Sunday, May 21, 2023

Rules of Daily Life, by Louis Lavelle

Rules of Daily Life, by Louis Lavelle, explores the concept of philosophical spirituality, a rational reflection that elevates the soul and confronts it with higher ideals of beauty and goodness. Unlike religious spirituality, Lavelle’s work is not tied to any specific faith but offers a nourishment for the soul that is relevant to contemporary humanity’s search for meaning. Through the book, Lavelle seeks to transform everyday life, finding depth and significance in even the smallest gestures. His philosophy emphasizes the importance of self-effort and reflection, aiming to uplift and morally elevate one’s personality.

In the book, Lavelle provides rules to follow in everyday life, not unlike the manuals of Christian life that offer guidance based on the Gospel. However, Lavelle’s rules are not mere repetitions of religious teachings but draw inspiration from spiritual literature, extracting their philosophical significance. By seeking rules for everyday life, Lavelle encourages a transformative approach to the mundane, allowing individuals to escape superficiality and discover real depth in their daily experiences. He rejects the notion that everyday life is repetitive and meaningless, instead advocating for a philosophical commitment to uncovering its inherent value.

Preface: A Philosophical Spirituality

The contemporaneity and originality of Louis Lavelle’s work lie in two words: philosophical spirituality. Indeed, no philosopher of the century has presented, as he has, what constitutes a properly philosophical spirituality, namely, a rational reflection that uplifts the soul and brings it face to face with superior beauty and goodness.

This is not a religious spirituality, such as that which characterizes great saints like St. Bernard of Clairvaux or St. Francis de Sales, for example. One could say that Lavelle’s only predecessor is Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), a contemporary of Louis XVI, and Lavelle acknowledged his debt to this philosopher. It is important to note that Father Malebranche explicitly sought to reconcile the Christian faith and the rational approach, whereas Lavelle is not explicitly a religious philosopher, although Christianity often serves as the backdrop to his thinking.

However, it is precisely because Lavelle offers a spirituality that does not presuppose any religious faith or specific involvement in a particular confession that his work is relevant to contemporary humanity’s search for nourishment for the soul. This philosophical spirituality, which was already present in Plato, has been renewed by Lavelle, and the Rules of Everyday Life, which he wrote for his own use as a “book of reason,” bear marvelous witness to this.

Some may argue that the term “spirituality” is vague or ambiguous. Matters of the soul are not easily defined. But despite this, we must attempt to do so.

In a specifically religious sense, and even purely Christian, spirituality is the reception of grace in the believing soul and the very way in which this reception can be represented and expressed in theological or pastoral terms. From this perspective, St. Bernard and Meister Eckhart were and continue to be the undisputed masters of spiritual sermon.

However, in a purely philosophical sense, spirituality consists of the self-effort that triggers reflection, particularly when it transforms one’s personality and elevates it morally. It is in this sense that Michel Foucault could say that in numerous modern philosophies, there is “a certain structure of spirituality” that “seeks to connect knowledge, the act of knowing, the conditions of this act of knowing, and its effects to a transformation in the very being of the subject.”

Lavelle’s philosophical spirituality is close to this conception, where the pursuit of knowledge and writing form the fabric of everyday life.

On the Rules for Everyday Life

We may ask ourselves if, in the short notes that follow, Lavelle is not imitating the manuals of Christian life in which rules are simply stated to lead a life in accordance with the Gospel.

In the practice of religious life, spiritual direction implied giving rules to the disciple. The Benedictine Louis de Blois wrote, in the 16th century, a Rule of Spiritual Life and a Manual for the Humble, which were manuals of spirituality, like the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. Certainly, Lavelle was well acquainted with spiritual literature, particularly St. Francis de Sales, Bérulle, and Malebranche. But he does not repeat them; he is imbued with them, and from them, he extracts his philosophical meaning.

Why provide rules to follow in everyday life?

This is a philosophical position that is a true commitment. One should not abandon the everyday; it must be transformed through spiritualization. Contrary to what Heidegger claims in Being and Time (1927), the everyday is not the realm of the impersonal, of the indeterminate “one” that determines the subject and superficial loquacity. Prior to Heidegger, Bergson, who loved the exceptional, the genius, the heroic, had severely criticized the conventional character of the social self, which he called the “superficial self.”

But for Lavelle, the role of the philosopher is not to be satisfied with criticizing everyday life as repetitive, devoid of meaning, and stripped of all interest. It is necessary to seek rules for everyday life in order to attempt to escape superficiality and be able to perceive the real depth in the smallest everyday gesture.

Husserl deeply understood that this everyday life, which he calls Lebernwelt, that is, the world of life, is indeed essential, for it is the source of all experience, and it is only from it that scientific rationality is possible. More metaphysical, Bergson says that our lived experience (or our personal consciousness) is temporal, that it belongs to the realm of duration, and that without this qualitative, irreducible, and inescapable duration, no quantitative knowledge, objective understanding, approximate science, or even loose science would be possible. However, both Husserl and Bergson (exact contemporaries, from a generation before Étienne Gilson and Louis Lavelle) retain a residue of positivism. With Lavelle, this positivist element disappears, and philosophical reflection emerges as an inward conversion to the living reality of the spirit.

In our barbaric world, Lavelle’s thought brings a ray of hope. He shows us that each person has their own genius, which, however, needs to be discovered; he teaches us that holiness is not a moral elevation reserved for an elite, but accessible to all.

Lavelle’s masterpiece of moral reflection, L’Erreur de Narcisse [The Error of Narcissus], contains beautiful pages on vocation. The failure of everyday life can precisely be the failure of a person who overlooks their own calling.

But one may argue, wouldn’t such analyses belong to another era?

On the contrary, I believe they are more relevant than ever.

We witness every day the moral disaster of our society, when we see the immense influence exerted on youth by the most vulgar spectacles, when we are faced with the exaggerated worship of appearance, the fashion of clothing, the beauty of the body considered as the sole horizon. If journalists accurately reflect the dominant currents of society, then it must be acknowledged that today’s individuals have a rudimentary amorous psychology, idolatrous of their own image, which is precisely the error of narcissism, and they communicate very poorly with others, even in what they consider to be love. Television offers in vivid images the spectacle of this moral misery, poverty, and emotional crudeness.

The Rules of Everyday Life are a way to deepen our experience of each day, to give it meaning, and at the same time, to purify it. This elevation of everydayness is not just a spiritual and moral exercise. It is the very essence of metaphysics. In his work on Le Mal et la Souffrance [Evil and Suffering], Lavelle explains that “metaphysics only teaches us to perceive the meaning, dignity, and value of the most common sentiments.”

On Humility and Stillness

Humility is the first rule. There is nothing sublime in everyday life. Do not seek sublimity, but instead devote oneself entirely, with all one’s strength, to the most humble tasks. Vanity, self-love, these are the great diseases of the soul that make us deaf to the call of the spirit.

Section 6 of the reflections that make up this book is titled, quite significantly, “Being Whole in What One Does (Activity of the Spirit).” This is why the philosopher rightly considers the method of his work, namely, the rules of thought, as rules of life. Writing is a hygiene of the spirit, and humility is a rule, for writing is a solitary activity, and it is only much later that we perceive in others the echo of what we have written.

Section 9 deals with self-love. It is a favorite subject of Lavelle’s reflection. For him, ambition is dangerous. We should not compare ourselves to others or have a self-centered gaze. Humility teaches us consent. In fact, the tension of the will is a harmful tendency; effort should never be sought for its own sake. We must strive to not make an effort. Such is the paradox of stillness, or the repose of the soul. True joy is pure relaxation. Lavelle implicitly rejects all moral voluntarism (“You must because you must,” wrote Kant); he is much closer to the Rhineland mystics and their surrender to God, which they called Gelassenheit.

