The Seeking Heart
The Seeking Heart was written by 18th century French Catholic archbishop, François Fénelon. I first came across the name Fénelon in a volume I’ve mentioned once before on this blog, in the post about Meister Eckhart’s Book of Divine Consolation. I’m talking about The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley. Fénelon is quoted nine times in the book, first in the chapter called “Charity.” In the chapter “Mortification, Non-Attachment, Right Livelihood,” Huxley refers to Fénelon as “one of the greatest masters of psychological analysis.” He quotes some of Fénelon’s words on simplicity, many of which are echoed in The Seeking Heart: “That soul which looks where it is going without losing time arguing over every step, or looking back perpetually, possesses true simplicity.” He quotes him again in the chapter titled “Self-Knowledge,” wherein Fénelon uses a powerful water metaphor to convey what happens when we become more aware of our habits and predilections: “While we go with the stream, we are unconscious of its rapid course; but when we begin to stem it ever so little, it makes itself felt.”
Here he is again, quoted in the chapter “Silence”: “You cannot practice too rigid a fast from the charms of worldly talk.” In the chapter “Prayer,” Huxley includes Fénelon’s own prayer of, “Lord, I know not what to ask of thee. Thou only knows what I need…Pray Thyself in me.” He quotes Fénelon twice in the chapter “Emotionalism,” describing the Archbishop of Cambrai as a man who “combines the character of a saint with the talents of a Marcel Proust,” adding, “Fénelon never hesitated to disintegrate a correspondent’s complacent ego; but the disintegration was always performed with a view to reintegration on a higher, non-egotistic level.” Part of that chapter’s first and lengthiest quoted passage includes the line, “It is mere self-love to be inconsolable at seeing one’s own imperfections.” I will definitely write more about Fénelon’s concept of “self-love” (different from our modern day one), and why he’s so against it. Finally, Huxley quotes Fénelon in Chapter 25 of The Perennial Philosophy, titled “Spiritual Exercises.” I’d say about half of these passages can be found in The Seeking Heart.
But I didn’t know that when I purchased my copy about a year ago. I did some googling and came across a handful of reviews that inspired me to start my Fénelon studies with this particular volume. Though he was best known for his book, The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses, which French literary historian Jean-Claude Bonnet calls "the true key to the museum of the eighteenth-century imagination,” I didn’t think it would provide the kind of distilled wisdom that Huxley quoted in The Perennial Philosophy. And I don’t regret my choice—although The Seed Sowers Library of Classics edition doesn’t do much for me aesthetically. And the introduction/biography section provides little information on the context of the book, or the original sources of its pages. It only says that most of the letters it contains were written during Fénelon’s latter years, after he’d been banished to his diocese. (A bit more on that later.) At first I couldn’t even find a copyright date, until I realized it was in Roman numerals that translated to 1993. Fénelon’s Wikipedia page doesn’t even include The Seeking Heart in its list of his published works. Abe Books has one copy of a volume called Fénelon’s Spiritual Letters, with The Seeking Heart as a subtitle, which maybe is an older translation. The Seed Sowers (a Christian publishing house) website contains a product description that calls The Seeking Heart “an updated version of a series of spiritual letters Fénelon wrote to the seekers of his time. Written to individuals concerning a variety of issues, the spiritual wisdom and counsel contained within these letters make them relevant for today.”
Many of his letters sound like Fénelon could be talking to himself, while others are more clearly addressed to a specific person. Examples of first lines from such letters include: "I am truly sorry about all your troubles”; "I am sorry that one near you is an invalid”; "I am happy to hear you are well”; and, "I hear you are having problems sleeping.” Product reviews that people left on SeedSowers.com contain the headings, “contemplative gem,” “a deep well,” “a spiritual treasure,” “more helpful than any counselor or psychiatrist,” “keep it nearby!”, and “not fluff!” Of the twenty-three reader reviews posted on Goodreads, most describe The Seeking Heart as some version of life-changing. The general consensus is that it is the kind of book you read slowly, as its short, thematically repetitive chapters invite contemplation. I agree. And inasmuch as it has changed the way I relate to difficulty, my own self-criticism, and my meditation practice, the book has indeed changed my life.
