Hierarchy Index Cards - C
Carlyle; Carpenter
Card-C-10-01 Intentionality. Carlyle: “The Situation that has not its Duty, its `ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom: and working, believe, live, be free.”
DEH: This is a form of raising life to Intentionality. It regards all that happens to oneself as just what is needed to test and strengthen and mature one. This is the Christian doctrine of God’s Fatherhood and care for his children. His care is the same for all. But our need is to realise this care and the fitness of the environment to what we have to become. So that nothing that happens to us is seen as accident. All is seen as intentional — even the most distressing circumstances. And to see these events as God’s intention and accept them as such is half way to making them your intention. The Christian whose life is thus made purposeful in every detail is thus biologically a higher type than the man who resents his lot.
One stage is for our life and activity to take on intentionality. The next stage is an extension of this: for our environment to take on intentionality.
Card-C-10-03
Carlyle puts this very well. I go a bit further and say that, while circumstances are there to be reacted to and not to be accepted merely, those circumstances are God-instituted; and while bending all one’s energies to remove the evil that befalls one, one should realise that that evil is a Test. We are being tried, and developed, and exercised. And so the evil is given Intentionality. And intentionality is the basis of mental and spiritual growth.
Index Card C-10
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