Ascent to Higher Realities

The apparent complexity of the ascent of the soul from the darkness of matter to Spirit resolves itself into a single-pointed vision. Once we take up a correct perspective, a perspective which leads to divine union, our attachment to the material is laid to rest.

This union cannot be achieved through sense knowledge, or by one’s spiritual ideas and feelings about God. For this reason, we need to analyze how our attachment to worldly things and even spiritual good can hinder our attainment of God union. In fact, it is the attachment to spiritual blessings in the form of the consolation of prayer, visions and revelations that can pose the most dangerous obstacles to us, because they are felt to be a blessing and for this reason we attach ourselves to them.

We need to embrace a complete detachment from all that is not God and realize that what we give up is replaced by something much better. It is the giving up of temporal and worldly desires and replacing them with spiritual aspirations. Finally we must give up even our spiritual desires in order to attain to full liberation. This is the prelude to the beginning of contemplation and meditation, leading one to Divine union.

Some teachers try to tell us that the cause of the deluded soul is attributable to the fact that the soul is like a tabula rasa (a clean slate) when God infuses it into the body. It would be ignorant without the knowledge it receives through its senses, because no knowledge is communicated to it from any other source. But in fact we experience the darkness or sadness of the soul when it identifies itself with the body. It’s like the presence of a prisoner in a dark dungeon, which knows no more than what he manages to behold through the windows of his prison and has nowhere else to turn if he sees nothing through them.

The reason why the mortification of desire is so important is that a disordered desire creates a likeness between the person and what he desires, for love effects a likeness between the lover and the object loved. If a person has inordinate desires for things other than God, he or she becomes made over in their likeness and cannot be made in the likeness of God. This dual affection cannot exist because two contraries cannot coexist in one person; darkness which is affection set upon the material and light which is God are contrary to each other.

The conclusion is that if a man becomes like the limited object of his desire, he cannot realize his potential to be transformed into the likeness of the infinite God. Such transformation demands that the will of man be completely in accord with the will of God, and any voluntary imperfection is enough to create an obstacle to this transformation.

This concept forms the general context to the beginning of contemplation and meditation, the way of dispelling the dark through the inner way of one’s being. The denial of the appetites of sense pleasure in all things leads to attainment of the divine union with God.

We need to come to the understanding that our soul once united with the Spirit of God is eternally free and that we do not have to die for this to occur. But prior to this we need to be clear that rather than identifying with our body and mind, we need to identify with the Spirit within and realize that we are spiritual beings and not beings wanting to become spiritual. This union can be likened to a loving mother who warms her child with the heat of her bosom, nurses it with good milk and tender food, and carries and caresses it in her arms.

So prior to God union we are attracted to the things of the world, but through a dramatic change that has taken place, the soul which had been circumscribed by the attraction of the outer world now becomes inflamed with love for spiritual things and the love for the world is replaced by the love for the things of God. Undoubtedly, we need to make strong efforts to break with our former habits, but these efforts are powerfully aided by the new yearnings of love that have sprung up from within. The transition occurs with an enkindling of longings for the love of God.

Meditation is the spiritual activity; the feeling of love is the soul’s response. The two together forms a harmonious unity which is best described as spiritual awakening or religious ecstasy.

Before this conversion occurs, we are bound to the world and its allurements, and our attention, affection, energy and faculties are devoted to worldly things. By means of the senses; we looked outward through the senses toward the world.

Conversion means change from the outer to the inner. When this happens the new spiritual yearnings take the place of the attraction of the world. The new attraction that arises in the spiritual part of the soul begins to counterbalance the sensible attraction for the world and soon overpowers it. The net effect of initial conversion is that the desire for temporal things becomes an appreciation of spiritual things. The two are, in fact, opposite perspectives from the same vantage point. Another way of explaining this process is by saying that grace must initially take man as he is.

These words can be summarized as follows: the beginner experiences a growing difficulty in meditation through no conscious neglect. This difficulty in the ability to meditate goes hand-in-hand with a desire to remain still and at peace, resting in a new contemplative knowledge of God that is being given to him. Though this knowledge is very faint and sometimes imperceptible at the beginning, it soon grows more and more conscious when one learns what attitude to take up in regard to it. He then recognizes the presence of God within.