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Born on August 6th, 1651, François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon started his formal studies of rhetoric and philosophy at the age of twelve. He gave his first public sermon at fifteen, and he was ordained as a priest at 24. When Fénelon was 28, the Archbishop of Paris selected him as director of Nouvelles-Catholiques, a community in Paris for young Huguenot girls, who had been removed from their families and were about to join the Church of Rome. (Huguenots were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition.) In 1681 (at the age of 30), Fénelon published a pedagogical work called Treatise on the Education of Girls, whose perspective on women's education as a means against heresy brought him much attention in France and abroad. About five years later Fénelon embarked on a missionary venture in the Saintonge region of France, preaching to Protestants with the aim of converting them. Apparently he resorted to force sometimes.
In 1689 he was appointed tutor to the seven-year-old Duke of Burgundy, who was second in line for the throne, and who was apparently a nightmare on the behavioral front, spoiled and violent. Fénelon wrote several important works specifically to guide the character formation of his pupil, including Fables, Dialogues des Morts, and the aforementioned Adventures of Telemachus (first published in 1699), which became an immediate best seller and remained one of the most popular works of the century, going through many editions and translated into every European language and even Latin verse. In 1695, the king nominated Fénelon to become the Archbishop of Cambrai, and Fénelon accepted the post, also remaining in his position as tutor to the Duke of Burgundy. An archbishop, by the way, is one step away from Cardinal, which is one step away from Pope.
It was around this time that Fénelon became embroiled in “one of the greatest ecclesiastical confrontations that church history has ever recorded,” his foe being a powerful religious figure by the name of Bossuet, who had it out for Fénelon for his defense of another theological writer name Jeanne Guyon. Bossuet also condemned Fénelon’s book The Maxims of the Saints, saying that Fénelon’s doctrines were “contrary to the true faith.” Long story short, a Vatican committee was eventually appointed to settle the matter, which took years, and in the end Fénelon received the papal equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Though banished to his diocese (as opposed to traveling, I guess?), he was still able to remain archbishop, and he devoted the remainder of his life to the duties therein, which included giving sermons and providing spiritual counsel to those in his pastoral district. Much of this counsel was in epistolary form, and those letters, according to the biography section of The Seeking Heart, are “generally conceded to be the most perfect of their kind to be found in the French language.”
Fénelon died on January 7th, 1715. Having suffered injuries in a carriage accident a couple months prior, he came down with a fever on January 1st and died six days later at the age of sixty-three.
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The Seeking Heart is divided into three sections: “The Way of the Cross,” “A Life of Simplicity,” and “The Peace of God.” Given Fénelon’s hardcore Catholic orientation, it should come as no surprise that there is a lot of God talk in this book. I can understand how that would turn some people off; it turns me off at times, when it gets especially heavy-handed and Jesus-y. But for the most part I’m easily able to read “God” as “Life,” “Nature,” “Fate,” or “Your Innermost Peace, Love, and Wisdom.” So if you’re like me and you don’t identify as Christian and some of that God-heavy language actually bums you out a little, you can insert whatever word or idea has more positive associations for you. In the case of such translations not applying, just take what you need and leave the rest. We need not throw the baby out with the bathwater. T
Is it blasphemous to take this more secular approach to religious texts? Am I imposing a universalism on Fénelon’s words that actually doesn’t apply? Eh. I can’t say I care that much.
