There is a moment when you realize that you are going to have to die in reality, not just pretend to die. Not just read about dying, not just recite Rumi late at night, but really, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, go into the darkness of the Love of God and really surrender, a moment when you realize that to do that, you will need Divine courage.
To be human is to be born into a dance in which every animate or inanimate, visible or invisible being is also dancing. Every step of this dance is printed in light; its energy is adoration, its rhythm is praise. Pain, desolution, and destruction in this full and unified sacred vision are not separate from the dance, but are instead essential energies of its transformative unfolding. Death itself cannot shatter the dance, because death is the lifespring of its fertility, the mother of all its changing splendor. If we could bring ourselves to open to this vision, we would undergo a revolution of the heart.
If you fuse knowledge of your transcendent origin with tireless service in and for God, you will come, on earth and in this body, to know divine joy and be fed by the ceaseless passion-energy of divine love. Human and divine, inner peace and outer action, knowledge and love, will be married in you at ever greater depths to make you an ever more powerful and radiant warrior for Love and Justice in all dimensions.
Slowly, the practice of gratitude will begin to transform your consciousness so you start to detect Divine Presence and Divine Mercy all around you, which in time tremendously lessens your fear and suffering. For, it will make you aware of the maternal protection of God and of how the entire universe and all of life is constantly giving you signs of God's glory, beauty, and love. Practicing gratitude not only heals you of vanity and pride; it also heals your fear, grief, and insecurity of separation.
The spiritual life is the uncovering of deeper and deeper levels of joy until that joy that streams from the God-head itself is realized and known in every breath. Every increase in joy is an increase in strength and peace of soul and an increase in all the powers of creativity that reveal life as a divine dance.
The last time I saw Fr. Bede, I asked for his blessing and one final word of advice.
He held my face in his hands and then said, "Pray, pray always!"
And he went back to his prayers.
Whether your destiny is glory or disgrace,
Purify yourself of hatre and love of self.
Polish your mirror, and that sublime Beauty
From the regions of mystery
Will flame out in your heart
As it did for the saints and prophets.
Then, with your heart on fire with that Splendor
The secret of the Beloved will no longer be hidden.
Bede Griffiths once said to me,
"What is essential is to keep the heart always open to beauty."
What could be harder in an age like ours? And yet, it is just because our age is so harsh and brutal that it is more than ever essential to create around us, in our homes and offices and meeting places, a sacred environment. To do so is to awaken the poet in each of us, the poet and the lover of life and beauty. Creating a sacred environment is not complicated; it just requires concentration and the constant reminder that the one important thing in your life is to keep your heart open to Divine Love.
The child is the creation of that ecstatic, stainless, motiveless pure love. It is that pure love in the heart and soul that give birth to the Divine Child. It is that pure love that leads the soul right into the heart of the godhead.
To survive in the world, you need spiritual strength, you need solitude.