How active he is, how energetic he says the spiritual life must be, so much combat. That's one of the chief notions of it. Let me give you my own selections of it. Because every time a person does this, he probably comes up with different terms that are more important. But first of all, the thing that strikes me, of course, is these are not... I'm trying to be objective, these are not so much my own things as what I think is the structure of these. First is purity of heart, which is the same as charity. If you take... otherwise you'd have to make charity first, because for Gashin that's his key term. But for him it's identical with purity of heart, which is also identical with a couple of other things. So anyway, purity of heart is kind of the keystone. And then renunciation is one side, and continual prayer is the other side. It's the other... the two go together. And each of them involves a lot of other stuff, and you could pick other terms. For instance, continual prayer, you could talk about the memory of God and a number of other things. But that's just to indicate the two other dimensions.

[01:02]

And then discretion. Then the spiritual combat, the idea of effort, of the exertion of the will. It's interesting, after you write these things down, it's interesting to look at the connections between one and another. Because they're all interiorly related. We talked about purity of heart, we talked about charity, and we talked about the spiritual combat. The fact that for Gashin the spiritual life is a kind of dynamism. That it's a movement, it's an action, it's an exertion even. But the exertion at a certain point, very strangely, becomes a quiet. An exertion, enormous exertion of one's whole self, which at a certain point becomes tranquility. And so it's very much connected to the purity of heart and charity, naturally, too. The idea of the spiritual combat, which in turn is connected with the vice of the evil thoughts. And those are another key element of Gashin, which of course it gets from Evagrius.

[02:03]

And then the notion of tranquility, Hezekiah, which comes once again from Evagrius' Apathia. But in Gashin it takes on a different color. Now here we're getting very much into the contemplative way. Because that for him is sort of a quiet harbor of contemplation. So the next term would be contemplation of self or theory. Then grace. Grace, I don't know if he uses a word very much. But he's very often bringing in the reality itself. In whatever terms he expresses it. In order to counteract this whole ascetical thing, which has the risk of going too far and making it seem like man is doing the whole thing. The whole idea of the spiritual combat. So, for instance, when Gashin writes about the spiritual combat, he says partly that its function is to humble us and open us to grace rather than just making us strong to defeat the enemy.

[03:08]

You see, that's precious, that's very important. Because otherwise we start building up a whole lot of spiritual muscles which are really not getting us any closer to God. The muscles are important in a sense, but in the final analysis they're not important. Something else is important. And yet the struggle is important. He's very wise in bringing that out so clearly. And finally, humility. Humility which hasn't been brought out so much yet in these conferences we've been talking about. Which comes out more later. But it's basic all the time. Even when we're just talking about the spiritual combat there. So, one big function of the spiritual combat is to humble a man. And humility is sort of the other side of grace. Humility is like the vessel which opens a person to grace. One could take, you could have fun. A person could have fun by taking one of these terms, for instance, the basic impurity of God

[04:09]

and then seeing how all of these others relate to it. And you get a kind of a structure. But the structure is a structure of overlapping elements, of interpenetrating elements. And a couple of other terms. I had a couple of other competitors for the first ten. Like... Confunctions. It hasn't come out so strongly yet. But it will later on in the other conferences. Confunction. And it comes out very strongly in the Desert Club. Also the notion of freedom of will. But that's implicit in what we're talking about, the spiritual combat. And so, the will is a very prominent element in Keshe. In fact, when you talk about purity of heart, what are you saying? You're saying that what's important is not the outside. What's important is not the things that you do, but what is behind those things. And really, in the end, that's your will, isn't it? When you're talking about purity of heart, you're talking about a will which is given totally to God. So that everything else is like the little rivulets that float in the big stream of the will. When we talk about the spiritual life as a dynamism,

[05:11]

we're talking about a will which is being... A will which carries the whole of man along with it, as it were, and which itself becomes carried by grace, because of God's will. So it pulls the whole of man together. But not just as a static thing, but as a movement. Like a big rift that carries everything. And scripture, too. The importance of the word. Cashin talks about this later on, especially when we get to Conference 14. He had a beautiful treatise on spiritual knowledge and the importance of the word there. But it's implicit everywhere, especially in the fact that he himself recurs to scripture so often. He's just loaded with scripture. Concentrated solution of the Bible. And also the notion of the nature of man and its goodness. Somebody mentioned that right at the outset. The optimistic view of man. It was very important for us to correct certain notions that we get sometimes. Not so much right now, when it can be exaggerated, but say 20 years ago.

