Blessed Night, Loves 😊

I Pray All Is Well With Everyone…And Your Hearts And Minds Are Full Of Love, Joy, And Compassion…For Yourselves And Everyone Else…All Over The World. And If For The Majority Of Mankind That Was The Case…Then We Would Be Well On Our Way To Seeing Brighter Days – On This Earth! But Even So, Let Us Never Lose Hope; Instead Continue To Radiate More Of The Loving Energy Of Our Own “Mighty I AM Presence” – At Every Opportunity Given Us; Until Radiating The Loving Energy Of Our “Presence” Becomes Effortless…And Love Is The Prevailing Thought…Of The Collective Consciousness. Amen…

Give Thanks And Praises For Love Life…

And Y’all Be Love…

“In illumination we come to that state of consciousness which is popularly supposed to be peculiar to the mystic: a form of mental life, a kind of perception, radically different from that of “normal” men. His preceding adventures and experiences cannot be allowed this quality. His awakening to consciousness of the Absolute – though often marked by a splendor and intensity which seem to distinguish it from other psychic upheavals of that kind – does but reproduce upon higher levels those characteristic processes of conversion and falling in love which give depth and actuality to the religious and passional life. The purification to which he then sets himself – though this possesses as a rule certain features peculiar to mystical development – is again closely related to the disciplines and mortifications of ascetic, but not necessarily mystical, piety. It is the most exalted form with which we are acquainted of that catharsis – that pruning and training of the human plant – which is the essence of all education, and a necessary stage in every kind of transcendence. Here, the mystic does but adopt in a more drastic form the principles which all who would live with an intense life, all seekers after freedom, all true lovers must accept though he may justly claim with Ophelia, that these wear their rue with a difference.

But in the great swing back into sunshine which is the reward of that painful descent into the “cell of self-knowledge”, he parts company with these other pilgrims. Those who still go with him a little way – certain prophets, poets, artists, dreamers, do so in virtue of that mystical genius, that instinct for transcendental reality, of which all seers and creators have some trace. The initiates of beauty or of wisdom, as the great mystic is the initiate of love, they share in some degree the experiences of the way of illumination. But the mystic has now a veritable foothold in that transcendental world into which they penetrate now and again: enjoys a certain fellowship – not yet union – with the “great life of the All”, and thence draws strength and peace. Really and actually, as one whose noviciate is finished, he has “entered the Inner Choir, where the Soul joineth hands and danceth with Sophia, the Divine Wisdom”: and, keeping time with the great rhythms of the spiritual universe, feels that he has found his place.

This change of consciousness, however abrupt and amazing it may seem to the self which experiences it, seems to the psychologist a normal phase in that organic process of development which was initiated by the awakening of the transcendental sense. Responding to the intimations received in that awakening, ordering itself in their interest, concentrating its scattered energies on this one thing, the self emerges from long and varied acts of purification to find that it is able to apprehend another order of reality. It has achieved consciousness of a world that was always there, and wherein its substantial being – that Ground which is of God – has always stood. Such a consciousness is “Transcendental Feeling” in excelsis: a deep, intuitional knowledge of the “secret plan.”

…To “see God in nature,” to attain a radiant consciousness of the “otherness” of natural things, is the simplest and commonest form of illumination. Most people, under the spell of emotion or of beauty, have known flashes of rudimentary vision of this kind. Where such a consciousness is recurrent, as it is in many poets, there results that partial yet often overpowering apprehension of the Infinite Life immanent in all living things, which some modern writers have dignified by the name of “nature-mysticism.” Where it is raised to its highest denomination, till the veil is obliterated by the light behind, and “faith has vanished into sight,” as sometimes happened to Blake, we reach the point at which the mystic swallows up the poet.

…The Mysteries of the antique world appear to have been attempts – often by way of a merely magical initiation – to “open the immortal eyes of man inwards”: exalt his powers of perception until they could receive the messages of a higher degree of reality. In spite of much eager theorizing, it is impossible to tell how far they succeeded in this task. To those who had a natural genius for the Infinite, symbols and rituals which were doubtless charged with ecstatic suggestions, and often dramatized the actual course of the Mystic Way, may well have brought some enhancement of consciousness: though hardly that complete rearrangement of character which is an essential of the mystic’s entrance on the true Illuminated State. Hence Plato only claims that “he whose initiation is recent” can see Immortal Beauty under mortal veils.

…Whatever its scope, however, this new apprehension of reality generally appears to the illuminated Self as final and complete. As the true lover is always convinced that he has found in his bride the one Rose of the World, so the mystic, in the first glow of his initiation, is sure that his quest is now fulfilled. Ignorant as yet of that consummation of love which overpasses the proceedings of the inward eye and ear, he exclaims with entire assurance, “Beati oculi qui exterioribus clausi, interioribus autem sunt intenti,” and, absorbed in this new blissful act of vision, forgets that it belongs to those who are still in via . He has yet to pass through that “night of the senses” in which he learns to distinguish the substance of Reality from the accidents under which it is perceived; to discover that the heavenly food here given cannot satisfy his “hunger for the Absolute.”

His true goal lies far beyond this joyful basking in the sunbeams of the Uncreated Light. Only the greatest souls learn this lesson, and tread the whole of that “King’s Highway”, which leads man back to his Source. “For the many that come to Bethlehem, there be few that will go on to Calvary.” The rest stay here, in this Earthly Paradise, these flowery fields; where the liberated-self wanders at will, describing to us as well as it can, now this corner, now that of the Country of the Soul.”

Mysticism, by Evelyn Underhill, 1911