If We Don't Seek Ecstasy in God, We will Seek it in Our Flesh - Or Despair of Finding it, Settling for a Living Death
Maybe I ought to talk to you a little bit about ecstasy this morning. Ecstasy literally means getting out of yourself. I guess the reason why it's so important is that the need for ecstasy is in our nature, because that's what God is. God is the eternal ecstasy of the Holy Trinity, and if we're made to His likeness, we by nature want that ecstasy. And so I guess you can say that there are three ways of resolving that desire: one is to find it in your flesh, that's what people seek in their sexual desires, that need to get out of themselves; the other is to seek it in God, in Jesus; and the third way, I guess the most popular, is to kill it.
I guess that's what is behind the words of Jesus when He said; "I wish you were hot or cold" (Rev 3:15): either find your ecstasy in Me or find it in your flesh, hut don’t kill it with the appearance of virtue and humility. I very often get the feeling in talking to you that I am giving artificial respiration to a corpse. I think it would be good to examine your conscience on that point. See if it isn't true that you tried all your life to avoid guilt, avoid "getting into trouble" by killing that desire.
The ecstasy of the faith is a rational ecstasy, not merely reason, but it's rational insofar as it's motivated by the judgment that God loves you, that He wants to give Himself to you now; and it removes rationally the impediments, the impediments of false misgiving and particularly that deadness. I guess you see pretty clearly that you killed that desire.
COMMENT: The only way you can rekindle that then is in meditation, in convincing yourself that when you say the Jesus Prayer...
You have to be convinced that you want God, and, too, that you can have Him, not in the future, because the desire for ecstasy is very impatient, but now. When people are in love the only thing that means anything to them is the present, now.
COMMENT: And anything that's contrary to that conviction is against nature, really.
And against faith. With people in love, no two moments are the same. A person who doesn't love another person would say, well, I don't have to see her today, I saw her yesterday. But where there is real love, there's that impatience. Or else you would try naturally to get that ecstasy out of your flesh where it isn't, but at least there's a semblance of it. Or else you just settle for something, a life without any ecstasy, because you’re convinced you can't have it. And in that state there's habitual apathy; among other things, you have no awareness of what others need. "I was hungry and you gave Me not to eat”(Mt 19:43), because you're not aware of what anyone needs. I guess you can say that your whole life is motivated by the desire to avoid pain, and that state is a kind of living death, and the cause of it is that your conscience is completely numb, because the only thing that motivates you is the avoidance of pain.
COMMENT: It's like we were just taught to be hearers of the word. There was never anything about ecstasy in God. You learned about the things you weren't supposed to do.
COMMENT: Would you say more about killing that desire by virtuous living?
Well, you would be seeking that life in yourself, seeking that death, which would be tied up with avoiding pain. It's painful to see your sins, and so you cultivate a kind of virtue, a dead virtue, the motive of which is to be able to feel that you're all right, and it seems to have the authority of God behind it, because all those things He said not to do, you say, yes, I shouldn't do those things. As I've said many times, you keep the Commandments - all except the first! But conscience would always operate in what would pain you, that's the key to your conscience. Ask yourself, what pains me? What pains me is seeing anything in myself which I can't delight in, whereas what should pain you is that very desire to take delight in yourself.
COMMENT: We never connected that with conscience, the desire to take delight in yourself, because we couldn't have.
Your whole conscience is based on that.
COMMENT: Our consciences were never formed that way, so there couldn't be any connection...
COMMENT: That delight in yourself comes out of that phony ecstasy
I don't think it's really ecstasy. You can see the significance of the arts, music and everything else: the desire to get some kind of ecstasy artificially. That's why art is so significant in our time. So you really have to face the fact that you've been dead. And it's very significant how much goes back to the Trinity, to the life of God which is eternal ecstasy. That's why "eye has not seen what God has prepared for those that love Him," (1Cor 2:9) because heaven would be that eternal ecstasy, drawn up into the ecstasy of God.
COMMENT: I thought that ecstasy was like the very last step that could ever happen, that you'd never have ecstasy with God while you're living, it would only be afterwards.
It's the preparation for heaven.
COMMENT: I never thought it could be real. I tried to be good or something, as though I could earn that.
Well, there's no ecstasy; it's just a set of rules of what you should do.
COMMENT: You said that the desire to take delight in yourself is what should pain you, because you would see that you were depriving yourself of that ecstasy.
Because it's contrary to nature. It really is spiritual masturbation, because like the physical act of masturbation is contrary to nature because you're made to be physically lost in another, so spiritually you're made to be lost in another.
COMMENT: It's perverse.
The Word was made flesh so that through the Word made flesh we might be drawn into the ecstasy in the Word in the Father.
COMMENT: It's like a real motive to hate your soul.
Yes, you hate an enemy; an enemy is one who destroys what you want, it destroys your life really.
COMMENT: We destroy all the real desires, and the only substitute is the desire for self-complacency.
And even that self-complacency - it's true that it's there, but it takes the form of just avoiding pain. It's all negative.
