Fénelon on the Discipline of Not Reasoning About Yourself
⏱ 10 min read
Your mind argues its case all day, and you wake up tired of yourself. The case has been building for weeks — the small inner court that runs underneath every moment, with the defence and the prosecution both in your head, both your voice, both endlessly reasoning about who you are, what you should have done, what you said and did not say, whether the decision was right, whether you are doing enough. The judge never adjourns. The case never closes. François Fénelon, writing in Spiritual Progress to a soul whose interior was caught in the same endless argument, did not give her better arguments. He taught her the discipline of not reasoning about herself at all. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries this same gentle counsel into a daily companion, for the Christian whose mind has been her own loudest neighbour and is ready, finally, for the quiet of the un-argued evening.
Fénelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose private letters of direction became the volume we know as Spiritual Progress, wrote almost all of his pastoral work to people whose interior was hyper-articulate. They reasoned constantly. They knew their own faults intimately. They could narrate their spiritual life in elaborate sentences. And they were, by their own admission, exhausted. Fénelon understood — long before the modern vocabulary for it existed — that the over-reasoning mind was not the cure for the troubled interior but a large part of what was keeping it troubled. The mind that has stopped arguing its case, in his reading, is not the lazy mind. It is the quieted mind, the one that has finally let the inner courtroom close, so that prayer can begin.
The first passage — the calm that precedes the doing
Fénelon, in Spiritual Progress, gave the order of operations the over-reasoning soul has been doing backwards.
“When you shall have become calm, then do in a spirit of recollection, what you shall perceive to be nearest the will of God respecting you.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is when you shall have become calm, then do. The sentence is short. It can be read in eight seconds. It overturns, in those eight seconds, the entire pattern the over-reasoning mind has been running for years. The pattern has been reason your way to clarity, then do. Fénelon names a different pattern. Become calm first. The clarity does not arrive through the reasoning. The clarity arrives through the calm, and the reasoning has, all this time, been the thing keeping the calm out of the room.
The contemplative French school, of which Fénelon was the gentlest voice, understood the quieted mind as a precondition for spiritual perception, not a result of it. The reasoning, however well-intentioned, cannot see what the calm sees. The reasoning is too close. The reasoning is too loud. The reasoning is making the noise it is trying to listen through. Fénelon’s instruction is not that the soul should never think. It is that the thinking that matters happens after the calm has arrived — not as the engine that produces the calm. In a spirit of recollection — that is, with the mind gathered, the scattered pieces drawn back into the centre, the inner courtroom closed for the day. That is the mind that can perceive what is nearest the will of God. The arguing mind, by definition, cannot.
(For the wider context this letter sits inside, the sibling article what Fénelon meant by simplicity of heart names the un-divided interior the quieted mind is finally free to live in, Fénelon on recollection — the forgotten Christian practice walks the small daily gathering of the scattered self that the quieted mind requires, and why Fénelon said silence is the Christian’s hardest discipline describes the silence the over-reasoning has been refusing to enter.)
The somatic — for the body that has been hosting the argument
Pause here. The inner court has not lived only in the mind. It has lived in the jaw, in the small forward set of it that comes from years of preparing the next sentence. It has lived in the temples, in the small pressure that builds when the head has been doing thinking work that the body has been refusing the breath to support. It has lived in the upper back, where the bracing of the case takes its bodily form. The mind has been arguing in the chest, not only in the head, and the chest knows.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat against the floor. Let the jaw release — let it drop by a millimetre, let the back teeth come unstuck. Let the shoulders lower by an inch. Take one slow inhale, not deep, only slow, and let the breath travel down past the chest into the lower belly. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale, until the next breath arrives without your having to plan it.
The slow exhale is the body’s literal practice of letting the argument go. The argument has been held in the muscles of preparation — the small ongoing readiness to say the next thing, to defend the last thing, to refine the position. The slow exhale teaches those muscles that they can stand down. The quieted mind, in Fénelon’s vocabulary, is what arrives when the body is finally allowed to stop hosting the case. The mind has been arguing because the body has been braced to argue, and the body and the mind have been keeping each other in the courtroom. The breath, slowly lowered, is the first key to the door.
The second passage — the peace amid uncertainties
Fénelon, a few letters later in Spiritual Progress, gave the sentence that the mind which has stopped arguing its case is finally free to inhabit.
