Heidegger

I fear I am digressing and getting distracted where was I? Oh yes, to follow
the model of Jesus is to crucify the individualist narcissistic I and
continously bury this old self in order to receive a measure of manna from
heaven. This process of entombment never ends just like there is an ongoing
empowerement of the I when one follows Moses which can only happen through a
constant guarding of the heart. This practice involves what Gregory of Nyssa
in “The Life of Moses” calls a principle without which “it is impossible to
flee the Egyptian life”. This principle involves the ongoing and constant
sacrifice of “the first born of Egypt”. Nyssa here is concerned to get at
the “spiritual meaning” by which means the philosophical contemplative
meaning, the meaning that is applied to the way thoughts are turned. Either
thoughts can be governed by the I’s appetite and linear thinking or they can
turn towards the promised land by following the guidance of the cloud of
unknowing and remembering to touch hard ground as it were to say hello to
the passing moment and the here and now. But there is constant distractions
that never end that first make their appearance as suggestive thoughts
compromising our ability to stay attentive and watch over the heart mind in
order to keep it looking like a desert where nothing grows and nothing lives
for very long that yet represents the promise of a fertile oasis for the
birth of the Word. Because of this constant emergence of thoughts intending
something or other the above named “principle” of sacrificing the first born
of Egypt is necessary where the spiritual meaning of Egypt is the
narcissistic individuality of the I or the old Adam that continously passes
away when one takes up the cross and becomes entombed with Jesus and follows
Moses into the desert. So Nyssa writes, “The teaching is this: when through
virtue one comes to grips with any evil, he must completely destroy the
first beginnings of evil.” This means that one destroys the *suggestion* to
action that is activated by the imaginative memory used by the ordinary
understanding governed by the appetites. Nyssa describes this contemplative
guarding for the emergence of a first born of Egypt as an activity that
crushes the head of a snake so that the body doesn’t follow and so the
suggestion of sin doesn’t lead to action beyond being an idea. Nyssa writes,
“Safety and security consist in marking the upper doorpost and the side
posts of the entrance with the blood of the lamb.” This is how the ‘Law’
works as a defense of the heart mind and so as the ongoing liberation of
Isreal from Egypt which today many are describing as a descent into the
unconscious. It is the blood displayed on the doors that separates the
Isrealite from the Egyptian who always remain the same people. Because those
who follow the lawgiver into the desert are always followed by their
Egyptian roots that can never be completely gotten rid off. There is always
a constant need to shed the blood of the lamb. So there is always a cutting
away of the old I that is also a forgetting and there is the expectation of
renewal in another Self that remains unknown for even the blessings of God
are suspect and are to be cooled off by the waters so that one can look
forward to the next blessing and not get attached to His gifts which is also
an old teaching of the ancients that at one time I discussed as the
“doctrine of the two blessings” in Ibn Arabi. The idea here is to sacrifice
any blessing in order to stay hungry and thirsty and so grow in faith. Nyssa
doesn’t say this as far as I can tell but there is guarding both on the side
of emerging sin and emerging blessings both of which can be hindrances to
the intensification of faith and so our ability to cleave to God. One stays
grounded on the process or narrow path by both forgetting the past and not
getting excited by what is coming in the future as if it was a big deal.
This is how I read the exegesis of the guiding cloud that the Isrealites
follow in the desert in the anonymous “The Cloud of Unknowing”: “Just as the
cloud of unknowing lies above you, between you and your God. So you must
fashion a cloud of forgetting beneath you, between you and every created
creature.” This author writes that it is nice to think of our Lady and God’s
kindness and dignity and such but it is better to rest the mind in what he
is in himself which we have no way of knowing or understanding that is why
this brings us into the very darkness of the cloud of unknowing and learned
ignorance.

Posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 at 3:50 am
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