Great serenity permeates Lavelle’s philosophy, which knows nothing of tragic ruptures in the manner of Pascal or Kierkegaard. The rules of life should allow us to live in the light of God as in our own element. Not wanting, but consenting. Consenting in not wanting to hear the voice of God and the calls of the spirit. Creating emptiness within oneself, setting aside concerns, that is true stillness.

Attention to the everyday, the refusal of voluntarism, consent to presence—these are themes that bring Lavelle close to Taoism and its spiritual exercises. However, one should not go too far in this direction, as Lavelle presupposes the Christian religion, albeit without advocating for it. And the frameworks of his thought remain purely Western. But this West is not the frenetic activism we see before our eyes in its own uncultured light and lack of references.

Two contemporaries of Lavelle, Michele F. Sciacca, the great Italian philosopher from Genoa, and Jean Guitton, the recently deceased Catholic thinker, tell the same story: to meet Lavelle, they had to go to a convent where he was on retreat, near Avignon. And there the philosopher reflected in silence and solitude, about which he wrote beautiful meditative pages.

It is through silence and in solitude that we enter into true communication with others. The noise of the city and all useless agitation must be silenced. Thanks to silent retreat, the will can transform into thought, and we can access the world of spirits.

The true spiritual community is the properly mystical place in Lavelle’s thought: it is because the “exchange of spirits” defines, in his view, a spiritual space that is the promise given to our hope. And in our everyday life, to progressively attain that communication which is the life of the spirit, “it is important to never establish relationships with other people except through God and never with God through other people.”

Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron

1. The Use of Rules

It is as difficult to make good use of rules as it is to make good use of books.

For the use of books is often a call to present and available memory, just as the use of rules is a call to a mechanism whose operation is assured. Rules, like books, are aids that should not be disregarded, but they should suggest certain movements of thought rather than replace them.

The aim of reflection should be to formulate a small number of rules for life, but ones that very few people have enough strength to use consistently, not only in rare moments when it seems that the will is renewed and strengthened, but through a sort of imperceptible disposition of the soul in which they establish us and which is accompanied by a light in which necessity and freedom merge.

And the effectiveness of rules is based on an exercise of attention rather than the repetition of a practice.

The only rule is to maintain a good moral state without excessive concern for the power given by technology or the nature of the object as it is presented to us. For a good moral state possesses a power that surpasses that of technology and attracts to itself the object that suits it best.

To anyone who would raise an accusation of quietism, it must be said that this is to discover and engage in the most subtle and profound activity, of which the will is nothing more than a hesitant and crude imitation.

We must return to these daily rules of evening and morning that oblige us to self-examination and right intention, but on the condition that these go beyond all particular acts and bring forth in the light those powers of the soul that almost always elude us, but that depend on a continuous act of our attention to keep them always awake.

At the beginning of the day, it is only a matter of strengthening one’s intention. And at the end, when everything has become an effect, it is not a matter of lamenting the distance that separates [one from] it, but of finding in this very effect a surplus that deepens it.

One should never question what one must do, but rather strengthen oneself in this pure spiritual intention that will show us, when necessary, what we must do without deliberation.

For willpower is an act of the mind that applies to the mind itself, not to things, and when it is what it should be, it translates, as it should, into actions.

It was not bad advice that the Epicureans gave to memorize the fundamental maxims, but it was to have them always present and available without effort, in the very form in which they were discovered when we first perceived their spiritual truth.

This is essential for beings who live in time and are always prone to forget the best of themselves. It is never useless for an author to reread their own works.

The nightly examination of conscience must be a means of obtaining peaceful sleep by purifying oneself from the concerns of the day, for they remain vivid and continue to trouble us when we specifically fear bringing them to the light of consciousness.

The role of consciousness is not, as believed, to produce insecurity and anguish within us; it is, like that of the sun, to illuminate and purify, and to bring us peace.

2. General Attitude

We must ensure that our intentions always coincide with our tastes and our calling, and carry each intention to its final point, that is, to the absolute. But for that, we must not have specific intentions: there are only particular effects; they always follow the intention and give it its measure.

The only way to be strong is to never subordinate what one is, that is, what one thinks, says, or does, to a particular concern or a temporal end.

It is for them to follow me, and not for me to follow them.

Maintaining a middle ground between coldness and exaltation, that is, the perfection of both states at the same time.

Never apply oneself to problems posed from outside and by others, but always to problems posed from within and by ourselves.

And to the extent that it is possible, either in the realm of knowledge or in the realm of conduct, not to pose problems, nor to pose them to ourselves.

Never speak about oneself, never think about oneself. It distracts and weakens. Every thought, every action must be directed towards an object and have that object as its purpose.

Always strive to remain rooted at the summit of oneself, where our highest thoughts and purest intentions reside.

Remain familiar, both in words and actions, with two or three essential thoughts on which everything else depends.

And once the connection with them is regained, let nature take care of everything.

Always act with free spontaneity, which is only possible if our action naturally springs from the highest parts of ourselves, as otherwise reflection would constantly disturb us.

One must be flexible like a vine, but like it, unbreakable, and gentle like a perfectly polished, but perfectly hard, surface.

Being clear, that is, being pure, but with a purity that defends itself against all impurities.

Only apply oneself to great things or to small things in relation to the great ones, and never for their own sake. And the great ones are those that concern my entire life and contribute to determining the meaning of my destiny.

Rest within activity.

3. Fundamental Rules

The mind must always be awake, not allowing itself to be lulled to sleep by laziness or memory, nor distracted by fear or desire. It should never allow any gap to separate it from itself, without any repetitive formulas or habits to rely on. It should equally ignore the past and the future, always ready to listen and welcome whatever captures its attention, whether it arises from within or comes from outside.

We don’t need specific rules, the people say, it is enough that the moral is good. And everyone knows what constitutes good moral, both when they possess it and when they have lost it. They are less certain about how to acquire it, that is to say, how to maintain it when they have it and how to regain it when they don’t. That is the proper object of wisdom.

In the meantime, one can only attempt to define it: an absence of desire and self-love, a presence and response to everything offered to me, a joy of existence that elevates me above all modes of existence and is not diverted from the present moment by regret of the past or hope or fear of the future.

FREEDOM

It is better to surrender to spontaneity and even the taste of pleasure than to listen to that false reason that diverts us from the present and always seeks self-interest in the future. One should never speak or act like a mercenary. Selfishness and spontaneity should not be confused.

There is no selfishness that does not involve some calculation, and there is no spontaneity that does not involve some nobility. And even the taste of pleasure is not without selflessness. Resisting selfishness is to rediscover in oneself a native spontaneity, prior to all calculations, and outside oneself a direct contact with reality that self-interest never allows.

This immediate connection between spontaneity and reality is the essence of sincerity. As soon as reflection intervenes between them and the individual thinks of their own good, sincerity begins to deteriorate.

AN ACTIVITY THAT SURPASSES WILLINGNESS

The whole difficulty lies in liberating within oneself an activity that is both more reliable, more powerful, and easier than willingness, which one avoids resorting to and hinders its play because self-love gets involved, refusing to renounce itself and consent to an action it is incapable of claiming.

Everything becomes easy (reading, memorizing, doing, and acting) when, instead of seeking to acquire some external good that one would like to make one’s own, one finds in it only the exercise of a power of the soul that already sensed and even carried it within itself, and of which it embodies the free play.

Never seek the remedy for effort in rest, but in a freer and purer activity.

The greatest strength is to rediscover, in their full light, the most common affirmations of humanity on the most essential points. They remain vain and banal formulas if they do not spring from within us as if we ourselves had invented them.

We must feel both as if we have always known them, and as if we are encountering them for the first time. But it is futile to start by taking them from the outside, believing it is then possible to revive them by giving them a kind of borrowed warmth.

