What could make this woman write something like this? Why should anyone have gratitude for what they don’t like? Toleration maybe but Love???
Perhaps it was PMS or maybe an expression of frustrations since maybe she felt her breasts were to small to guarantee enough male attention. Anything is possible. Perhaps it was just a normal loss of sanity from being around the wrong people. After all, she lived before Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Richard Dawkins were around to set her straight.
This could be support for Atheism since such an idea is completely illogical proving that God doesn’t exist.
Hmmm…then again there is this possibility, though slight, that she understood something beyond the usual and escaping even the precision of logical thought. Let’s face it, it seems illogical to suggest that there could be any reason why we should have equal gratitude for what brings either joy or suffering.
Can you see anything to support her claim or do we just chalk it up to lunacy on her part?
Atheist eh…hang around me and I’ll put a stop to that.
Actually Simone, even though a Christian mystic, said that in many cases the Atheist is closer to the truth than the believer. Their doubts are more legitimate than the believers beliefs.
My opening was basically a tease. It was an invitation to discuss what Simone means. I believe that if a person truly understands the profound meaning of what she said, the great depth of Christianity begins to be revealed including Jesus’ perplexing statement on the Cross: “Why have you forsaken me.”
I agree. Her meaning was of love but also of a different quality.
Be honest. Isn’t your love selective as is mine? We love this and don’t love that depending on how we value it or its effect on us.
But she is suggesting a quality of love as it pertains to God that is not determined or "activated’ by external circumstances as is normal for us. To the contrary, she is suggesting a value beyond external circumstances. Christianity says to love your enemies but we cannot even love our friends when they do the “wrong” thing and then of course why should we.
This is not so easy. If an alledged Christian asserts God as responsible for all things and some of these things are not to our liking, why should we love God as she suggests? Is it just an I’ll scratch your back and you’ll scratch mine affair?
The only way I can make sense of that quote is by putting it in terms of the yin and the yang. One can either have pleasure and pain, or neither, so gratitude at receiving pain could make sense if the gratitude is in fact for the pleasure that accompanies it. Only a masochist and/or a misguided fool would be grateful for the pain itself on its own.
By the way, on the subject of the crucifixion, if it’s true that he was nailed to a tree with a plank of wood attached to it horizontally, does that mean that when he was made to carry his “cross” to the place of execution, all he had to carry was the said plank of wood?
You’re never an ass for raising an honest question. The best way to agree or disagree is from experience. Have you experienced that your emotions change towards other people including ones you call friends. This has been my experience. If you also have experienced this change in emotion, then you will agree. If not then you won’t.
ChimneySweep
The only way I can make sense of that quote is by putting it in terms of the yin and the yang. One can either have pleasure and pain, or neither, so gratitude at receiving pain could make sense if the gratitude is in fact for the pleasure that accompanies it. Only a masochist and/or a misguided fool would be grateful for the pain itself on its own.
But isn’t this just life as we know it. The Buddhists call it samsara. Our life experiences are always changing. They create alternating suffering and pleasure within us. Nothing stays the same. Why show either gratitude or Love towards God for continuing it?
Why indeed. In fact, why not put god back in the bookshelf and live as though he doesn’t exist? Because he’s totally superfluous in every aspect of life, this is quite possible.
Its about acceptance. If you have come to the point to where you accept both joy and suffering equally, not resisting either, then you have reached the point of understanding that each comes regardless of how you view it. What comes next is a gratitude, a gratitude for life appreciating however it comes, appreciating that joy or suffering will be. You have come to appreciate what life truly is, experience! You have come to the point of accepting whatever experience that comes your way, allowing nothing in your mind to go against that which must come to pass. This is being completely open and receptive to what is. Completely receptive to God, to whatever stems from this Source. When someone is completely and fully open to something, they are experiencing pure love. In this case, being completely and fully open to Life, or to God and what He allows, is experiencing Love of God purely, without any obstructions from mind.
Unless I’m reading this wrong, the Atheists on this thread so far believe Simone is misguided if not genuinely deluded.
illativemindindeed
OK, butis there more? I’ll try to take it one step further frommy understanding and here is where it becomes difficult. I really don’t know if I can do justice to it so I will invite those interested to study this article.
The purpose of this openness to acceptance you suggest is also essential for the transformation of human “being” described in Christianity as re-birth. I won’t be suggesting anything we should do simply because we are incapable of such freedom to really "do"anything. Accept for those like Simone Weil who I believe to be a special case, it can only exist for us as a potential. I’m only indicating the profound depth of psychology of this idea that I believe is also essential for really appreciating the Book of Job or the Crucifixion.
This question of affliction being very real is naturally dealt with in both Christianity and Buddhism for example. Both teachings suggest profiting from it.
Both Simone and the Bodhisattva suggest that we can be consumed by affliction or consume it for our own sake and the sake of others.
I believe her profound observation here reveals human transformation as it relates to the cross and the importance of Jesus’ question on the cross: “Why have you forsaken me?” The distance implied by Simone allows for this growth of being to reach the level of heaven. When the child feels abandoned it searches for its mother. When the soul feels abandoned, it searches for the Father and is reunited through transformation…re-birth. This IMO is very profound psychology within the teaching itself.
“God” most often represents the higher things above people that they cannot understand but still want to somehow make friends with.
Surviving extremes gives a spiritual sense because it brings most people closer to that thing that they didn’t understand and was more powerful then them [almost destroyed them = more powerful].
My faith reached a “peak” many many months ago, in which it became most strong and I felt as though I could finally hear God’s “voice” as I prayed.
I have had much suffering in my life also, and then I became greatful at even being alive… later on, my health began to effect my ability to feel emotion or think, and I then realized even the ability to feel greatful can be taken away.
Now I see it.
Everything can be taken away–taken by an unconscious, blind and unstoppable chaos that noone can predict the day and the hour of.
I understood this God that I spoke to…
And I entered my mind.
In deep meditations, I killed “God”.
I realized he was all I ever wanted, and all I ever feared. He was everything that I wanted to submit to and befriend. He was all of the lies that I wanted to believe. He was the hope that never became a true solution on earth, and just sustianed a dieing soul for a few more years. He was the last and ultimate enemy, that we cannot “beat” so we try to “join”.
Thus the faithful say:
“I have indured to the end. I have fought the fine fight. My reward shall be in heaven.”
Because they have no reward, they have lost their battle, and insanity is their only revenge against their own enemy–which is their own weakness.
I know what you mean. I also know that the suffering you describe can become a source of validating ourselves. Consider this from a Man in the real sense of the word:
IMO you have to seriously ask yourself if you wish to condemn or to understand. If the goal is to “understand.” we cannot justify our suffering but instead must experience it free of judgment. How much understanding is possible without impartial experience? Yet some very powerful condemnation is possible without it.
