The First Week: The First Exercise, part the first

Of meditating according to the three powers of the mind concerning three ways in which we fail to accomplish our Will; containing a preparatory prayer, two preludes, and three leading points, with one colloquy.

The preparatory prayer is that whereby we ask assistance of Antinous Nauigator, that all our powers and operations may tend sincerely to our perfection and the accomplishment of our Will.

The first prelude is a certain way of constructing the place [or scene]; for which it must be noted, that in every meditation or contemplation about a gross thing, as for example about Antinous, we must form, according to a certain imaginary vision, a gross place representing what we contemplate; as the temple, or a mountain, in which we may find Antinous Soter, or Diuus Hadrianus Caesar, and the other things which concern the subject of our contemplation.

But if the subject of meditation be a subtle thing, as is the consideration of the Will now offered, the construction of the place may be such as if by imagination we see our Selves alone and separated from this holy world, as confined in a prison of alienation; and humanity itself, in this sundered state, an exile among brute animals.  In this way we can resist our submersion in this estranged context and take our place among the interdependent ecology of the world.

The second prelude will be to ask of Antinous Nauigator that we navigate each proposed contemplation by its proper and earnestly desired route: for example, if I am to meditate concerning the new inundation of the river Neilos after Antinous Soter's deification, I must ask for joy wherewith I may rejoice together with all the Empire rejoicing: but if concerning his drowning, let me ask tears, pains, and anguish, in order that I may suffer together with Diuus Hadrianus Caesar suffering. In the present meditation, therefore, I ought to ask for my own reflection (as in the flowing surface of the river Neilos) and liberation and resolve to change, considering how many human beings have become mired in self-indulgent guilt on account of even one single failing of the Will, and that I have so often chained myself with the same chains.

It must be noted further, that every meditation or contemplation must be preceded by both the preparatory prayer and the two preludes; but the prayer is always made in the same manner, whereas the preludes are different according to the difference of the subjects.

The first point will be to exercise my memory concerning the first error of all, which was that committed by those of us who first built cities, applying immediately the reasoning power of the understanding, and the motion of the Will, stirring me up to consider and understand those things which I may reflect upon and liberate myself from, comparing their intent and their reasons with so many of mine: whence I may gather, since their actions having succeeded in their intents have thwarted their Will and violated their understanding of the world as it has affected us their descendants, how often I myself have thwarted my Will by means of my intent by not uniting cause and effect in a single consideration of a single action. We say therefore, that one must draw into the memory, how people lived in the beginning (and live now in the beginning) understanding themselves rightly to be a cell in an interdependent world (a state we call grace), but not being willing by the liberty of the Will (which is called the proprium and is necessary for the consummation of blessedness) either to pay the price the world charged for their life in uncertainty and in hard travel or to flow according to the dictates of the world's flow, but built cities to be able to store abundance and improve nutrition and allow the development of individual souls.  These cities, however, placed nature outside their boundaries and, by thus fostering the attitude that we were in the world but not of it, caused our ancestors to grow proud against the world, and they were turned from grace to hubris, and from Paradise the world was made Enemy or was made Resource and noone can say which is worse. Accordingly we must examine, by the office of the understanding, more accurately concerning these things, and at the same time strive more earnestly to excite the affections of the Will.

The second point is, to exercise the same three powers concerning the failing of the next generation of our ancestors, which we shall call the second, going over by the memory, how long we as a race have been suffering because of it; how greatly we continue and perpetuate it through our own words and deeds; how many thousands of human beings have failed to accomplish their Will because of it. We must remember, that is to say, how Adam, the right half of the original being made of the clay of the earth in the plain of Damascus, and Eve, the left half of that being, and living in a terrestrial Paradise, free-willed and wild, when they had eaten of the fruit of the tree of their god's knowledge of good and evil, and had allowed that god and his priests and anointed kings to make meaning for them; after their submission, the great and wonderful earth immediately became no longer Paradise for them; and being clothed in clothing they were told was not fashionable, and deprived of their original wildness, dragged out the remainder of their life in servitude, in the greatest labours and miseries. Concerning these things also we must use the reasoning of the intellect and the affections of the will, as before.