To only have regard for the inner and not for the outer, for what is, not for what should be, and thus abolish the consideration of all ends. And what is called an end, instead of being the object of the will, must be the result of an inner disposition in which one is established and which is sufficient for us.

4. Rules of Conduct towards Other Men

One should never seek to defend oneself, but to convert, and if necessary, to be converted.

One can refuse the struggle when it presents itself to us, but it must not be out of indifference, laziness, selfishness, or contempt, nor even out of a separation and withdrawal into oneself, where one wants to remain alone with God.

It must be through a sort of already acquired victory of truth, which only needs to be shown in order to conquer, without the need to attack or defend oneself.

There are words that are spoken only with the intention of acting upon other people and producing some effect, which also happens when one writes. They have no value: the only words that matter are those spoken out of respect for the truth and not for the outcome.

They exclude any intention to deceive, even out of kindness. They produce nothing but excellence, as they respect the order of the world and call upon all people to take their place in it.

You should never covet anything: it weakens you, puts you at the mercy of other men. You are immediately challenged. But sometimes there is contempt in refusing everything that is asked of you to accept without you having sought it, without you wanting it.

Never deal with things, but with people, nor have in mind the object you are talking about, but the people you are speaking to or about.

The influence we can exert on others comes from what we are capable of suggesting to them. It does not happen without a certain indeterminacy that we must leave to our own thoughts, which need to find completion in a real or possible invention.

It arouses an emotion that it leaves unresolved, and what it communicates to others is the idea of an action, not the possession of a state.

The role of words is to express a movement of thought and life that always surpasses their own content.

SELF-LOVE

True merit does not linger in disputing with others to demand recognition. It does not suffer if it is forgotten. It is self-love that suffers, but self-love is not merit. It joins with it to corrupt it. It is self-love alone that seeks to taste a reward to which it has no right.

Always talking to others about what interests them and never about what interests myself and leaves them indifferent or irritates them.

The two fundamental problems in relationships with others are first to produce love through the will, and second to explain this strange reversal that makes the satisfactions I despise when it comes to myself become good as soon as I seek to give them to others. This is the most difficult problem in the entire chemistry of consciousness.

There are two maxims that seem contradictory but are actually one.

The first is to never think of the public, for truth eludes us if we do not think of it, but of the opinion that another may have of it.

The second is to think only of the public, for truth is only valuable through its spiritual effectiveness, that is, through that act which is inherent in it and which, by producing my own communication with the whole, also produces communication among all beings.

It is not enough to learn how to always be what we manage to be sometimes. But it is not enough to be that way with oneself – it is also necessary to be that way with others.

It is the most vulgar people who always seek to appear better than they are, that is, to give to others what they cannot give to themselves. But they fool no one. They are like those who try to offer a good that they do not possess.

But the best people still suffer from feeling better in solitude than in society and not being able to be as generous with other people as they are with themselves.

The company of other people should come, so to speak, to confirm and deepen our solitude and make a solitude of the mind from the pure solitude of the self. It would then give us, through our communion with another being, that presence of God that we thought we possessed when we were alone, but without ever being sure that we are not ourselves both the demand and the response.

Therefore, one should not feel troubled when one enters the midst of people, as happens to all shy people who then seek a new way of living. One must only be careful not to lose the natural rhythm of solitude.

Nothing is more humiliating than feeling kindness and love towards other people when one is alone, only for those feelings to turn into impatience and hostility as soon as one encounters them.

But these feelings that fill our solitude express nothing more than potentialities that reveal themselves to us to testify to our inability to ever experience their reality. And solitude does not require so much goodwill when the mere sight of our neighbor opens our heart.

The circle in which one can have real communication with other beings is very narrow: one should not try to enlarge it indefinitely. Here, only quality matters.

In a real communication with a single being, the relationships between all human beings are already contained.

5. Rules of Intelligence

One must always seek intelligence and not the intelligible, and only have regard for the act of thought and not for its object.

The only thing that matters is contact with the truth. And the difficult part is maintaining it by renouncing, if necessary, talent, which always seeks to adorn it and often betrays it.

The essential rule is to avoid the rest of attention.

No work of the mind should resemble a duty or the exposition of what one knows; it should always be a creation and a discovery.

The whole problem of speech (and intelligence) is to find certain knots of inspiration.

True intelligence is always concerned with relationships.

It is not necessary to have a lot of knowledge, but it is necessary to maintain at all times the free disposition of oneself and the freshness of natural invention. Everything depends on what I can give in the present moment, and in the face of circumstances that I could never have predicted.

We should not acquire knowledge as one acquires a thing that temporarily occupies a place in our memory. Knowledge is nothing if it does not transform itself into an activity that changes us. Thus, contrary to what is believed, knowledge is never more than a means and not an end; and the goal is to discover through it one of the powers of our secret life.

To deliberately learn only what we need for the use of our temporal activity, but not to refuse any knowledge that presents itself, always placing spiritual knowledge above material knowledge and attempting to unite the two.

The goal is not to acquire knowledge that we forget, which may not always be present, and only in the moment when we need it or in circumstances that never exactly repeat themselves. We must strive to keep our attention awake and always available so that it turns toward the whole of being and never toward myself.

To obtain a very simple view of reality, one that emphasizes rather than obscures the number and complexity of details.

Do not dwell on a view that has just been obtained with the intention of not letting anything escape. By dwelling on it, its light gradually becomes obscured. Thought must be allowed its movement and play, and not demand from the efforts of the will the revelation of reality that can only be expected from a spontaneous and fleeting contact with it.

Avoid the effort that blocks the path of our thought by pressing upon it. Thought is a spontaneous and subtle movement; its free play must be discovered and respected, not forced. It is beyond will and self-love, beyond myself, and resists their solicitation. It is at the moment when they fade away that it springs forth.

There is nothing more artificial and more vain than the effort made to maintain the coherence of one’s thoughts.

This coherence, which is the effect of will and even of self-love, must be feared and nothing should be sacrificed to it. This identity to which man constrains himself is only the work of man.

Undoubtedly, identity is a kind of temporal expression of the very unity of the Whole. But this unity of the Whole is never given to man. So he does not have to worry about identity when he is assured of having set foot in the very reality of the Whole.

Undoubtedly, he will never have anything but particular and separate views, but it is not his task to laboriously realize an agreement between them that he does not always perceive.

Through their disparities and even their apparent contradictions, identity will reveal itself to his mind as it is realized in things; all that will be needed is for him to acquire an increasingly large number of intermediate views on them, which will gradually restore the broken continuity.

There is only one sin against the spirit, which is to refuse to listen to its voice. Then thought is completely drowned out by the tumult of the body.

RULES OF EXPRESSION

One must not reject or despise appearance, which is also manifestation or expression. For there is solidarity between appearance and what it shows.

It is required that appearance be faithful, which already imposes a strict discipline on us; for in the effort we make to render it faithful, it is the very idea that we seek to circumscribe, that is, to form. And the word “definition” here is admirable, seeming to designate nothing more than the proposition by which I formulate the meaning of the idea in words, but which is also the act by which I take possession of it and create it within myself.

An idea needs to be realized externally in order to exist internally; otherwise, it wavers and extinguishes. It must take form to be, and it is this very form that makes it exist. It must be precisely said that it is formless when it fails to give itself a form.

But this very fidelity by which we seek to obtain conformity, that is, the identity of idea and form, that is, to give a body to the idea that also gives it existence and life, it must transform for us into beauty. For the demand for beauty in form is the testimony in the idea itself of that secret value which makes it worthy to be both thought, desired, and loved.

One must not strive to become oneself like a mirror that flattens things and ends up blinding us. It is the one who carries the greatest thoughts in the mind who perceives reality with the greatest brightness and relief.

It is the characteristic of representative intelligence to always perceive things as in a mirror.

