glorycloud's Diaryland Diary

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The Third Unity

"From this second unity comes a third one, namely, a contemplative life in which the spirit is one with God without distinction. When the noble, loving spirit has responded so closely with love (by dying to himself and to all divine gifts) to the inward drawing of God into the mere being of his mind, when he does not experience anything else but the loving drawing inward of God and his own active love, then he enkindles himself through these two in the mere being of his existence, and he wanders in an unknowing, a modelessness, and a darkness (because all existence-as existence-is bare and without image). God possesses all existence as his own dwelling place, and therefore, when the spirit, in the simplicity of its faculties, in its bare existence, has lost itself, by sinking away from itself, then an incomprehensible brightness is revealed to him in this darkness. And that is the Son of God himself. And this brightness shines through and transforms all spirits who are actively turned inward in the bareness of their existence. And the eyes of the spirit are so widely opened in this brightness that it contemplates, and by which it contemplates. And thus, the spirit becomes this brightness itself, without differences. It receives this brightness, purely and without similarities, and it is pre-illuminated and transformed by this brightness; therefore, one can say that it is this brightness itself, namely, without intermediary. This is indeed a characteristic of the simplicity of God: it cannot be known as it is, except by itself, namely, when it informs the understanding and illuminates it, so that it [the divine simplicity] is known and understood by its own being. No creature, however simple and noble it may be, can be united in its being [existence] with another spiritual creature without intermediary, because in all spiritual creatures there is a difference between existence and essence. But that is not the case in God. Since the spirit, in this contemplation, does not know anything but this brightness, which it contemplates and by which it contemplates, and since it contemplates itself and all things in this brightness as one life and one truth with this light-because "all that was made, is life in Him," says St. John; all things, that is, live in this light, being the eternal image of everything, and living in God, and being precisely what God himself is-therefore one can truly say that the contemplative person is the same as what he contemplates and as that with which he contemplates, without separation. I cannot give a more precise explanation of this unity."

1:44 p.m. - 2020-12-25

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