other, no matter what their level of attainment is or their level of holiness, they like children around them. Yes.

[24:19]

Children like to be around them all the same time. There's some of them that talk a lot about realization in the sense of, I don't know, in the sense of a kind of autonomy. I don't know if they really do it. I think that people like Muktananda talk about realizing your own godness or something like that. People talk about that. I don't know if they do that on a practical level. If they lead people really to liberty or to a kind of subjection. But that's the thing. What they say is not necessarily what they do. Yes. It's very important. For example, that same teacher said to me, you are not my student. I'm not your teacher. We're both students of the way. I'm a little more experienced, but that's that. Now, if one took him on his word, then OK, here is a very enlightened master. But in practical reality, that was not the case. He was very jealous of students going to other teachers. Yes. So, in that sense, one thing is the theory and another is the practice. That we respect in the end.

[25:22]

And with respect to the discernment of teachers, what one is supposed to do, what one's own initiative should be, there is sometimes, apart from really miracles, I think many spiritual directors or teachers can be in a position where they cannot say anything and they should know that. But they simply don't know. Yes. For example, the Zen teacher never explores one's own life. It's just the state of the meditation. That's it. When one goes to a personal interview with Dr. San, and then it's supposedly just about the state of the interview, that's not true necessarily. Many persons really have psychological problems that are engaging on the meditation, so he has to go on to that. And sometimes the type of meditation that the person should have

[26:23]

does not accord with the personality. And it takes many, many years before he gets over it. This took a long time. And finally, after having searched for 18 persons, unless the person says, you do it, you want to repeat it, something like that, and it brings about something. So, for example, this principle of Koans versus other types of meditation, usually the Zen teachers will ban Koans, and that's it. Many persons are just very devotional, they don't care about Koans. That's the intellectual trap. That's it. There is a certain type of insensitivity. One of the Hiroshi's talks that I certainly would have liked to study psychology, and I actually did very well. It was a nightmare. It's a whole dependency structure.

[27:33]

And he had a famous musician following him for a long time, this guitarist. And it was great publicity for him because it really made him more famous too. And at one point, this guitarist decided he didn't want to follow him anymore, and probably would have said, I'm not following this region anymore. His reaction, his public statement was, he is lost. Of course. You know, this whole... The modern age puts us in a real... ...regard to the spiritual mother tradition. You realize how the modern age is characterized at its outset by the Renaissance and then by the Reformation, right? The Renaissance is a bursting out of a kind of spontaneity and autonomy, really. And the throwing off of a kind of paternal Christianity. And the Lutheran outburst, the Lutheran Reformation, is precisely that. It's the rejection of the father, in a sense.

[28:48]

So the modern age starts with that thing. And we're impregnated with that. So, we really have to sort of drastically twist ourselves or sort of give in to that innate natural desire we have for a kind of dependency, total dependency and total relation of father's trust in order to go back to that state. There's something in us that's always going to be rising up and criticizing that kind of subjection. We have to come to terms with that. But we really don't have... It's not a problem to our Christianity. It's not a threat to our faith precisely because Christianity is the gift of this autonomy. As in the Gospel this morning, those words of Jesus are really something, you know? He says, Call no man your master, call no man your teacher, call nobody your teacher. That's incredible. He just overthrows everything. And yet, at the same time, he upholds a certain order. The communion is the first principle. The communion really is the only thing in the world. And then the order and the hierarchy is set up inside of the communion. And the Church is just coming to terms with everything

[29:51]

that I've been talking about today with the rediscovery of collegiality and the fact that the Church first is the people of God and then it's hierarchical. At first it's the people of God and the hierarchy is inside the people of God. It's not on top of it. And the Church is not the hierarchy. The Church is that communion. And then everything else is secondary and extravagant. That's a terrific liberation. I want to read those words a little bit. It's from Matthew 23. He's talking about the scribes and the pharisees who'd love to be called rabbis and have their own fringes and stuff and find heavy burdens. But you are not to be called rabbis, for you have one teacher and you are all brethren. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for you have one Master, the Christ. He who is greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. Whoever humbles himself will be exalted. And even the Christ goes through that way of abundance, that way in some way of descending to nothing. It's as if the teacher or the Christ or the Master has to prove himself

