The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-dayUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day
Underhill, Evelyn
Spiritual life
The third strand in the life of the Spirit, for this normal self which
we are considering; must be the disposition of complete Surrender. More
and more advancing in this inner life, it will feel the imperative
attraction of Reality, of God; and it must respond to this attraction
with all the courage and generosity of which it is capable. I am trying
to use the simplest and the most general language, and to avoid
emotional imagery: though it is here, in telling of this perpetually
renewed act of self-giving and dedication, that spiritual writers most
often have recourse to the language of the heart. It is indeed in a
spirit of intensest and humble adoration that generous souls yield
themselves to the drawing of that mysterious Beauty and unchanging Love,
with all that it entails. But the form which the impulse to surrender
takes will vary with the psychic make-up of the individual. To some it
will come as a sense of vocation, a making-over of the will to the
purposes of the Kingdom; a type of consecration which may not be overtly
religious, but may be concerned with the self-forgetting quest of
social excellence, of beauty, or of truth. By some it will be felt as an
illumination of the mind, which now discerns once for all true values,
and accepting these, must uphold and strive for them in the teeth of all
opportunism. By some--and these are the most blessed--as a breaking and
re-making of the heart. Whatever the form it takes, the extent in which
the self experiences the peace, joy and power of living at the level of
Spirit will depend on the completeness and singlemindedness of this, its
supreme act of self-simplification. Any reserves, anything in its
make-up which sets up resistances--and this means generally any form of
egotism--will mar the harmony of the process. And on the other hand,
such a real simplification of the self's life as is here
demanded--uniting on one object, the intellect, will and feeling too
often split among contradictory attractions--is itself productive of
inner harmony and increased power: productive too of that noble
endurance which counts no pain too much in the service of Reality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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