Meditation Class:The Third Power of the Soul: A Mystics Journal Entry October 27, 2005
Thursday, October 27
Last night, after meditation and before class, I went to the kitchen - and as I passed Serge I again was aware of fragrant perfume, the strong scent of flowers or myrrh. Serge was not yet aware of it, it was a foot or two behind him, in the passageway by the fireplace. On my return from the kitchen, M. said that after I stood near her, she also became aware of the strong fragrance of flowers; after I sat on the couch, next to Trudy, she also became aware of the powerful scent. Chris said that she had whiffs of it. After class I spoke to Serge, and he said he had also experienced it. The only person who did not was Pam, and she was seated on the other side of the room, off to the side. I am happy that the fragrances have again returned to class. This was most definitely the presence of Our Lady.
In meditation class, we continued our study of St. Bonaventure. We spent last night’s class on the third power of the soul: choice or will.
St. Bonaventure divided this third power of the soul, the power of choice, into three parts: deliberation, judgement and desire. Deliberation involves inquiry, judgement uses discernment. He says: Deliberation necessarily includes the notion of the highest good. We had a fairly long discussion on this one sentence. I said that this was an important topic because we humans must make decisions every moment of every day - even as to what thought we will hold in our minds.
I asked: if we leave out the highest good in our deliberations, what would replace it? All agreed that the ego would replace it, our own personal desires and thoughts on an issue, i.e. the “me” thought. To remember the highest good in every situation would lend a healthy and needed detachment from the personal ego. In other words, what - in a particular situation - would be best for the souls of everyone involved. That should be our question. M. added that this was more like collaborative law. In collaborative law the question is what is best for everyone, especially the children involved; not just in the present, but in the long view. Whereas in traditional divorce law, accusations, hostility, adversarial and self-centered tactics are used; basically everyone wants their own way, their own desires and needs to be filled.
I then gave the class an exercise: Imagine a difficult situation you are in. Close your eyes, picture it - and then ask what the highest good is for everyone in that situation. Afterwards, the meditators agreed that the situation did change, that new solutions did present themselves.
We then discussed desire, the third part of the third power of the soul. St. Bonaventure wrote: The attractive power of the Supreme Good is such that everything a creature loves , is loved out of a desire for the Supreme Good. Creatures can be deceived into thinking the reflection or the image is the Good itself however. We spent quite some time discussing these sentences. I began by saying that everything we love is really our love for the Beauty and Goodness of our own soul and the soul’s yearning for the Beauty and the Goodness of God. M. said that it reminded her of St. Francis of Assisi: that he loved every creature, every flower, ray of sun, bird, stone - because he saw God in all of them. In other words, in loving them, he was loving God.
Chris added that for her the Supreme Good was a giant magnet. That in one sense we are drawn to the higher; in another sense, it is the Divine that draws us to it. Trudy said that everything we want or love is because of the Supreme Good underlying it, i.e. that Divinity that is the substratum of the universe.
Creatures can be deceived into thinking the reflection or the image is the Good itself however. We decided that “creature” here meant a created being, vs God, the Creator. And that even though our real desire is for the soul and God, we misplace the true desire and instead place our personal desires on things of the world, i.e. the reflections of, the images of the Good itself. So we want a person or a new car, instead of the soul. Trudy said that when we actually obtained the thing or person we wanted, we still were not happy, something was still missing. We then discussed something we had read in Paul Brunton’s writings: that the joy and peace we feel when a desire is granted is not happiness that we obtained the thing we wanted; the happiness and peace was because we had let go of our desire for that thing or person. If we place emphasis on the thing itself, the reflection or image of the Good - soon enough we will want something else, something better than what we already have; it is the yearning of the soul for God that causes this dissatisfaction. This also happens because what we are truly attracted to in that person or thing is the Divinity of our own soul or God, which we see reflected in that person or thing. And for this reason, we can never have lasting and true joy until we desire the soul and the Good directly. I then asked what our last desire allowed to us is on the spiritual path, and all agreed it was the desire for the soul and God, enlightenment. And that last desire must eventually also be given up, for it is also a thought and will separate us from what we seek.
I then said that it was not fair to put our desires on things or situations or other creatures; it would be both harmful to them and to ourselves, for another created being cannot live up to our expectations. And when they cannot, our love for them will turn to dissatisfaction or anger, even hatred.
This section of Saint Bonaventure’s writings ended with: In sum: we see how close the soul is to God and how close the memory is to Eternity and the intelligence to Truth and how the power of choice in its functioning leads to the Highest Good. This statement I found exquisite: that the power of memory in the soul is near Eternity and the power of intelligence near Truth. And that the power of choice in the soul is drawn to, and near the Highest Good. If we see that the soul is in some mysterious way connected to God, then it can be easily grasped that the powers of the soul are connected to the Eternity, Truth and Highest Good that is God. And that if we meditate, clear our minds of our own personal thoughts, we might be able to contact the soul and experience Eternity, Truth and the Highest Good. That even while not in meditation we could look within and make a connection with these qualities of God that rest within the soul, in our daily lives. That this is how we creatures are meant to live. That the reflection of these three powers of the soul within the ego - our own personal memory, intelligence and will - could always reflect Eternity, Truth and the Highest Good, if we remembered and maintained our connection to the soul and God. If we looked within, instead of merely perceiving our own thoughts and the physical world in our daily lives.
These are the secrets of the saints.
The next section began: From the order, origin, and comportment of these powers, we are lead to the Blessed Trinity itself. We took this to mean that the origin of these powers was God, and the three powers of the soul were linked to Eternity, Truth and the Highest Good. Bonaventure then says: From memory and understanding comes forth love as a link between the two. If memory is linked to the Eternal (the Father) and understanding or Truth is linked to the Word (the Son) - then Love, or the Holy Spirit - the Third Person of the Trinity - would link the Father and the Son. In this statement, Bonaventure is saying that the three powers of the soul are connected to the Trinity Itself. This brought us back to the sentence we had read last week, in St. Bonaventure’s initial paragraph to this chapter: Similar to a candelabrum, the light of truth shines on the face of our mind with the Image of the Most Holy Trinity radiating over it.
Chris said that it is through the Holy Spirit that we experience the Father and the Son, both the Eternal and Truth, in our daily lives. We then had a brief discussion on Christ telling the disciples that after his death the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, would be sent to earth. That the Trinity has manifested itself to the creatures of earth as the Voice of the Father, the incarnated human Son in the person of Christ - and the Dove, the Divine flames during Pentecost, and wind representing the Holy Spirit.
St. Bonaventure then writes: When the mind reflects on itself, there surges up as in a mirror an image of the Trinity of Father, Word, and Love, three coequal, coeternal, and cosubstantial persons, each existing in the other, although the three are one God. Here Bonaventure is saying that the three Persons of the Trinity exist together at the same time, are all eternal and of the same essence, and that they exist in each other and comprise the one God. Just as the three powers of the soul, memory, intellect and will are mutually interacting and coexisting and of the same Divine essence. When the mind reflects on itself, there surges up as in a mirror an image of the Trinity we took to mean that when we experience deep meditation, or contemplation, we gaze on the soul itself - and in gazing on the three powers of the soul, we are brought to the reflected image of the Blessed Trinity Itself.
Meditation Class:The Third Power of the Soul: October 27
Moderator: figaro
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Anonymous
Hello Iloveauto
"That means is not present?" Hmm .... You lost me here. What isn't present?