Question: Could you please explain the line in our Lord's Prayer which says "And if put to the challenge, may we walk in the shadow of Your example"?- I find the word 'shadow' a bit off-putting.A SHADOW is that which falls out from someone (or something) when there is light strong enough to make such discernible. The 'shadow of an example' means the example's projections which naturally fall this way or that; depending upon their relation to what is before them.
Although the word 'shadow' implies a gloominess distinct from its contrast of light, it is a product of a light-focus, of there being that place to where the rays have issued and met. Darkness, as often signified, is that which is without light, i.e. no thing which the light present can efface.
Light itself is ever-present, called into being by the need of a lowly existence; for all light (all, as in all) is a reality from a higher world presenting in pure form. It contains an essential fluidity, and an amalgamation of qualities and higher forces, including myriads of beings respective to times and places from higher realms also; and it enters into the spheres beneath, presenting to illumine and make known that which is in existence there.
We come to recognize and know all that is of this World by the provisions of that from a far higher impetus. Thus all knowledge, even the blatant materialistic comprehension, is inspired from 'on high'.
One cannot light a candle and bring the fires out from Hell to produce an illuminating flame. Any flame, of necessity, is from an adjoining region which is higher to the condition from which it is seen in, and from that perspective the fires of Hell themselves are indeed what is needed and a godsend so to speak, rather than an object of evil. They are purging to the sinner to whom they are abhorrent, because they are from a higher sphere. Those who are temporarily (yes, temporarily) committed within the lowly confines, are enshrouded with a darkness all of their own. Their spirit is truly divorced from the joy of any great illumination; and as a plant without light they either recoil back from life or adapt with an astrality which feeds them the milk of the light as cast from others; and as a creature of the depths of darkness, their characteristics mutate into spurious, inhuman design.
It is a higher world which calls us into being. We are drawn up towards it, but only brought as far as the perimeters of this in our consciousness; whilst all the while we live too in quality and in perspective, in some of that which is to be our spiritual future, belonging further on ahead.
The miracle of Medjugorje is a circumstance of discovering this truth. The Sun becomes the very portal that it is, with the cascade of angels multifariously tumbling into our place of being, with too the grandest of Loves, in pure spirit form, who may meet in the light and are seen in this light, and interpreted in countless languages because their true and first language is direct and spoken in presence, rather than projection.
The earth in which the kernel rests, cradled and nourished, protected before maturation, this earth is penetrated by the sunlight daily; and although our eyes would not take in the difference between morning and night, all growth beneath the ground does. The etheric sight belonging to all things which live beneath the soil is keen to the Sun, which actually radiates all the way through the larger Earth, saturating it entirely. We are never without some of its influence - and even in those portions where the darkness of night is apparent, there is still much of the Sun that is with us even so.
Heat and light are two totally different commodities. Heat is activity whereas light is our immediate Heaven, the 'one' above us, the element so combined of our higher resources. Heat is an activity which is not necessarily partial to the relative higher aspects in its manifestation. It is active because of higher possibility, but may come from a lower source. Heat expires soul forces, whereas light infills them.
Heat is natural to the activity of soul, but requires containment and direction. Light is of the soul and knows no containment but is satisfied and lives through all things lower than itself - it finds itself (transversely) by its subjection into the grosser imprints.
The Future finds its way into the Present and thus recognizes itself, by that which it makes apparent. The Present may only come to recognize itself by those powers as sacrificed to it from the incoming Future.
Actuality, of a higher and firstborn reality, inspires activity, where the forces of the Future impound and tussle with the forces of the Present. Warmth is such an activity, whereupon the Future makes wrestle with the Present; and accounted for, may expire some of the Present whilst making way for the new.
Question: Is there anything that one can ever really be 'certain' of?
Yes indeed! Whilst we may never be certain about our own perspectives being completely and utterly adherent to an actuality, we may, for one, be certain that there are those more able than us who are reliable. This is not a trite put-down, but offered as a comfort. For although it is paramount for each to learn for himself all things, there can be much too much self-importance placed in this by the individual student, who may overestimate his wisdom into the bargain. There are those times in which it is appropriate for all of us to acknowledge our relative infancy on this path to higher Wisdom, and look forward to many adjustments in understanding, in comprehension.