6. Being Fully Present in What One Does (activity of the mind)

The most humble task requires all our strength, all our genius, and all our reason. It is like the elementary gesture of priesthood where the divine presence is always there.

The mind is a continuous act. As soon as it relaxes, as soon as it succumbs to idleness, it is the interval, the gap through which self-love enters with all the ailments of the soul and body. But the wise person does not have the time or the space to be sick.

The one tormented by self-love thinks that their mind is active when in reality it is restrained and paralyzed by the individual self, incapable of acting, that is, of stepping out of itself and communicating with the Whole. It is during the time when they close themselves off from others that illness takes advantage of their isolation, penetrates them, and consumes them.

The highest object of my reflection should not be detached from my most familiar life. It nourishes it, I always carry it with me and within me.

Otherwise, it is nothing but an artifice. And I never fully become aware of what I am doing.

PURIFICATION

Hygiene requires me to immediately renounce any thought whose very nature is to be vague, or to demand effort from me, or to constantly produce discomfort of conscience.

We do not give thought its due. For it is not a particular form of our activity that we can sometimes abandon and sometimes resume. It is our entirety: it fills the entire capacity of our being.

We cannot oppose it to work or entertainment since it governs my entire conduct, it gives its light, its meaning, and even its joy to everything I do: to work, to entertainment, to speech, to walking, to eating and drinking, to love, and perhaps even to sleep.

RULES OF INTELLIGENCE

We must not force our mind to always produce new ideas. There are always quite a number of them passing through our mind: it would be better to say that it is enough to be on the lookout and spy on them in order to seize them when they present themselves, to hold them under our gaze, and to surrender to their free movement without any other concern. By themselves, they will lead us further than all our efforts to provoke and regulate their course could have done.

There is a light that comes from God and is similar to the light of day, and another that comes from man and is similar to that of our lamps. Those who see the first one do not need the other, but those who believe they possess the second one think there is no other.

The rules for directing thought are rules for directing life: they are only of interest to the extent that life itself must be regulated by thought.

The value and even the existence of our ideas can only be perceived by those who are like us; everyone else sees them as nonsense or fantasies, even if our mind feeds on them and sees in them the only reality.

There is only one rule: to always remain united with this vast universe or rather with the act from which it proceeds, but in such a way that one limits oneself to assuming responsibility for it in all the particular tasks one has to accomplish.

Then all our thoughts, all our actions, all our relationships with ourselves and with other men acquire extraordinary significance.

Otherwise, they can repel us; idleness and self-love slacken and corrupt them all.

Our thought must never lose sight of the Whole of which we are a part and for which we assume responsibility, but this thought can never be put into action except in specific creations.

We must be capable of combining continuous meditation on the eternal act on which the world depends with the most suitable action, at every moment, given the circumstances that are presented to us.

Thought cannot be considered as the end of our life: it must have its own object or content.

But we only grasp its dignity when we make it the principle, the center, and the hearth from which all the motives that make us act radiate and settle.

7. Rules of Moderation

All the difficulty lies in finding that inner balance which is the very condition for the balance between the world and myself; but I cannot maintain it, and I only encounter it to leave it.

The life of consciousness is an indefinite oscillation around a point of equilibrium that is constantly crossed and rediscovered, without either extreme being considered anything other than a reason to resort to the other so that they are linked together in an uninterrupted back and forth.

The whole difficulty lies in finding the point where genius allies itself with reason, and establishing oneself there.

There is a measure that comes from lack of strength and a measure that comes from excess of strength, where the extremes are present within us at the same time, but we ourselves being above them and knowing how to dominate them, that is, prevent them from dominating us.

It is the most generous nature that best maintains measure and avoids all excesses on its own, exceeding in the present with regard to what it knows or holds (that is to say, reveries relating to another world, particularly a future that one already thinks one possesses).

Too many ideas or too few equally exhaust the mind and hinder its implementation. The difficult part is to always maintain the right proportion between the diversity of ideas and the unity of thought, so that they can multiply without losing their place and value with impunity.

PERSONAL RULES FOR LITERARY COMPOSITION

Nourish one’s thoughts only with eternal ideas, allowing them to perform only pure spiritual operations, independent of time and place, but immediately finding a present example where they are transformed not into living acts, but into images.

Each object of thought is an object of eternal meditation to which we return at different moments in time: one must collect in different notebooks all these scattered touches whose gathering will create a vast landscape.

The order of the parts also reveals itself to us in a sort of flash of insight, so that there is no contradiction between systematic composition and scattered notations. The discovery of order is the discovery of the germ from which all our thoughts proceed or the knot that binds them.

In a living thought situated in the moment when the temporal and the eternal are united, these two processes converge and must be used simultaneously.

Never establish a visible institution or school that one would eventually become a prisoner of.

The truth, once found, must be manifested not only because it does not belong to us and we are accountable to all of humanity, but also because it is the only way for us to not let it slip away and to make it our own by fully engaging with it.

8. Rules of Body Use, Health, and Illness

The danger for any sick person is to be entirely held back by the body or by this self-awareness which is a sort of tenderness of the body.

One who is healthy forgets their body, unites with the world around them, looks at the sky above their head, and tends to their affairs.

One must not refuse nature what it demands in order to avoid ever entering into dispute with it. But one must wait for it to ask, not offer it willingly, and never solicit it. That is where concupiscence begins.

RULES FOR THE USE OF THE SENSES

Let them be silent, yet agile and ready to be moved.

Let them not refuse anything and not be overcome by anything, always ready to receive and spiritualize everything.

RULES OF MOVEMENT AND REST

Find rest within movement itself, the only way that neither one nor the other becomes an escape.

The thought of the body is a preoccupation that must be banished like all preoccupations because it interrupts the life of the spirit.

The rule here is to not concern ourselves with the life of the body, which does not depend on us, but with the life of the spirit, which only exists through the consent we give it and provides for the care of the other through a sort of surplus, since it must assume the other in order to become capable of promoting it.

RULES OF ONE’S PARTICULAR VOCATION

Do not fear developing all the powers of our individual nature without seeking to imitate others or trying to achieve a common and anonymous model within oneself.

Do not diminish this ardor of being oneself, which alone can justify the place of each being in the world.

What we are not, others will be, and humanity as a whole is the accumulation of all differences, not the leveling of them.

Most men always act with the body in mind, as if the body should be the sole object of their care. But it is the opposite that must be done. One must always act through the medium of the body, but as if the body were to disappear and in view of what survives the body.

9. Self-Love

Will and ambition do not always favor large enterprises because they prevent us from listening to inner calls and substitute all suggestions of self-love for the voice of God.

We should never insist on thinking or writing when we need to make an effort that reveals the very impotence of our own genius to find either ideas or the link that unites them. Such effort remains sterile and increases our darkness.

But there is a certain natural movement of the mind that we must be capable of discovering in order to trust it without resisting it. The essence of will is to discern such movement from all the less pure impulses that we always risk confusing with it. It is because there is nothing that we should do by choice rather than as a gift.

Only then does everything become easy, alert, ardent, and effective for us. It is sufficient to show enough self-attention and trust in what presents itself. It is intelligence itself that operates within us almost without our awareness: it is no longer the self that tries to guide and, so to speak, force it.

Then nothing is impossible for us, and we are capable of learning everything, even the most difficult languages.

It is also true to say that strength only exists where there is perfect coolness within us — that is, a perfect indifference toward all external events and all the sentiments they can awaken in self-love, in order to retain within us the ability to judge — and at the same time, an extreme inner ardor that, in order to elevate a pure flame within us, must blind all the exits through which all the preoccupations of selfishness or the world that disperse and corrupt it arise.

Never look back to enjoy the fruit of action or the knowledge one possesses. All such enjoyment is poisoned. For only joy is pure, but it attaches itself to the act and not to its effects.

