Saying Yes to the Good

Serrabonna, interior

 I'm currently reading the doctoral thesis of Alejandra Novoa Echaurren, from University of the Andes, Chile, on Simone Weil. She makes an interesting comment regarding this question of yes.

In regard to transformation, she says the following:

“The greatest activity that we can do is allow God to transform us: “We cannot transform ourselves, we have to be transformed, but we cannot be so other than if we want to” (Weil, 1995d: 93). 

This implies allowing the death of the old man, clinging to his self, to give way to a true desire for God. It is necessary to despair of everything that is not God, to empty the soul of partial goods, to accept being raised to the true divine life. In that absolute, perfect and eternal Good the goods of this world are integrated and elevated. We just have to give our consent. Until God considers the καιρός (kairos), just time for it,  "The most that a human being can do, until the moment is near, is to keep intact the ability to say yes to good."

(Weil, 1995c: 56).

Her comment on the idea of a "just" time was expanded in a footnote as follows:

“As well as the word υπομονή (hupomon), which Weil liked so much, καιρός (kairos) is also a beautiful word full of meaning, since it unites those of good and time. It can be translated as "opportune time," but it seems to me to be more than that. However, I consider that it is the right word in this context. Jorge Peña (2002) exposes it as follows: “On the other hand, kairos is the propitious moment, the season, a point in which time is full of meaning and loaded with meaning precisely because of its relationship with the end. On the one hand, we have simple time in its homogeneous and constant flow of time (chronos) and, on the other, the decisive time of God's advent, the fulfillment of time (kairos, Mk 1, 15) and that of the signs of the times (kairos, Mt. 16, 2-3) ”(127).”

I find this phrase, "to keep intact the ability to say yes to good" to be an interesting commentary on our position between the higher and lower. It is so easy, after all, to lose this ability; and on a daily and even momentary basis, there are so many. 

Of course the ability to say yes to good is vitally important to the spiritual path from the carnal perspective of our temporal flesh and bones, and Alejandra brings that up in her thesis. Weil, like Swedenborg, believed that the desires of the soul, so close to God as they are, do not attain realization unless they manifest in the flesh, that is, in ordinary life: so the call of the spirit is only validated through its immersion in the life of the flesh. The flesh, the ordinary body and the ordinary desires, the ordinary thoughts, are the medium through which union takes place. (Swedenborg, who thought much the same way, called Weil’s conception of the death of the old man to make way for the new regeneration.) 

Weil was remarkably consonant with Meister Eckhart on this subject insofar as the absolute totality of its necessity is considered: the action must be within ordinary being, and uncompromising. This is reminiscent of more than a few of de Salzmann's comments on the question; and because of Weil’s friendship with Daumal and her mention of de Salzmann in texts, we can presume she was familiar with Gurdjieff's ideas.

Having just finished Fran Shaw's new book, "I am stories,” it reminds me strongly of a somewhat more esoteric understanding of this idea, the ability to say yes to good. 

This relates most directly to Michel de Salzmann’s work leading others to remain open to a higher energy. 

That work was, of course, a continuation of his mother’s work, but it was also an elaboration, refinement, and deepening of that work which appears to me to remain under-appreciated – perhaps not so much so by those who worked directly with him, who will at once understand what I mean, but by the Gurdjieff community “outside the work” in general. In this sense his contributions to Gurdjieff’s legacy remain yet to be measured; they were subtler, and yet perhaps the most compelling.

We’re not excused from the demands and trials of the flesh. Yet we’re called to remain poised, forever and in this moment, on the edge of receiving "the good" – that energy which descends from above to transform us in the very molecules of our being, opening us to an influence that quiets the cacophony and brings a new silence to our in our life. 

The call to experience this all the time is a huge demand which perhaps seems impossible, from the perspective of the flesh, for us to meet. 

That opinionated and inflected belief sometimes eclipses Michel’s consistent message that it can be experienced at any time. 

That time would be, whenever it comes, kairos—the fulfillment of meaning in time, the propitious time—which could also be called consciousness.

I have not finished reading Alejandra's thesis, but if there are more interesting remarks in it I’ll pass them on.

with warm regards,

Lee