Use things wisely, and that thing about the vessels of the altar, that comes from here. And this myth that there's a new harmony, because we're in a second life, a new life, which is not the formal way of life, has the harmony. And we just have to act as if it is harmonious, and then it is harmonious. Because all things will be given according to need. And we go back to the Acts of the Apostles. Each one was given according to their due. Not according to their wishes or wants, but according to their needs. And that need was discerned with Christ, figure, the Adam. And then the community was not to grieve if someone needed more than the other, because their need was only to be obedient to the needs they had. So things are a wonderful medium for holiness. And again, you could separate out the difference between a renunciate and a householder. Someone who is married and has children and runs a house and has a profession, they need things to make that entity work.

[01:08]

We, as individuals, need nothing except this monastery to work, and we're inserted into this economy of things. So individually, we used to write in our books, ah, do some, remember that, for my use? to be used by me, and that was literally true. All these teachings are not just sort of true, or maybe we could get them, they were literally true, but we just maybe didn't literally implement them, but there was nothing wrong with the teachings, because that is literally the truth. Everything we have the superior could take away from us and give to someone else. We possess nothing. We have nothing. Even our body or our souls are at the service of the community. Because we're trying to move towards God and this illumination is we need nothing Because we're not going that way, there's no reason for it. If the community sees we need something, the community will give it, in the name of the community. So there's this harmony, this peacefulness.

[02:11]

Then the last thing I'll just take on, the idea of things is, if indeed you do get locked in things, this greed, There are ways out of the greed and it is truly to remove yourself from the things literally. You need to separate out from those things that you are grasping. And after you remove yourself, that's why retreats were a space where you need very little things. See how much you need. You don't need much. And then, then you start seeing that you have a lot of thoughts about things that you never need. So it was an illusion that you needed those things. Open up your closet. Huh? You've got some dress on. How many dresses are still hanging there? It's an illusion that you need all those dresses because you only need it. They need four or five or six because you don't need 36. So the illusion is present.

[03:13]

So if you separate yourself from things, notice that things are just another thought, and those things are not my thoughts, I am not my thoughts, those are not my things, throw anything into the swamp shop. Because whose things are they anyway? You don't have anything. You know, you are not a thing. They're just little thoughts that come and go. And so then again, discernment, going to your spirit. What do you think I need? Remember the days we used to take inventory of our things? That was to help sort out how much do we need. And then, oh, I did community. Can I get things in community? Do I trust? When we did total renunciation here several years ago, and a lot of, you know, took that form of the vow of poverty, all of us put our books in the library. We had to build another room. When we took our books out of our bedrooms, the books didn't fit in one room. We doubled the size of our library because the books came down. And then all of us had more things. What a problem.

[04:14]

So you see, this thing works. It's also just like dieting, through the fasting rules, through the sexuality sublimated through, you know, prayer and vigilance, you give, you have much more generativity and energy, so does right order of things give you a harmony. Final teaching on things. Things are most harmful because it divides the mind, and it divides your time, it divides you, it's a fragmentation. It is most against this oneness of each other in community, this oneness of yourself and your mind and your body and your soul, yourself with God. These things are around. So the idea of simplicity is the idea of oneness, a total oneness. So you practice in your room as much harmony and oneness and less fragmentation, less confusion. and disparity and all that moving out, but to this harmony, this point of oneness, which is God, and in Trinity, who is the One.

[05:23]

Isn't that exciting? So that's the teaching on things that we'll do today. Why don't you just share with your neighbor what you like best about that, and we'll move on to anger. Maybe you don't like it, and we'll get mad about it. Okay, we're going to move right along. And to speed this up because you can see this is. nothing that can be done in two hours I'm going to just now take put together thoughts of the mind and I'll put together the thoughts of the soul and I want to end up back to Benedict's rule and where this thing comes together is because Cassian's tradition you'll say well that's not our tradition we're Benedictines so I want to bring it right back even though Benedict quotes Cassian 136 times it may give me some clue that he thought we should know it so okay The thoughts of the mind are anger and dejection. Anger rises when you don't get the things you want.