INTELLIGENCE

The finest art does not reside in the skill of logical constructions but in a certain contact that one manages to maintain continuously with reality.

We must break away from science that only looks at the object, from history that only looks at the past, and place our trust entirely in psychology, which allows us to know in the present moment the relationship between our self and the universe.

ENTERTAINMENT

We read, go to the theater, seek continuous discourse, and indulge in diversions when we don’t have the strength to converse with ourselves or with our friends in order to discover a truth that has grown from our own depths, and which we must constantly test in the very situations that life presents us.

VOCATION

Barrès says in “The Enemy of Laws” that the only thing that matters is to give our life a purpose that absorbs all our activity and aligns with our capacity to feel.

There is only one rule, which is to remain in a state of constant attention, which is a constant response, meaning a constant consent to everything that life demands of us.

10. On Worries

One must not allow oneself to be distracted from present action or immediate relationships with others by any concern, even pure thought. Rather, there should be only one concern, that of the Whole, which encompasses all our particular endeavors.

In this way, we will give each of them its most powerful, free, and effective play.

One cannot attach oneself to the particular as such without feeling its imperfection and without exerting a great deal of effort. The thought of the Whole is not enough either, for it can leave us idle towards the Whole and each part of the Whole.

But it is through a living accord with the Whole that we best fulfill our obligations in every respect without appearing to have willed it.

Banish all concerns and have an empty mind, not filled with thoughts. Then the activity of the mind operates freely, and the thoughts it needs arise in their proper place and with the appropriate light. (This is what leads us to place ignorance above knowledge, which means preferring a constantly possible and reborn knowledge to any acquired knowledge).

In a constantly occupied life, we also have the concern for rest. There are opportunities for rest as well as for action, and one should not be less attentive to recognizing them or responding to them.

Do not desire to change the conditions of one’s material life, as most people do, but regardless of the situation one is in, be assured of always being able to rediscover that spiritual inspiration on which our power and happiness depend at every moment.

THE USE OF RULES

Men spend their lives seeking new paths. And yet they expect everything from method, from rules. They never cease to want to reform their lives; they place all their hope in the future. They ask for masters to teach them an unfamiliar way of conducting themselves.

But it is not tomorrow that one must act, it is right now. And each person has enough light to know in an instant what they must do. If some new opportunity, unforeseen until now, soon presents itself to their activity, let them not worry today about how they will respond to it tomorrow.

Each day has enough trouble of its own. They will know how they should act if they do not turn away from the view of the action to be done in search of a miraculous rule that they would apply too late when the opportunity to act has already passed. The concern for rules is the death of action, just as the concern for method is the death of science.

It may therefore seem vain to have ready-made rules that will never be precisely adapted to the conditions in which we will have to apply them. This does not mean that rules are useless; they are not recipes for action, but rather a kind of reminder to ourselves of our purest activity, the exercise of which always remains new.

The company of a wise person or a man of science strengthens and nourishes our spirit, and the example of their success will teach us to succeed, but through unpredictable means that are suitable only for our own spirit and whose secret they cannot disclose to us.

11. Habit

Do not let the sense of novelty in life and the inseparable emotion associated with it dull away due to habit.

Free oneself so well from all habits of sensitivity or intelligence that one can always look at everything that presents itself to us, within us and outside of us, as if seeing it for the first time.

And this rule could also apply to the discovery of one’s own existence, to the spectacle of things, to the encounter with another being.

However, it is not enough for the rule to be perceived by us as a flash of insight in a few privileged moments of our lives in order for it to be effective. It must produce a permanent disposition of our soul, similar to what the scholastics called “habitus,” and of which habit, through a kind of natural decline of thought and language, seems to be, in a way, the negation.

Because this disposition of the soul, far from producing a mechanical disposition from which we are, so to speak, absent, is a true act of presence, the most perfect, the purest, and such that, if it appears continuous, it is because it itself is exempt from the law of time. In such a way that, when an opportunity arises to put it into practice, it is accomplished almost without one having willed it.

Therefore, there are here two opposite operations whose effects, however, resemble each other: because on both sides, there is a spontaneity that annihilates effort and any interval that separates intention from success. Only in mechanical habit do we undergo a movement from which consciousness has withdrawn. And in the other, it is consciousness itself that seems to act on its own through a kind of natural grace.

Descartes and Pascal both emphasize the role of exercise, where the former has in mind mechanical habit intended to prepare this permanent disposition of the soul that frees us; these are two types of acquired activities between which he establishes a subordination, with one being the stepping stone to the other, instead of contradicting each other.

This was also Descartes' belief, who thought that the essential effort of life is to know how to maintain, over time through repetition, the intuitions of the instant. Time itself is thus suspended in eternity and seems, so to speak, abolished, at least in a kind of limit that we never quite reach.

Some need obstacles in order to overcome them, while others need habits to support them. However, it is by trying to rediscover the trend where it awakens the will without yet transforming into habit that we maintain the creative virtue, youth, and freshness of everyday life.

It is not in vain to repeat the same things—except for those who see them as a mere object of curiosity—when it comes to maxims that one must always remember and in which one must never cease to strengthen oneself. In reality, one can never repeat to oneself enough the very things of which one is certain if one wants them to penetrate within us and become our flesh and blood. As long as we remain conscious of them, they are still an object that remains detached from us.

THE FREE PLAY OF THE MIND (RULES OF EFFORT)

Effort flatters our self-esteem, and we base our merit on it. But it is also for this reason that, wherever it appears, it is the mark of our limits and imperfection. Therefore, it is generally agreed that one must pursue effort until every trace of effort eventually disappears.

This is because any work that comes solely from man seems to be the product of artifice. It lacks the sovereign ease of creative spontaneity. And it happens that effort acts as a screen that prevents it from emerging, even though its role is not to replace it but to open a passage for it by freeing it from all the obstacles that hold it back, and to fade away when it appears.

Thus, the role of effort is, if you will, negative and not positive. Its purpose is not to do, but to let a power that surpasses us do, and to free it from everything within us that hinders it from doing.

In this sense, effort is always a struggle: it is, so to speak, a struggle against ourselves.

Effort introduces us to time not only through the obstacle that comes from matter, but also through a kind of abruptness that tears us away from the undivided continuity of our inner life, which is the very unity of our soul (and which always runs the risk of transforming into dreamy self-indulgence).

One must not solicit thought; one must let it come in its own time and only lend it an attentive ear. It is by not seeking to think that we think, by not seeking to be profound that we are.

One must not constrain oneself to work on first gathering a certain number of favorable conditions: comfort, solitude, certain material arrangements, an excellent laboratory, a well-composed library.

It is first to postpone the exercise of thought until the moment when all these means are in our hands. And when they are, we are surprised that it does not occur. But that is because we expect it as if it should come to us from the outside. Yet the mind finds itself then cast out of itself, incapable of achieving that inner calm and self-possession without which it is nothing.

The person who has no means has full control of oneself. And the one who has all the means puts their complete trust in them and no longer has control of oneself.

Never should distrust toward effort be greater than when it comes to memory. There is no more futile task than trying to hold onto a past that escapes us.

But we cannot succeed in doing so. What we retain is a thing, not a thought, or a sterile regret towards a past that is no more.

What is worth retaining is what we love, and we always have the strength to produce it.

12. Interactions with Other Men

Those who seek the approval of other men thereby reveal their weakness. And how could they obtain this approval they seek, since in seeking it they clearly demonstrate that they do not deserve it?

All men spontaneously seek goodness. And it is enough that you are good to be sought after.

But from this goodness, you must not think of gaining anything yourself, as that would be enough to annihilate it. Being sought after can only be a gift that one offers of oneself and not a profit that one seeks to enjoy.