The title of Part One of The Seeking Heart, “The Way of the Cross,” refers, of course, to the cross that Christ had to carry to his own crucifixion, using that object as a metaphor to represent any and every hardship we encounter as humans. The cross signifies pain, and if we resist it, then suffering results. Fénelon says that “the pain of resisting the cross is harder to live with than the cross itself.” Indeed, this very resistance—which comes from a more general “stubborn and hidden hold” we have over our lives—is what necessitates the cross in the first place. And of course we would not learn to relinquish our supposed control if a given hardship did not hit us where it really hurt. Fénelon says that God (which in this case I interpret as Life itself, or Fate, or Destiny) “knows exactly where the fatal blows should fall.” Whatever we are most loathe to give up, that is what will be taken from us. It’s only through these types of losses that we can die to ourselves. Fénelon references this kind of death a lot, as a good thing, as necessary to our growth and to our living for God only, as opposed to for ourselves, our worldly pleasures, etc. I translate “dying to the self” as the death of the ego. The ego contends that it needs X, Y, and/or Z in order to be happy. God, or Life with a capital L, is here to reveal the folly and mendacity of that premise.
In this first part of The Seeking Heart, Fénelon also repeatedly addresses the notion of people creating their own hardships, which reminds me, with a chuckle, of what social critic and public speaker Fran Lebowitz has to say on the matter. People who climb mountains and run marathons and undertake extreme fasting and the like in the name of challenging themselves, Lebowitz says, are not really challenging themselves, because they contrived the challenge for themselves. Real hardship is not contrived. Fénelon would agree. Only God, he says, knows which challenges you need. “The cross that you would pick out would build your self-will instead of breaking it down.” What’s more, the trials God chooses for you are far more efficient in ultimately helping you than any trial you might choose for yourself. He will attack what Fénelon calls “self-love” at its strongest point.
As I mentioned earlier, the self-love Fénelon repeatedly references is not the same concept as the self-love I’ve explored in previous blog posts. When I talked about loving and trusting the Self in the recent blog about Internal Family Systems, I was referring to the Self with a capital S—that calm, compassionate, unconditionally supportive core we all possess—basically what my mind equates with God—or perhaps, to be more specific in my Christian analogies, the Holy Spirit. This is definitely not what Fénelon is encouraging the death of. Nor does his version of self-love refer to self-care, which is something he whole-heartedly endorses. Again and again in his letters, Fénelon exhorts his correspondents to be patient and gentle with themselves, to take regular time for relaxation and silence, and to maintain lifestyles that uphold the health and vigor of their bodies. This is not the kind of self-love that God seeks to destroy by assigning us pain and hardship. Rather, it’s our worshipping of ego—identifying with our physical attributes, our bodily strength, our intelligence, our talents, our social popularity, our material wealth, professional success, and even our spiritual accomplishments—that we are all being invited—through pain, embarrassment, humiliation, grief, fear, and the like—to relinquish. And according to Fénelon, the more we can relinquish our attachment to ego-based identifications, or the more we can die to the self every day, the easier our actual deaths will be.
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Another idea from Part One of The Seeking Heart that I love, has to do with the very human tendency to beat oneself up for making mistakes or otherwise having flaws. Fénelon says, “The pain you feel at your own imperfection is worse than the faults themselves.” This is the idea I had in mind earlier when I said that The Seeking Heart has changed how I relate to my own self-criticism. Not only does chastising ourselves for being flawed make the experience of being flawed that much harder to bear, but that very chastisement is more of a flaw than whatever inspired it in the first place! And why? Because it just deepens our self-absorption (read: ego absorption), which means that we are that much less in touch with God, or the Divine within us and all around us, or whatever you want to call it.
This idea is echoed in the Bernard Bassett book, We Neurotics: A Handbook for the Half Mad, which I wrote about in an earlier blog post. A character called The Little Nun defies the anxiety-riddled narrator’s expectations by not encouraging him, as so many others have, to pray about his neuroses. She says that in his situation, prayer could actually be harmful, because it would just be another way of thinking about himself. She tells him to eschew prayer of any kind for a month and to focus instead on relaxation. In her second and last appearance in the book, The Little Nun not only discourages one against thinking about oneself, but also against doing too much thinking at all, of any kind. The Little Nun attributes the majority of the world’s evils to mankind’s general lack of ability to control our thoughts. She can think of no tyranny greater or more cruel than that of a mind that won’t stop thinking certain dark, overly critical thoughts. She says that in constantly entertaining those types of thoughts, we are not only making ourselves mad, but selfish.