[30:52]

to be that by being able to reduce himself to nothing and then to re-emerge. That's crude. It's not like magic. You see what I mean? He has to be able to become nothing so that his teaching which comes from beyond himself may bring him into being again. In actually, in his disciples, in those who learn. So his teaching is not from himself. And he can reduce to nothing until the seed falls into the ground and he can rise as it were complete in his disciples. Just as he comes from another so he can re-arise within another. He comes from another who is a father and he can re-emerge within those who believe. Giving him the same thing which is himself. So behind this whole thing is the mystery of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the fact that we are in the Son. Our relationship to the Trinity is not just an equal relationship to the two persons. It's appropriation that they talk about so much and it chills our relationship to the Trinity.

[31:52]

Honor is one of the ones that brings back a living relationship to each of the persons of the Trinity. And the fact that it's only the Word, the Son, who became flesh. The Father did not become incarnate. The Holy Spirit did not become incarnate. But the Son did. And we are in the Word. And therefore, this Spirit and this liberty is ours, is within us. And nobody can get in between us and God. That expression of, what's his name, charismatic again, God has no grandchildren. There's something that's temporary that comes in between them. There's a pedagogy and a training which is temporary and then gets out of the way. Like the law in the Old Testament which Paul talks about in Galatians. He says, you were held on to these pedagogies. You were led by the hand. You had this law, this ladder, this tradition. Given by angels, he says. But now you're beyond that because you have the Holy Spirit. You say, Abba Father. And then the other side of that is that he places in the letters of St. Paul where he enjoins obedience upon the Christians. He tells them, well, obey your pastors. But he even tells them, slaves, obey your masters. And wives, obey your husbands.

[32:54]

And in another place he says, there's neither slave nor free man. There's neither man nor woman. There's neither Greek nor Jew. Remember? But you're all one in Christ. So you've got those two levels. And the one level is, and the other level sort of is for a wife. The one level really is, and is permanent. That's the level of communion and equality where all the children are God. And the other level is temporary and within it. It surprises us that St. Paul, for instance, doesn't try to correct the practice of slavery. He doesn't extend this Christian revolution of equality immediately into the social sphere and say, slaves, you're free. Masters, give up your slaves. He doesn't say that. He says, slaves, obey your masters. And he says, at the same time, obey your masters as if you were obeying Christ. He says, it doesn't make any difference whether you're a slave or a free man, really, because you're free in Christ. Slaves, you're already free in Christ. Free men, you're slaves of Christ. So, but that's something that we have to think about. Why that revolution doesn't spread immediately to the social world

[33:55]

is an important question for us. It seems to me that there's always a Christianity community that employs the right responsibilities to set a constant living goal, which is a living paradox. Like Christ is saying today in the Gospel that you have to call no man a master of you or a master of Christ. And that sounds like an invitation to be ultimate all the time. And it is. But, you know, the way we can get to that The only person who's qualified to be a master, to give life, is one who's washed deep. That's the only person. You have to go through that like Jesus himself. He had to be crucified before he could experience any life. And it seems like it's always that way. It's always going to be that way. It's part of the process. It's almost like in a Zen column where as long as you're on a certain level, you see it's always going to be paradoxical. But once you get to a certain level, there's no more home. There's no more

[34:56]

paradise. It seems like that's the glorified state of Christianity where there's no opposition to him at all telling someone to remain as a slave. Now the other guy tells him to be free. He seems like, oh, he just takes it beyond all the external. There is no external. There's something that is external. He says slaves were made in Manchester but he's saying they aren't slaves. Nobody can make them. The trouble is when the Marxists come along and they find for instance that the rich people can make sort of good business out of this in the sense that the slaveholders can say, well, you're not slaves. You're free so now go make some money for me or something like that. Then the Marxists come along at a certain point and they say, well, is this Christianity? Sooner or later it has to work out on a practical level too. We're free in our hearts. We're free no matter what but unless that, what would you call it, social revolution happens sooner or later, unless the liberation

