TO FIND OURSELVES, WE MUST FIRST LOSE OURSELVES. SUCH IS THE GREAT PARADOX AND THE GREAT MYSTERY OF THE SPIRITUAL AND SACRED QUEST
The spiritual quest is driven by self. At the door that guards the quest’s end, self must be transcended. The door’s key is always selfless love for ALL. The old myths give clear signals about the path of test and ordeal towards initiation and ultimate spiritual fulfilment. The importance of Christ is that he showed that at the heart of this process, alongside bravery and virtue etc. is selfless love. Christ demonstrated through His crucifixion, the key, the final key, to the mysteries. We need the ancient virtues as we set out on our quest, but the final door, the final test can only be opened or won when the whole purpose of the quest is turned in on itself, when the pursuit almost becomes meaningless as the seeker stands at the door and no longer desires to pass, other than through his or her selfless love for all creation, as something done for them alone. The original purposes and desires of the seeker are necessarily lost at the very moment of triumph. But it is in that moment of loss, invariably felt as a soul-shattering and cataclysmic tragedy, that everything is gained.
We are seeking, in our own ways, to be pilgrims upon the spiritual, mystical and sacred path – the sacred mystical quest. Yet ultimately our very presence upon that quest, is a precursor, almost, to a negation of ourselves. And yet at the same time, it culminates utterly in our SELF. Our spiritual purpose and destiny is to walk the sacred way of pilgrimage,. And at our pilgrimage’s end to utterly surrender ourselves to OTHER. It is the negation of the self we have always been and known, but it is only the negation of our lesser self. For in losing ourselves we in fact find at last our true SELF. And our true SELF is the manifestation of ONE fundamental truth: that ALL is ONE. This does not mean that our ultimate spiritual destiny is to become subsumed into the impersonality of the whole, it is in fact to at last be gloriously our true SELF, our true SELF that is ONE with the ALL, that feels and loves and knows all things, all of Creation: and above all, our very selves: our very true SELVES.