It’s hard to describe what happens in my brain when it clicks into the understanding of this idea. And I imagine it wouldn’t work for everybody, but for me, at least for now, the liberating effect is instantaneous. I catch myself berating myself for making a given mistake, and I remember The Little Nun, and now, even more readily, I remember Fénelon: “The pain you feel at your own imperfection is worse than the faults themselves.” And I quite simply snap out of it. Which seems to imply that the misguided aim of my self-criticism was to somehow improve myself, right? Because when I see that it’s actually making myself worse, not better, I have no need for it anymore. And of course none of this is to say that we should never feel remorse or regret or shame or humiliation for a given faulty behavior. The trick is to see that all of those difficult feelings are proof of our fundamental decency. Those feelings tell us we are bad—or that’s how we interpret their message—but they’re actually proof that we’re good. Fénelon says that God is endlessly patient with us, regardless of our flaws, and so we should practice the same patience with ourselves.
On the other end of that ego spectrum, of course, is the habit of thinking too highly of ourselves. Being part of the ultra-religious crowd, Fénelon’s main point of reference when it came to unhealthy pride was that which occurred in the spiritual realm. It’s like he’s writing a letter directly to me when he says, “Sometimes an exciting book, or an inspiring devotional time, or a deep conversation about spiritual matters will make you feel extremely satisfied with yourself.” You mean, an exciting book like The Seeking Heart? Or an inspiring yoga asana practice or meditation? Or the kind of deep conversation about spiritual matters that I developed this very radio show in order to have on a regular basis? He goes onto say, “You will believe that you are farther along than you really are.” So true. I need only be given the slightest cause to think one of my dogs is sick, or witness a child’s temper tantrum, or feel misunderstood by a loved one, to realize how very far I have to go. Completing this train of thought, Fénelon also says, “Talking about the cross is not at all the same as experiencing it.” I admit it: I talk a lot about the importance of accepting whatever hand we’re dealt, but I’ve been dealt some solid hands since day one. Saying that out loud makes me worry about jinxing things—that often-feared other shoe dropping—but I honestly don’t know if the first shoe has even dropped for me! My life hasn’t always been free of pain and suffering, but compared to what some people experience—and sometimes while they’re still just children—I’ve gotten off way easy. So easy it’s scary.
So I am aware that much of what I wax philosophical and spiritual about in this blog is easier said than done, and when real hardship befalls me—like, say, a cancer diagnosis or the death of a loved one—I’m not entirely sure I could practice the radical acceptance that I preach. But I’ve definitely gotten better at it when it comes to the day to day difficulties and annoyances—which is, more often than not, according to Fénelon, where God resides. “Do not seek God as if He were far off in an ivory castle,” he says. “God is found in the middle of the events of your everyday life.”
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“The Way of the Cross” section of The Seeking Heart returns again and again to the assertion that we can find God—a.k.a. the Meaning of Life, Our Purest True Nature, Divine Consciousness—in moments of pain and suffering just as much—nay, more—than in joyful or tender moments. Fénelon even compares hardship to medicine, calling it “the cure to the poison of your old nature.” This “old nature” he refers to is our conditioned, egoic self. If we could see how much we harm ourselves by not dying to our old nature, our “wrong attachments,” we would weep far more than we do when God takes away something or someone we love. And unfortunately human nature requires that we lose everything before we can finally lose ourselves.
