The path of counsel is the way of life that leads to the encounter with the wisdom of God's Spirit. That Spirit, as we have already seen, lies within us, and the attainment of His knowledge is God's gift to us. But we have to be perpetually ready to receive this summons, lest the pearl of great price remains unobserved and therefore unclaimed. The spirit of counsel is intimately related to the spiritual self that is our true identity, were we only in conscious relationship with it. As we have already noted, the identity we know and seek to preserve is a narrowly egoistical one based on such superficial appurtenances as age, sex, social and financial position and intellectual attainment. These find their summation in the role we play in the world around us, and their outer manifestation constitutes the image of ourselves that we project on to others and take refuge in when we are alone and our faith is sorely tried. In itself this is not so much reprehensible as childish, for that identity not only fluctuates in the short-term but is also irreversibly diminished by the inroads of time and ageing, disease and degeneration, and finally death with its apparent end of all mortal endeavour. As St Paul says 'If it is for this life only that Christ has given us hope, we of all men are most to be pitied' (1 Cor. 15:19). The counsel that proceeds from the egoistical person, even if he is replete with the latest psychological knowledge, will be dominated by his own opinions and view of life. He cannot avoid, by the very frailty common to us all, taking the higher seat and assuming the master role. Therefore his counsel is of man's knowledge rather than of God's wisdom. It will consequently tend to be biased and even at its more brilliant will lack the perception that comes from the burning intuition of the naked soul. This is where the deeper, more comprehensive identity of the person resides, and it makes itself felt more keenly as we move on the path of life. Here our opinions are constantly being challenged by new data, and the rather superficial criteria of our identity are being ground down in the attrition that age and experience bring in their wake.
How does one encounter this spiritual self which is the foundation stone of our personalities, the rock on which our being is exquisitely fashioned? The most compelling recognition occurs in the infused mystical experience which changes our entire view of life, but this experience comes by the grace of God. If it is in any way fostered or cultivated, either by drugs or by special meditation techniques, it is sullied and cheapened. If it is captured it is degraded into an egoistical possession, tending to exalt one's innate selfishness so that one believes one is the repository of a special knowledge and therefore a very remarkable person. If it is given by God, it regenerates the personality and becomes the centre around which the new man is born and gradually develops into a real person. He is emphatically himself and none other, but now the integrating power is no longer the predatory ego but the person of Christ Himself. We have met St Paul's doctrine already: 'I have been crucified with Christ: the life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me' (Gal. 2:19). Christ does not take over the life of the person whose being He has entered as a conscious presence. He instead illuminates it with meaning and purpose, so that the innate qualities of that person are made manifest and the gifts of the Holy Spirit allowed to play their proper role in his future work for his own development as well as the benefit of those to whom he ministers.
It is in the practice of inner silence that the true self is known and its fountain of living wisdom encountered and tapped. Silence in this respect is an attitude of inner stillness in which there is practised awareness, attention, and deep concern for other people in addition to one's own need. The practice of awareness, or alert mindfulness, is one in which the senses and mind are open and receptive to all information that impinges itself on them. This information comes as sensory stimuli and also as intuitive shafts of understanding that appear to arise from the very depths of one's being. Each stimulus and the emotion it evokes are acknowledged without prior judgment, whether it is good or bad, beneficial or malign. It is the phenomenon itself that is significant, and the emotion that accompanies it reveals much about ourselves and our most intimate reactions to our inner life as well as the world around us. This awareness of one's present disposition and the emotions that arise within one are not to be confused with morbid introspection, in which one's attitudes and actions are analysed and deliberated upon in minute detail to the detriment of the present place of work and the needs of those around one. The aware person is inwardly still and quiet, being in proper relationship with his own psyche while at the same time participating freely in the world around him. In this state of self-awareness the barrier that usually separates the inner life of the person from the life of the world around him is thinned until it is finally breached. It was said of Christ that at the moment of His death the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Mark 15:38); in that death the sacred and the profane were finally united, and through that death and what followed we too can effect a union between the inner temple of the soul and the world outside when we are aware of the sanctity of all life concentrated in the present moment, which is unique in content and can never be repeated.