COMMENT: You would never do anything, because you would be afraid of getting hurt, and that would be your motive, because you don't want to see yourself being bad, it would hurt you.
Everything you do is to be able to rest in yourself.
COMMENT: It's ironic too that we would be doing that to avoid pain, and yet from what you said yesterday, that would be the pain of hell.
Yes, actually you're moving towards hell.
COMMENT: And the thing that hits me is this seeking to delight in myself isn't something that's going to diminish; it's going to be there until the moment of death.
Oh yes, there's a battle going on. "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away."(Mt 11:12) To the extent that you don't look to find your joy and delight in Jesus, that desire to remain in yourself dominates and it goes on; in fact it increases. Any bad habit increases. It's like the cockle and the grain. Jesus said, "Don't cut the cockle down; let it grow along with the grain." (Cf. Mt 13:30) The important thing is that your faith should increase more powerfully than the bad habit.
COMMENT: You said it was a rational ecstasy. Where does the feeling come in? Because I thought I always sought ecstasy in my feelings.
That's right. They come in if God wants them to come in. Just like the music: you play the notes and the feeling that comes, it comes with your union with the music and the notes. But if you try to cultivate some dumb feeling, you end up abusing the music. That's really important: your desire for ecstasy through other things is the desire for a kind of emotional thing. That's why I get annoyed with people in this house; they want to use me to have a feeling about it.
COMMENT: What I never heard you say before is so true: that we kill that desire for ecstasy, that responsibility.
Yes, it's a form of spiritual suicide really.
COMMENT: It's like we've been born killing the wrong thing.
COMMENT: That would be why our sins and failings and things we do wrong could always cause us to despair! So now God really wants me to see that my ecstasy should be in Him and not in that desire for success.
That's right, because all that desire for success is really a desire to be in yourself. You see the significance of the Pharisee: the Pharisee wasn't a simple sinner, he was a pious sinner, and once you have that desire to live in yourself, that's what you'd become: you'll do all kinds of good things, avoid all Ends of evil, but the motive is to be in yourself.
COMMENT: But then there's still another motive behind that. You want to be loved, you don't care that much about just pleasing someone.
Sure that’s there, the need to be loved is in our nature it can't be wiped out completely. But look what happens in marriages. People want to be loved and they get married; what happens to that need to love and to be loved? Marriage goes sour, because there isn't that capacity to be lost in another, so they get bitter, because the very proximity of the person who is frustrating them makes it impossible to rest in themselves as much as they'd like to. He wants to be appreciated for what he did and she wants to be appreciated for what she did, and so since neither can do it, they both watch TV.
COMMENT: More and more as you talked this morning I realized how all my life I've been cultivating death rather than life, in that in-between that's neither hot nor cold.
And it's true, I can tell you, that when you live in Jesus, each moment is new. And a sign of that death is, well, when a person dies physically, he doesn't experience any more change.
I guess that's what is behind the words of Jesus when He said; "I wish you were hot or cold" (Rev 3:15): either find your ecstasy in Me or find it in your flesh, hut don’t kill it with the appearance of virtue and humility. I very often get the feeling in talking to you that I am giving artificial respiration to a corpse. I think it would be good to examine your conscience on that point. See if it isn't true that you tried all your life to avoid guilt, avoid "getting into trouble" by killing that desire.
The ecstasy of the faith is a rational ecstasy, not merely reason, but it's rational insofar as it's motivated by the judgment that God loves you, that He wants to give Himself to you now; and it removes rationally the impediments, the impediments of false misgiving and particularly that deadness. I guess you see pretty clearly that you killed that desire.
COMMENT: The only way you can rekindle that then is in meditation, in convincing yourself that when you say the Jesus Prayer...
You have to be convinced that you want God, and, too, that you can have Him, not in the future, because the desire for ecstasy is very impatient, but now. When people are in love the only thing that means anything to them is the present, now.
COMMENT: And anything that's contrary to that conviction is against nature, really.
And against faith. With people in love, no two moments are the same. A person who doesn't love another person would say, well, I don't have to see her today, I saw her yesterday. But where there is real love, there's that impatience. Or else you would try naturally to get that ecstasy out of your flesh where it isn't, but at least there's a semblance of it. Or else you just settle for something, a life without any ecstasy, because you’re convinced you can't have it. And in that state there's habitual apathy; among other things, you have no awareness of what others need. "I was hungry and you gave Me not to eat”(Mt 19:43), because you're not aware of what anyone needs. I guess you can say that your whole life is motivated by the desire to avoid pain, and that state is a kind of living death, and the cause of it is that your conscience is completely numb, because the only thing that motivates you is the avoidance of pain.
COMMENT: It's like we were just taught to be hearers of the word. There was never anything about ecstasy in God. You learned about the things you weren't supposed to do.
COMMENT: Would you say more about killing that desire by virtuous living?
