For many human hearts there is a longing to participate in a reunion with love that is all encompassing, stretching the heart to unknown yet remembered heights and depths, and filling the soul so that it no longer experiences any kind of lack.  Such is the remembrance of the Divine experience of the One for souls that have, for the most part, left this remembrance behind.  It stands as an evocation of limitless love that is the stuff of heroic legends and romantic ballads, but at its core, it is a yearning for the inexpressible oneness-of-being that exists within the totality of Love.

Such a union cannot come to the soul until the way has been prepared through the labor of having rid the self of all that stands in the way – all that would receive love for the benefit of the self and not be capable of merging within the All.  Indeed, to receive such love, one must be capable of moving beyond the self to the place of the Totality of all that is, for only that Totality can create the experience that enraptures the heart and fills the soul.

Seekers on various spiritual paths have pursued this goal over centuries and millennia, and many have walked on the roads that these paths carved out.  Some routes have been defined by the kind of loss of self acquired in deep meditation where the ground-of-being within the Oneness appears as the only real reality.  There are other ways, however, besides the way of meditation, which can lead the soul to an ultimate union with God in love.  These are the ways of surrender and of no-self, in which the self decides to participate in its own dismantling in order to serve the higher goal of becoming one with the All.  This labor of love, for that is what it is, cannot be undertaken except by those who have already discovered within their hearts, a deep-seated yearning for unity that burns increasingly brightly that will not be put out by any practical considerations.  For these souls, the way of surrender is not a choice but a necessity, and it requires of them all that they have to give.  The way, however, is joyful, for in the letting go of all, the soul hopes to attain all.  This may not be entirely known to the conscious self, but the deeper being knows the road that must be taken.

Over and over through the time of dismantling, the cause of celebration lies not in the perception of victory or joy, but in the perception of having become less and less of a self.  This is not joy for the ego or for the human personality, but it is joy for the soul that is finding its way home.  The path that such a soul takes is filled with difficulty based on its own history of having traveled long within human experience, but the joy that comes to the soul occurs in the midst of the difficulty, and lets the one traveling this road know that they could not choose to do anything else.

When the soul finally comes to the end of its dismantling process, there is no longer a self to speak of that has a defined boundary or a defined relationship to the physical world in any ordinary way.  The body continues to function in time and space, but the inner reality is that the self has gone.  And yet what remains is something other than a human self.  It is a self that is solely defined by its relationship with God, living in holiness and beauty, at peace with all, and experiencing itself in each moment as part of the Oneness.  Such an arrival is a cause for great celebration, for the victory of the soul is also a victory for the human embodiment, which is now free to become a sacred and holy vessel of pure Divine grace.  This sacred vessel of human embodiment can now bring the gifts of its immersion in Divine Love to the rest of the world, for blessing continually flows through a heart that has become free of self, and this blessing blesses the heart in which it resides, while at the same time blessing the world.

Related Writings:

The Sacred and Holy Covenant

The Winged Heart Rising to God

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