detachment

"To strip ourselves of the imaginary royalty of the world. Absolute solitude. Then we possess the truth of the world."

"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 fullness.

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 nothingness, since there is no thing that is good. But this nothingness is not unreal. Compared with it, everything in existence is unreal."

I look at this last statement as a comment on reification. Good is the palpable shadow that stretches across our uncertainty. We see good things knowing full well their empty promises, yet unaware that it is the pedestal that simultaneously supports inadequate certainty, hence disbelief. It is not Good we ought to be after, but the void (that infinite gap that both separates and connects us to God almighty referred to as Grace). Once we go after God (which we have no power in our own self to attain), we end up following god as a reified subject...which is without saying, no God at all.

The notion of distance is interesting in this sense...the unbridgeable gap which can only be crossed by the Holy Spirit. As long as we are within our fleshly, fallen and decaying vessels, we will find ourselves trying to traverse this gap and falling tremendously short every time.

This seems to be where grace comes in, which for Weil is also a form of detachment.

"The reality of the world is the result of our attachment. It is the reality of the self which we transfer into things. It has nothing to do with independent reality. That is only perceptible through total detachment. Should only one thread remain, there is still attachment."

As long as we perceive nature, man and God as extensions of our own self rather than independent subjects, we will "soil" our relationship to these things (succumbing to gravity and thus refusing Grace to occur between us).

affliction is a cause for attachment (false comfort, false knowledge, false control, false security).

"Attachment is a manufacturer of illusions and whoever wants reality ought to be detached." (Weil, 14)

Attachment is an insufficiency in our sense of reality. We think if we cease to possess a thing it ceases to exist.

Misery.

Misery would be intolerable if it were not diluted in time. If misery were intolerable it would detach us from our unreality.

"All suffering which does not detach us is wasted suffering."

this ties back to Weil's issue with consolation and how inconsolable affliction is necessary to detachment. We are comforted in our understanding, yet by our own perception, understanding (objectively) is in fact misunderstanding without Grace.

"Each time that we say 'Thy will be done' we should have in mind all possible misfortunes added together." (Christ on the cross)

"The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it. If we can let our whole good rest with something hidden in the ground, why not with God?"

detachment is distance that allows a thing to be fully that thing, Man to be fully Man and God to be fully God. (all through Grace).