Prayer of Quiet

I've been spending a little time with a Late Latin translation of the Rule of St Benedict - presently in the triurnal cycle we work through the degrees of humility, all twelve of them.

Yesterdays reading is thus:

Secundus humilitatis gradus est, si propriam quis non amans voluntatem desideria sua non delectur implere, sed vocam ilam Domini factis imitetur dicentis: Non veni facere voluntatem meam, sed ejus qui me misit. *


The second degree of humility is that a man love not his own will, nor delight in fulfilling his own desires, but carry out in deed the saying of the Lord: I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. *


*John vi. 38


The role of the will seems to me to be a key differentiating factor between religious and occult practice (yes, yes, for as much as I really know about either).

The Rule of St Benedict is heavily masculine in tone - it's addressed to monks, with instructions about, and to, Abbotts and brothers. For a post-modern barely feminist psychology student, it's a leap of faith all of it's own to think that this text is talking to me (all of me - my 'inner boy' is well addressed, here).

But I'm flicking through St Teresa's 'The Way of Perfection' at the same time, and she discusses something called 'The Prayer of Quiet', and she talks, in a feminine voice, too, about the role of the will in prayer:

'When this quiet is felt in a high degree and lasts for a long time, I do not think that, if the will were not made fast to something, the peace would be of such long duration. Sometimes it goes on for a day, or for two days, and we find ourselves - I mean those who experience this state - full of joy without understanding the reason [Vajrayana Buddhism I think, talks to this TN]. They see clearly that their whole self is not in what they are doing, but that the most important faculty is absent, namely, the will, which I think is united with it's God - and that the other faculties are left free to busy themselves with service...it unites the active life with the contemplative...Thus Mary and Martha work together'.

It intrigues me, this secondary displacement of an internal capacity to an external facility - the vulnerable opening to the influence of the All, by the All. I don't think that she, or he (above) is implying that there is a need to hold firm to your own sense of cognition, even while giving up your will, but if I think about my life history, the vulnerability, so created by abnegation of the will, is only supported  by maintaining a firm sense of knowing who yer are.

To vocalise, recollect, mentally pray, contemplate,
Attending to the flow of knowing.

These things.

Ref: 


Peers, E. A. (1964). The Way of Perfection - St Teresa Of Avila. New York: Image Books.
McCann, J. (1952). The Rule of St Benedict. London: Burns and Oates Limited.