[35:57]

really happens in the world as a consequence then somehow something doesn't happen. That's what happens now, that challenge. Would that be the same for you? Not completely because everybody is going to die anyway. I still suspect it doesn't really have a meaning. But there's something that's going on in the world, isn't there? Since the coming of Christ, there's something that goes on in the world with regard to liberation. And it's very slow and halting and it goes backwards sometimes. And yet there is something happening and it's due to Christianity. It's due to the coming of Christ. It's very unequal. It seems like Marxism, communism is a kind of, it's a Christian heresy. It's an atheistic Christianity. It's like the mystical body and the doctrine of the mystical body and the equality of all men, without the head which is Christ and which is God. And it's because Christianity didn't do it that Marx has come along and promised

[36:59]

to do it. They can't do it either. Well, there's the customs of the slaves, the customs of the masters. They don't think it's your bed, and that kind of way he wasn't making a categorical statement about what they should do. But I think it's kind of suggestive that he might have turned them in a certain direction. How long could you convene the law to go with somebody when they split up? That's right. It sort of brings the death knell for slavery without saying it in the obvious way. In other words, the implication is right in the Christian fact that slavery can't continue, but he doesn't press it to that conclusion. I think that's surprising. I have a couple of passages here. In Ephesians and Colossians, especially, but also in 1 Timothy. There's also the uncomfortable fact that the Church has to recognize

[37:59]

that it's not only a feature of the world, but the world in some way is an empty Church. For example, in the very periscoping history, the Reformation taught the Church something. It's only about five centuries later that we have the Invalides, we have the Pontifical Tithe itself. The United States, with its sometimes ridiculous level of tolerance in many, many African lands, has taught the Church something. But that's Christianity that the Church couldn't learn. It's like Gandhi, who comes and teaches the Church something. It's like the bread that the Church didn't eat, the bread of the Gospel that the Church didn't know how to retain. It's like the thing about the Jews in the Old Testament, and then the Pagans would come and confront the Jews, and all the other prophets would do it. Many passages where he says,

[39:00]

Abuse my servant such and such, King of Persia, teach you Israel this and that. Cyrus is my son, my servant. Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is in Ephesians 5. Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the wife of the husband, and so on. The same thing is to the slaves. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. He always does on the other side. He always does both sides. But bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, and singleness of heart as to Christ. Not in the way of eye service, as men pleases, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to men. Knowing that whatever good

[40:03]

anyone does, he will receive the same again from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free. Masters, do the same to them, and forbear threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, that there is no partiality with him. And he says the same thing over and over again. Obviously, there's a... Well, it's not obviously. It seems to me. There's an historical reality. There's no way it could survive if he had preached a radical revolt of the social order. He speaks very often about we don't want to give them cause for redemption. And maybe there's a change in how they approach the social order that's more approved as time goes on. Maybe this isn't an absolute. See, this principle is very important because it affects how we understand the Old Testament.

[41:05]

All of those things in the Old Testament that you can't accept the bloodshed and the Holy Wars and everything. You can use the same principle to be able to accept them. But sort of the grace of God cannot and the truth of God cannot be fully absorbed at one moment. And so it sort of has to worm itself in and work itself through like a needle in a thread. And it takes centuries and centuries and centuries before, on the historical level, it can really emerge. Meanwhile, the truth is always this. You don't really see that when you read because sometimes those things like the extermination of the war-wounded children seems to be God's work, God's will, and all that. It's a real problem. It must be the same thing. It's working through the stubbornness and the harshness of people and of men and gradually bringing it to you. Isn't it supposed to be to come from within instead of just stop slavery? He wants you to give it up somehow. That's there. But the same thing, the trouble is that at the same time

[42:07]

these people are living and dying under slavery. And it seems like a heavy price to pay for somebody else's interior education, in a sense. And yet it's true that man has to learn it from inside. And, well, he's not going to impose it, but he's also not going to flash all that truth and just cause a lot of violence. He's not going to do it by means of violent revolution. It has to be... What you're saying is true on this level. It has to be an interior revolution rather than an exterior revolution. Okay? So I'm wondering if the attitude of the Church is supposed to change whether or not the Gospel is something that's addressed to the hearts. And when it starts to become social, then how on earth do you think it's to lose everyone that she's called to do? Because I think when she begins to lose that thing of speaking to hearts and inviting them to come from within, then she loses her reputation. It's true, but the difficulty is that people then can...