[06:14]

Before Vatican II, when man was looked at as a very messed up sort of thing. So that nature itself is a mess. And then grace comes along and turns it into something beautiful. Well, that's got its uses, that point of thinking. But nature is just a cripple. And, in fact, has a natural tendency towards evil. And then grace comes along and transforms it into something majestic. Or into something beautiful. That can have its uses. But is it true? Or was nature originally, and is it still basically, something noble and beautiful and strong? So the relationship between grace and nature. Now we know that there is a transformation. And there is also what is called a purification. But the process is not just transforming something from absolute misery.

[07:19]

The process is rediscovering, reawakening. Bringing back to life. Resurrecting something which is already inside of man. This is very important. Because otherwise you get a very twisted and strenuous and discouraging type of spiritual world. In which you're always straining for something outside of yourself. And which can generate a lot of destructive self-hatred within you. It can make the spiritual world very rough and depressing. Whereas if you realize that fundamentally you are good. And it's a matter of moving by following gravity towards your center. Moving towards your real nature. Dropping off all of the things which... What do you call them? The sinful things, the bad things, the dirty things. Which are mere accretions to your nature which is fundamentally good. It changes the whole picture. Then nature is on your side. Instead of against you. If nature is against you, you're really in bad shape. If you always have to be reaching outside the world to grab on to some grace that comes from outside.

[08:23]

If nature is for you and there's just something in between you and God. In between you and original nature, that's something else. That's not so... Not such an awful prediction. Well, that's where we are. There are a lot of other implications for what is important. It comes out in many places in Cassian. But it's a presupposition in Cassian. You see, it's not just a doctrine. It's a presupposition. It comes out with that idea of the feather, you know. That the soul being like a feather. If you remove the humanity that's holding it down, it goes up towards God. And yet the Holy Spirit is necessary as the proper room to help. It's not quite light and absolute. It's a beautiful thing. And then finally, the notion of the mobility of the soul. Which is always on Cassian's mind and Germanus' mind. Which is sort of the recurring question that they ask to the fathers. Why can't my soul stand still? Rooted, you know, within God. Why can't I pray continually? Why can't my mind be always in God? Okay.

[09:29]

And then there's the notion of the ejaculatory prayer, too. Which is really just part of the continual prayer. So each notion that you find really has several sub-sections in it. Prayer, for instance, breaks down into all the different aspects of Cassian. Memory of God, the ejaculatory prayer, the prayer of fire. And then it's connections with the other things. Like charity. Like building a congregation and so on. There's not a whole lot that we have in English which helps you get a total view of Cassian's theology. There's a book by Chadwick which is kind of a wandering thing. And there's a good article by this Fr. Ralph Galliard. He's a French treasurer. And fortunately the article is in French. Purity of heart according to Cassian. And what he does is he tries to get the whole structure of Cassian's theology, of his spirituality, his thought, are based on and centered on the notion of purity of heart.

[10:32]

Although there's a good article on Cassian and the dictionary of his spirituality, too, which is also in French. Which means that you have to learn French to speak English. Although Cassian himself was not a Frenchman, as some would put it in English. No. Well, wait a minute, maybe he was. They don't know. They don't know as a matter of fact. Some people thought he was from Scythia. But he settled in Marseilles afterwards. Who? Yeah. He settled in... He couldn't be an Irishman. He's too much of a... too orderly to be an Irishman. He's too much of a... What do you think of him? He'd be more of a poet. No, he'd be more of a poet. If he were an Irishman. Oh, yeah. If he wouldn't be so systematic and so... Yeah, he settled in Marseilles afterwards. That's where he's from. That's where he had his monastery. That's where he came from.

