TO ACCEPT THE VOID
To accept a void in ourselves is supernatural. Where is the energy to be found for an act which has nothing to counter-balance it? The energy has to come from elsewhere. Yet first there must be a tearing out, something desperate has to take place, the void must be created. Void: the dark night. (p. 10)
Admiration, pity (most of all a mixture of the two) being real energy. But this we must do without. (p. 11)
The world must be regarded as containing something of a void in order that it may have need of God. That presupposes evil. (p. 11)
DETACHMENT
Affliction in itself is not enough for the attainment of total detachment. Unconsoled affliction is necessary. There must be no consolation - no apparent consolation. Ineffable consolation then comes down.
To forgive debts. To accept the past without asking for future compensation. To stop time at the present instant. This is also the acceptance of death.
'He emptied himself of his divinity.' To empty ourselves of the world. To take the form of a slave. To reduce ourselves to the point we occupy in space and time - that is to say, nothing.
To strip ourselves of the imaginary royalty of the world. Absolute solitude. Then we possess the truth of the world. (p. 12)
[We have difficulty when we seek consolation, which is actually trying to find a 'quick fix' to our troubles and our struggles.']
Always, beyond the particular object whatever it may be, we have to fix our will on the void - to will the void. For the good which we can neither picture nor define is a void for us. But this void is fuller than all fullnesses.
If we get as far as this we shall come through all right, for God fills the void. It has nothing to do with an intellectual process in the present-day sense. The intelligence has nothing to discover, it has only to clear the ground. It is only good for servile tasks.
The good seems to us as a nothingness, since there is no thingthat is good. But this nothingness is not unreal. Compared with it, everything in existence is unreal. (p. 13)
Love is not consolation, it is light. (p. 13)
Attachment is a manufacturer of illusions and whoever wants reality ought to be detached. (p. 14)
All suffering which does not detach us is wasted suffering. Nothing is more frightful, a desolate coldness, a warped soul (Ovid. Slaves in Plautus). p. 14
[re. this last quote, Weil's comments complements 1 Peter 4.1: 'he who has suffered has ceased from sin.']
IMAGINATION WHICH FILLS THE VOID
The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.' (p. 16)
In not matter what circumstances, if the imagination is stopped from pouring itself out we have a void (the poor in spirit). (p. 17)
We must continually suspend the work of the imagination filling the void within ourselves.
If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe?
We have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full. (p. 17)
RENUNCIATION OF TIME
Time is an image of eternity, but it is also a substitute for eternity. (p. 18)
The miser whose treasure has been taken from him. It is some of the frozen past which he as lost. Past and future, man's only riches. (p. 18)
[The Eucharist is all times]
The future is a filler of void places. Sometimes the past also plays this part ('I used to be,' 'I once did this or that...') . But there are other cases when affliction makes the thought of happiness intolerable; then it robs the sufferer of his past (nessun maggior dolore...).
We want the future to be there without ceasing to be future. This is an absurdity of which eternity alone is the cure. (p. 19)
Time and the cave. To come out of the cave, to be detached, means to cease to make the future our objective. (p. 19)