GOLDEN VERSES

Do not provoke discord; rather, avoid it by yielding.

It is not a matter of praising spiritual unity with words, but of practicing it through actions without speaking of it, and even without being too aware of it.

Never stoop to seeking external means for the esteem of those from whom you are certain to remain separate, who are strangers or enemies to you.

In relationships with men, one must be reserved and always ready, waiting for the opportunity and not letting it pass, for there is a right moment to speak and act, to ask and respond, which cannot be found again, and immediately before or immediately after, the possible becomes impossible, and even what created communication becomes a barrier.

And to recognize this moment, one needs a great deal of attention and delicacy, and a great deal of generosity and abandon in order to make the most of it. In the absence of a word, a quick glance, a simple consent, how many spiritual resources are compromised and destroyed!

Never make advances, but also be wary of those made to us, seize that opening point where silent communication occurs before one intends it.

Never turn your gaze toward glory or influence or power; rather, fear them rather than despise them, and engage in them only out of that sense of obligation one feels when self-esteem is on the other side. This is rare among the best.

Do not suffer from being ignored, unrecognized, or betrayed. Wisdom does not allow for indignation. It commands an indifference full of serenity and light.

It is necessary to avoid contradicting others, but to gently welcome their contradictions.

Never provoke discord and prefer to avoid it by yielding.

One must look at the men to whom one speaks when speaking to them — which is rarer than one believes — in order to see them and see what is happening within them (while also showing them what is happening within us, instead of hiding it). The gaze is meant for two consciousnesses to become transparent to one another.

One should never have their gaze directed towards the object, but towards the man, and towards the inner man, and be interested not in knowledge but in meaning.

One must live like other men and go unnoticed in such a way that it is our most hidden life that is revealed, and in such a way that others discover their own without thinking about it, and express it in turn through the simplest and most natural gestures.

The sign of strength is to pay no attention to opinion or how one may be judged, and to remain alone with God in constant communication. It is important to never enter into relationship with other men except through God, and never with God through other men.

Never communicate a thought that one has not fully taken possession of (or only as a suggestion and an appeal to another who lends it the strength they possess instead of using it to annihilate it).

13. Being Self-Sufficient

The difficulty lies in having confidence in the constant presence of grace. Yet, it is this confidence that gives birth to it.

It does not always manifest itself as a sudden inspiration related to the opportunity presented to me. But there is a grace that transcends events and still shines through even in missed actions.

The truth that suits each of us, proportionate to our needs and the conditions in which we find ourselves, is always revealed to us, provided that we are docile and attentive.

But people have too much self-love to see it and be content with it. They prefer the ingenious constructions of their understanding to those simple and luminous touches that they strive to erase and obscure.

It would be up to us, if we knew, when they present themselves, to recognize and gather them, so that the life of our intelligence would always be full of novelty, ease, and joy.

It would not be the laborious and irritated work of an ego that rejoices much less in having found the truth than in having found it through its own genius and by means that are denied to others.

The problem is that we fruitlessly solicit the spirit when it is silent and remain deaf to its call when it speaks to us.

Action alone is my shield: as soon as I stop, I am exposed to all blows, both from myself and from others.

To seek that continuous desire whose omnipresent object can never escape or change.

It is we who lack this desire rather than it lacking us.

14. Knowing how to Manage One’s Mind

The misfortune is that we do nothing without that inner ardor that shakes all the powers of our mind, without that indifferent serenity which, like a perfectly polished mirror, waits for the image to present itself in order to reflect it without distorting it, and without the method, finally, that prepares and solicits discovery through artifices.

But these are spiritual attitudes that almost always exclude each other, and it takes a lot of skill not to let the inner fire extinguish and to know how to convert it into light in time, to be able to regulate it and provide it with the appropriate nourishment at the right time.

There is a certain constancy of our inner state that it is our task to maintain, and it is such that events then occur as they should, without us ever having to refuse or call for them.

It is necessary to maintain the calm of the soul, which can only exist if the senses are silent or if they are appeased, which can be easily achieved as long as the imagination does not interfere.

Go fast and far, always give your mind its full motion and compel it to stride over the greatest distances, so that it avoids us remaining in one place and dying there.

Never linger to capture or retain. It is an idolatry of the thing. But truth resides only in an act that must always be resurrected.

Moreover, what I try to capture or retain is always related to an event that will never recur, whereas the power within me will only be exercised when provoked by the novelty of the event and to respond to it.

The mind is rightly compared to fire. There are things it must illuminate, others it must warm, and still others it must consume or melt.

The difficult part is always obtaining direct contact with reality in the moment, preventing memory, habit, and knowledge from creating an interval, and then interposing a screen between reality and us.

Knowing how to dispose of one’s mind is to use, against habits, another habit that is finer and more subtle.

EXPERIENCE

There is nothing that we have thought once and for all that is such that it would suffice to keep it in memory and convert it into rules.

For nothing can exempt me from immediate and ever-new contact with reality. This obliges me to live day by day, allowing accumulated experience to build within me without ever thinking of using it, to rediscover each time, as if revealed to me for the first time, the same truth I have always encountered.

The essential is not to strengthen one’s will, but to discover the source of activity from which it draws, which, if we do not oppose it with any obstacle, will always provide us with the power we need to respond to all the tasks demanded of us.

In all our specific tasks, we always descend too low to regulate the details, and we never ascend high enough to rediscover that creative impulse which, in the unity of the same act, generates the whole and the details, and renders them present in the unity of the same gaze.

It is often believed that what matters is to find that perfect leisure where all work is interrupted, as if work were servitude from which leisure relieves us; it is to make leisure itself an exercise of pure mind, where it is work that becomes relaxation.

15. Working Title: A Difficult Ease

Do not engage in a debate with aspects of creation that would make us prisoners and slaves. Instead, be with the creator and, like him, indifferent and ignorant toward the works. Only then can they be perfect.

We should only have eyes for the act that I am accomplishing: its effects are a spectacle that exists only for others. When the act is what it should be, the spectacle is also, but to be preoccupied with the spectacle is to prioritize appearance over essence, it is, as happens in positivism, in materialism, to be content with an appearance that is the appearance of nothing.

PATIENCE

One must accept all inevitable hardships, and even all hardships, for none of them can we know for certain is truly an evil.

And there is no evil that cannot be averted or tamed with enough wisdom, trust, and gentleness.

One must not attach oneself to an object that is foreign to me or surpasses me.

As soon as my vision begins to blur, when I am obliged to exert my strength and my will interferes, my mind loses its self-disposition, its light, its health, its joy, and no longer has the strength for the tasks assigned to it.

This does not mean that I should stop at the first difficulty: for there are difficulties that are within my capacity, that I call upon, that only I can recognize and resolve, and that are like a test of my creative power.

But let this power never yield to constraint, even to the constraint of self-esteem, and let it only strive to discern what suits it, namely an agreement between the proposition that reality presents to it and its most natural impulse. This is not as easy as one might think.

So many people who mock ease, but who have not made enough effort to acquire it.

DISCIPLINE OF EACH DAY

Let there be no day when we do not set our hand to a task that we have assigned ourselves and that will constitute the very work of our lives.

Let there be no day when we do not set aside a little leisure for pure contemplation, when we do not fix our gaze on some essential truth worthy of being kept.

Let there be no day when we fail to seize those truths that pass through our consciousness like flashes of lightning, like openings in eternity, belonging to the moment and depending on us to make them penetrate into duration.

Rule: the pursuit of perfection means nothing if it is not inseparable from the need to spread all the good that one possesses.

Reason is incapable of self-sufficiency. For it is a mastery that we exert over our irrational powers. It is they who give us strength, and reason imposes upon them the balance that allows us to make good use of them.