Well, you would be seeking that life in yourself, seeking that death, which would be tied up with avoiding pain. It's painful to see your sins, and so you cultivate a kind of virtue, a dead virtue, the motive of which is to be able to feel that you're all right, and it seems to have the authority of God behind it, because all those things He said not to do, you say, yes, I shouldn't do those things. As I've said many times, you keep the Commandments - all except the first! But conscience would always operate in what would pain you, that's the key to your conscience. Ask yourself, what pains me? What pains me is seeing anything in myself which I can't delight in, whereas what should pain you is that very desire to take delight in yourself.
COMMENT: We never connected that with conscience, the desire to take delight in yourself, because we couldn't have.
Your whole conscience is based on that.
COMMENT: Our consciences were never formed that way, so there couldn't be any connection...
COMMENT: That delight in yourself comes out of that phony ecstasy
I don't think it's really ecstasy. You can see the significance of the arts, music and everything else: the desire to get some kind of ecstasy artificially. That's why art is so significant in our time. So you really have to face the fact that you've been dead. And it's very significant how much goes back to the Trinity, to the life of God which is eternal ecstasy. That's why "eye has not seen what God has prepared for those that love Him," (1Cor 2:9) because heaven would be that eternal ecstasy, drawn up into the ecstasy of God.
COMMENT: I thought that ecstasy was like the very last step that could ever happen, that you'd never have ecstasy with God while you're living, it would only be afterwards.
It's the preparation for heaven.
COMMENT: I never thought it could be real. I tried to be good or something, as though I could earn that.
Well, there's no ecstasy; it's just a set of rules of what you should do.
COMMENT: You said that the desire to take delight in yourself is what should pain you, because you would see that you were depriving yourself of that ecstasy.
Because it's contrary to nature. It really is spiritual masturbation, because like the physical act of masturbation is contrary to nature because you're made to be physically lost in another, so spiritually you're made to be lost in another.
COMMENT: It's perverse.
The Word was made flesh so that through the Word made flesh we might be drawn into the ecstasy in the Word in the Father.
COMMENT: It's like a real motive to hate your soul.
Yes, you hate an enemy; an enemy is one who destroys what you want, it destroys your life really.
COMMENT: We destroy all the real desires, and the only substitute is the desire for self-complacency.
And even that self-complacency - it's true that it's there, but it takes the form of just avoiding pain. It's all negative.
COMMENT: You would never do anything, because you would be afraid of getting hurt, and that would be your motive, because you don't want to see yourself being bad, it would hurt you.
Everything you do is to be able to rest in yourself.
COMMENT: It's ironic too that we would be doing that to avoid pain, and yet from what you said yesterday, that would be the pain of hell.
Yes, actually you're moving towards hell.
COMMENT: And the thing that hits me is this seeking to delight in myself isn't something that's going to diminish; it's going to be there until the moment of death.
Oh yes, there's a battle going on. "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away."(Mt 11:12) To the extent that you don't look to find your joy and delight in Jesus, that desire to remain in yourself dominates and it goes on; in fact it increases. Any bad habit increases. It's like the cockle and the grain. Jesus said, "Don't cut the cockle down; let it grow along with the grain." (Cf. Mt 13:30) The important thing is that your faith should increase more powerfully than the bad habit.
COMMENT: You said it was a rational ecstasy. Where does the feeling come in? Because I thought I always sought ecstasy in my feelings.
That's right. They come in if God wants them to come in. Just like the music: you play the notes and the feeling that comes, it comes with your union with the music and the notes. But if you try to cultivate some dumb feeling, you end up abusing the music. That's really important: your desire for ecstasy through other things is the desire for a kind of emotional thing. That's why I get annoyed with people in this house; they want to use me to have a feeling about it.
COMMENT: What I never heard you say before is so true: that we kill that desire for ecstasy, that responsibility.
Yes, it's a form of spiritual suicide really.
COMMENT: It's like we've been born killing the wrong thing.
COMMENT: That would be why our sins and failings and things we do wrong could always cause us to despair! So now God really wants me to see that my ecstasy should be in Him and not in that desire for success.
That's right, because all that desire for success is really a desire to be in yourself. You see the significance of the Pharisee: the Pharisee wasn't a simple sinner, he was a pious sinner, and once you have that desire to live in yourself, that's what you'd become: you'll do all kinds of good things, avoid all Ends of evil, but the motive is to be in yourself.
COMMENT: But then there's still another motive behind that. You want to be loved, you don't care that much about just pleasing someone.
Sure that’s there, the need to be loved is in our nature it can't be wiped out completely. But look what happens in marriages. People want to be loved and they get married; what happens to that need to love and to be loved? Marriage goes sour, because there isn't that capacity to be lost in another, so they get bitter, because the very proximity of the person who is frustrating them makes it impossible to rest in themselves as much as they'd like to. He wants to be appreciated for what he did and she wants to be appreciated for what she did, and so since neither can do it, they both watch TV.
COMMENT: More and more as you talked this morning I realized how all my life I've been cultivating death rather than life, in that in-between that's neither hot nor cold.
And it's true, I can tell you, that when you live in Jesus, each moment is new. And a sign of that death is, well, when a person dies physically, he doesn't experience any more change.