[43:09]

They can make a wall between the inside and the outside and they don't really conform to the Gospel. That thing happens, like the scribes and the Pharisees because they claim to be listening to their hearts maybe for a while, but then they set it up their own way so that it's very comfortable. After a while they don't listen to their hearts. In some way she has to be... This is the thing nowadays that the Church sees that she has to be in some way effective on the social level as well as the level of the heart. The heart comes first. And the social thing is only true if it comes from within. This is the situation which is in Iraq right now. Much more than in Cuba where it's already settled where the administration perhaps actually gets to be involved as did some of the other scholars in Iraq say that you have to resign the government and they said

[44:11]

we won't. Well, we don't then because it will be left to die. But the other thing was OK, we'll divide the Catholic Church in Iraq between the Revolutionary Church and the Christian Church. I don't know. And so finally what they came to was that OK, keep your posts but do not set them up for reasons which would have been incredibly bad. That's precisely where you are. We were the first to talk about I don't think we should have slavery. No, they didn't preach against slavery. That was something they didn't try to purge and we have to speculate why. I think because it was too general and it was premature. It was like preaching against war at that time. It would be like saying well, don't have any more wars if you do. You couldn't do it.

[45:12]

I mean, you're using that as an ultimate value of not being totally autonomous. How do you come from the white people? It's too delicate to make a blanket a black and white statement on the one hand and another black and white statement on the other. I've lost the connection. Well, it's like you're telling people that it's absurdity. This is the way a lot of people look at the male ego. It's like where Andre Louvre says it was necessary for Christ to come as a male because of the nature of God and the passivity of the human soul being represented by the female. So, if slavery is looked at again as another example of passivity, the dominance passivity role is obvious and there's a master and a slave. So you're preaching the value of passivity on the one hand, of not trying to assert one's own will but rather to do only the will of the Father.

[46:17]

I mean, this is too tangled up. I can't make a blanket statement either. But maybe if he had just... It seems like if people are only their major focus is that individual autonomy, which is, I think, what started happening around the Renaissance and then the holistic view of religion, which existed in the Middle Ages at least in a certain way, everything spiritual, then that would cease to exist. It can't exist under those conditions, it seems. Or at least we haven't worked out how to... I think it's a question of integration of the two. The Middle Ages too much suppressed that individual autonomy and so it burst forth and it's like the wine in the wine vessel if you remember in the Gospel. The vessel was burst and the wine spilled. That's what happened with the Reformation. But that wine is the wine of the Holy Spirit to the Spirit. The Church is to Him. It seems that slavery is an issue that has been

[47:19]

dealt with by the Christian Church ultimately. I mean it went in a certain direction and made its statement on it eventually, but I guess Christ knew that he couldn't fire on it right away because it would destroy it. On that external level the implications of Christianity couldn't immediately be implemented on a general external political level. It had to gradually work its way through through the milk. That's true for a lot of people. But we live in St. Paul's and we don't really know where people in the state of Christianity... ...in a short while, right? Well if that's true, sure, just be a slave, don't worry about it because the time is short. And that's what he says in other places. He says it's as if slaves, be as if you were free men. Free men be as if you were slaves because the time is short. The only thing that matters is to serve the Lord. He does say in other places that if you have an opportunity to have freedom, okay? But he doesn't set out that slavery isn't... Well, that's an ambiguous passage actually.

[48:20]

Sometimes they say, if you have can have your freedom make use of your slavery as if you're not a slave. I'm not sure what that means. I think we also have, I think there is much to the humanity of Christ and all that one goes to be limited by what they serve. He didn't wish to be. When he was here, I'm fooling you, he was already there. When he was already back he was a servant of the heavens. That's right. And that's true of all of us. And always will be in this life. And St. Paul was not. Maybe he had departments according to those he was in. But at the same time he was a patient. He could have died anyway. So, Patrick, what you say is true about that. That we're all in that situation of servitude because ultimately our slavery is to death in a sense. Until we die we're always dying

[49:22]

in a sense. Whatever we were on that level. But we can be on another level. Thank you. I was just addressing that whole thing of slavery to a very famous subject when it comes to the master in a sense. How do I become liberated in a sense? Much like the person we are. Yeah. And maybe that's like Paul. Sometimes maybe he's on that level where he recognizes his own complete freedom in Christ. He's no longer not acting on Christ. Not having to probably discipline my people to be proud of their freedom. But, then there's reincarnation. Anyway, there's an important thing there for understanding the

