Immersion in prayer #20 is a preparation for experiencing love without the
protective veils of life around it. Its passion arises out of the realization
that all human love is illusory, even the most intimate and enduring unions. In
their confrontation with that truth, the mind and heart suffer the deepest
disillusionment, for which there can be no preparation. How can love not be the
one salvation within a world that is permeated with darkness? If you are ready
to surrender the palliatives that most spiritual teachings offer, you will be
able to stand eye-to-eye with the one living truth. How you respond to this
loss of illusion is the very redemption of human life, even as the veils that
define human life are shed.
Your passage into the inner reaches of the heart, once the veil has
been irrevocably torn, may be perilous, and you may even want to forgo the
journey. There is, however, no way out, for you as a human being are not the
master of your fate. Only the living grace will accompany you into the heart
regions from where there is no return. That which is undeniable and acting out
of its own necessity will ask of you more than what you as a human being can
offer. The depth of surrender is unfathomable.
This is a private calling. You travel the path alone. The enduring
values of the race, including those of hearth and home and mother and child,
play no role here. As you turn your back on what is most sacred in the human
condition, you will have nothing to go on but that which always remains unseen,
and there is no “other” in whose lap you can lay your head. You are the veil
which love wraps around itself; you are the illusion who must face the truth.
