Veneration

This is, of course, a companion post to the post at the Doremishock blog.

 The action of veneration and the action of intimacy come together seamlessly in the Lord have Mercy prayer.

 I ask the Lord for help. In asking, already, I venerate, because in my heart, in my mind, and in my body, I acknowledge that there is nothing but the Lord, and I surrender my heart, my mind, and my body, because all of them belong to the Lord, and although I experience them as forever (forever being this lifetime) separated from the Lord, in reality, the Lord is in them, and never leaves.

The Lord is my shepherd because the Lord is my Master, and this higher principle is always within me in the form of a vibration I am often unaware of. This higher vibration, which actually creates me—and which I yet think is separate from me—is all of me. It is my wish; it is Truth; it is the Lamb of God, which is forever directly next to me and in me.

 I ask for help because I worship the Lord; this means I acknowledge the value of the Lord; I venerate the Lord. I know that this higher principle, this higher energy, brings a new principal for life. It ought to forever inform this life, forever, that is, in this moment. This energy is not somewhere else; it is here. It is not someone else; it is me. It is not yesterday or tomorrow; it is now. And yet I'm not available to it. So I ask for Mercy.

Mercy is intimate, because I have to surrender myself in order to receive Mercy. Myself, as I am, I have no Mercy. I am, in fact, Merciless. Like others, I will do harm to get what I want.  I will not just do harm to others; I will do harm to myself. In such a way, I violate the Lord with every action. And here is how I discover sin in myself: it isn't that complicated. It begins with this violation. Every step that I take past the violation, this inner violation, into outer action is merely an affirmation of the original violation: an appendage. So my outer action, which is what seems sinful, is only the result of the sin, not its original cause, not its root. And in changing the outer action, I simply plaster over the wound, which prevents me from seeing it.

The parts of me that are better informed, and that know what a terrible price I will pay for my actions,  both inner and outer, are asleep. Only an action in me, a conscious action, and the reciprocal action that this initiates, can change this circumstance.

But I can't receive Mercy unless I ask for it. And this is an intimate act. Because I have to allow, to intentionally suffer, this energy, the Lamb of God, to enter me in such a way as to take away the sins of the world. And the difficulty is that I myself am the sins of the world. So I am admitting that I will have to die in this instance.

Death is not the action of an enemy. Whether it comes here, now, and is of the spirit and the soul, or comes later, of the body, it is a friend. Death is the passage to a new life.

How can I describe it? It is as though I stand on the edge of a magnificent landscape, a foreign country filled with miracles, that is at the same time empty of everything coarse and material, which I could step into at any moment.

  There is a light in this country. It emanates from everything and fills everything; it cleanses all that is so that what is— that is, in this state of separation, what could be— is perfect. It is perfect in the sense of being untouched; it is perfect in the sense of having been prepared for me, and it is perfect in the sense of waiting for me.

Yet I am afraid to go there. And this is what my death is. I will go there whether I want to or not, because every creature—every created Being who is an indivisible part of the Lord, and all created Beings are such—will have to return to the Lord. By created beings I mean everything from atoms to universes.

 So death is the gift of return from this passage we participate in. And Mercy is the path to understanding this, and acquiring the courage to step into this unknown and unknowable country filled with light.

I approach the Lord with veneration because through my inner effort, I slowly begin to understand that this energy has been available all along, and is made available to me to help me take this step, to make this passage.

 The whole path is in preparation for this death. As in sin, where every other action is an appendage of the inner violation, so every outer action in life is an appendage, a surrounding circumstance, of the inner action of preparation.

Or at least it would be so, for one who worked.

 I respectfully hope you will take good care.