We must be prepared to lose everything. I remind myself of this maxim often. Fénelon would say we must not only be prepared, but willing to lose everything. Coronavirus has certainly highlighted how much work we have to do on that front. And then there’s climate change. Talk about losing everything. I do wish we could find a way as a society, as a species, to balance our problem-solving efforts—vaccines, limits on greenhouse gas emissions—with a more acceptance-based attitude. If we could so easily catch COVID and die, for instance, wouldn’t it make sense to be a little more prepared for sickness and death, rather than pouring all of our energy into resisting those things and fearing them? We get so indignant about unvaccinated people jeopardizing our health, and yet we’re all complicit, every day, in leading lifestyles that are literally—if slowly—well, not so slowly anymore—killing us by heating up the atmosphere to inhospitable temperatures. Coronavirus and climate change might just be the closest things to a universal cross that our species has ever had to bear. I wonder how we might accept them with more grace? As Fénelon says, “The point is not to know how you are to be kept alive, but how you are to lose everything and die.”
Part Two of The Seeking Heart is titled “A Life of Simplicity,” and what stands out the most to me about this section of the book is Fénelon’s refrain of “turning toward God,” which I interpret as turning toward the Self with a capital S. He also calls it “bringing yourself before God.” I’m reminded here of that line in the book Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, something about putting yourself in the way of beauty, which Strayed did by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail all by herself. Fénelon doesn’t recommend anything so ambitious or dangerous. He mostly emphasizes the importance of slowing down, reducing the busy-ness in your life, and spending more time in silence and stillness. “The busier you are,” he says, “the more you must practice turning toward God.” And when you can’t find silence, he suggests letting others take more of the lead in conversations, and also practicing, when you must speak, using as few words as possible. “There is no better way to quench the natural strength of your old nature than by silencing it.”
I once read—I think in a Saul Williams book—that the word “person” means “being of sound”—so, a noisy creature. Of course when I search the etymology of the word “person” online, all I find as its root is the word “persona,” which refers to the masks worn by actors in ancient Greece, and how we all play various roles in life, actors in our own self-perpetuating dramas. This definition is compelling, too, but I think “being of sound” is just as on the nose. We never shut up! If we’re not talking, we’re listening to others talk, either on the radio (thank you!) or podcasts or television or in conversation. Or we’re listening to music, or creating noise with any number of power tools, vehicles, airplanes, sirens. Years ago I read an interview in The Sun magazine about how silence was an endangered phenomenon, that the number of places on the earth where one could go and never hear a human-created sound were rapidly diminishing. For all I know, none of those places exist now, which we largely have airplanes to thank for. Our inability to be still—so potently epitomized by the airplane and the automobile—is inextricably linked with our inability to shut up.
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Of course I must briefly address social media in regards to being quiet. Bo Burnham took the words right out of my brain when he questioned, in his Netflix special Inside, the necessity of every single person on the planet expressing every single opinion that they have on every single thing that happens, all at the same time. “Is that necessary?” Then he reframes the question thusly, which I’m editing for radio: “Can anyone—any single one—shut the hell up? About any single thing? Can any single person shut the hell up about any single thing for…an hour?” He then acknowledges that one could legitimately point out that he’s not shutting the hell up when he rants about everyone else not shutting the hell up (and I realize I’m not either, in writing this blog) at which point Burnham abruptly—in his brilliant way—transitions to another, totally non sequitur comedy segment. My laughter upon seeing that part of Bo Burnham: Inside was one of profound appreciation. Even when social media isn’t actually noisy and only consists of written posts and photographs, it nonetheless creates psychic noise for everyone that consumes it. Fénelon, writing in the early 1700s’, exhorted parishioners to “guard your tongue,” and I’m sure if he were living now, he’d be saying “guard your thumbs,” or whatever digits you use to make social media posts.
The more silence we can give ourselves, the better we can hear that “still, small voice” within. All of the media we consume—even in a good old-fashioned newspaper—drowns that voice out. To paraphrase Fénelon, we render powerless the very thing that could fortify us—namely, our spirit. Our spirit goes “unfed.” But we can feed it by reducing distractions and spending more of our free time “sitting before God.” Or at the very least being able to hear ourselves think.
