[st uriel's] On the Soul

[Fr Tim Mansfield]

On Sunday a half-dozen of us gathered at the Unitarian Centre to talk about
the Soul led by the beautiful, troubling Gnostic text "The Exegesis on the
Soul".

http://www.piney.com/GnosExegesisSoul.html

The text uses the allegory of a woman who leaves her family to go into the
world and becomes beguiled by wily men who take her to their beds, promising
her love, fidelity and riches but leaving her penniless, forlorn and alone.
She is taken in again and again and always left abandoned.

Finally she cries out to her father for aid and undergoes a transformation,
turning in on herself she enters the peace of her bed chamber and tingling
with expectation begins to await, not yet another lover, but her Bridegroom.
He eventually arrives and they are united, become one and return to the
house of the father.

My fairytale summary leaves out a great deal of bizarre detail which I'll
leave you to discover yourself when you read the text.

The story is old, it's taught in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities
and it points, I think, to a simple aspect of our experience.

Before we begin to set our feet upon the path, many of us find it hard to
even notice what is referred to in this story as the Soul. Our attention and
awareness is so drawn by the phenomena of the material world, by other
people, by television and relationships, McDonald's and birdsong that it's
hard to even be aware that there's an interior experience to be attending
to.

It took me a long time to begin to really notice my interior, my judgements,
my meaning-making, my thoughts, my feelings and to tease out those interior
experiences from what and who I was looking at and hearing.

At some point, for some reason, some of us resolve to make a change, to
change how we're thinking and experiencing our lives. The traditional term
for this is "metanoia" - to transform the mind, a word that gets translated
as "repentance". The first step is to turn the attention inward and to start
noticing our Soul.

"Soul" means many things for different people, but in the terms of the text
we can take it to mean the aggregate of those interior experiences -
feelings, thoughts, judgements, intentions and so on. In modern terms,
perhaps we could use the shorthand that the Ego is the confused Soul,
unaware of herself and turned outward.

As we begin to attend to all that interior activity, a spaciousness can
start to open around the Soul and an older, wiser aspect begins to be
evident. My Spirit - that wider, wiser me-but-not-me - takes my Soul by her
hand and leads her to the bridal chamber and to Union, rendering whole that
which has been broken.

Our Tradition suggests that our Spirit is ever-present with us, acting as
our connection to the majestic grace and love we crave. I am so often so
caught in my Ego's bluff and bluster, his pretended certainty that he can
make it on his own, that he needs no help, that opening myself to anything
else seems foolish and impossible.

The Exegesis suggests that when we truly realise how badly we have been used
and how "penniless" we are and simply cry out for help - for Mercy - then
the bedchamber of our heart opens to admit the Bridegroom. It's a beautiful
story and so clearly mirrored in so many personal experiences I've heard.

Next week we meet to share the Divine Liturgy of the Eucharist in order to
give thanks for the lives of All Gnostic Saints - all those blessed teachers
who have gone before us and shared their sight with us.

I hope you can join us.

Divine Liturgy
6pm Sunday 23 Nov
Unitarian Centre
15 Francis St
Darlinghurst

Father Tim+
http://www.saint-uriels.org
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