Jean Christophe reports the lake has dropped a metre overnight and did I want to empty it now. I said not, after ticking him off for interrupting my meditation (curtain drawn, lights out - leave me alone!)
The Sufi idea that to avoid pain, disappointment, is the primrose path to perdition, that we find love and god through pain. My (mis-)understanding that pain (e.g. with Pol or S, or Bonnevaux) is a sign to me from my deep self that this is wrong. And then last night quite late, back in the caravan, watching Joe Black, a deep {feeling, insight, apercu, the still quiet voice, conviction, faith}, at the same time a sort of fantasy or day dream which I felt might really be true, that I have never loved anyone so deeply and truly as S, and that she loves me in the same way. That all this pain and discomfort and frustration and unhappiness is evidence of that, and not, as I have felt, the opposite. That we neither of us want to hurt the other, lash out, rage. I know I have been here, and for all I know, she has in her journal too. A bit like Dimitry K who knows he’s a shit and the lowest of the low, even when he acts nobly. And that the same may be true of Bonnevaux / my responses to it – even the to the ‘leadership team’ and Laurence. Don’t assume pain and unhappiness are necessarily signposts to something being wrong. They may be the price to be paid for taking the difficult, but the best, path. After all, not drinking is not a pleasure. The results are. My real sin in life – constantly avoiding the horse called disappointment. Learning that meditation is not in itself fun, that when it is pleasant, relaxing, enjoyable, it’s probably not meditation. And the need to achieve (?) apatheia / indifference / detachment towards suffering.
The deep difference between pain (useful, informative) and suffering / disappointment (the ego’s response to difficulty). How to distinguish one from the other.
The true meaning of ‘pick up your cross’ or the way of the cross – choosing the horse called disappointment.
And how that insight, if that’s what it was, transformed my feelings – about S, and everything that’s been happening, and the next few days (going slowly back to Switzerland with her). But not, as yet, to Bonnevaux e.g. to Giovanni’s lunchtime reading list (basically, John Main and Laurence). We have a Deans’ meeting today.
The discussion of the Rule – a supposedly (Mary Katherine thought) boring and uninspiring passage on the arrangement of prayers and psalms for the offices during the day – Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Compline (he having sorted out Vigils and Lauds) – led to a really interesting and various set of contributions on structure, routine, continuity, repetition, discipline. And Seb got very antsy about all this prayer (when Jesus only gave us the Our Father) and meditation 5 times a day (when John Main only recommended twice) and what about adaptability and flexibility and spontaneity, which is exactly what I might have said last week, or yesterday. And it all made me feel uncomfortable about how many times I have missed community meditation in the past few weeks.
Fix the tyre. Get a haircut.
The Sufi idea that to avoid pain, disappointment, is the primrose path to perdition, that we find love and god through pain. My (mis-)understanding that pain (e.g. with Pol or S, or Bonnevaux) is a sign to me from my deep self that this is wrong. And then last night quite late, back in the caravan, watching Joe Black, a deep {feeling, insight, apercu, the still quiet voice, conviction, faith}, at the same time a sort of fantasy or day dream which I felt might really be true, that I have never loved anyone so deeply and truly as S, and that she loves me in the same way. That all this pain and discomfort and frustration and unhappiness is evidence of that, and not, as I have felt, the opposite. That we neither of us want to hurt the other, lash out, rage. I know I have been here, and for all I know, she has in her journal too. A bit like Dimitry K who knows he’s a shit and the lowest of the low, even when he acts nobly. And that the same may be true of Bonnevaux / my responses to it – even the to the ‘leadership team’ and Laurence. Don’t assume pain and unhappiness are necessarily signposts to something being wrong. They may be the price to be paid for taking the difficult, but the best, path. After all, not drinking is not a pleasure. The results are. My real sin in life – constantly avoiding the horse called disappointment. Learning that meditation is not in itself fun, that when it is pleasant, relaxing, enjoyable, it’s probably not meditation. And the need to achieve (?) apatheia / indifference / detachment towards suffering.
The deep difference between pain (useful, informative) and suffering / disappointment (the ego’s response to difficulty). How to distinguish one from the other.
The true meaning of ‘pick up your cross’ or the way of the cross – choosing the horse called disappointment.
And how that insight, if that’s what it was, transformed my feelings – about S, and everything that’s been happening, and the next few days (going slowly back to Switzerland with her). But not, as yet, to Bonnevaux e.g. to Giovanni’s lunchtime reading list (basically, John Main and Laurence). We have a Deans’ meeting today.
The discussion of the Rule – a supposedly (Mary Katherine thought) boring and uninspiring passage on the arrangement of prayers and psalms for the offices during the day – Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Compline (he having sorted out Vigils and Lauds) – led to a really interesting and various set of contributions on structure, routine, continuity, repetition, discipline. And Seb got very antsy about all this prayer (when Jesus only gave us the Our Father) and meditation 5 times a day (when John Main only recommended twice) and what about adaptability and flexibility and spontaneity, which is exactly what I might have said last week, or yesterday. And it all made me feel uncomfortable about how many times I have missed community meditation in the past few weeks.
Fix the tyre. Get a haircut.
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