Not that focusing on our thoughts should be the goal. The Little Nun would agree with Fénelon when he says that too much thinking will “exhaust you and cause you to make a lot of mistakes.” Prayer—or meditation, if you prefer—is an antidote to thinking. Fénelon suggests that we live out every situation as if we were in prayer, as if we were communing with God. We can turn toward the Sacred when we’re driving, getting dressed, or getting a haircut (all examples Fénelon uses). We can orient ourselves to the Divine while eating, or when we feel bored by others’ small talk. So while silence is immensely helpful in allowing us to maintain said orientation, it is not essential. The most important thing to do in this regard is just try to be present with what is. Fénelon says that the will of God is only found in the present moment. We insult today by seeking a better tomorrow. Today—right now—is our “sole treasure.” Reminding me of Jack Kerouac, whom I’ve quoted before on this show as saying, “Eternity and the Here-and-Now are the exact same thing,” Fénelon admonishes us to “view each moment as if it were the whole sweep of eternity.”
Perhaps the most tried and true method of connecting with the Present Moment is to focus on the breath. I also find that gratitude is incredibly effective when it comes to fastening my attention to the here-and-now. As Meister Eckhart famously wrote, “If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” I’ve really taken those words to heart and it’s made a huge difference in my overall outlook and attitude. I am blessed, for instance, to exist, at least for now, in a pain-free body. That alone provides me with enough to be thankful for in every move I make throughout the day, from the simple things like putting on a sweater (no shoulder pain!) to the more complex, like doing yoga or walking my dogs (the latter of which can get quite complex if we encounter a bunny, some deer, or worst of all, a car). And of course each breath is a reason to say thank you.
Another great thing about returning to “thank you” is that it’s a huge relief. It helps me realize, again and again, that all I have to do is be thankful. I don’t have to worry about anything, or plan anything, or figure out why I might be tired or sad or irritable. All I have to do is be thankful for the chance to experience any of it.
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This morning, I stepped out into my backyard with the dogs, feeling pleasantly energized by the walk we’d just taken, and I made my way towards the edge of the property. It was about 8:30 so a lot of the yard was still in shadow, thanks to the tall (though dying) row of vegetation that we keep unmowed for the dogs to sniff around in. There are three of these rows. We call them meadow strips. Our dog Tyke likes to “cruise the strips.” Anyway, the yard was in shadow as I walked along. My ultimate destination, though—a tiny bench my husband made out of two chunks of log with the bark still on, a pine plank on top—was in full sunlight. It looked so adorable, so warm on this thirty-five-degree morning, so welcoming. It was perfect. But as I got closer I could see that right in the middle of the bench was a bird dropping. A fresh one, too. My first instinct was to think that the bench—the whole bucolic scene—was no longer perfect. But what if that bird poop is what actually made it perfect? And by perfect I mean, exactly as it should be?
Regardless, I cleaned it off with a couple leaves and sat down in the morning sun. Did you know that getting morning sun is good for your sleep? And that there’s nothing quite like sitting in that sun, perfectly comfortable in your coat and hat, and just being still and quiet, occasionally opening your eyes to see how the light gets caught in the fuzzy golden rod husk, glowing and halo-like? And to think, “I am so lucky to be looking at this golden rod husk right now”? This is what Fénelon must have been talking about when he said that when you come to really know “the Lord” (i.e. Divine Consciousness, your calm, compassionate center, the fundamental goodness of life), then you will not be able to resist turning toward Him/That every chance you get. And when it isn’t sunny of a given morning, I can practice turning toward That by meditating indoors, preferably after some yoga asanas.