The genius of man resides in a controlled intoxication. There is always some wine that men demand of him, and when he gives it too easily, he only provides a caricature. Man falls asleep as soon as the intoxication leaves him. Reason spies on it in order to subject it to the law of order.

Nothing begins with reason, but there is nothing that can do without it. The man who is only reasonable is also the one who does not love, but the highest form of reason is to be the law of love, that intoxication.

It is important to always relate the possible to the real, for otherwise the possible would be nothing but a dream of the imagination, and the real would be a given that imposes itself on me and that I would be incapable of reclaiming and spiritualizing.

What characterizes the soul is not so much the end it aims for as the state in which it establishes itself.

Then one says: what good is time? But there is no more time, and we cannot complain that tomorrow brings us nothing.

Solitude, good or bad depending on whether the will interferes or not.

Louis XIV eats in public.

16. Opportunity

Maintaining this great ventilation of the mind, which keeps its freedom not only always available but always in exercise, which allows itself to be solicited by all things that present themselves without ever being carried away by them, which is not always troubled in seeking what inspiration denies it and that its self-esteem demands, this is the health of the soul and even of the body.

One should not choose any particular end, but know how to achieve all those that are proposed.

May the gaze always remain attentive to that purely spiritual act that underlies everything that is and everything that can be, without ever being held back by any particular action, by any individual being. This is the only way to give a full and strong meaning to all those events that each of us encounters on their path, events they did not solicit and towards which they seemed indifferent.

Does the spiritual life deserve the reproaches with which it is burdened? It does happen that it becomes a self-indulgent and selfish reverie that diverts us from action and gives us a kind of voluptuous melancholy.

But it deserves to be called a life only if it always revives our creative power, if it constantly gives us renewed joy, if it binds us more closely to other beings, if it enables us to find, better than any technical research, what suits each particular situation best.

17. Rules of Unity

The great affair is to unite all the flashes that pass through our thoughts at different hours of the day, in such a way that instead of dissipating immediately, they allow us to live in an atmosphere of light.

And for that, it is much less a matter of multiplying them than of converting them into a sort of continuous irradiation where all movement seems abolished.

The same goes for all the particular movements of goodwill that must merge into a single act of will that is always present and barely noticeable, and that knows neither interruption nor resumption.

Never serve an external cause, but only pursue this expansion of our soul, of which all the acts we seek to produce are merely the means or effects.

There are two ways to achieve unity: the first is the powerless effort by which we try to connect each object from the outside to all the others in an infinite race whose end always recedes, the second by which we connect it from within to an omnipresent spiritual act and enter a world that is self-sufficient, with which we form a sort of society that does not differ from the society we form with ourselves.

SIMPLICITY

Great ideas often appear to me with extreme simplicity, which makes me suspicious. Because this simplicity humiliates my self-love, which can no longer claim credit for it. But that precisely is the sign of their truth.

The danger, once it has discovered the simplicity of essential truths, is that it will abandon the very activity that led to their discovery and give in to an ease that dissipates them.

There is no greater difficulty than maintaining the perfect simplicity of vision that the slightest shock, the slightest covetousness is enough to disturb. This simplicity, which renders all things transparent, surpasses in power of penetration all the efforts of the will.

Simplicity, if it resides in a sort of uninterrupted contact with reality, never risks becoming an appearance that satisfies us or a scheme that we have built. It is often thought to be the result of a kind of inertia of our thinking when it is the mark of its most delicate and strongest activity.

Unity and identity are the fundamental laws of thought: this can be translated by saying that thought must always apply itself to the Whole and never allow its continuity to be broken when it moves from one object to another within the same Whole.

There is no serious thought that does not encompass the Whole and does not manifest through some action.

It is difficult to embrace the Whole through an act of contemplation. There is an active, human, living truth that possesses perfect simplicity, that moves swiftly and goes straight to the point, and that is closer to contemplative truth than all the most learned knowledge combined with the most subtle analyses.

To judge a philosophy, one must always consider the simplest idea that could be conveyed to the least experienced person: for this idea is its root, and it is upon it that it must be judged by measuring the impact it would be capable of having on our existence.

18. The Conversion of Will into Intellect

Everything is born from free will, but will does not have its end within itself. It seeks to transform into a possession, that is to say, into a light that only intelligence is capable of providing.

What will seeks is an object that it cannot not want, and that is such that, once it is discovered, one can clearly see that it cannot be otherwise than it is.

This coincidence can only occur on the condition that the supreme goal of our will is precisely the will of God within us.

It is only a matter of understanding, and for the one who has understood, the action is already done.

TIME

We suffer from thinking that we do not yet have a philosophy, but it is because we fail to take possession of the one we carry within ourselves and instead seek another one outside.

But philosophy is such a close union of contemplation and action that it bears fruit in every moment, instead of constantly delaying its maturity.

Therefore, one must have a sufficiently awakened attention so that each passing moment is itself full and sufficient, and not just a means towards another moment that will come later.

There lies the principle of all our misfortunes.

Each action is absolutely valuable in the very moment I accomplish it; then it takes its place in time, although its principle is not in time but in an eternal source that gives me, in the present moment itself, all the strength and all the light at my disposal.

There is no action that does not require preparation, that is to say, certain means that it sets in motion, that does not seek to produce certain results, that is to say, that does not aim for certain ends.

But at the moment it is accomplished, it is no longer bound by those means or ends; it belongs to it to overcome them; it does not repeat a model. It is a new creation that surpasses all models and becomes its own model.

Men believe that the great difficulty is to transform intellect into will. But it is the opposite that should be said.

One should never aim for action but for the idea, and action should follow without the need to will it.

May knowledge never reproduce already acquired knowledge, nor may action reproduce a movement already done.

Every movement, every knowledge should be relevant to our future and always appear new to us.

Or rather, when we are truly present to ourselves, there is nothing that is for us either new or old.

There is an exact coincidence of the new and the old, which is eternity, this eternal youth.

For if eternity is older than the oldest things, the encounter we have with it is always a new encounter.

We only encounter it by forgetting, that is to say, by forgetting the encounters we have had with it.

19. Discipline of Desire: Rules Regarding Oneself; Rules of Vocation

Nirvana is a practical wisdom in which desire is abolished.

The fundamental rule is for each of us to know how to distinguish between what suits us and what does not suit us.

Almost all our misfortunes come from the contempt we have for everything we do naturally, effortlessly, and with pleasure, in order to exert great effort in attaching ourselves to an object that is not suitable for us and that we are incapable of attaining.

But as soon as another person acquires and possesses it because it suits them, all those things that are offered to us and that we have at hand are immediately abolished.

RULE OF HAPPINESS

The entire secret of philosophy is to make one’s soul a good demon (eu-daîmon) that allows us to be both good and happy.

But it is a difficult ideal that people despise because they only desire material advantages that are visible to all, whose possession is based on certain titles, and that receive the esteem of public opinion.

To understand the real advantages they sacrifice for these and which philosophy could provide them, one must have as much steadfastness in thought as in will.

Unable to create happiness for themselves, people end up making misery and turmoil that overwhelm them objects of glory. But while they hate those who have ceased to feel them, they despise those who, like them, are still immersed in them.

They receive no consolation from this, while the happiness of others is a constant reproach to them.

It seems that the specific events of our lives are there only to produce in our consciousness general, timeless feelings, independent of the body and circumstances, and in which we merely participate.

It is this participation that is our very life, not the sequence of details of our history. We only love others to discover in them the metaphysical reality of love.

This is what is observed in all classics. And what Plato thought about the idea, which for him was the true reality and not the thing itself, must be extended to the feeling as well, which is also an essence that specific states only approach.

20. Rules Regarding Other Men

There is a misuse of this very rule that prescribes me to turn towards others and not towards myself. Because I can be interested in him as if he were an object that belongs to me, or even as another self.