[11:34]

Okay, any other remarks? Maybe we should look at what we've got. The notions that we've come up with. Most of us have put the accent on prayer in these ideas that we've picked up. And maybe that's because we treated these conferences on prayer number 9 and 10 just recently, most recently. And also we took more time on them than we did on some of the others. But also because those things are striking to us experientially, and they mean a lot to us. Because what we're concerned with, especially I think where you are right now, is in finding a way to get into prayer. I'll get one more that was jumped out at me and changed. This is from the fourth month. Was it April 21st? Temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance.

[12:41]

There must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental. Mortification becomes more searching and more subtle. There is a need for unsleeping awareness, and, on the levels of thought, feeling and conduct, the constant exercise of something like an artist's taste and tact. That latter thing is true, especially with respect to discretion. Discretion is kind of the sense of taste. Other people call that sapientia, because sapor means taste, sapientia, wisdom, taste, like some burners. When it's a question of discerning what is right and what is not right, the question of having the taste of purity of all of the world, which is kind of an absence of taste, it's emptiness in a sense. So that takes a kind of delicate taste,

[13:45]

discernment, like that of an artist. Something else you said there, and that was the idea that external activities are not to be suppressed. He's pretty radical about that business of solitude and quiet sometimes. For instance, in that passage that Dave quoted, where he says, going out of yourself is always destructive, where he talks about occupations which people may not engage in. Maybe at another conference, where he says that monks should not do farming, gardening, that sort of thing, because it takes away their recollection, because it makes their minds wild. He's thinking in a kind of absolute pedigree. You've got to realize that you can't buy everything in cash and sales. It's not the gospel, and you're going to find things that you can't sell. Sometimes he's very hard and absolute about, for instance, the relationship between the solitary life and the cenobitic life.

[14:46]

Sometimes you'll find him putting the solitary life way above the common life, as if the common life were just a kind of nursery for humans. And sometimes, on the contrary, he treats the cenobitic life as if it had advantages and superiorities, actually, to the solitary life. There's a big fluctuation. People try to sort it out, and they try to say, well, he had the cenobitical phase and the medical phase, or this is what the fathers were saying, the desert fathers, and this is what Cassian put on top of it. But I don't think they've got it all sorted out. So you have to read critically, even though it's empathetic. And he'll tend to say something absolute, and then, maybe later on, he'll come along and help. We'll see as we go through the next five minutes that we'll detect him in other places. That's typically what fathers do. I think that in the analogy

[15:47]

that you had a tremendous insight into the workings of the unconscious in psychology, and he seemed very much aware of that, talking about letting the Holy Spirit work in us. He's very much aware of it, makes sure it's the Holy Spirit and not just an unconscious desire or something that we can misinterpret. And that's why his asceticism seems so important, in order to really purify ourselves from what he would say are temptations from the devil. Because he gets a lot of that from Evagrius. Evagrius is sort of the father of demonology in our spirituality. And he's the one who systematized it, and he also systematized the eight evil thoughts, which turned into these eight principles of racism and passion. So Evagrius writes at length about each of the demons or each of the evil thoughts, and for him they're almost equivalent, because there's a demon behind each evil thought,

[16:49]

and how you recognize it, and then how you come by it. So a lot of the psychology comes from him, but some of it is Cassian's own. Father John Higgs, a member, in his introduction and notes to Evagrius, in the Practicas especially, makes a lot of psychological commentary on Evagrius, and therefore implicitly in Cassian, because that's John Higgs' own background. You know, Cassian is... See, starting out as he does, talking about theory of heart, he's in a good position to do that, because he's talking about the interior, so you've got to judge the interior, not just what seems on the outside. And the whole question of discernment, of discerning the spirits, this is in Conference 1 and Conference 2. It's hard to fool somebody with that kind of thing. Discerning from the interior movement, rather than from the external operations.

[17:50]

Well, it takes a great honesty for one's self to do it, to do it with a great capacity for self-perception. Well, the demonology comes out pretty strong in one conference there, remember? Or two. The Principalities and Apollos and so on, and the Spirituality of Conduct, those conferences. Not so strongly in the others, but it's a very important thing in early Christian spirituality. You may find it embarrassing, we talked about this before, and awkward and difficult for us to integrate. And that is there, that is basic. If you read the life of St. Anthony, he was just loaded with it, from one end to the other. That was the way they saw it. And they saw the desert as the place where you go out to fight the devil. Some of them would describe the monastic life simply in those terms, fighting the devil.

