continued Extracts from Ecstatic Notebook by Duncan Ward:
‘Ecstasy is not something that can be accessed on demand, but there may be little tricks and methods we can use in order to make ourselves more amenable to ecstasy when it does come. One useful technique is the spontaneous performance of abnormal acts. The most notorious incident in the life of the thirteenth century mystic Angela of Foligno occurred one Maundy Thursday when she and her companion were bathing the sores of some lepers. Angela had the idea of drinking the water she had used to bathe the sores, and when a scab that had been floating in the water became stuck in her throat she declared that it tasted like the Eucharist. Remarkable though the story is in terms of sheer disgust, what I find most impressive about it is the impulsive character of Angela’s action: the way she made the decision, seemingly from out of nowhere, to drink the scabby water. Benedict did something comparable in his decision to jump into the thornbushes. Normally, when one is confronted with a glass of water that has been used to bathe a leper’s sores, one does not then ask oneself whether to drink it or leave it alone; and normally, when confronted with a group of bushes with sharp thorns, one does not pose the question as to whether one should leap into them or pass on by. These questions, under normal circumstances, simply do not arise; and the water is left undrunk and the bushes are walked away from. But both Benedict and Angela did something extraordinary in these two stories, they created a choice where there had not seemed to be one. To do so opens up a kind of vacuum, because all of a sudden one’s actions are not being informed by the trends of thousands of years of human culture. Within this vacuum may arise the possibility of achieving ecstasy (quite possibly Benedict felt it in the bushes; certainly Angela felt it drinking the water as she tells us of the resulting “intense sweetness” that “lasted all the way home […] just as if I had received Holy Communion”).
Although I have done nothing on the level of Benedict or Angela, I have made some modest attempts at putting the principle into practice. It feels good to try taking steps outside of normal procedure, to forget momentarily the standard approaches and treat situations as if they were being faced for the very first time in the world, without the benefits or impediments of established knowledge. One example took place on the evening of 28/08/06, significant because that dates it to the day immediately prior to my great ecstasy noted a few pages back. I was attempting to cross Park Lane and took the subway that runs under that road; and coming towards the middle point where the tunnel dips down to its lowest level I found that a section of about ten metres in length had become flooded and was under several inches of water. Rather than turn back I suddenly decided to carry on walking and did not take my shoes and socks off or roll up my trousers but continued straight ahead and let the water flow in. This action, as it happened, did not constitute an ecstatic experience – I was laughing as I walked through the water but nothing more – but I believe that it did in some way help to prepare me for the ecstasy I would receive on the following day. The incident in the tunnel was one of a number of similar actions I made in the days leading up to the 29th (the first of my attempts to shower in the rain on my terrace also dates to this time), and together they helped to get me into the habit of casting aside normal patterns of behaviour that is perhaps a prerequisite for the subsequent receipt of ecstatic experience.’
