SIMPLY JIM'S BALANCE/TRAGIC VISION OF HUMANKIND?

    "Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them."

~(Emil Cioran)~

"Only...

 those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, 

and to think about such things means not to think at all. 

~(Emil Cioran)~

SHOULD WE BE INDIFFERENT TO EVERYTHING BUT GOD?

St. Ignatius taught that "indifference" was key to growth in the spiritual life. The term is somewhat problematic for us, because when a person today says, "I am indifferent" toward something, he means "I don’t care about it." But when Ignatius called us to be indifferent about something, he didn’t mean that we shouldn’t care about it, that we should somehow leave our heart out of it: He meant that we should care about God more. We may say, then, that in the Christian life indifference means to position oneself in right relation to God, his creatures, and those material attachments, which, for better or worse, are part of our earthly lives.

Break the Ties that Bind

Our habits are one thing to which we need to become indifferent. All of us have certain idiosyncrasies and particular ways of doing things. They are largely harmless in themselves, but many of us are so attached to them that we can get very upset when they are disturbed in the slightest way. These can be our daily schedule, our plans, our tastes, our way of doing things, or even the order in which we do them.

The fairy tale of the princess and the pea is a perfect illustration of what we have in mind. Old maids and bachelors have the reputation of being impossible to please because they are set in their ways. But some married people are the same way, making a drama when things don’t go their way.

No religious order worthy of its name will tolerate princesses on a pea. A friend of mine, a Canadian nun, told me that on the very first day she entered the convent, she was corrected by her superior because she turned down a dish she did not like. Those entering religious orders are told that they must liberate themselves from these small, apparently insignificant ties which, like the thin threads that bound Gulliver to the ground, prevent novices from taking their flight upward.

The victim of these harmless habits gradually loses his freedom without realizing it.

The path to holiness entails, through God’s grace, becoming "indifferent" to these small attachments which bind us. It would be sheer illusion to believe that this victory does not cost great efforts. 

Order and discipline are desirable, but for many people they become a straitjacket and can cause them gravely to offend charity. Because these habits are good in themselves, it is often very difficult to make people realize that they can become harmful to one’s spiritual development. The saint, though, acquires a superb flexibility and indifference. On the one hand, he never allows his moods to disrupt his schedule; on the other he never hesitates to break it when charity demands it.

SHOULD WE BE INDIFFERENT TO EVERYTHING BUT GOD? 

***

"Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood - all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you."

~(Emil Cioran)~

"From the cradle to the grave, each individual pays for the sin of not being God. That's why life is an uninterrupted religious crisis, superficial for believers, shattering for doubters."

~(Emil Cioran)~

         

"I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday."

~(Emil Cioran)~

"I cannot contribute anything to this world because I only have one method: agony."

~(Emil Cioran)~

"Life is too full of death for death to be able to add anything to it."

~(Emil Cioran)~

"How I wish I didn't know anything about myself and this world!"

~(Emil Cioran)~

"Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them."

~(Emil Cioran)~

"To varying degrees, 

everything is pathology except for indifference."
~(Emil Cioran)~

I am going to have to disagree with this quote by Emil Cioran.

Those...

with a surplus are better "ABEL"

 controlling their circumstances.  

Those..?

without a surplus 

are controlled by them.  

One is not always in a position
 
"ABEL" exercising good judgement.

If we are all to be sinners, 
then there should be no difference between a wise man and a fool
:
Indifference anywhere is just pathology somewhere else.

Therefore...

God be the Eternal;

Not 

Two or Three.

This is still physics
: 
That's all there to it.