Traditional Quotes and Symbols
In the Middle Ages the whole civilization was structured in such a way as to give a person at least some sense of his cosmic situation; today we live in a kind of misleading “extraterritoriality,” in opaque back rooms that hide reality.
Your difficulties stem from the fact that you are not aware of the full gravity of the human condition, and you are not aware of this because nothing in your habitual surroundings—the world you live in—suggests it, to say the least. It is finally a question of imagination; I am not saying you are directly responsible for this, but you are in any case its victim, and you are not alone in being so.
In the Middle Ages the whole civilization was structured in such a way as to give a person at least some sense of his cosmic situation; today we live in a kind of misleading “extraterritoriality,” in opaque back rooms that hide reality. Nonetheless God touches us everywhere, for there is no empty space and no respite. He is “the First” and “the Last,” “the Outward” and “the Inward” (al-Awwalu wal-Ākhiru wal-Zāhiru wal-Bātin); man is like the point of intersection of the “divine dimensions.”
You must detach your life from an awareness of the multiple and reduce it to a geometrical point before God. You have but one life, and it is not just anything; this life is everything for you, and it owes its greatness to its divine origin and goal. The human condition is something great because its foundation is God; the modern error is to believe we are small, that we are biological accidents, that we are entitled to be lukewarm—that we are free to be small, apathetic, mediocre. In reality we are condemned to greatness, if I may express it this way, and we find this greatness in spiritual smallness before the divine Greatness. It is God who is great, but we must open ourselves up to this Greatness, knowing that there is only He, that we are bound to Him, that we cannot escape Him; knowing this we must resign ourselves to our human and personal condition—to the fact that the sacred is everywhere—and we must repose in trust.
F. Schuon
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Image:
Beato of Liébana: The Codex of Fernando I and Doña Sancha.
Illustration of Rev 20:11-15
"Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire."
www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_10639/?sp=7&st=gallery
In the Middle Ages the whole civilization was structured in such a way as to give a person at least some sense of his cosmic situation; today we live in a kind of misleading “extraterritoriality,” in opaque back rooms that hide reality.
Your difficulties stem from the fact that you are not aware of the full gravity of the human condition, and you are not aware of this because nothing in your habitual surroundings—the world you live in—suggests it, to say the least. It is finally a question of imagination; I am not saying you are directly responsible for this, but you are in any case its victim, and you are not alone in being so.
In the Middle Ages the whole civilization was structured in such a way as to give a person at least some sense of his cosmic situation; today we live in a kind of misleading “extraterritoriality,” in opaque back rooms that hide reality. Nonetheless God touches us everywhere, for there is no empty space and no respite. He is “the First” and “the Last,” “the Outward” and “the Inward” (al-Awwalu wal-Ākhiru wal-Zāhiru wal-Bātin); man is like the point of intersection of the “divine dimensions.”
You must detach your life from an awareness of the multiple and reduce it to a geometrical point before God. You have but one life, and it is not just anything; this life is everything for you, and it owes its greatness to its divine origin and goal. The human condition is something great because its foundation is God; the modern error is to believe we are small, that we are biological accidents, that we are entitled to be lukewarm—that we are free to be small, apathetic, mediocre. In reality we are condemned to greatness, if I may express it this way, and we find this greatness in spiritual smallness before the divine Greatness. It is God who is great, but we must open ourselves up to this Greatness, knowing that there is only He, that we are bound to Him, that we cannot escape Him; knowing this we must resign ourselves to our human and personal condition—to the fact that the sacred is everywhere—and we must repose in trust.
F. Schuon
-----
Image:
Beato of Liébana: The Codex of Fernando I and Doña Sancha.
Illustration of Rev 20:11-15
"Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire."
www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_10639/?sp=7&st=gallery