[18:56]

So, that's one of the things that makes us sort of wake up and wonder, well, how far are we from that? From those early moments? And what has come in between? Who's right? Because our generation really doesn't bother. Our generation, today, is at least the same. But the archangels and the angels, nor the devils, neither of them are very much believed in by the present day religion, even in theologians. And it's too bad. They should read the archangels. That's a straight line. There's not much witness, I think. I don't know. I mean, you've probably sensed that a little, or something. Well, I think... One time, one time here, he talks about the angels, and the pulpit, and also how they compare to people. Yes. See, a man in another age was more prone to believe in those things

[19:58]

than not to believe in them. It's as if he just was born with a whole set of convictions, a whole set of perceptions in him that made him believe in them. It just goes so far back in history. But for an early man, the world, the universe, tends to be a place which is alive with spirits. There's a spiritual reality, which for him is as real as the physical. And sometimes it's hardly distinct from it, because behind it is physical. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but that's the way it was. I just want to make the comparison between that and us. But especially, first of all, Christianity in its... Well, it's done something to that field, sort of by wiping out, by exercising the world, in a sense, or a mentality, in favor of just one great spirit, which is God. Sort of wiping out all the lesser deities

[21:01]

in terms of that. And secondly, by our science, our physical science, which is inclined us to believe only in that which we can touch and hold, and which can be proven, I thought, by logic and truth. So we're a long ways from that. And maybe we're way over, the pendulum is one way over on the other side, and we have to wonder, where is the truth? Not to go back to that kind of universal credulity, but limited in the fact that we have many people who are still in the South Asian culture, but with less touch with the world, especially. I think the importance of dreams were very key for that. Whereas now, I think we're starting to get back to that, in a sense. But in realizing scripture, dreams played a very important part in man's realization of his own...

[22:04]

It's a part of his true spirit. You find that much better even in the dreams in the Bible, if you do it. The dreams of the pharaoh, the chaser, the dreams in the Book of Daniel, the dreams of Jacob, and the New Testament, and Joseph. And those dreams of Jacob are the truth, which is wonderful. And they follow that. Yeah, and they do. There's a sense that the dream is that energy speaking to you. And they better act on it. And if they don't act on it, they're making a different statement. I think there are other places in the world where it can be pretty hard to set about people who have dreams and to preach them as being messages from God. I don't know just where, but I think they're to be punished and so on. That can go to excess, too, obviously. Well, that could be a concern. Yeah, but the positivity in the dream

[23:05]

is subordinate to it. And doesn't it seem like early man is much more conscious and conscious of modern man? You see, what has modern man done? He's taken the rational mind and he's made that the whole mind. So he's taken the world which is related to the rational mind, to the logical intellect, and he's made that the whole world. Well, there's a whole other dimension of man, which is the unconscious, you can call it the superconscious if you want. There's another, you know, there's an upstairs to it, there's an attic to it, too. Everything outside the rational mind, we consider the rational mind, you can talk of it, that as being just one small sector of the whole thing, man's whole spirit, his whole mind. Similarly, the world is not only that which can be verified with the rational mind and the senses, but maybe much, much other dimensions. But it's bewildering territory because on one side you get into the importance of dreams, on the other side you get into the deeper levels of meditation and so on,

[24:06]

but on the other side you get into the occult and into extrasensory perception and all those dubious things. But now is the time when the balance is beginning to be assertive. Well, next time we can talk a little bit, I think, about difficulties in reading the Fathers and how to read the Fathers and so on, and then we can start on our next set of conferences, which will be 11 through 18, so if anybody wants to get started reading conference 11, that'll be fine. 11 is also in Western asceticism, although most of the other ones after it are not. When do we begin? It's not next time? Not next time, no, because next time we want to talk about difficulties in reading the Fathers and some principles of Lectio Divina. Could you tell us about the passion of next month and what we should study?

