Getting the Hell Out of Time

At any given moment, the most important place on earth can be a palace, a pigsty, or a cell. --Davila

Would you believe a coonsty? 

In each moment, each person is capable of possessing the truths that matter.

I believe that. But let’s try to prove it. Again, we’re embarking on a vertical adventure into the now, bringing only our intelligence and a snorkel. Here we go!

Leave place, leave time, / Avoid even image! / Go forth without a way / On the narrow path, / Then you will find the desert path. --Meister Eckhart

The desert path? I pictured an ocean. I guess we won't need the snorkel. 

We all have a key to the door that opens to the luminous and noble peace of the desert.

Oh, that desert. Where the Desert Fathers lived. These first Christian monks “looked back to a series of Old and New Testament models and prototypes, especially figures associated with the desert, like Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist… (McGinn). These fellows “carved out new roles for themselves as special mediators between the divine and human realms."

This “free-form asceticism” entailed

withdrawal from society into the desert, a separation that involved both an external geographical shift of momentous nature and a new kind of exploration of the inner geography of the soul.

Soul cartographers? Yes, but mapper and mapped are the same, or at least not-two. In this, a “basic pattern” emerges, of “withdrawal-purgation-transformation.”

Withdrawal from society is the easy part. I took you out of hell, but I could not get that hell out of you, says Petey. 

The desert, traditionally the home for demons and not for humans, was the place where the encounter with the spirits of evil… could be more readily encountered and mastered…. These demonic powers, always present within the soul, become luminously real in the intense heat and introspective atmosphere of the desert.

Christ began his career by being tempted by the demons. And we’re supposed to seek them out and tempt them? Isn’t that bit like the guy who decided to live with bears in the wild? How'd that work out? 

What’s the first thing we notice? The size of those teeth! No, about the moment.  

I suppose we notice that we notice. More generally that there is experience. This is impossible to put into words, because words -- and anything else -- presuppose it. 

Moreover, while animals have experiences, man alone experiences experience; or rather, we go back and forth between experience and the experience thereof.  

A voluptuous presence communicates its sensual splendor to everything.

Is that what this is, this pure Presence? 

The momentary beauty of the instant is the only thing in the universe that concurs with the eagerness of our souls.

The Momentary Beauty of the Instant. 

Experience, Presence, Light, Mystery. Being. 

Slow down!

One who acts hastily frightens off swarm of gods.

And be quick about it!

Our most urgent task is that of reconstructing the mystery of the world.

We are not alone!

In man’s extreme solitude he perceives anew the touch of immortal wings.

 To be continued...