Readers who have, over the years, followed my many carefully constructed essays regarding the nature of Joy and Sorrow may find some of this confusing. It's important to understand not only the relationship of Joy and Sorrow; it's also necessary at this point to expound on the nature of Joy as it exists within the Divine, which is a somewhat different question.
It is said from on high that the Joy of the Lord will prevail.
This
extremely current message is especially important in these times, because many things are taking place that seem quite awful.
Yet we're sent an understanding, from a higher level, that the Joy of the Lord is utterly invincible.
This Joy is forever everywhere, existing at all times and in all places. It is in every object, event, circumstance, and condition, because each of these arising phenomena—no matter what we may
think— is constructed wholly of Love.
Human beings are made as exquisite receptors of Love. We are capable of receiving Love not just within the often narrow range of our conventional emotional or average intellectual experience, but within a much wider range of senses which might be called 'extrasensory' but are actually just sensory—yet, paradoxically, unsensed. Even our cells—
especially our cells themselves- are designed for the sensing of Love, of this higher energy, and they perhaps above all have a very fine intelligence capable of understanding (in a way that we, in the gross sense of ourselves, often perversely don't!) the absolutely divine nature of this energy.
There is no greater responsibility incumbent upon us than to have an unwavering faith in this Love and to prepare ourselves perpetually to receive this Love. It is the greatest wish of the Lord that we prepare for this, because He perpetually emanates Love in abundance and would like nothing better for us than to ensure we receive it.
All inner work is ultimately preparation to put ourselves in the service of this force. All of the work of receiving an influence, of receiving a higher energy, must be directed at preparing ourselves for the influence, the inflow, of this energy, which is of a very fine quality and a different level of vibration than anything we usually know. In the end, it is not the psychological state... the state of
mind... that the energy produces which matters, but
the entire state. A direct relationship is possible. But it isn't my relationship within myself, because nothing of this order belongs to me. And I am truly confused about this, because the Joy of the Lord is, for the most part, not a known thing to me.
The Joy of the Lord will prevail because the Love of the Lord will prevail; and it is inevitable, because it is
inherent. It is only whether or not I can be open to it that's in question.
The nature of Joy is the essential nature of the relationship between the Reality and creation, because the essential nature of the Reality (which is ultimately unknowable) reaches, or touches, creation through the manifestation of Love, which is characterized first and foremost by Joy. The relationship with the Divine cannot, at its essential heart, be anything other than Joyful.
The reason we find ourselves in a place of suffering and sorrow has a great deal to do with our state of separation; and the reason we are here is for the purposes of purification, that is, the elimination of that which is not fully in relationship with the Divine. Gurdjieff's allegory of the Holy Plant Purgatory is all about this; and de Salzmann's entire work of purifying the emotions also relates to this question.
More on this in the next post.
May your soul be filled with light.