[06:26]

How's that? It's a thought, it's a vicious surge of this, it's an infection about your ego that's attached to your things or attached to sex or relationships or it's attached to food. It's an attachment that somehow is you will identify that I am my thought. And then when the thought doesn't go the way I want, then anger, this passion erupts. And all of us have it. Some have it more than others. Some have it from a previous lifetime. Some have it from bad experiences. What is the origin of anger? Anger is a learned experience. You don't... You know, you really do learn it according to this tradition. So you may have the promptings of it, but you learn this afflictive acting out in this lifetime through watching others or somehow.

[07:27]

So if it's a learned experience, you can unlearn it, is the point. And the goal of a monk is to to not be angry. In this tradition, there's no justifiable anger. You can't be angry at your past, can't be angry at your future, can't be angry at the moment. There is nothing worth being angry about. Now, that you have anger, yes, but for you to attach a thought to that anger, to hide in that anger, is what this is about. You would notice the anger, you would lay it aside. Notice the anger, lay it aside. and pray without ceasing. Do that exercise. So you have the thought, but it is not true. And it can't be unlearned, but it takes a lot of training. There are actually 26 teachings about anger and compassion. So I'm just going to narrow them down to a few for our purpose here. The biggest teaching is to disengage from your attachment to the anger.

[08:29]

even a little anger is very harmful. So to say, I'm just a little angry, well then, you know, where do you stop? So the teaching is no anger, zero tolerance for anger. The fact that you have it, it's okay. I mean, it rises. But that you tolerate it, no. You must... It's because it isn't neutral. If you don't lay aside, it's going to move up. There's no such thing as anger just hanging here. It's... So you must... So that's the point. You have to deal with it. You can't repress it. You have to lay it aside. Second teaching about anger is that if you don't deal with it, it can be pushed out for a while, but it'll come out in a bad mood. or to come out of being mad at a thing, your pencil, your pen, or it'll come out in dejection, which is the next teaching. So all anger must be taken very seriously. You must notice it.

[09:31]

You must check it. You must look at it. You must lay it aside. And anger definitely is an affliction. And so instead of analyzing why you're angry and the types of anger and sorting the anger feelings, the better thing in this tradition is to just notice that you have anger, because the more you analyze it, the more you are heightening the anger. because you're giving it a face, and a form, and a vision, and a storyline, and a commentary. See, this would be at its earliest. They talk about the snake's head, and as that head comes up out of the ground, waft it off. They don't want a full-blown snake out there for you to say, oh, I'm not going to be angry at you, because then you're dead and you're full of poison. The teaching is that first inkling of anger. Now this is very serious because a lot of the training and therapy is a lot of analysis, going back to early childhood, or transference, or parenting, and this would say that that is not hopeful.

[10:38]

This would say that that is all towards the self instead of moving directly towards God, and using that anger or thought to go towards God. So it's very anti-psychological at this point. No, because no matter where it comes from, it is still to be laid aside, so you might as well lay it aside now. So it's that first instance of awakening. Stay vigilant. This thoughtful heart and watchfulness of thoughts is an absolute discipline. As thoughts rise, you know, you get that first inkling, and you get highly sensitive and trained. It's very subtle. So you certainly aren't going to go take it to the next level of analysis, because then you've got passion with it. Now, you'll say, well then there's understanding and then you can resolve it. This tradition would say manifestation is as much understanding as you need. You hand it totally over to God and you surrender it.

[11:39]

And the practice is in the surrendering. And you can see I'm moving quickly to chapter 7 in humility. Say you were beat up by your parents and raped three times and whatever. The whole point is In humility, so you were. You're just going to say, I'm not worthy of anything more than that anyway, so what's the difference? So I might as well just lop it off right now without getting the commentary. That is this teaching as I understand it. And that's how I link to the chapter seven of humility. And there's a lot of evidence to show that all that analysis doesn't dissipate it anyway. It really does come up in another form. And you still don't have the tools to deal with the next anger. You have to go analyze that. And this is not repression. It's actually dealing with it, praying. And if God wants you to have understanding, you'll have understanding to avoid dedication. This is all about the mind, the heart, guarding its heart, because all you want is God.

