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| © Claudia Ravel |
Deep in meditation, quarrying the strata of the secret wisdom, stripping away layer beneath layer of the hardened sediment draped over truth, the mind’s eye attains perception of the light.
That is not yet G‑dliness.
Immersed in received knowledge of the higher realms, secluded from the confusion of humankind and earthly pleasures, there comes a day when the prophet hears with his ears the voice that brings all into being; he sees with his eyes the splendor of that light.
That is not yet G‑dliness.
Arriving in the ancient Temple of Solomon, each person, great or small, saw the light with such clarity that all sense of being was lost, nothing existed other than the singularity of the Infinite Light that shone openly in that place.
Yet, still, that is not yet G‑dliness.
In a time to come, when the fruits of all our labor will blossom and the world will attain its state for which it was created, when “I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy,” then every small child will see more than the greatest prophet has ever seen, “and all flesh shall see”—the physical eye will perceive an unbounded divine light that has never before been revealed. The very stones of the earth will scream out, “There is nothing else but He!” in every corner of the world, even within its inert matter, “for all the earth shall be filled with the knowing of G‑d, as waters fill the ocean basin.”
There will be a world, and the world will know that it is nothing but a manifestation of the Infinite Light.
That will be G‑dliness.
Reinterpreting the Stone
How could a human ego know it is nothing but a figment of a Supernal Mind, and yet remain a human being?
How could a finite, physical eye perceive infinite, G‑dly light, and yet remain an eye?
How could a stone scream out that there is nothing else but G‑d, and yet remain a stone?
It must be that the ego is not the ego we imagine it to be; that the physical is not the physicality we imagine it to be; that existence is not the absoluteness of being we assume when we speak of existence.
It must be that the true reality of all these things is a deeper meaning, the purpose for which they emerged into being; that the underlying condition that allows anything the privilege of existence is to know the divine.
The ego, the eye, the very physicality of the world—we have misinterpreted all of them. They are all nothing but instruments by which G‑d’s oneness can be known.
The Mandate of Darkness
As impossible as it sounds, as absurd as it may seem: The mandate of darkness is to become light; the mandate of a busy, messy world is to find oneness.
We have proof, for the greater the darkness becomes, the greater the confusion of life, the deeper our souls reach inward to discover their own light.
How could it be that darkness leads us to find a deeper light? That confusion leads us to find a deeper truth?
Only because the very act of existence is set to know its own author. That is the cosmic drama, its theme and its plot: That otherness should come to know oneness.
And we are the players in that drama.
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