Above all we have to go beyond words and images and concepts. No imaginative vision or conceptual framework is adequate to the great reality.
Bede Griffiths
God has graced every tradition with insight into the divine mystery, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated-each has a gift to bring to the world.
mystery tradition world gift insight divine god
The inspiration came suddenly again to surrender to the Mother. It was quite unexpected: And so somehow I made a surrender to the Mother. Then I had an experience of overwhelming love. Waves of love sort of flowed into me.
inspiration experience unexpected mother surrender made love
God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
life ego knowledge surrender nothingness made god
Obedience is detachment from the self. This is the most radical detachment of all. But what is the self? The self is the principle of reason and responsibility in us. It is the root of freedom, it is what makes us men.
principles men self reason responsibility obedience radical freedom detachment
You must be ready to give up everything, not only material attachments but also human attachments - father, mother, wife, children - everything that you have. But the one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
human children mother wife father ready thing give
I was being called to surrender the very citadel of my self. I was completely in the dark. I did not really know what repentance was or what I was required to repent of. It was indeed the turning point of my life.
life self dark surrender repentance repent
I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God.
thetimes time ego existence seeking made god
It is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith, but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.
faith christianity religion understanding tolerance listen grow question ready christian
I am rediscovering the whole sexual dimension of life at the age of 86, really. And that also means discovering the feminine. So the whole of this dimension, which I had been seeking for a very long time, is now sort of opening itself up to me.
life age thetimes time feminine seeking
I had made a god of my own reason.. Even if theoretically I now acknowledged the authority of God and the Church, in practice I was still the ruler and the judge. I was the centre of my own existence, and my isolation from the rest of the world was due to the fact that I had deliberately shut myself up within the barriers of my own will and reason.
rest existence world authority church reason practice judge isolation fact made god
Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery.
mystery challenge truth religion divine rejection idols images agnosticism concepts god atheism
religion reality spirit concepts
I was suddenly made aware of another world of beauty and mystery such as I had never imagined to exist, except in poetry. It was as though I had begun to see and smell and hear for the first time. The world appeared to me as Wordsworth describes with the glory and freshness of a dream. The sight of a wild rosegrowing on a hedge, the scent of lime-tree blossoms caught suddenly as I rode down a hill on a bicycle, came to me like visitations from another world. But it was not only my sensesthat were awakened. I experienced an overwhelming emotionin the presence of nature, especially at evening. It began to have a kind of sacramental character for me. I approached it with a sense of almost religious awe and, in a hush that comes before sunset, I felt again the presence of an almost unfathomable mystery. The song of the birds, the shape of the trees, the colors of the sunset, were so many signs of the presence, which seemed to be drawing me to itself.
nature transcendence
I think the Mother is gradually revealing itself to me and taking over. But it is not the Mother alone. It is the Mother and the Father, the male and the female, sort of gradually having their marriage.
marriage
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