[12:42]

And you really don't even want understanding. reconciliation as such, you just won't die. If you get reconciled, fine. Now, again, reconciliation is a teaching. If you are the cause of someone else's anger or your own anger, Not out of anger, but after that has dissipated, you must go ask for forgiveness. That's just another teaching. But it's not a way to deal with your anger. That's a way to deal with justice and right living in a cinematic community and to establish the harmony and to anticipate someone else's anger and to exhibit. It's more the fruit of this practice of giving back to the heart and watchfulness of thoughts in anger. It's a very strong chapter and it is uncompromising, but believably strong. So now we'll keep going because that question will come up and it's dejection.

[13:43]

So let's just move along on dejection. Dejection is a thought down about yourself. Remember we said we're not without thoughts. So a thought up about yourself is staying in glory. A thought down about yourself is dejection. When really yourself just is. And I am not my thoughts. So those thoughts up or down, it's an illusion. I'm not up. I'm not down. I'm just am. So any down thoughts. You do the same thing with, you just let them go. You lay, if you return to your ceaseless prayer, where you just acknowledge them, it's just a down thought. It doesn't mean that I'm down, it's just I feel like I'm down, but I'm not down, I'm just am. So you return to the amness. See, this whole thing is on equanimity, tranquility, passionlessness, purity of heart. See, the point is staying in that middle fulcrum. But you can't, it's staying between painfully and pride. And the point between vainglory and pride, that point of truth, is humility.

[14:47]

So this is all training in humility. So if somebody is angry, very, very angry, and we go and move up their self-esteem or move them down through telling them how terrible they are, that doesn't help them in this humility. Humility is this right thinking about yourself. So the practice, the tools of God-detection, It's not a very long chapter, but it's very compelling. It talks about if you are dejected, first of all, you have to look at your life and see, am I feeling down because it's true? I have done wrong things and I have not repented. In other words, yeah, maybe you aren't so good. How about that being an indicator to change? It could be true. Okay, so you look at that. Second one is, the second source of dejection is Something did happen to you very bad, and you have the effect of it. Somebody died. You almost died. You're sick. You're in pain. Something harmful happened to you.

[15:50]

Some disaster happened to your community. That is a cause for dejection. But that isn't a cause to sustain the dejection. It just means its origin. It says in the chapter, from whence does it come? The third source of dejection, it says, it comes from a source we know not where. which we would translate as chemical, parathialogical depression, where people are just depressed, that's all. Not their fault, it's nothing they did, and there's nothing they can do to get out of it. And then they, what the teaching is there, the community must be most compassionate with that person and just hold them in honor, hold them in love. And it doesn't tell them to do anything. Because that's the problem, they can't do anything. So we just hold them. But today we have chemicals. Today we have people that can get some help when they're chemically depressed. It turns out this chapter talking a lot about many among the nuns become suicidal and die and commit suicide.

[16:55]

And suicide is a very harmful thing because it cuts off your possibility in this lifetime of meeting God in this lifetime and experiencing God in the witness and the joy. So, you know, we do want to overcome detection. But in an awful sense, dejection isn't the worst thing that can happen to you. If you kill yourself, the only thing that happens is your body dies and your mind dies. There's something much worse than dejection. Isn't this a happy thought? The CDA is much worse than dejection because the CDA is It is the dying of your soul. It's the disease of the soul that you hit a place where this working on the thoughts, this ascetical life, this renunciation where you say, I've had enough. I'm not getting anywhere. I don't like it. I don't get any joy out of prayers. I don't get any joy out of being in my community. I've got to think some of it. I'd rather have a mate. I'd rather have some things. But it's worse at this stage to go back and get things, and get a mate, and get whatever, because you've tasted the fruits of spiritual life before.

[18:08]

So when you return, and you don't, in case you're insidious, you return to your former way of life, You killed your soul. This is soul side. This is an absolute much suicide we can handle. You know, they'll get another lifetime of God's mercy or something. But soul side is a very, very dangerous thing. That's saying no to God's grace. That's saying no to the spiritual life. That's saying thanks but no thanks. I've had it. I don't want any more of this. It's a very subtle, dangerous, risky disease that when we see a friend of ours or a sister or a monk, we must be supportive to them to get out of Acidiae. And if we notice it in ourselves, we need to go and get some help, because there is help at Acidiae. There's wonderful descriptions of Acidiae. How you notice it, usually they feel bored, They feel listless. They wouldn't come to a workshop like this because they're too busy or could care less or don't like the speakers or they maybe here and still don't like the speakers.

