What do you do when you face your limits, your weakness, your no escape? You submit only to the Christ of the Cross.
You can do this within your natural life. You can ascend to the heavenly Life now. For heavenly Life is not discontinuous with an "afterlife." Heavenly Life is of the One Life that is on both "sides."
We do three things to enjoy this ascension to the heavenly Life, says Behmen:
1) You resign your will to God's Will, humbling yourself like dust before God's Greatness, Power, and Wisdom, relying only on Divine Mercy.
This does not mean other persons will not help you. Yet, your prayer is something like this: "God help me. I only want your help. Use whomever you will to help, but bar any supposed help not of you, regardless of how well-intentioned."
2) You detest your own will and do not surrender to it.
Detest your will does not mean you loathe your will in itself. You detest "your own will"; that is, your will apart from it being aligned with and directly and indirectly influenced in right affections and movements by the inner Spirit of Christ.
3) You bow your spirit under the Cross in surrender to it.
The Cross is symbol and sign of your loss of self, the loss of self apart from God's Grace. The self is not deplorable. The self is not evil. Still, the self to live spiritually relies on consecration: the holy Spirit's anointing influence.
This is simple. When you find yourself in difficulty, you can do this, even if you do not feel like it. But often in difficulty this three-fold way of the Cross is the last thing on our minds. We worry and scamper about in a frenzied state. Christ summons us, not to deny what we face, but to seek peace in this cruciform surrender.
After all, when you bow under the Cross, you bow under Christ, and you bow under the Word holding the entire Universe together as one Harmony. Do we not trust that One will hold our lives together in inner and outer Harmony, even amidst testing?
Continued... |