But turning-toward doesn’t necessarily have to involve sitting still and silent for minutes on end. (Sometimes ten can feel like forever.) While Fénelon highly recommends praying or meditating (though he never uses the word “meditate” in that way) every morning and evening, he also acknowledges that any given day contains a multitude of moments for turning-towards. I think it’s pretty common for people to put off spending this kind of quiet, mindful time with themselves because they have an image in their heads of what that experience is supposed to look like. They think they have to sit cross-legged on the floor for thirty minutes for it to count as real meditation, and because they can’t do that for whatever reason, they don’t do anything. An example of how the perfect is the enemy of the good. (And another example of this, I’m realizing now, is that our need to be perfect is worse than any “flaw” we possess.)
And of course we can’t be in a state of meditative non-action all the time, so when we must move about in the world and do things, we can approach those tasks as sacred offerings. Fénelon says, “Even the most ordinary things, done in God’s presence, are serving Him.” I’ve especially remembered this concept when tying up the curtains in my bedroom each morning. I secure them with a pair of pale blue boot laces that came extra with some Doc Marten’s I bought about eight years ago. I don’t know why this particular ordinary act strikes me as especially offering-like—maybe because it’s a way to let more light in?—but it lends a sweetness to that tying of shoe string that wasn’t there before. And the intention to do everything, as Fénelon says, “in God’s presence”—which to me translates to seeing the sacred in everything we do—allows us to be more present with our actions. We don’t do anything mindlessly because we aren’t thinking of anything in the past or imagining anything about the future. When Fénelon says, “You will be much happier if you keep your mind only on the tasks at hand,” I’m again reminded of what Alan Watts says about Zen monks: when they see that something needs to be done, they do it right then and there. And if for some reason they can’t do it right then and there, they don’t think about it. Like Fénelon, they “think of something only when it is time to think of it,” thereby maintaining a quiet spirit.
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Another recurring theme in Part Two of The Seeking Heart has to do with knowledge. What Fénelon says about reading books reminds me of what Chogyam Trungpa, whom I wrote about in an earlier blog post, has to say about the same topic in his book, Meditation in Action. Trungpa allows that books can be of great benefit; namely, they can provide “inspiration and self-confidence” to the reader. Once they have indeed provided that, though, the reader should stop reading, and go forth inspired and confident to see what he can see for himself. Fénelon would agree. In order to remain “pure,” he says, one must, first of all, “read and pray.” But the goal of reading should not be to gain more knowledge. “Nothing could be more vain!” he says. Instead, one should read “some great word or deed of Jesus and ponder it in deep silence.” And here I substitute Jesus with any spiritual master, or with any sacred-feeling text. The poems of Rumi and Hafiz are great for this sort of thing, as are the short passages in Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and, for the matter, the short chapters in The Seeking Heart.
To read with the goal of gaining more knowledge is not to be advised, I gather, because it could result in our being overly proud. Even thinking we know much about spiritual things, Fénelon says, is “more dangerous than being rich,” and will impede us in the important goal of erasing every trace of pride within us. A constant hunger for more knowledge is also symptomatic of a lack of trust in God/the Universe/the Cosmos of which we are an integral part. There’s only so much we need to know in order to live a fulfilling life. Fénelon says, “Be faithful with what you know and more will be given to you.” You don’t need to amass more knowledge—especially book smarts—to become more wise. And Fénelon would add that you don’t need to see yourself as wise at all. “Just be a little child,” he’d say, echoing Jesus’ admonition, “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” He also said the kingdom of heaven lies within you.
And that’s really the whole point of all this spiritual stuff! To make your inner world a kind of paradise. To know that whatever challenge comes your way, you already possess all the strength and wisdom and compassion you need deal with them effectively.
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From the third part of François Fénelon’s The Seeking Heart—which is the shortest section of the book, called “The Peace of God”—I’ll just share one passage that really packs a punch. In the chapter/letter titled “Absolute Surrender,” Fénelon writes, “The moment you stop wanting things to be your way, you will be free from so much worry and concern.” Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh, quoted by Ram Dass in a series of talks called Becoming Nobody, puts it this way: “If you and I are to be free, there is nothing we can push away.”