[19:15]

I don't know. Anyway, they check out. The CBA is checking out. They know better, you know, and they decide to become a bishop or they decide to become a teacher or professor, get their doctorate. They don't need any of that stuff anymore. They leave the monastery, you know, so they set up other things. There's a most dangerous time when people leave religious life, leave their married lives, have kids or don't have kids, you know, get another profession. And see, this is just when the monastic way of life is going to work for you because this is the junction between the first thought and the second thought. First thought is just the sex thing. The second thought is why you do what you do. And when you no longer get consolation from your balanced food, from your equanimity of no anger, from your harmony of things, and you're just living the life. Then the deeper purifications start coming up. And then Ascidia is the break point, saying, boy, you're not going to go in that zone.

[20:20]

This is consuming now. You really want God, don't you? So this is most evil time for you, most dangerous, most insidious. So this is the test of why you're doing what you do. Is it for you or for God? So if it's for God, you go to prayers. If it's for you, you don't go to prayers. But you go if it's for God. If you serve others selflessly, it's for them, it's not for you. The rest of this is all ego. And if you stop here, you're worse than you were before, but you're very good at it. So, God placed this ascidiae, a function, as a very beneficial thing. And so if you have people in a spiritual direction that have kissed the ascidiae, how can they kiss them and say, wonderful, we're off and ready? You know, because there are some tools to get through ascidiae. Ready for the tools? First rule is, again, back to physical labor. It's an affliction of the body and the mind. It's a transition affliction before the soul. The soul is sick, but basically you can, if you use manual labor, not ministry, not mental work, intelligent work, manual labor,

[21:30]

repetitive manual labor and you do things just because it's good to do it and you disengage your mind while you're doing it in any return to the self and you stay present to what you're doing, practice the art, again watchfulness of thoughts, it's like zen you know or like monastic work, this is where this comes in and this is where it's beneficial and you do it over and often, repetitively, day in, day out, it starts moving this affliction out of your body and it calms your mind. Very healing, cleaning, cooking, sewing, There's nothing to replace a physical, repetitive type work that equalizes us. And this is just right there in the tradition. The worst thing you can do is go for your doctorate, go for ministry, become a bishop, marry the man of your dreams. That's the worst thing you can do. The best thing is stay humble.

[22:31]

See, it's the beginning of this humility. doing God's work without any return, so that you get used to letting those feelings come, letting those feelings go, letting those feelings come, letting those feelings go. See, like when you're peeling potatoes and one day you're just mad at that potato because it doesn't look right, and the next day it's the most beautiful potato in the world, who's problem is it? Is it the potato? No, you just, you know, peel the potato. So you start distancing you from your mind and the effect you think your work has on the work. Work is. Work is holy. All life is holy. All being is holy. So if you negotiate this affliction, you can work and prayer become interchangeable. I work, I pray, I pray, I work. So it doesn't matter if I'm reciting the psalm or killing the data. Killing the data, reciting the psalm. It's all the work of God. Work, work, work, prayer, prayer, prayer.

[23:33]

But not before this. See, this is why it's dangerous for people to go to ministry too soon. When you're bored, then they say, well, I'll pray later. Then they're not praying with their work. This teaches you to pray always with whatever work you do, or work always with whatever prayer you do, so your mind is clear, your mind is clean. You're not thinking about yourself in prayer. You're not thinking about yourself in work. See how this purifies both your work and your prayer? So work, your prayer, prayer is work, work is prayer. It's a marvelous affliction to have, and that's why most of us get it. at one time or another. So the second, the physical work helps us do this work of prayer. The second major teaching is in this story, in this affliction of Assyria. It's a very long chapter. It's all over, maybe a hundred pages long on this, is that Assyria does break through if you do this manual labor and you do this physical work, it breaks through at some point with tears and you break down and cry and you experience compunction.

[24:47]

If you go deep enough in manual labor and distancing yourself Your desire for God rises. When you reduce yourself, God rises. And then God rises so beautifully, so wonderfully, so strongly. But then you still have this angst or this feeling that I'm so far from God. So there's this real wonderful, exciting tension called compunction. where I desire for God that I experience myself so distant from God. So there's that war of the flesh and the spirit, but there's a beauty of this, it's the tears, and it softens your heart, and it's something you want to cultivate. So instead of cultivating boredom, or Sibie, you would cultivate this compulsion. And it's a practice. Compulsion is a practice. So when it rises, you would stay with it, you would linger, you would offer it, you would cry, and bring those tears to God. And the tears themselves become a prayer. So, you can tell when somebody's in that kind of tears or when they're crying about themselves because they didn't get something.

