The first response to the profane expectation of the feeling of happiness-or to the bad habit of imprisoning oneself in this expectation, as if there were not above us a serene and boundless sky-is remembrance of the Sovereign Good or awareness of its Reality and Beatitude. It is this awareness that allows us to perceive the relativity and pettiness of our "complex" of happiness and to notice that in this expectation there are two fundamental vices, namely, concupiscence and idolatry: two things, therefore, that take us away from God and consequently from Felicity as such, the source of all happiness.
Frithjof Schuon
Prayer Fashions Man
Cookies are good because of the Sovereign Good. Have you ever seen a holy man eat a cookie? I would imagine they do it in a detached way, as if they were tasting one for the first time, and the last time. Have we ever really tasted a cookie if we have not tasted it like that? Not that the main point is to learn how to taste cookies. But, if we have trouble tasting something as small and silly as a cookie in a detached way, how about when we try to meditate on, to taste, the Truth not for any pleasure or gain to be had from it, but simply because it is the Truth? How could we, who cannot resist the lure of sweets, not be turned into some sort of lustful, raving monster, at the slightest glimpse of the Good Itself?
God, in his mercy, entered the smallest, pettiest parts of human nature, and is remaking them in the likeness of Himself. His greatness is not of an overwhelming kind. He will not clear away our pettiness if we do not want him to. He is giving us the chance to repent before He comes in power.
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