Having said that, we may examine the meaning of certainty, and hope that we may come to it! Certainty is to Light as Knowledge is to the Heat's activity. The experience of certainty within a man is, of itself, a higher quality given expression; for the time that he has called it forth and lives with it in true affirmation within, this 'living' certainty (irrespective of its connections), is expressive of his higher nature, positioning him in relation to the present.
It is assumed that this is relative to the ego-activity of a man, but it is not. Many creatures that know certainty have not the egos to know that they know. Many self-realized beings are brimful of certainty, but reflective solely of the Cosmos, and have no marked individuality which distinguishes them from their brothers (apart from their histories). So we may say that certainty is not bound to self, with all of the implications of possible mistakenness.
Certainty lives in our experiencing that which is really outside of ourselves, rather than some false imagination. In other words, one cannot consider it properly in a negative context - of 'it' having gone wrong - particularly in this case, the subject being what it is; if you get the point.
The clearest and strongest of experiences of pure certainty comes to a man during prayer - this is true. When we endeavor to combine with our Christ or Father God, or appeal to the Angels also, we effectively do so. As immediately as the hope goes out it is answered. There is an enormous eagerness to meet with us, and quite often, although a man may almost experience a solitude during prayer, he is at the same time amassed with a loving attentiveness that obliges his soul.
Many times we may come to share in the greater strengths which are about us. We may come to a certainty of Christ's wherein we know:
He is unshakably, undeterably, incorrigibly, unrelentlessly, completely and emphatically, unreservedly and undeniably, totally, most utterly, fully, and happily:
- CERTAIN of His Love for us - for all of us.
- CERTAIN of His unswerving commitment to us.
- CERTAIN of our being, (in existence) and our right to be.
- CERTAIN of His being, (in existence) and His right to be.
- CERTAIN of the Future (because He is the Future).
- CERTAIN of Love (it being the one Key to Creation).
- CERTAIN of Purpose - with a definite direction known to Him.
By just such contemplation of this earnest certainty we begin to adhere to its reality, and thus experience it. There is no doubt about it! That is the very experience of certainty - its gift to us is the pleasure of a godly conformity, where we do not battle our wills with the greater Will, but we may yet do battle with those aspects of the World which we need to effect change.
Should we ever really discuss the correctness of a man to ponder his correctness of certainty? You see, as implied before, the nature of certainty is what it is. The experience of it, in one sense, no matter how it is attached to what or what for, is still a heavenly inspired gift working within a man. What he knows in certainty may not even translate and correlate in thought. He may be mistaken in opinion, but in those times of certainty he is close to the big truth; and so one is separate to another and not dependent upon another.
How a man manifests day to day in blithering logic and movement does not depict his full reality. What he says he knows and what he truly knows is an extraordinary comparison of itself. We may cite countless instances of him knowing so much more in the richness of his soul experience, having been gleaned over ages now beyond memory (but not beyond recall), that for the time he may be fixed with acquiring a technique of this age, or a sophistication in his thinking; but he is a grand being with vast associations.
Therefore he is able to be certain of a good many things without even having to qualify why. And he is entitled because the spirit-soul is far wiser than the all-connecting intellect regardless. And he is accountable to his own spirit-soul before answering to the intellects of others.
But what of delusion? Delusion is another matter. In certainty he is never wrong, even though his reasoning may be.
Just as light comes to us from the higher spiritual realities, so does the light of certainty infill us with its higher spiritual knowing. From this, when the future is brought into our present thought, we have an activity arising, a combusting process within the inspiration of reasoning, of further surmising, of unrelated thoughts too, and vapors of emotion also. We begin then to expire some of our soul forces into that which we are considering. There becomes a warmth and a liveliness, which may consume our present selves, or maybe quick to extinguish, depending upon the episode.
Certainty is to Light, as the activity of Knowledge is to Heat. And if you can't stand the heat... you can still get into a Certainty.
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