100321 - Reading #6 - pg 41

I feel the motivating factors that moves us from stage to stage is the desire to have a deep loving relationship with God and the desire to have the "perfect love of God".  How wonderful would that be !      To do this, you have to accomplish the degrees of love.  This could take years, as these degrees are challenging.

The fourth degree of love, writes Bernard, is a powerful moment, a sense of oneness, wherein we are "entirely transfused into the will of God." Have you ever been blessed by one of these special moments? Describe. Why are they only "temporary"?
　
　
There has been a lot of death in my life. Years back I had planted a garden, and as a gesture of remembrance to those who had passed I planted flowers, each person remembered receiving their own flower. One day as I was standing in the garden I reached out my fingertip to touch the soft orange petal of an orange Tiger Lily, and a sense of something wondrous passed over and through me. It seemed to sweep over the entire earth, yet passed right through my center as if including me amongst particles of the air. I became air. I was weightless, entirely free of burden, bodiless. An unexpected loving protection reached out for me, yet also radiated out from me. The crazy thought occurred that in that instant of protection the petal spoke to me of a life I barely remembered, but lived. It was a life that included the memory of time spent before Time. It was an absolute reassurance of Time to come. Then my earthly life, as if bracketed, passed before my eyes, as if the whole of it could be squeezed into a ring box. It was a vision of my life as a mere glimpse, as if it were a single breath weaving through an eternal sigh. As the petal spoke, it revealed just how beautiful I appeared to its velvet skin, and this made me fill with a sorrow I couldn’t explain. It seemed as if I was remembering living among the tall strong stalks and huge bright orange petals, as if I myself was a lily among lilies; and, I missed this life to the point of grieving, yet it was a thankful beautiful and precious grief that I would not trade. I have tried in vain to give a clearer description of this experience, but this is as close as I can come. It seemed, while it lasted, to last forever. Yet once it had ended it was as if an eternity had been enfolded into a single instant.

I have to start by saying that I found this week's reading much easier to work with than past weeks.  That doesn't mean I agree with everything the author says, but at least I can converse with him.  I read with interest the four degrees of love and found it quite thought-provoking.
 
I have some difficulty with stage one and that may just be a reflection of my skewed view of humanity due to my work, but I think that there are a fair number of people on the planet who do not love themselves.  If they do, they would not do to themselves the harmful things that they do or engage in the behaviours that can contribute to harmful situations that they may find themselves in. My interpretation of the second part of great commandment is that you must love others as you love yourself.  If you do not love yourself, you cannot love others. 
 
The cynic in me says that the second degree of love is an example of the no-atheist-in-foxholes rule.  When bad things happen, we're pretty quick to call on God for a rescue.  But what do we do if we are not rescued?  Do we never move on to the third degree?  It seems to me that the third degree is the most common or am I misreading the philanthropy that many people engage in?
 
I think my overwhelming view of the whole concept of the four degrees is that a person does not proceed through the degrees in a linear fashion, but moves back and forth between the four in everchanging patterns (kind of like an intoxicated spirograph) at varying speeds and with varying lengths of rests at each point in the circle (each degree) throughout life.  Until we find our final rest in God in a permanent fourth degree.