[50:24]

scripture and understanding history. And also understanding the ancestry and where we're going. We can't think of much more. Next time we'll finish this up. I thought we would this time and we'll go on to the next one without judging. Just to give us back a little context before we close. There's an ultimate reality of Christianity which is also the first gift of Christianity which is this mystery of eternity. What is freedom? Freedom is to find out who you are and to have room to be who you are. Simply to be able to be who you are. And that's what Jesus tells us when he says you're the son of God. Which is not just a word but a reality because of the spirit that's growing through us. By which we know this impulses that we're the sons of God. There aren't any other words that express that. We can go around it with other words but it's the fact itself, the experience itself that tells. But somehow we still have to make a journey to it

[51:25]

during this life. That's at the beginning and yet we have a journey to make before the end of it. And the journey we were talking about in terms of the death and the resurrection in terms of a liberation and in terms of moving from a shallow self, an ego to a deeper self. Martin's one of the true self. It requires a kind of a death and a resurrection and that's what this Prism of Obedience is about. And also the fact is that starting out as we are in a shallow self or a limited ego, if we want to get to that deeper one, we can't get it there ourselves. We can't direct ourselves there. We have to have a reference point outside of ourselves. Now preferably the reference point would be where we're going. Now it's that way through the word of God because the word of God is spoken from where we are headed. But it's also that way in the human person which is what we're really looking for. The first disciples of Jesus, when they found him, they discovered their destination. They discovered where they were going. And somebody evidently could tell them how to get there.

[52:26]

And we look for the same thing. The word isn't enough. We look for a human person who controls. But if we can't find a human person who is there, at least we can find a human person who is outside of our own ego. And therefore who is not in the same trap of self-will, self-love, of blindness, of will. He may have his own, but at least he's not in ours. So at least we have two points to orient ourselves, one instead of one. And then if he has discernment, even though he may not be there, he may be able to help us to get there. Remember in the tradition, in the cenobitical life, the cenobitical life was called the life of obedience. And therefore it's necessarily a life of heteronomy. And they talk about the aramidical life, passion in most people, as being a life of autonomy, in which a person has arrived at the ability somehow to guide himself, more or less. He's still got a reference point, he's still got a spiritual fatherly justice. But basically he's directing himself, basically he's arrived at the

[53:28]

freedom of his own empire. So he's arrived back at the beginning in a sense. The simplicity of his life witnesses to that. That parallel, of course, is far from being perfectly true. Especially when we don't have that external tradition of cenobitical life and aramidical life which is very rare nowadays. And so, it's a theoretical scheme which has a certain validity that most often isn't verified in practice. But they say when he talks about discernment, when he talks about this consultation of the fathers, don't go in those terms. This is why only those men who have fully mastered their passions, to whom the Spirit has granted the gift of a profound and intimate grace of peacefulness, under his criterion for the Holy Spirit, rather than our own will, our own passions, is the calm of humility, he says. The peace of humility. So, the charism somehow is marked by peacefulness, an intimate grace of peacefulness, and who from this point are thereby suited for the solitary life, may

[54:29]

without presumption exercise a proper discernment and is not of personal choice, at least in that very case. There is a big bias of theory in that. They say that the person, because that simply doesn't exist in our world. These fathers were graduated for solitary life. That's almost non-existent in the Western world. So, to put it like that, it can be kind of a fairy-tale thing. Nevertheless, the principle is one way about it. He who has not yet attained to such purity of heart, there's only one thing left for him to do. It's not to die. Come around next time, next life. The manifestation of his thoughts to his spiritual director, and a complete submission to the discernment of the Lord. And he goes on, he quotes Catherine. We'll go on with this and finish it next time. That book that Ephraim has there is of great value for our next subject. Show your book, Ephraim. It's by this charismatic guy

[55:31]

named Joe Brogan. Some of you may know him because he's been here. And it's about fraternal correction and judging people. And the fathers are always laughing about it. See, this thing is about not judging your own life, right? Submitting your judgment, or sort of subjecting your judgment to somebody else. And the other one is not judging anybody else. There's a real logic in that, too. But not judging somebody else's life, either. But the principles are structurally somewhat different. Okay, so we'll go on with that next time. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, it is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

[56:17]

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