The soul seeks God in faith, not by the reasonings of the mind and labored efforts, but by the drawings of love; to which inclinations God responds, and instructs the soul, which co-operates actively. God then puts the soul in a passive state, where He accomplishes all, causing great progress — first by way of enjoyment, then by privation, and finally by pure Love.
✦ The Complete Map
Guyon's masterwork. Thirty-four days of letters, and today she draws the complete map of the interior way — from the first seeking to the final nothing. Everything she has taught, compressed into one passage. Three stages, three purifications, one destination.
What do we understand by the Interior Way? It is to seek the kingdom of God within us. Luke 17:21. It becomes necessary to withdraw the eyes of the soul from external landmarks and rest the eye, in faith, on the Word of the Lord — "Seek and you shall find."
The enemy takes two methods: either by excessive labors, persuading the soul that this is the way to find God, and thus choking the internal process — or by tension of the mind. Neither of these methods open the interior way.
God, seeing the heart of him who seeks Him within, draws near, and teaches a just moderation in all things. By this retrenchment of all excess in externals, the soul begins to perceive the peaceful kingdom.
The active stage. The soul seeks. It fights to recollect itself inwardly. This is hard work — habit makes interior recollection difficult. And the enemy tries to choke the process by two methods that look like devotion but are not: working harder, or thinking harder. Neither opens the way. The kingdom is not in the external vestments of the soul. It is in its depths. And God Himself teaches the moderation that opens the door. 🙏
At this stage, the soul ceases from self. Its work is to regard, lovingly, the operation of God. Now the soul seeks no longer to combat the obstacles, but lets God combat and act in the soul.
"It is time, O Lord, that You should take possession of Your kingdom! I desire only to observe Your operation."
The soul advances very much more by this way, in little time, than by all the efforts of many years. This state is called passive love. The soul sees no cause to fear; it supposes that all the work is done.
God takes over. The soul stops fighting and starts watching. Days and years pass without weariness. The soul advances more in passive love than in all the efforts of many years. And the soul believes the work is done. This is the dangerous moment — the place where most persons mistake the first purification for the last. 🙏
The soul begins to feel a drawing to let God not only be all things in the soul, but there to reign separate from the soul's enjoyment of His gifts. The soul now experiences what is called by the author of the Imitation of Christ, the exile of the heart.
Every successive state is marked by a purifying process. Persons often mistake, and take the first purification for the last.
The soul is afflicted, believing it has lost the virtues acquired with so much care, and seems to have faults that it had not before perceived.
After being despoiled of her beauty, it would be a selfishness much greater to appropriate to herself the beauty of her Beloved. His beauty must remain untarnished, unappropriated by her; she must leave him all, and remain in her nothing, for the nothing is her proper place.
This is Perfect Love, which regards God alone.
✦ The Nothing Is Her Proper Place
The exile of the heart. The gifts are withdrawn — not because God is angry, but because the soul must learn to love the Giver without the gifts. The virtues seem lost. The faults become more visible. And the soul must go further still — beyond desiring God's beauty for herself, beyond appropriating even His beauty — into the nothing that is her proper place.
This is Perfect Love, which regards God alone. Not God and His gifts. Not God and the consolation. Not God and the sweet rain. God alone. The soul that has arrived here has passed through seeking, through enjoyment, through exile — and what remains is love with no object but God Himself. No self left to receive. No beauty to appropriate. Nothing — and in the nothing, everything. 🙏
"She must leave Him all, and remain in her nothing, for the nothing is her proper place."
Madame Guyon · Perfect Love · Which regards God aloneI'm finding myself listening and reading the Word of God as I did when I first converted to Christianity. The fight is the same. You never graduate from not being worried. You fight against this sin again because the enemy still roams.
Paul was very clear: "Fight the good fight of faith" is what we are called to do. The comfort is that it is the good fight of faith, not the bad one.
At the end of the fight we get to taste the victory — and to know that the Lord is good. 🙏
✦ The Good Fight — Not the Bad One
Le brings Guyon's complete map down to the ground where the pilgrim actually walks. The fight is the same — day one and day thirty-four. The enemy still roams. The worry still comes. The old battles return in new clothing. And the soul that has walked thirty-four days with Guyon is fighting the same fight as the soul that walked into Father Joe James's hospital room at midnight.
But Le names the comfort exactly: it is the good fight, not the bad one. The bad fight was the fight against God — the impetuousness, the self-rescue, helping God by saving yourself. That fight is over. The good fight is the fight of faith — trusting when the sweet rain stops, staying planted when the roots feel dry, following across the precipice when reason says turn back.
And at the end — not the absence of fighting. The tasting. O taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 34:8. The victory is not that the fight ends. The victory is that in the middle of the fight, you taste — and you know. 🙏
The Complete Map
Three stages: active seeking, passive enjoyment, the exile of the heart. First by enjoyment, then by privation, finally by pure Love. Every state marked by purification. Most mistake the first for the last.
The Nothing
Her proper place. Beyond appropriating even God's beauty for herself. Perfect Love regards God alone — no self left to receive, no beauty to claim. In the nothing, everything.
The Good Fight
You never graduate. The enemy still roams. The fight is the same — but it is the good fight, not the bad one. At the end: tasting the victory. Knowing the Lord is good.
Guyon's thirty-fourth day. Her masterwork — the complete map of the interior way. And Le's response: the fight is the same. You never graduate.
The three stages confirmed: Day twenty-two named them: illuminated reason, the way of faith, unknown steps. Today Guyon fills in the full landscape: active seeking, passive enjoyment, the exile of the heart. The map that says: beyond the enjoyment, there is still the exile. Beyond the exile, there is the nothing. And in the nothing — Perfect Love.
The enemy's two methods: Excessive labors or forced mental concentration. Both look like devotion. Both choke the interior process. Day nine's polished intellect. Day sixteen's impetuousness. The enemy's best disguise has always been the appearance of spiritual effort.
Le's honesty — reading as she did at conversion: The circle that Guyon has been drawing for thirty-four days appears in Le's own experience. She reads now as she read then — at the beginning. Not because she has lost ground. Because the interior way is a spiral, not a line. The same truths, at a deeper level. The same fight, with clearer eyes. The same Word — received now with the maturity that only thirty-four days of Guyon, and years of morning devotions, could produce.
Psalm 34:8 — taste and see: Le's final word: at the end of the fight we get to taste the victory. Not understand it. Not argue it. Taste it. The Theology of Experience from day twenty-four. The Word reproduced from day twenty-eight. The deep well-spring from day thirty-three. All of it arriving at the same place: the mouth, the taste, the knowing that the Lord is good. 🙏