[25:07]

Yeah, well, that'll be what we'll be on after that. It'll be that 11th in the next month. On perfection. That's a good one, as I remember. It's on fear and what have you. A couple of you may have gone through that with us last year. Most of the other ones we haven't gone through and I haven't read them yet. You can remember Father Delibere's guidelines. One is to make an outline if you can after you've read the conference so that you have a sort of inspectus of the subject matter. And another is to make comparisons either with other conferences of passion or with other writers or with a scripture or whatever. Another one was to use the original text when you can use a lot in which there's no crucible for most books. And I forget what the fourth one was. Do you know what it was? Oh, well, never mind. That's good. $100. Now, about reading the Fathers, there are those three articles

[26:08]

that are copied from Children of Australia magazine. And I think we'll touch on those next time. I think what we'd better do is first take the one on the difficulties. The 11 difficulties in reading the Fathers. And that way you can bring out your difficulties and I'll bring out my difficulties. And that'll give us an orientation starting from our own experience. And then we'll talk a little about the other two articles. The one on the 11 difficulties is the most shallow of those three articles, I think. Whereas Casey also wrote the one on the seven principles of that sort of thing, which is pretty good, pretty deep. And then there's the one by Desprez on how readable are the Fathers today, which is really an excellent, comprehensive article giving a lot of feedback

[27:09]

from people of other countries on various movements. But there's a lot more detail there that you can read. We'll go through that a couple of useful points. He says some good things about the Fathers. Okay, so next time we'll probably look at those three articles. I'll try to give you a little more detail. So this is another crisis in a very important part of the Church. I mean, another, yes. So what I'm wondering is whether they will say, well, we'll use the same reasoning process we used the first time, or whether they'll say, this is a sign from God and we've got to do something else. I hope they get more into this, you know, deeper into themselves and into the Spirit. The biggest sign of new thought

[28:11]

would be if they're not Italian. And somebody who has a particular orientation to the New World. That has been solved. Coronio? He voted? I think it was... No, there's one, was it Argentina? It was South America. Coronio comes from Argentina, doesn't he? No, he's a real conservative. No, no, no. No, he's pretty adventurous. They were bombing his house in Argentina. The idea, remember, was to get together the things that impressed us most were the things that we seemed central in him, that seemed to us central in him.

[29:13]

The Chief Ten Ideas, the Chief Three Ideas, the one principle or central idea. It seems like a kind of an arbitrary way to operate that could be useful. And so we see, really, there are two threads here. The one is the objective thing, what is the structure of Cassian's thought? What are the key ideas that he has? And the other is subjective. What are the things that appear to me to be most important, that grab me the most in reading Cassian? So those two things don't necessarily agree. And they end up with something which is pretty subjective, which expresses more where I am and what Cassian is saying. But that's okay, too. That's helpful, too. So let's see what we've got then. Anybody want to volunteer his thoughts? I'll write them down here and put them all on one chart. Anybody else is welcome to do the same thing. We would get a kind of a general perspective. James, you have something there for us? I think what impressed me more in Cassian was the aspect of prayer,

[30:17]

the aspect of spiritual father, relationship, relationship that the young monk or old monk, it really didn't make any difference in age-wise. They were always seemingly growing. That's right. That once a monk seemed to be cut off, that his brothers would try to help him, like the one Abba who had this strange relationship. He thought of God in a human sense. And so he had to do a breakdown type of thing. He couldn't pray, but they helped him try to form his relationship not only in solitude, but in community. I've got it right off the top of my head.

[31:19]

That's about it. Dr. David, do you have something? Of course, the importance, the ascetic way of total liberation of flesh. Liberation from the flesh, I guess. Thank you. It's a human knowledge. Yes, it's spoken in the First Judaism. Like a prayer, you'll see this. That would be also keeping the mind on the Lord always,

[32:35]

to prevent one from reflecting on himself. We could call it the memory of God or recollection. Amen. Discernment of spirit. Something that struck me in prayer, just the little things in a day that could bring one to prayerfulness. Like you mentioned, a brother singing. Yes, yes. Or a vacation. Yes.

