Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal PeopleUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People
Underhill, Evelyn
Mysticism
Do not suppose from this that your new career is to be perpetually
supported by agreeable spiritual contacts, or occupy itself
in the mild contemplation of the great world through which
you move. True, it is said of the Shepherd that he carries the
lambs in his bosom: but the sheep are expected to walk, and put
up with the inequalities of the road, the bunts and blunders of the
flock. It is to vigour rather than to comfort that you are called.
Since the transcendental aspect of your being has been brought
into focus you are now raised out of the mere push-forward, the
blind passage through time of the flock, into a position of creative
responsibility. You are aware of personal correspondences with
the Shepherd. You correspond, too, with a larger, deeper, broader
world. The sky and the hedges, the wide lands through which you
are moving, the corporate character and meaning of the group to
which you belong--all these are now within the circle of your
consciousness; and each little event, each separate demand or
invitation which comes to you is now seen in a truer proportion,
because you bring to it your awareness of the Whole. Your
journey ceases to be an automatic progress, and takes on some of
the characters of a free act: for "things" are now under you, you
are no longer under them.
You will hardly deny that this is a practical gain: that this
widening and deepening of the range over which your powers of
perception work makes you more of a man than you were before,
and thus adds to rather than subtracts from your total practical
efficiency. It is indeed only when he reaches these levels, and
feels within himself this creative freedom--this full actualisation
of himself--on the one hand: on the other hand the sense of a
world-order, a love and energy on which he depends and with
whose interests he is now at one, that man becomes fully human,
capable of living the real life of Eternity in the midst of the world
of time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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