You Say I Am Repeating Something I Have Said Before I Shall Say It Again Shall I Say It Again

You say I am repeating / Something I accept said before. I shall say it again. / Shall I say it again? In order to go far there, / To arrive where you lot are, to become from where yous are not, / You must become past a manner wherein there is no ecstasy. / In club to arrive at what you do not know / You must get by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess / You must go by the mode of dispossession. / In order to arrive at what yous are not / Yous must become through the way in which you are not. / And what you do not know is the only thing you lot know / And what you own is what you do non own / And where you are is where you are not.

At first glance one might think that T. S. Eliot has presented us a serial of Zen koans, riddles designed to confuse, provoke, and ultimately enlighten—and in a sense he has. Six antinomies: know/ignorance; possess/dispossession; what you lot are not/through the way in which you lot are not; do non know/the only thing you know; own/do non ain; where you are/where you are non. Our discursive reason objects to paradox. Please give me a prissy syllogism. Merely in confrontation with the darkness, our reason betrays united states. It but confirms us in the status quo, which is the manner of expiry. There is merely one way forward: we must inhabit the paradoxes and discover the way of life.

St John of the Cantankerous, whose writings Eliot read securely, brings u.s.a. into the eye of the ascetical mystery:

To reach satisfaction in all
Want its possession in nothing,
To come to the noesis of all
Desire the knowledge of aught.
To come to possess all
Desire the possession of nothing.
To get in at being all
Desire to be cipher.
To come to the pleasance you lot have non
You lot must become by a style in which you enjoy not.

To come to the noesis you lot have not
You must go by a way in which you know not.
To come up to the possession you lot have non
Yous must get by a way in which yous possess not.
To come to be what you are not
You must become by a way in which you are not.
When you turn toward something
You cease to cast yourself upon the all,
For to go from the all to the all
You must possess it without wanting annihilation.
In this nakedness the spirit finds its rest,
for when information technology covets cipher
nothing raises information technology upwards and nothing weighs information technology downward,
because it stands in the centre of its humility.
(Ascent of Mount Carmel I.thirteen.11)

Hither is the Carmelite way to salvation—the manner of purgation and detachment, the way of the Cross. Nosotros must strip ourselves—or be stripped—of all of our illusions and delusions. Nosotros must liberate ourselves—or be liberated—from our attachments. We must die to cocky—or our selves must exist slain—that we might exist reborn into a new creation. Rowan Williams writes, "Thus the move of self or soul is always a stripping, a simplification." Yet, he goes on to explicate, for St John "it is a movement towards fulfillment, not emptiness, towards beauty and life, not anything" (The Wound of Noesis, pp. 176-177).

Still how do I alive this? I live on neither Mount Carmel nor Mount Athos. How do I achieve the detachment necessary for liberation? How practise I inhabit the Eliotean paradoxes? And hasn't Vladimir Lossky told u.s. that St John of the Cross is alien to Orthodox spirituality? (For a contrary cess, see David B. Hart, "Bright Morning of the Soul.") Yet the Lord himself directed St Silouan, "Go along thy mind in hell, and despair non"?

No matter.

I shall say my prayers. I shall nourish to my married woman, my children, my friends, my neighbors. I shall exercise the work to which I am called.

I shall await in the darkness.

"He who finds his life will lose information technology, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it" (Mt x:39).

(Go to next meditation)

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Source: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/meditating-four-quartets-east-coker-iii4/

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