"Christian Mysticism:"
From these articles:
Christian mysticism
Wesleyan Arminianism
Found this reading about Christian meditation and saw that a certain type, not the whole thing, was considered heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. So of course prohibition makes one curious and I looked to read about 'Quietism'
This along with Christian Perfection and Christian-Mysticism-(African) has begun to paint a very interesting portrait of myself and my beliefs. This is the Christian thought/philosophy that I truly feel that I was cultivating in my early years raised as a Christian...(no wonder I practically canned myself asking questions about this sort of thing.) Since much of it was considered heresy well before the Reformation, in which the Protestant sect I was raised in was yet to come even later than this.
What I see here is an amazing blending of the Hindu yogas, specifically, Bhakti Yoga or devotional union with Brahman, via seeing the True Nature of Self(Atman), and the Buddhist definition of Atman, which is to say,(Anatman) Non/Not-Self, yet seem to get the same ends of True Nature (This is mentioned on the Meister Eckhart link as to how his ideas are 'stampable' as Buddhist-like). As well touching my fascination and connection with the Sufi's metaphysics/meditation(murakaba). All of which speak loudly to me about dissolving barriers between I, me, mine and the World/Spirit of Life.
Please bear with the wiki-links...I use them only when they agree with my prior understandings and outside finding.
:namaste
SageTree
From these articles:
Christian mysticism
Wesleyan Arminianism
Found this reading about Christian meditation and saw that a certain type, not the whole thing, was considered heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. So of course prohibition makes one curious and I looked to read about 'Quietism'
This along with Christian Perfection and Christian-Mysticism-(African) has begun to paint a very interesting portrait of myself and my beliefs. This is the Christian thought/philosophy that I truly feel that I was cultivating in my early years raised as a Christian...(no wonder I practically canned myself asking questions about this sort of thing.) Since much of it was considered heresy well before the Reformation, in which the Protestant sect I was raised in was yet to come even later than this.
What I see here is an amazing blending of the Hindu yogas, specifically, Bhakti Yoga or devotional union with Brahman, via seeing the True Nature of Self(Atman), and the Buddhist definition of Atman, which is to say,(Anatman) Non/Not-Self, yet seem to get the same ends of True Nature (This is mentioned on the Meister Eckhart link as to how his ideas are 'stampable' as Buddhist-like). As well touching my fascination and connection with the Sufi's metaphysics/meditation(murakaba). All of which speak loudly to me about dissolving barriers between I, me, mine and the World/Spirit of Life.
Quietism is a Christian philosophy that swept through France, Italy and Spain during the 17th century, but it had much earlier origins. The mystics known as Quietists insist, with more or less emphasis, on intellectual stillness and interior passivity as essential conditions of perfection. All have been officially proscribed as heresy in very explicit terms by the Roman Catholic Church.
*As a side: Explanation of Self in Buddhism and/vs Hinduism - *Origins of Quietism
The state of imperturbable serenity or ataraxia (lucid state) was seen as a desirable state of mind by Epicurus, Pyrrhonian and the Stoic philosophers alike, and by their Roman followers, such as the emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Quietism has been compared to the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana.
The possibility of achieving a sinless state and union with the Christian Godhead are denied by the Roman Catholic Church.
Among the ideas seen as errors and condemned by the Council of Vienne (1311-12) are the propositions that humankind in the present life can attain such a degree of perfection as to become utterly sinless; that the "perfect" have no need to fast or pray, but may freely grant the body whatsoever it craves (a tacit reference to the Cathars or Albigenses of southern France and Catalonia), and that they are not subject to any human authority or bound by the precepts of the Church. Similar assertions of individual autonomy on the part of the Fraticelli led to their condemnation by John XXII in 1317. The same pope in 1329 proscribed among the errors of Meister Eckhart the assertions that we are totally transformed into God just as in the sacrament the bread is changed into the body of Christ and the value of internal actions, which are wrought by the Godhead abiding within us.
Quietism may have had some indirect effect on the mysticism of the great 16th century Spaniards, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, but there were clearly other influences. It should be made clear that both Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross were very active reformers and that both cautioned against a simple-minded "don't think anything" (no pensar nada) approach to meditation and contemplation; further, both remained firmly committed to the authority of the Catholic Church.
Quietism's primary defender was Miguel de Molinos, referred to by the Catholic Encyclopedia as the "founder" of Quietism. The apostle of the Quietist movement in 17th-century France was Molinos' correspondent, the prolific writer Mme Guyon, who won an influential convert at the court of Louis XIV in Madame de Maintenon and an ally within the Catholic hierarchy in Archbishop Fénelon.
Molinos and the doctrines of Quietism were finally condemned by Pope Innocent XI in the Bull Coelestis Pastor of 1687. A commission in France found most of Madame Guyons works intolerable and the government confined her, first in a convent, then in the Bastille. In 1699, after Fénelons spirited defense in a press war with Bossuet, Pope Innocent XII prohibited the circulation of Fénelons Maxims of the Saints, to which Fénelon submitted at once. The inquisition's proceedings against remaining Quietists in Italy lasted until the eighteenth century.
Theology
Quietism states that man's highest perfection consists of a self-annihilation, and subsequent absorption, of the soul into the Divine, even during the present life. In this way, the mind is withdrawn from worldly interests to passively and constantly contemplate God. Quietists would say that the Bible describes the man of God as a man of the tent and the altar only, having no part or interest in the multitudinous affairs, pursuits, and pleasures of the world system.
Quietists were so called from a kind of absolute rest and inaction, which they supposed the soul to be in when arrived at that state of perfection which they called the unitive life; in which state, they imagined the soul wholly employed in contemplating its God, to whose influence it was entirely submissive, so that he could turn and drive it where and how he would. In this state, the soul no longer needs prayers, hymns, &c. being laid, as it were, in the bosom, and between the arms of God, in whom it is in a manner swallowed up.
Please bear with the wiki-links...I use them only when they agree with my prior understandings and outside finding.
:namaste
SageTree