Here's a pithy little formulation by Schuon that bears somewhat on doing nothing, AKA non-doing. "Spirituality," he writes, "includes four principal elements," the first of which
cuts man off from the current of profane life; the second empties the soul of illusory contents; the third infuses the discursive intelligence with divine Light; the fourth essentially brings about deification.
Alternatively,
This could be formulated as follows: in renunciation the soul leaves the world; in purification the world leaves the soul; in meditation God enters the soul; in continual prayer the soul enters God.
(This reminds me of the pneumaticons in the book -- e.g., (---), (o), (↓), and (↑) in relation to O.)
Along these lines, over the past several weeks a phrase keeps popping into my head: Christian nihilism. Of course, this shares nothing in common with the vulgar nihilism of the left, nor with mere fatalism, stoicism, or resignation.
For one thing, it's a joyous nihilism (or innocent and childlike) because it has only to do with this (or that, rather) world, not the next; moreover, the latter is already here, bisecting this one, i.e., The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Living at the intersection of heaven and earth is where it's at. If not, to hell with it.
Elsewhere in the same book Schuon alludes to the rottenness of this world, for which there are compensatory graces unique to the challenges posed by the civilizational decay surrounding us; come to think of it, this is like an inverse analogy of the communist idea of "the worse, the better" (better because it means the glorious revolution is that much closer).
Schuon agrees that "there are advantages to this [cultural] evil itself," but (obviously) for totally different reasons from those purely destructive Marxist devils such as Piven & Cloward; specifically,
the world has become so emptied of substance that it is hard for a spiritual man to be too attached to it.... In former times worldliness was all the more seductive for having aspects of intelligence, nobility, and plenitude; it was far from being wholly contemptible as it is in our day.
Our elites and their institutions are indeed wholly contemptible. What spiritually awakened person could ever wish to take part in this malevolent farce except in opposition to it?
But this opposition is the precise opposite of "reactionary," because it is rooted in the loving affirmation -- intellectual, spiritual, and experiential -- of a higher reality (or just say reality).
Note also that "lower reality" makes no sense except in the context of the higher; to the extent that it becomes an autonomous dimension detached from its vertical source, this devolves to the vulgar nihilism of the tenured, i.e., accidental intelligence combined with axiomatic stupidity.
If we were merely opposed to this principled stupidity of the left, it would be a form of counterfeit slack, still rooted in an attachment to the world and its seductive appearances. But our attachment is again to truth, AKA the real. Compared to this reality, the world is literally but a dream, or even "a dream woven of dreams." What else could it be if the intellect weren't an adequation (in potential) to the real?
We cannot doubt that truth is infinitely real and precious and that its absence must therefore imply a sort of inverted infinity.
Exactly. Absent our adherence to Truth -- at once saving and liberating -- the material world becomes a vast and necessarily meaningless psychiatric prison. Which it is, but the doors are locked from the inside.
Modern man, even when he stumbles upon a truth, never follows it all the way back and up; and any truth detached from the Absolute becomes no truth at all; one might say it takes revenge on the intelligence that pretends it can exist apart from Intelligence as such, i.e., Celestial Central.
(Quoted material from Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts https://www.amazon.com/dp/193331642X/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=onecos-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=f86b12483b9ef2311a292cf307aed833&creativeASIN=193331642X)
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