“We court the reproach of Christ Jesus, and dwell in peace though surrounded by uncertainties; the judgments of God do not affright us, for we abandon ourselves to them, imploring his mercy according to our attainments in confidence, sacrifice, and absolute surrender.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it twice. Slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is dwell in peace though surrounded by uncertainties. The over-reasoning mind has assumed that the peace will arrive once the uncertainties are resolved. The case has been running because each unresolved question is being treated as an obstacle to the peace. Fénelon names a different relationship to the uncertainties altogether. The peace is not the result of resolution. The peace is the address you live at while the uncertainties remain unresolved. Dwell — again the verb — not visit. The peace is the country, not the destination. The uncertainties are the weather inside the country, and they do not change the address.
The judgments of God do not affright us, for we abandon ourselves to them. This is the sentence the inner courtroom has been built to avoid. The whole point of the perpetual reasoning has been the attempt to control the judgment, to anticipate it, to argue it down ahead of time, to manage the inner verdict on yourself so that no surprise can land. Fénelon’s instruction is the slow release of that control. The abandonment to the judgment of God is the closing of the case. The soul that has abandoned herself to the judgments is no longer building the defence. The case is closed. The mind, finally, can rest. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women holds this exact rotation across one hundred and forty days — a short passage, a small page, room for the un-argued sentence, with no place anywhere on the page for the inner court that has been running underneath your evening for too long.
The sentence does not require the uncertainties to disappear. It does not require the verdict to come back. It only requires the small daily abandonment that lets the quieted mind become, slowly, your actual interior.
The third passage — the fidelity that is not built on the lively feeling
Fénelon, writing to a soul who had complained that her quieted mind no longer felt the warmth her arguing mind had once produced, gave the sentence that names what the discipline is finally worth.
“God does not call you by any lively emotions, and I heartily rejoice at it, if you will but remain faithful; for a fidelity, unsustained by delights, is far purer, and safer from danger, than one accompanied by those tender feelings, which may be seated too exclusively in the imagination.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is a fidelity, unsustained by delights, is far purer. The over-reasoning mind has been, in part, a delight-generator. The constant inner argument has produced its own emotional weather — the flush of being right, the relief of having defended yourself, the small dopamine of the next mental sentence forming. The quieted mind, at first, feels like a loss of that weather. The discipline of not reasoning about yourself is, in Fénelon’s hand, a slow letting-go of the emotional reward the reasoning had been quietly producing.
What replaces it is the fidelity unsustained by delights — the durable faithfulness that does not need the lively feeling to keep going. The arguing mind had to produce its own warmth. The quieted mind does not. The quieted mind sits, calmly, in the presence of God without requiring an inner spectacle. Far purer, and safer from danger. The discipline is worth more than the delight it cost. The mind that has stopped arguing its case is the mind that finally has room for the quiet, durable contact with God that the arguing had been displacing.
What the slow practice will do over a year
If you walk the discipline of not reasoning about yourself with Fénelon’s three passages as your quiet companion for the next year, the inner court will not close in a week. The arguing mind has been the loudest tenant for too long to leave on short notice. What will change is your relationship to it. You will start to notice, in real time, when the case is back in session — and you will, slowly, learn the small instruction Fénelon kept giving. Become calm first. Dwell in peace though surrounded by uncertainties. Remain faithful even without the delight. By the end of a year, the quieted mind will be the address more often than the courtroom. The evenings will end with the case adjourned. The mornings will begin with the un-argued breath. The discipline of not reasoning about yourself will have become the small daily room in which prayer, finally, has space to live.
(For the bridge into the closely related practice the Reformed tradition has named in its own vocabulary, Andrew Murray on the inner chamber and the outer life walks the small room where the un-arguing actually happens, and the Holy Spirit’s role in prayer — Andrew Murray’s plain answer names the One who prays the prayer the quieted mind is free to stop trying to articulate.)
We plan, in time, to reprint Fénelon’s letters through Everspring Press, in a slow modern edition for the Christian whose mind has argued itself out and is ready, finally, for the quiet.
Get Seven Days of Stillness — free
A free gift from Hayley Louisa Mark. A short devotional companion drawn from the 140-Day series — seven passages, seven contemplative practices, sent to your inbox over the coming week.
No noise. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you wish.
A daily home for the quieted-mind practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Prayer Journal for Women. Each evening, a short passage and room for the honest sentence — a small daily page built for the mind that has stopped arguing its case, and is ready for the un-argued evening Fénelon spent his letters teaching.
The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries Fénelon’s slow vocabulary — the calm that precedes the doing, the peace dwelt in though surrounded by uncertainties, the fidelity that does not require the delight — into a daily companion for the Christian whose mind has worn itself out arguing, and whose quieted interior is, finally, ready to be its actual address.