[34:01]

I think it's the most important. It's important from a practical point of view. Yes. That's it? That's the end. That's it? Well, yes, I had the whole big thing worked out. Oh, good. The whole quotations. You can tell us the ideas and you can elaborate it. Okay. Well, I missed most of them, most of the conferences. But we've begun them last summer. That's right. So you may have missed a few. So I got just the beginning and then I missed a lot of stuff. From the beginning I got the idea of the telos and scopos. Yes. The ultimate end of the spiritual life,

[35:03]

being the attainment of the kingdom of God. And the aim, I think that's the thing that's the prize, as he expresses it, and the target that we shoot at to attain the prize, being purity of heart. So from that I developed a sort of ladder, not to add to it anymore, but there's a perseverance in prayer and purification and pure prayer. Are these having some kind of an order to them? Should we go from one to the other? Yes. It might be better to say it's a constellation. Constellation or constellation?

[36:13]

Constellation. So... Kind of to support those, I've taken most of these to conferences of Abba Isaac. On page 387, it says, The aim of every monk and the perfection of his heart tends to continual and unbroken perseverance in prayer. And as far as it is allowed to human frailty, strives to acquire an immovable tranquility of mind and perpetual purity. So there's perseverance in prayer and this perpetual purity, immovable tranquility of mind, which is like the pure prayer

[37:17]

for the sake of which we seek to practice all bodily labors as well as contrition of spirit, which is like the purification. So there's the whole constellation right in that one little bit there. What we want to find ourselves like while we are praying, that we ought to prepare ourselves to be before the time of prayer. And I'm always being brought up against that. That seems really important to me. That really impresses me. Then he says a really fascinating thing about... in chapter 4 of Conference 9, about the lightness of the soul. He compares it to a feather. The nature of the soul is not inaptly compared to a very fine feather,

[38:22]

which is born aloft almost naturally, almost naturally to the heights of heaven by the lightness of its breath, by the lightness of its nature and the aid of the slightest breath of spiritual meditation. So the soul, when it's in its natural state, is kind of naturally pure. And when it's in its natural state, it almost can lift itself to God. And it needs just this light breath of meditation. Then he quotes from Paul. Pray without ceasing in every place, lifting up holy hands without wrath and disputing.

[39:26]

And I see that constellation there again. Pray without ceasing is continual prayer. And lifting up holy hands to the act of lifting up holy hands is the act of pure prayer. The holy hands themselves is purity, holy hands, rather than gross, encrusted hands. This is pretty involved. And then he gets to the prayer of fire, which I'm not going to go into. And he says a thing here on page 394, on the top of the first column. He's talking about the Our Father. Where it is said, Hallowed be thy name,

[40:28]

it may also be fairly taken in this way. The hallowing of God is our perfection. The hallowing of God is our perfection. What it seems to me like he's saying is that the greatest thing for us is to praise God and hallow his name, to hold him in reverence. That when we do that, that in itself purifies us. To love God and reverence God is our greatest treasure because it hallows us.

[41:31]

It purifies us. It purifies us. Now he's getting to to begin to hint at what a pure prayer could be. That is not a perfect prayer wherein a monk understands himself and the words which he prays. So there's some unknowing that is not pure. It's not clouded over by thoughts and vain imaginations. Wherefore, we ought to pray often but briefly,

[42:44]

lest if we are long about it, our crafty foe may succeed in implanting something in our heart. So the brief prayer is a pure prayer. Then he goes on to talk about his mantra. Will God come to my assistance? Lord, make haste to help me. This is the formula which the mind should unceasingly cling to, strengthened by the constant use of it and by continual meditation. He casts off and rejects the rich and full material of thoughts and restricts itself to the poverty of this one verse. Again, poverty has something to do with purity, simplicity.