Attention follows awareness. It means a focusing of our awareness on a particular person or phenomenon. Attention is a total giving of oneself to the situation around one, and brings with it discernment and commitment. Our attention is the most immediately useful part of ourselves that we can give to anyone, but it is valuable only when it is pure, undivided and tranquil. This purity and fullness of attention can be known only to a person who is at peace in himself and has learned the lesson of enlightened self-love. When we need no longer flinch at any revelation concerning ourselves, then we are free to contemplate another person, or a more complex event, with wholehearted commitment. The special equanimity that allows us to accept whatever is in store for us in trust, since we have moved beyond the need for assurance and recompense for what we have done, also enables us to give of ourselves fully in psychic outflow to another person.
Concern crowns awareness and attention. It is a positive psychic relationship between one person and another in which the one can share in the unhappiness and distress of the other. The end of this relationship is a positive action to relieve the distress. In some situations this may entail an outer response of help, but more often all that can be done is to vow an inner commitment to that person's needs. This commitment shows itself in holding him in one's thoughts and praying regularly for him. The inner link is strengthened by the more material communication afforded by the telephone and the welcome visit. And yet the concern should always be non-attached. One is not there to take over the life of another person or even to influence it in a particular spiritual direction. This is the work of God's Spirit in a person's life. But when one is infused with the spirit of counsel, one can assist the Holy Spirit working in that person by being available and also acting as a mouthpiece of wisdom when the time is opportune. This requires a sensitivity of response that is beyond the reach of the naked human consciousness, for we tend to rush in all too often because we feel the need to justify ourselves or our opinions. But the spirit of counsel cleanses and enlightens the intuition, and affords shafts of the most penetrating insight into the disposition of the person in pain. It is then that the appropriate word flows from the mouth of the counsellor, who himself acts as a purified instrument of God's peace and does not need or attempt to assert his presence with lordly advice.
It is in the silence of losing oneself in concern for someone in distress that one finds oneself as one really is. When one's commitment is total and one's inability to ease the situation by rational means is equally complete, one enters a dark silence in which there echoes a shattering awareness of impotence both in being of help to anybody and, more starkly, in being true to oneself in the depths of one's present inadequacy. When we can no longer act constructively, at least according to our own judgment of what is a helpful response, we are cast over the precipice of self-esteem that we ourselves had erected. We hurtle downwards, dashing ourselves against the jutting rocks of submerged unconscious complexes that more usually reveal themselves to us in dreams of which the main features and trends are represented as symbols. When we reach the bottom, bruised and diminished in our self-esteem and enveloped in a dark world of menacing images that often take their origin from the earliest period of our life, a light shines distantly before us. It is the light of the world, the Christ within each of us. As we move by hesitant, rationally unguided steps towards that light, we find that it too is moving towards us when our inner disposition is directed by willed self-discipline and service to others. When the light meets us, or more precisely when we have entered into the light by arduous yet fearful steps into the unknown, that light affords us the key to our own identity, and what is revealed puts any previous comprehensive view of the world into imbalance and disarray.
The light is surrounded by silence, indeed is the very heart of the silence. The more in fellowship one is with one's true being, the more emphatic, embracing and invigorating does the silence become. To be outside the orbit of the silence becomes intolerable, and indeed eventually an impossible situation, because from the silence issues forth the Word of God in Whom alone is life. As a result one is always accompanied by the silence of inner peace, and is attended by its invariable fruit of deep communion with the soul of any person one is called on to meet and assist. Thus the disciplined silence of a life of prayer on behalf of others has its ultimate fruit in the attainment of a free, joyous silence in which one flows out in blessing to all around one.
This silence would seem, at least as an unqualified state, to be one of isolation from the world and a determined withdrawal from the company of those around one. In fact this aspect of silence is only the preliminary discipline that points to a much deeper, fuller and more committed way to communication with all kinds of people, and not only those whom one likes or with whom one shares some special interest that brings the participants together in a private, exclusive enterprise. In the silence of the true self that is also a focus of God's uncreated light by which His emergent energies are known to His creatures and made available to them, we enter a common unity of knowledge and regard. It is said of Christ that when even two or three are gathered together in His name, He is in the midst of them (Matt. 18:20). To be gathered together in Christ's name means to be bound together in His nature, inasmuch as the name of a person is the way by which we enter into a knowledge of his unique identity. It is for this reason that we cannot give a finite name to the Ultimate Source of Being from Whom all creation stems. The title god can be applied to any individual source of free will, and as such is used biblically even in respect of leaders and judges who are invested with god-like powers over those subject to them, but fail to execute these powers with love and justice (Pss. 58:1 and 82:1, 6). God the Father, on the other hand, works according to the way His nature was perfectly revealed in the ministry of Christ. In the same way, the name and nature of Christ are with all who enter into the silence of prayer in service to those who are in pain and mental agony. Furthermore, that silence of deep inner commitment to all who are in need of reassurance and love flows out in a never-abating stream from the one who lives and speaks from his inner depths where the true self is encountered and emits a perpetual radiance.