[25:55]

This is wonderful tears. But you see, the reason why you need them is that it keeps down pride, and it also keeps your heart soft so that your work is very supple, and you hear the impulses of the Holy Spirit. There's some wonderful teachings on tektos, or compunction. Irenaeus Harsha is one of the better writers. But it is in Chaston, it is in Benedict, and it's especially in Brachomius. He was always renting his garments and drying out his clothes because he was crying so much. But it all fits together. It all fits together, and so we want to cultivate that in ourselves. But again, you're not going to get there if all you're doing is analyzing the causes of your anger, see? You need to quicken that part of your system so that these other spiritual works go. See, that's the reason why self-analysis is not... you don't want to do it your whole life, if at all. I'll come back to that.

[26:58]

Because this other work, spiritual work, has to be done. Okay, so, the benefit of aciviate is that it purifies your intentions. And work and prayer becomes interchangeable. And your heart becomes soft and supple. You hear the Holy Spirit. You're getting ready now for illumination. You're moving out of the purgative stage. But before there's a big grip of moving on the Torpedo Stage, there's an affliction of the soul. And there's two thoughts there. I'm going to just race through them. The one thought is vainglory, and that's thoughts about yourself, where you do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. And you look very good. Nobody detects it because you're very good at it. And you've done all these thoughts before. So you pray well. You speak well. You walk well. You're very, very good at being a religious person. And you're so good, you're better than anybody else. But it's very, very dangerous because instead of the thoughts going towards God, the thoughts with intentions reach out to the self.

[28:07]

I'm doing it all for myself. And so the only way out of vainglory is manifestation, even the intention to someone else. And also practicing humility, going back and doing humble tasks and works. And not doing ministry. It's really dangerous to be a minister and be It's not in the affliction of vainglory. You should probably drop out of ministry while you've got that affliction. Again, it's right on the pride. Pride... Oh, again, if you do negotiate vainglory, then you can't become a minister because you're not doing it for the adulation of others. And then, see, when you're afflicted with vainglory, you need to stay in the monastery. The Asciniate teaching is stay put and do those practices. Main glory, you tend to want to go out and start a new monastery or have people attracted to yourself and teach them and all that, but you can't do that either until you get past main glory. Then, it doesn't matter if you teach at home or teach someplace else, because no thoughts return to the self, and they certainly don't go to evil.

[29:13]

So you can see what pride is. Pride is just a little slippery thing. If I could do the right things for myself, what's me to tell Carolyn, you know, would you mind getting that car for me? They don't need it, but I do. So pretty soon you're doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. So you go back to, I need this little sex wasn't going to hurt anybody. In fact, they'd be glad to have me, you know. anger. I have a righteous anger. I know when it's time to be angry and I can shake them up with my anger and I'm the authority here and I can do this because I'm the exception of the rule. So pride is doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason and it just is insidious. There's two kinds of pride. The first kind of pride is carnal pride, which most of us do. It's just that little subtle thing of eating just because I need a little bit more or drinking because I've got this little family background. We can drink more than most people. You know, alcoholism isn't in our family.

[30:14]

Or sex. You know, I just need a little sex to make me happy, not a lot. Or just fantasy love or something. So, you see, clinical pride is just in one of these thoughts, a little bit for me, just a little bit for me. And it doesn't hurt too many people, but it hurts me, but I'll do it anyway. So there's a little being of sin that eventually, you know, becomes bigger. Now, spiritual pride is something else. Spiritual pride is when the reference, you're no longer saying, well, that's wrong, but I'll do it anyway. That's carnal pride. Spiritual pride is, you know, that really isn't wrong. You know, what if there's no God anyway? Look, all this life I was trying to do this good because I thought there was God. Maybe there isn't a God. And maybe, you know, maybe I'm God. Who knows? Who's to tell? I'm better than any other God I know. So you've become the reference, you've become the God. And then what's really worse is you've become the evil one. You know, I know both good and evil, and I can do good by doing evil.