[43:48]

And so one becomes grandly poor. The poor and needy shall praise the name of the Lord. And thriving on this pasture of the psalms, thriving on this pasture continually, he will take into himself all the thoughts of the psalms and will begin to sing them in such a way that he will utter them with the deepest emotion of heart, not as if they were the compositions of the psalmist, but rather as if they were his own utterances and his very own heart. And so our mind will reach that incorruptible prayer which is actually distinguished by the use of no words or utterances. He's getting into the prayer of fire here. But with the purpose of the mind all on fire is produced through ecstasy of heart

[44:52]

by some unaccountable keenness of spirit, unaccountable keenness of spirit, and the mind being thus affected without the aid of the senses or any visible material pours it forth to God with groanings and sighs that cannot be uttered. I didn't really get a whole lot, but there's something where he's talking about a kind of transparency which is that purity that comes through in being able to read the psalms, to really enter into the psalms, and kind of letting the psalms flow through you as though you were thinking them the first time,

[45:54]

as if they weren't something committed to memory or something that you're reading, leading off by rote. And then to summarize, he says, there are three things which make a shifting heart steadfast, watchings, meditation, and prayer. Diligence in which and constant attention will produce steadfast firmness of mind. And that impresses me because I'm very much in need of that kind of firmness of mind. And it would be straining it to say that watchings, meditation, and prayer are perseverance, purification, and pure prayer. But... that's what I got. So what you've got there

[47:04]

came up with is very much focused on prayer. Starting out from the telos and mesopos, which is the purity of heart, prayer is found in prayer, and is associated with these other aspects. David, you've got something? Yeah, the first problem I encountered, I first did some of this, I don't know when it was, about six weeks ago, we were going to have a class, and I found the first problem was trying to rank these things, because Joe said, describe this as a constellation, so you really can't do that, but maybe you can find some major theme or something running through it, and do it different ways. One thing I tried to do, I didn't finish it though, I started writing an essay, but I didn't get very far. So after I got through the first, this is just a rough draft, after I got through the first couple points, it started getting kind of lengthy. And when you try to tie everything together in an essay that really can't be tied together in step form, you really run into some problems.

[48:04]

You try to say everything in it in a short amount of time. Well, you're not going to be better than a cashman at that anyway. Sometimes you can pick up the essential elements of the roots, the bones of this theology. So one thing that's really, I think is really central to me, and it's a problem in a lot of, I guess a lot of fathers and stuff, is the problem of grace and free will. You know, how much is God's part and how much is our part? So on the level of our practice and God's assistance, you see this in both the practice, practique, I think, say, in theory, in prayer, in the first, no matter what our efforts are, whether, you know, whether it's some kind of renunciation or doing different things, it still has to be God's grace assisting us in that. Then even in prayer, no matter how much we're doing, what method we're using, God can break in at any point. So in both those, in both circles, you see the movement of grace. Then I've got a couple of places

[49:06]

where he talks about that. See, just for references, Conference 3, Chapter 22. And then he's got another discussion of it when he's talking about the evil powers. That's Conference 7, Chapter 8. It's just a couple of places. Then another central point, of course, purity of heart. The purity of heart equaling charity. He talks about charity. I was just looking it over just briefly this morning. And it seemed to me that charity, the way he was talking about it, was something like when Joe was talking about the soul being as light as a feather, in this way, that charity is a gift, but perfection of charity, which depends on all these secondary ways of virtue.

[50:07]

He talks about fasting and so forth, different ascetical practices that are necessary towards this perfection of charity, which itself, in some way, is a gift, which is sort of that. Then the next point would be the idea of unceasing prayer and dividing this into the methods of prayer, the varieties of prayer. Then I don't remember exactly why I have this listed under here, but somewhere he says the mind cannot possibly remain in one state it either advances or declines. That's kind of the point. Then again, with this idea of grace and free will, we have somewhere that we have humility, sort of a check and sort of a means,

[51:12]

a necessary means for our prayer, and then discretion. And discretion is the same thing. It's discretion. Is that a gift? Is this the highest gift? In the other sense, he talks about it being acquired and maintained by humility. I'm not clear on how that fits in. It's just discretion. I think in Conference 10 he mentions it again somewhere when he was talking about the forms of prayer. I don't know. Somewhere where he's talking about the hedgehogs or something,

