Christian Mystic on Metaphysical Love

[AtmanIsBrahman]

I would post this in high consciousness resources, but since the sub-forum is closed I'll have to post here.

Revelations of Divine Love is a high-consciousness resource where the medieval Christian anchoress Julian of Norwich describes her visions of God. This is interesting for a couple reasons: 1) insights into the nature of Love and suffering, 2) how spiral dynamics stage affects mystical visions.

 

Here are some of her visions and insights.

• She has a vision of a hazelnut, which represents the entire universe and God's love for it. 

"I looked at it and thought, 'What can this be?' And the answer came to me, 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, 'It lasts and will last for ever because God loves it; and in the same way everything exists through the love of God.' "

God's love, or Existence's self-love, is what eternally sustains everything.

 

• She saw a lot of things in the visions, but...

"I did not see sin; for I believe it has no sort of substance nor portion of being, nor would it be recognized were it not for the suffering which it causes."

"And when I saw that God has made all things, I saw nothing of you [sin]; and when I saw that God is in all things, I saw nothing of you; and when I saw that God does all things that are done, greater and lesser, I saw nothing of you.”

"How can anything be amiss?"

You get the point. Sin is not real; it is a human delusion. Julian obviously had to see through a lot of Christian conditioning to get this point. There is nothing that is morally wrong: shooting someone in the head, genocide, etc. -- it is all good from the absolute point of view. God is too good to see anything as evil. It perfectly understands and loves everything. 

 

• God loves and willingly undergoes suffering

"And in these words, 'If I could suffer more, I would suffer more,' I truly saw that he was willing to die as often as he was able to die, and love would never let him rest until he had done it."

God is an infinite suffering manufacturer. This is because suffering isn't actually real, so there is no reason to avoid it. There is no suffering as we think of it to a completely unbiased mind.

 

• My insights

This helped me realize that not only can suffering be transcended -- a hypothesis that anyone who's heard of spirituality is aware of -- but it was never real in the first place.

Suffering is one of the greatest illusions. Every time you are suffering, you are completely and utterly deluded. This doesn't mean you will transcend all of it, but you can use this principle to reframe all the suffering you experience. 

Also, suffering is the same thing as sin. The human ideas of suffering and sin (something being morally wrong) are both offshoots of the same delusion; neither are real.

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If you guys found this interesting, I can write a little bit about how spiral dynamics plays into this too. 

Edited 5 hours ago by AtmanIsBrahman

[blackchair]

Do pls explain more and put it in spiral lens, are these mistycs that bricked themself in small room for the rest of their life? 

[gengar]

Beautiful, never knew this one, I knew Marguerite Porete and Hadewich but not this one