[31:17]

I mean, it really gets pretty bad there, but people do that. Evil becomes their attack, and they make people subservient to them because they determine what is good and what is evil. So they have people do evil things. because evil is their good. So that's the Lucifer myth and all that. So kind of pride and spiritual pride are different. Now, the description of somebody in the grips of pride is somebody who walks haughtily, talks haughtily, laughs, scorns others, does what they think, has nobody above them, is self-taught, self this, self that, determines what's good, appropriates to themself anytime, anything, anyone, anybody. The definition of lust is just using another addition. So you lust for things, you lust for food, you lust, you know, you become the judge. So discernment is out because you've already made the choice and your choices are all good.

[32:18]

So legal has a great manifestation of heartiness and self-assuredness and no outside preference, especially not God, and certainly not others. So that's what pride is. Now, the anecdote for pride. What if you do find yourself in a group of pride? And through God's grace, usually no one ever repents of pride, because even if they fall, they kind of go back to carnal pride all over again. Pride is a very, very serious thing. I was taking this workshop one time, and I got all the way up to this worst thing, you know. And the people in the room said, well, that's just so-and-so. And I looked at so-and-so, and I says, hey, you're right. You know, they had somebody in their midst, but this is just the way they were, and everybody thought it was fine. You know? To top it with pride and main glory, these are people with spiritual gifts. In this very room, we had a monk come here from Paget Fountain Training in India.

[33:22]

And in a weak moment, I said, yes, why don't you say the math? Because we needed at least to say the math at the end of this intensive center and for a retreat. And then we were sitting around a contemplative math, and I watched him throw energy at her. And then it's her, and then it's him. And then at the kiss of peace, lots of touching. And then I saw his eyes just penetrate right there. And I saw people quickening. And then I saw people melting in his arms. Then I caught on, and I thought, oh my God, what did I do? And it turned out this guy had taken a lot of tantric training and he knew how to project those spiritual energies and overcome another person and make them subservient to him. And it's scary. It's scary. And those people are around, you know, because you can do that. These powers, this spiritual stuff gives you an enormous amount of power.

[34:25]

And those cars can be very legal. Scrooge, I guess. Yes, the cult people would be right in this category. And nothing's too little for them. This guy, I could toss his mail to me over and over again. And he wanted to come here. I wanted to give a retreat. And there's many more like him, unfortunately. We have to use discerning spirits. So if you don't see humility, watch out. Because these people that have taken these spiritual practices have this energy, see, these higher energies of the soul, and can manipulate them. to very vulnerable people. children. See, that's why sexual misconduct with children is so terrible. That's just the body. But you can do the soul, too. You can do the mind. You can do the soul. And it's all insidious. And it's very evil. And that's why as Christians, too, we can't be surprised by evil. We certainly don't need to be unduly alarmed. But much of Christianity is about demons. And it's good for us to know a demon.

[35:26]

That's why we need the Benedictine Cross. We need our holy water in our prayers. Evil is in our midst. And to be overconfident to go here and to do this and to be with this person is, you know, it's right thinking to say, this person's out of my league. I cannot have them in my house. I will not go to that monastery. I will not go to that place. So evil is evil. And we have to be very guarding I probably get, well all of us get problems with people and it's in our times because it's so typical today. Nobody notices it. And so practicing God at the heart. Now I have to wind up here. And I'm going to wind up with Benedict's chapter 7 of Humility. You can see that anybody that comes to renounce the former way of life, toward the spiritual life, to get on the spiritual journey, who's seeking God, who wants to be all light in union with God, the best training in the world is

[36:29]

humility. Humility is the training. You know, you may not know these thoughts and those tools of the thoughts. It would be nice to know them and I recommend them. But let's look at those twelve degrees of humility. First one, fear of the Lord. That there is God and God knows our hearts and our thoughts. And we should share our thoughts and know our thoughts and bring them to God. And have this dialogue with God. So it's really acknowledging that God exists and that God knows me, and that God knows what I'm dealing with. So that's the first one. And then the second one is to then throw myself on God. Submit my will, my heart, my being to God. So if you know God, if you're God, God is there, and God sees me inside and outside, then I must throw myself on God. And then the way to throw yourself on God is Three, you give yourself to a superior, somebody that represents God.