It follows therefore that the initial withdrawal from the world and the necessary inner retrenchment to find, establish and speak from the true self is fructified by bestowing the sacred quietness of the self on all whom one meets in everyday life and especially on those to whom one ministers healing and counsel. The silence of the self, far from making us remote from the world and separating us from our fellows, is the bond that the Holy Spirit uses to effect intimate spiritual relationships for the healing of many people. In the silence we are able to imbibe freely of God's wisdom and also the psychic obfuscation and emotional turmoil that may be around a person in great mental agony.
Once the silence has been experienced - and, as I have already indicated, it usually comes to one as an inner revelation during great suffering or at the peak of an intense emotional or aesthetic experience, although there are some unusual people who have known the inner silence of divine communion from their earliest years and have never been deflected from its sanctity despite the claims and temptations of the world - it has to be guarded, nurtured and made available to others. This is where the life of spirituality is vitally important. This life has been preserved and propagated in all the world's authentic religious traditions, Western and Eastern alike, that see the end of humanity in sharing fully in the divine nature, which is both personal in relationship to the finite individual and transpersonal in relationship with the cosmic flow with which the human mind grapples by transposing it into categories of time and space. It must be emphasised that the nature of reality is never impersonal, for personality is life and love, and as such it is lavished on all creatures equally, irrespective of their apparent usefulness to society. 'The kind of religion which is without stain or fault in the sight of God our Father is this: to go to the help of orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself untarnished by the world' (Jas. 1:27).
The concern for those who are helpless follows from an attitude of harmlessness to all life. Being unsullied by the world is not to be interpreted as an other-worldly withdrawal from participating in the common round of everyday living, still less a despising of the joys inherent in the full use of the body and its senses. Every aspect of earthly life can lead to an encounter with the divine were our awareness sharpened to the keenness of immediate recognition and response. Where the temptation of the world emerges as a constant threat is in our selfish, predatory attitude to its beauty and riches. As soon as the natural, predatory ego-consciousness takes control, it seeks to acquire, hoard and control the world's resources for itself. There follow from this selfishness of intent the evils of greed, dishonesty, jealousy and hatred which culminate in strife between people and ultimately war between nations.
The way in which one can play one's proper role in worldly society without becoming entangled in its muck and slime is by entering fully into an authentic spiritual tradition that has as its points of reference a sacramental life observed in fellowship by all who strive for better faith, the assiduous practice of prayer, and a deep awareness of personal inadequacy in the face of the divine love. This renders confession a necessary daily observance with its end in the full absolution accorded by a God whose nature is always to have mercy. The warmth of His love embraces in forgiveness even the most terrible sinner once he has repented and strives towards a new life of penitence in service and sacrifice of self for his brothers. To those who cannot accept the divine presence as a personal power that can absolve sin directly, a compromise can be struck by accrediting to the cosmic process itself the power to heal that which is aberrant and seeks a fresh start. In due course the love that informs this process will make itself a very real presence in the heart of the seeker, so that he will be aware that the power which moves the universe is in him also, and is constantly aware of his need and responsive to his entreaty.
The things of ultimate reality are not tractable to the natural unaided reason, but as one grows in spiritual experience, so the natural reason - which is never to be denigrated, let alone disregarded - is imbued with divine grace and is able to attain an understanding of eternal truth. The phenomena of this world, far from being the sum of all truth, are simply the surface of what we call reality. While not in themselves illusions, as some mystical traditions would imply, they are in essence outer, visible signs of a reality that is hidden from our natural senses and of spiritual intensity. In other words, to the person imbued with vision all the world is a sacrament, and nothing that occurs in his life is devoid of a deeper, spiritual content that leads him closer to the source of all life, whom men call God. This applies, to those with openness and humility, equally to the agreeable and the unpleasant experiences of life. All are here to teach us not to cling to any present security, but to see our lives as expendable, being offered as a perpetual sacrifice for the world. It is only in this frame of mind that we can escape from the bondage of the ego-consciousness to the freedom of full identity, by which alone there is a complete participation in life. Then we know the truth which sets us free (John 8:32). This truth is shown in the revelation of Christ, Whose presence is the eternal spirit of the soul. He sets us free from the clinging necessity for constant recognition and recompense. Indeed, if the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free (John 8:35). And in the freedom of the soul, the spirit of counsel speaks with a clarity and an authority that bring new life to all who hear the word and pursue the doctrine in action and dedication.
