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Old 08-26-2009, 06:18 PM   #15
Peter Goldsbury
 
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Re: How To Teach Power & Harmony?

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
It may be that Prof. G chooses not to indulge or express his capacity for his appreciation of mythic insight, and to concentrate instead on other expressions of his ... knowledge.
PAG. Correct.

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
He has said he intensively indulged the Spiritual Exercises at one point, so I do not attempt to make any comparisons on the point. He has been quite critical of some of the more wooly-minded aspects in those who have attempted to appreciate it in a particularly facile manner.
PAG. I am not sure what you mean by "indulged" here, for its use here does not appear to fit any of the eight meanings offered in the revised OED. The Spiritual Exercises are a handbook of meditation, as Ignatius saw this, and the Jesuits expect their members to use the Exercises all the time. During the years I was a member of this order, I did the full 30-day retreat once, but, as a novice and scholastic, pretty constantly used the Exercises, together with other mystical works (e.g., The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton, Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, Thomas a Kermpis). During this time, I never had the sense that there was any indulgence involved.

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
If I were to judge only from what he has offered on that score, however, I would have to conclude that he seems to possess a bit of tin ear (or too post-modern an outlook), when it comes to the music of mythical and mystical insight as a way of knowledge, and its recurrent non-linear "leaps."
PAG. See above. I have deliberately avoided discussing the "music of mythical and mystical insight", because (among other reasons) I do not regard them as the same and because I am unconvinced that the distinction 'linear / recurrent or recursive' does the music any justice.

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
Those attributes are indicative of the bent, recursive, elliptical way of knowing, which frustrates the linear mind to no end. What such minds see is only the point where the elliptically-minded happens to cross his linear straight road -- some times ahead, sometimes behind, but that indicates nothing of what he has seen or the ground he has covered. It is common to consider such minds as relatively disordered in their thinking, but in fact what they are is ordered in ways the linear thinker does not easily perceive.
PAG. I am sure you are aware that woolly-mindedness affects linear and recursive ways of thinking alike. Of course, a historian of ideas must be aware of this.

Best wishes,

PAG

Last edited by Peter Goldsbury : 08-26-2009 at 06:21 PM.

P A Goldsbury
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