[52:16]

but he says whoever advances from this condition not only secures the simplicity of innocence, but is also shielded by the virtue of discretion, becomes an exterminator of deadly serpents, and so forth and so on. So again, in Chapter 10 and earlier in 1 and 2, he's talking about discretion. He says, for the reference, for instance, discretion gained by truth and humility is Conference 2, Chapter 10. He's very strong on that. That's the principle. He's maintaining the discretion in the Conference and the discussion. Which means, for him,

[53:19]

it's all coming across. So there's another relation there, because by humility, that kind of humility is looking at the person and doing, inserts himself into the tradition. So what he's doing is not his discretion, first of all, comes from outside. Discretion comes from the spiritual power of tradition and knowledge. And he gets this by humility. And then as he obtains this sort of second discretion, which comes from outside, he's able to exercise discretion from inside. So that's another relation, humility to the gift of discretion. Somewhere in here, I don't have it here, but compunction, the idea of compunction has to fit in here somewhere, maybe under renunciations and so forth.

[54:21]

But I'm not there on that. That's just an afterthought. Well, then there are other ideas from where our thoughts arise when he mentions, you know, from ourselves, from the devil, from God. That impressed me quite a bit. I remember the time, I think, we discussed that, I think it was last year, when I was doing the first Conference, or second. Then Patrick mentioned the reality of evil and the inner self. I don't know. When I rank these, it's just sort of the way I put them. Then I had the eight principles, the eight principles of thoughts and renunciation. But the tenth one, I think it's kind of important I put down here for this life anyway. The need for exterior solitude as well as interior solitude. I've got two references for that. We've got Conference 10, Chapter 6 and Conference 6, Chapter 15.

[55:23]

I don't remember. I did this a lot of times. I don't remember. Conference 6, Chapter 15 I don't appear to be there. Oh, I'm looking wrong. I'm looking wrong. That's 360. 360?

[56:36]

No. One cell. 360. And so we ought always to remain shut up in our cell and so forth. For whenever a man is freed from it and returns fresh to it and begins again to live there he will be upset and disturbed. And then in 10.6 you saw the three gradual transfigurations outside in the building. So you have to go out into the real solitude and experience that in and of itself. And that's all. Steve, do you have any other questions? Stan. Stan is good. I just want to mention when I was writing this essay I was thinking

[57:39]

pointed Father Prior made a good time to share in the homily about asking the right question and I don't know why somehow it's coming to that one point where he asked the right question and when I was writing this I sort of incorporated that but Germanus when he first comes is told I think to get this right that he has to approach the the path in two two things faithfulness and sorrow I guess that's sorrow part I mentioned compunction right there at the beginning I'm not sure Well I guess it's in Conference 10 where he's asking a question about prayer or something and Abba

[58:39]

Oh yeah the Abba goes up on the questions Yeah, it says you're not far from the goal there Chapter 9 10-9 Yeah, I think it's 10 Conference 10 Yeah The answer and the efficacy of understanding Two things I experienced I was kind of impressed about how intense their desire is you know the very first chapter where they're having you know they're with tears says and together we implored him to give us a discourse for edification not without tears where he knew full well his determination and his consent to open the gate of perfection except to those who desire it with all faithfulness and sought it with all sorrow of heart and it's kind of it's kind of

[59:41]

and yet they're complaining about their own heartless heart like they weep out of sorrow because of their insensitivity There's something I'd like to add on that Grace Grace is the spirit living in us the action living in us we should just be and being in this harbor of silence that Cassian mentions in the preface about being in this ocean this vast ocean and sort of relating to me not only the community but of the church is in this ocean and to just let the ship go that it's the way that it's supposed to go that the Holy Spirit is guiding it although we really can't guide it we can just be in that motion in the flow of the spirit that the spirit will guide us in the direction

[60:52]

in the path that we're supposed to be we can't have preconceived ideas about what God is and about what our prayer should be that we should just utilize the ideas of before about going back to the early fathers of course using the Bible as a guideline but letting the spirit within us move us to the vocation to our vocation which is a calling and it's a lifetime calling every day is a new calling and it's a new and it's a new being within the mystical body of Christ and to say that this is it this is it it's not [...] it

[61:41]

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