The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day — John Shaqi
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
I think that the answer must be, from conflict: the conflict between the
pull-back of his racial origin and the pull-forward of his spiritual
destiny, the antagonism between the buried Titan and the emerging soul,
each tending towards adaptation to a different order of reality. We may
as well acknowledge that man as he stands is mostly full of conflicts
and resistances: that the trite verse about "fightings and fears
within, without" does really describe the unregenerate yet sensitive
mind with its ineffective struggles, its inveterate egotism, its
inconsistent impulses and loves. Man's young will and reason need some
reinforcement, some helping power, if they are to conquer and control
his archaic impulsive life. And this salvation, this extrication from
the wrongful and atavistic claims of primitive impulse in its many
strange forms, is a prime business of religion; sometimes achieved in
the sudden convulsion we call conversion, and sometimes by the slower
process of education. The wrong way to do it is seen in the methods of
the Puritan and the extreme ascetic, where all animal impulse is
regarded as "sin" and repressed: a proceeding which involves the risk of
grave physical and mental disorder, and produces even at the best a
bloodless pietism. The right way to do it was described once for all by
Jacob Boehme, when he said that it was the business of a spiritual man
to "harness his fiery energies to the service of the light--" that is to
say, change the direction of our passionate cravings for satisfaction,
harmonize and devote them to spiritual ends. This is true regeneration:
this is the salvation offered to man, the healing of his psychic
conflict by the unification of his instinctive and his ideal life. The
voice which St. Mechthild heard, saying "Come and be reconciled,"
expresses the deepest need of civilized but unspiritualized humanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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