Editing Simone Weil (section)

=== ''Decreation'' ===
In ''Waiting for God'' Weil outlines the concept of decreation (French: ''décréation)''. Weil believed that if humans are to imitate God they must renounce their power and their autonomy. Weil refers to this as decreation  which she referred to as "passive activity" or based on her childhood readings of the ''Bhagavad Gita'', “non-active action”.<ref name=":12" /> 

Weil's concept of necessity related to decreation. Weil felt that necessity includes physical forces as well as social forces.<ref name=":12" /> Weil states The self and the social are two great idols, but one is saved by grace<ref name=":16">{{Cite book |last=Weil |first=Simone |title=Gravity and Grace |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |year=1997 |isbn=0803298005}}</ref><sup>45</sup> All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws similar to gravity, except grace. While gravity is the work of creation, the work of grace consists of decreation.<ref name=":16" /><sup>21</sup>

Weil felt that when an individual is self-centred they deny necessity. Consent to necessity means the only choice is whether or not they desire the good. For Weil, this type of consent is obtained metaphysically through decreation rather than through effort.<ref name=":12" />

Decreation allows for obedience to the truth and not feel cheated or interested in compensation. Weil states: <blockquote>“And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.’ To remit debts is to renounce our own personality. It means renouncing everything that goes to make up our ego, without any exception. It means knowing that in the ego there is nothing whatever, no psychological element, that external circumstances could not do away with. It means accepting that truth. It means being happy that things should be so.”<ref>{{Cite book |last=Weil |first=Simone |title=Waiting For God |date=2009 |publisher=Harper Collins |isbn=9780061718960 |pages=149 |chapter=Concerning the Our Father}}</ref></blockquote>Simone Weil argues that our perception of reality is clouded by attachment—attachments born from the self, projected onto the world. We do not see things as they are, but as they relate to our desires, values, and imagined needs. The self, or “I,” fabricates a world driven by illusions: imagined debts others owe us, rewards we fantasize receiving from kings or gods. These imaginary constructs become the primary motivators of human behavior because, unlike real rewards, they are limitless.<ref name=":16" /><sup>53-54, 59</sup> 

True access to reality requires detachment: the stripping away of these illusions and the destruction of the “I.” This detachment is not mere indifference but a spiritual discipline that suspends imagination and opens one to necessity and truth. Only in this emptiness—desire without an object—can we encounter the presence of God, which is veiled by imagination but present in everything that exists.<ref name=":16" /><sup>59, 100–101, 115</sup>

Weil sees obedience as taking two forms. One is mechanical, driven by imagined righteousness or divine approval—an obedience rooted in desire and self-deception. The other is a form of pure attention: a fixed gaze on the real relationships among things, free from self-interest. This pure attention is the only true motive for action, because it does not seek reward or justification.<ref name=":16" /><sup>96–97</sup>

To harm another is to attempt to fill our own emptiness by taking from them—by expanding ourselves at their expense. But Weil insists that the only true freedom lies in the voluntary destruction of the self, a self that affliction may also destroy involuntarily. This loss, when embraced through decreation, allows the soul to participate in the divine act of creation.<ref name=":16" /><sup>50, 71, 76, 80</sup>

Even in ancient mysteries, people served or touched the divine without knowing it, clothing God in ignorance. For Weil, the meaning of such mystery is not in knowing, but in the purity of action and attention, being with God without imagining or naming Him.<ref name=":16" /><sup>105, 115</sup>