Tag: philosophy

Another one by Lavelle:

Tout le secret de la puissance et de la joie est de se découvrir et d’être fidèle à soi dans les plus petites choses comme dans les plus grandes. Jusque dans la sainteté, il s’agit de se réaliser. Celui qui tient le mieux le rôle qui est le sien, et qui ne peut être tenu par aucun autre, est aussi le mieux accordé avec l’ordre universel : il n’y a personne qui puisse être plus fort ni plus heureux.

The most curious thing about this truth, expressed by Lavelle in the clearest and most direct way imaginable, is that it can only be understood by those who have experienced it to some degree. “Il s’agit de se réaliser”—and the means by which it can be done are so varied that it is very difficult to grasp it as a common experience, as perhaps necessity, destiny and individual duty. The worst thing is to see that, in many cases, there is no one other than the individual himself capable of identifying and judging “le rôle qui est le sien”.

In 1951, Juan José López Ibor noted that, at least since 1945, there had been those who considered psychoanalysis to be “definitivamente muerto. Polvo y ceniza”, then declaring: “el ciclo psicoanalítico está terminado”. And yet, there it is… What is most striking about this, and other cases, is that it does not make the slightest difference if an idea, theory or doctrine is intellectually refuted and destroyed: once conceived, its survival will depend on other factors than its solidity in the intellectual field.

Having overcome the initial awe, imagining the states of ecstasy described by Nicolae Steinhardt when he was imprisoned is quite instructive. After we stop questioning the plausibility of the accounts, or rather, after we accept them, we realize that it is precisely in the most extreme deprivation, in the most acute suffering, that supreme relief can be found. When life is reduced to its rudiments, we see clearly what is most important, we see how much of this life is superfluous, what justifies it and what must be preserved. But the grace, above all, is to see that the most extreme and suffocating misery is neither absolute nor the last word.

A tree is known by its fruit, but a human act, not being a tree, is better known by its intention. It is well said that one does not pick grapes from a thorn bush, and that figs do not sprout from a weed; however, man, always subject to a greater or lesser extent to the uncontrollable, does not always produce what is expected of him or what he wants. That is why, in his case, sticking to the fruit is not enough and can often lead us astray.