The practice of prayer is the most important inner work on the path to sanctification. By prayer there can be an encounter with the world's grime that leaves one untarnished and the world a cleaner place for one's presence in it. In the dedicated silence of giving oneself wholly to God, the Holy Spirit (before, an unacknowledged presence in our life) now makes Himself heard inwardly and accepted joyously in the depth of our being. Since the spirit of counsel is a gift of the Holy Spirit, it reveals itself best when the mind is completely open in willed assent to the workings of God within it. The gift of the Spirit that seems to be especially close to the spirit of counsel, according to St Paul's list in 1 Corinthians 12, is the one of putting the deepest knowledge into words. This is the second of the list; the first, described as the gift of wise speech, can also be included. St Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:11-13,
For the Spirit explores everything, even the depths of God's own nature. Among men, who knows what a man is but the man's own spirit within him? In the same way, only the Spirit of God knows what God is. This is the Spirit that we have received from God, and not the spirit of the world, so that we may know all that God of His own grace has given us; and, because we are interpreting spiritual truths to those who have the Spirit, we speak of these gifts of God in words found for us not by our own human wisdom but by the Spirit.
In prayer it is the Holy Spirit Himself Who is the initiator of the act as well as its final consummation. He tells us of our lack and our need for confession when we are silent enough to hear His voice inside us. And when we have confessed our sins and made our petition to ourselves in clear consciousness, in the presence of God, with rededicated lives and a determined will to do better in the future, the Spirit sheds His healing radiance on to the troubled soul, and starts a new phase of life within. Each day we tend to relapse into the shoddy unconcern for truth that typifies the world around us. Each day the spirit of prayer raises us from the all-encompassing quagmire of indifference to a peak of aspiration in which the whole universe is transfigured in light and raised up to a fresh vision of glory. It is in this state of awareness that the spirit of counsel flows most perfectly from our lips, purifying our lives and giving peace to all those around us. It is no wonder then that the path of counsel is illuminated by shafts of prayer. These form the foundation of each day's work, and are also constantly on our lips as we ask for guidance in a difficult situation. This situation need not necessarily concern oneself directly. In the work of counselling it is the other's problem that is the focus for guidance, and once again, the spirit of counsel issues forth in the word of the person who is in prayer even while at work.
It must be emphasised, however, that prayer is no substitute for technical knowledge, and the treasury of understanding with which we have been blessed from the insights of the acknowledged masters of psychology is not to be laid on one side and forgotten. On the other hand, it is to be used with a grateful yet astute discernment. The spirit of counsel enables one to make use of all the means at one's disposal to help another person in difficulties. But now these remain the means in hand and do not become so dominant as to form an end in themselves. The end is always the growth of the individual into a full person who can assume responsibility for his life and his actions under the guidance of the divine power within him. The spirit of counsel is the word which delivers all who are attentive from the slavery of unconscious attitudes of the past to an active participation in the life of the present. The word does not dominate, still less dictate, the way of future life. It acts instead by releasing the potential for growth in the one who is open, so that the point of integration within him who hears is now awakened and active. It is from this centre of authenticity that the new life is directed, a life at once precarious and assured of consummation.
The path of counsel is the life of disciplined awareness of the present moment. 'If your eyes are sound, you will have light for your whole body' (Matt. 6:22). As the aspiring athlete gears every muscle for the contest before him, sacrificing the temptations of the flesh for the greater prize ahead, so the one who treads the path of counsel learns to sacrifice all paltry diversions for the privilege of attending to the word within him which speaks of eternal life. The beacons on this path are self-giving service to others, an inner life of prayer and devotion to the Most High, and awareness of the deeper meaning inherent in even the most trivial circumstances of everyday existence.