But this self that I seek to turn away from, will I awaken it in another? Will I take pleasure in him because he is not mine and ask this other person to do for themselves what I am freeing myself from?

Or would we end up with the paradox that all men must turn away from themselves to dedicate themselves to others, as if the first part of this rule should not lead them to refuse what is offered to them by virtue of the second part, so that in this sacrifice of altruism to egoism, altruism would create a temptation for the one who is its object, and they should always defend themselves against it. And in this subtle contradiction, the precept itself would ultimately succumb.

Will it be said that this kind of gratuity in a gift that would never be received is the very beauty of perfect generosity, which seeks the good of others without others ever desiring it as their own good? But besides the temptation to which I expose others, can I aim at as a good that which is not a good for either him or me?

Will we come back to the maxim that one should do for others what one wants them to do for oneself? Yes, undoubtedly, but on the condition of not settling for those satisfactions that the individual seeks and that do not become better when they are the object of mutual complicity.

If knowledge is only possible if I turn away from myself to reach the object, if morality is only possible if I pursue the good of others and not my own (and if one can say that by doing so, I am serving the interests of my own self by enriching intellect and will within it, but on the condition that it is only an effect and never an end), it is on the condition that instead of focusing on this particular object or on another person’s self, I consider it as an open path before me through which I break the solitude of my separate consciousness and begin to assume the knowledge and responsibility of the whole in which I am situated and of which I am both the spectator and the creator indivisibly.

The greatest difficulty is to learn to tolerate oneself and to tolerate others. But these two rules are one and the same.

One can only judge the tree by its fruits. It is an imperfect and unfinished meditation that, enclosing itself and jealous of spreading, gives the conscience a spiritual satisfaction that still resembles self-love satisfaction.

Undoubtedly, one will recognize that a soul, once purified, can spread the blessing of its mere presence. But does this blessing always occur? And there is an inner and solitary joy that resembles that of the enlightened and the deranged.

Just as science brings about a sort of renewal of the material nature from which all humans benefit, holiness brings about a renewal of the human soul that spreads across the entire earth.

Let us not forget that men do not have the same calling; some have the mission to increase this inner light that illuminates the conscience of all humanity, while others have the task of utilizing and multiplying the resources of the material universe for the benefit of bodily life. But neither the former nor the latter are exempt from providing mutual service to each other.

Wisdom is recognized by the fact that it produces happiness both within us and around us.

GENERAL REMARKS ON RULES

No rule is derived from reflection.

They are all derived from some action that has been carried out without a rule but whose memory, while residing in our memory, gradually creates in us not a habit but a spiritual power, a power to act that is now at the disposal of our conscience.

The whole difficulty lies in discovering within ourselves a participation in the creative power that constitutes our own genius and allowing it to have free play.

TIME

Some people only think about acquisitions that they would like to be eternal, about fixing ideas that they once glimpsed and will never lose thereafter. But it is a material effort that disappoints us greatly.

Those are things that are acquired, signs that are kept. And whoever believes that by doing so, they have captured the spiritual act that they will find again later, whenever they wish, is mistaken.

Every spiritual act is an act of participation that must always be recommenced: it is always identical and always new. We acquire the power to reproduce it, and there is nothing that exempts us from exercising it or allows it to be played for certain.

Descartes rightly saw that it is sufficient to have a few very simple general rules that can always remain present in our minds and no longer be distinguished from its own activity.

Specific rules both burden and enslave our minds, and yet how could they be applicable in all cases? If rules are to maintain their generality, on the contrary, it is not possible to create immutable formulas that dictate to us in every moment what we must do. As soon as we move to practice, we must restore flexibility and life to them.

And our rules for daily life are not intended to outline the details of our particular actions to the utmost extent, but rather to discern the interplay of these few very simple rules in all the perspectives that life may place us in.

21. Rules of Sensibility

One should not strive to cultivate sensitivity, as sensitivity expresses nothing more than the effects of intellectual or voluntary activity. Therefore, one should regulate oneself, and sensitivity will always manifest within it the effects that we deserve.

RULES REGARDING ONESELF

It is not necessary to always think or exhaust oneself in trying to mold one’s own nature. But we only know what is not ourselves, we only act outside of ourselves; when we behave properly towards the outside, the inside itself is what it should be.

But the proposition can be reversed: it is reciprocal.

One should not lead a separate life. It blinds more than it enlightens. It is a product of self-love that still appears in the desire to reform oneself and acquire wisdom.

One who flees into solitude and fears that contact with other people may distract them shows a peculiar weakness. It is in the midst of people that one must know how to preserve solitude and avoid diversion. As soon as their company ceases to distract us, it begins to nourish us.

AGAINST

One must refrain from all criticism and seek to discover in everything one encounters, everything one sees, and everything one reads, not that part of weakness that we believe elevates us, but that part of reality that nourishes us.

RULES REGARDING ONESELF

One should not force one’s mind; it is better for it to be capable of fewer things. It is preferable to ignorance than to laborious knowledge. What I do not understand in the works of others is what finds no echo within me or echoes that are too obscure.

The important thing is to only exercise my most personal faculties, those that bring me the most joy, whose play is the most effective, without exerting myself to awaken those that I lack, which cost me a great deal of effort and produce little fruit.

This apparent hedonism is also an asceticism in which I enclose myself within my own horizon, renouncing many satisfactions of a self-love always eager to equal the universe.

The difficult part is discovering one’s vocation, which always requires an opportunity that we cannot say whether we encounter or if it calls us. But once we have discovered it, the difficult part is fulfilling it without allowing ourselves to be imposed upon by diversion, by the desire for imitation. Here, the rules of conduct, by their universal nature, create immense peril.

All people feel a vocation within themselves, but they suffer from being unfaithful to it. It is because self-love and vocation are in conflict instead of supporting each other. For self-love always proposes an apparent goal esteemed by all, which creates opposition and a struggle among individuals to conquer it, whereas the diversity of their vocations would succeed in reconciling and uniting them.

If we want all people to be alike and pursue the same end, they will never cease to clash and hate each other. But if they are all different and each has their particular tasks, then each of them will be a revelation and support for all the others.

RULES OF INSPIRATION

One must leave everything and not unnecessarily subject one’s mind where it is not driven by any movement, where it does not feel any emotion, any small shock, or any illuminating clarity.

Willpower has power only to overcome the resistance of matter; it can do nothing when the mind is silent, and when the mind speaks, it is enough that the will be obedient to it. They are not of the same race. Willpower ruins everything if it believes that it is the one giving movement to the mind. It is enough for it to be attentive to its initial touches; it only needs to yield.

That point where the willpower senses that it only needs to yield is the one we must seek, the only one where the individual can surpass themselves, receive truth, strength, and happiness.

Willpower is the mind imprisoned by matter and seeking to free itself.

There is always an assumption that those who advocate waiting for inspiration are preaching in vain to those who already have it and are useless to those who do not. They are also reproached for dishonoring conscience through an excess of ease, where the self is annihilated in a situation where it simply has to receive and wait.

But this defense of the self is itself a defense of self-love. There is undoubtedly more difficulty in receiving than in acting. Or rather, receiving is also a kind of action that requires a more subtle art.

It is often more difficult to receive a material and tangible gift than to give one. What can be said of a spiritual gift? To receive it is to make it one’s own, to rise to its level, and the one who most often disdains receiving it is not capable of doing so.

But the most difficult thing is to be ready to receive, to have accomplished this purification, this stripping away of all particular attachments, to silence our own will instead of extending it, to create within ourselves that inner emptiness where the world can be received.

This is the difficult ease that resists all efforts and, not only in its exercise but from its very birth, resembles grace. However, it requires a selfless and welcoming disposition of our soul, a flexible consent, an indifference to oneself, an attentive and loving openness. In other words, it is the most secret activity of our self in its deepest and most delicate play.

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