[37:31]

We are carnal beings. To do this all in our mind doesn't work. We need ways, we need physical ways of doing this. So the third degree is to have a superior. The fourth degree is to accept hard things, to do hard things because I'm ready to submit. So to submit means just that, submit. So you start submitting to hard things and you get some hard things to do. You don't mind working. It's not beneath you. The fifth degree of humility is to manifest your thoughts about those hard things. You don't like those hard things. So you manifest those thoughts about the hard things to your superior that in the third degree of humility you put yourself on. So you see how this all works together and now it's all really the theory of the thoughts? gave us a sixth degree of humility, the 679. It's about these hard things and about how you are to do these hard things and we are to do them with

[38:35]

Wait, we should, no matter, it's the lowest thing, we don't mind doing it. So we do not judge the thing that we do. We do it without, I'm losing my degrees here, six, seven, okay, so we do a lot of things without judgment. Seven is the middle point, seven is the middle point. Seven is that, and it's a long section there in Benedict, he talks about, I am a worm and not a man. You do things because you are the lowest and you know it with your whole and entire being. Now, we've all had so many conferences on this, Chapter 7 and the Seventy-Three Fidelity. We tend to check out. But let me bring it together with this idea of renunciation. Renunciation is because we are indeed at it with our whole being. We can't do it by ourselves. We need to renounce And because we are nothing, and the ego is an illusion that we're something, we are really nothing.

[39:40]

And so, this is the move of the Buddhists. This is the annihilation of the Islam. This is the, what would it be if they knew? But it's that moment where you totally surrender. Because you know it from your being, from your mind. your body, your soul. I am the bullet. That's the way you feel. Not because you think you should feel that way, it's because that is the way it is. You know, to Jesus, for our Lord Jesus Christ, some will be, God have mercy on me, I'm a sinner. I listen when I have people, and I listen to hear how much of that they use. And about 50 to 80% of people say, I dropped that part about a sinner. And I think, well, it's probably true, they're not sinners. But I ask them, are they willing to feel that seventh degree of humility? And if being a sinner helps them feel that moodness, feel that nothingness, You won't have any problem saying it. It's because I am nothing. With God, I can do all things. Without God, I am nothing. So that's proof of the seventh degree of humility in chapter 7.

[40:46]

And with that, it's this surrender of the thoughts. And then 8, 9, and 10 are descriptions of a humble person. You wouldn't laugh raucously. You wouldn't boast. You wouldn't you wouldn't disturb others, you know, you're silent, you refrain even from good things, because, you know, you wait until you're asked to speak. And then the 12th degree of humility is a counter to the, in pride, they describe the most prideful person. And what it is, is exactly the opposite of the 12th degree of humility. someone who boasts, who laughs raucously, who listens to no one, who carries himself haughtily, you know, and it's just taken away entirely, piece by piece by piece, in that twelfth degree of humility. And then it ends, and with that, when there's no longer yourself, you experience God, and your heart becomes enlarged, you run with all magnanimity towards God, and you become illumined.

[41:51]

You're in the illuminative stage. So you see the The twelve degrees of humility are the eight thoughts or this whole purgation, this whole purgative state. And then you're ready for the illuminative, which is all about prayer and pure prayer. And there's many teachings on that in Geshen and in Buddhism as well, actually. But those would be different, and that's... So you see, by casting this today, if you have somebody that wants to renounce their life, what you want to do is get through this purgative stage as quickly and as methodically and as helpfully as we can, so that we can pray and be in this illuminative stage, where there are some competent teachers, and we do the scriptures with Lexa Divina, are a harmonious community. We're not the same if we still don't have some trace of original sin. But you see, we have been promised this well-being, this happiness, this blissfulness, and that is our heritage.

[42:53]

But we have to do the work. So that's where we're going to end today. Isn't this exciting? And I'm glad to be on the planet with you, because then we can do it together. Thank you very much. So you want to check your motivation of things through obedience. So poverty and obedience are really together. You'll see that we take really three classic vows. Obedience, yeah, and the converse optimum, and stability in the monastery. And that covers all these thoughts. poverty is under obedience. Because when we come to the monastery, we have no things, so there's nothing to be poor about. See, because that's already over with. We only get things through obedience. So we don't need a vow of poverty. That was an apostolic need for people that needed things for the apostolic world.

[43:42]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