The feeling of emptiness regarding all religious activity is a withdrawal of a certain feeling-based, even self-oriented, experience of the Sacred. This past was a wonderful preparation of this threshold marked by a sense of aridity, of lostness, of darkness. The pain of this withdrawal is a blessing, for the reliance on feelings to express and evaluate relationship with the Divine, and, consequently, others, is being transformed into what the Christian contemplatives have called Pure Love - Love known as fully present in the absence of feelings indicating Love. What this withdrawal may feel like is the feeling that all romance is removed from your relationship with the Sacred. One may seek to renew the old, and find one unable to renew the previous romance. A sad commentary on religion and spirituality is few mature to this point of sense of withdrawal - for this withdrawal is a transformative threshold, not the usual emotional lows part of even the most affection-filled of relationships, human or otherwise.

The absence of the consolations of religious activity is a sense of being deprived of the sweetness of previous devotion; yet, more so, for this is a true emergence of Fullness transforming life at a more subtle, more indepth intimacy with Truth, Beauty, and Grace.

Later, you may, and likely will, experience the reuniting of feelings and devotion, but the religiousness will be transformed, as you have been transformed, also. Yet, you must allow this withdrawal of religious feeling and inspiration, or the newness of the transformation cannot occur - this is not merely a re-formation, but a trans-formation, or a formation beyond any prior formation. If you choose to be with the withdrawal, you will be blessed with the reunion of Love, a Love there all the time and which initiated the aridity, so present fully in the absence of previous religious affections - actually, these affections of self-affection called forth the work of Grace to initiate an introduction into living consciously the sublime, quiet bliss of Pure Love.

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