My life, now apart, Beloved
One spark in the Eternal Sun

You sent me forth from the Light
to be a light, in this time and place

When I touch you in myself
and your hands move over me

Or when I see you in the other
in the seeing you see into my eyes

My desire for Home, for You, my Love,
rises again like a burning flame

When a woman holds me in her arms
I am transported to Here

Sometimes, I hear a whisper,
a faint echo of wordless Love

Other times I meet a kin soul
and in the resonating my heart leaps into the Sky

One swallow of your sweet Wine
I want to drown in the red Ocean

One smell of your Rose
I want to be lost in its folds

One sense of Home
I am ready to die again to phenomena forever

Religion encourages a longing
But leaves me too far from the Thing Itself

And, spirituality, well, little more
There is a Sanctum only true Lovers enter

Others talk about it, sing about it, preach about it,
Lovers are not about it

They are drunk out of their minds
in the Tavern of the Beloved

They are falling over everything
What a holy dance!

*Brian K. Wilcox. "Falling Over Everything."

Everything about the union of spiritual marriage is unique. The Beloved appears at the center of the soul through a very subtle transcendental vision rather than a visual revelation. The secret that God communicates to the soul here in a single instant is so exalted, the favors he bestows upon her so sublime, and the delight he gives her so sweet that I don't know what to compare it to. All I can say is that it is the will of God to manifest the glory of heaven to the soul in that moment. He does this in a more rarefied manner than is possible through any visual revelation or spiritual consolation.

*St. Teresa of Avila. The Interior Castle. Translated by Mirabai Starr.

Spiritual marriage is a final act of experienced union between the soul and the Divine. We need to be careful not to take as the only way to this, or sense of this, from any writer, even one such as St. Teresa of Avila.

The means to spiritual marriage and the felt-ness of it may differ, based on many factors. Yet, the Substance of its meaning and consequences remain the same.

Spiritual marriage is, in other words, the return of the whole soul to the whole of God. This does not mean that the soul will consciously know the whole of God in a cognitive sense. Rather, this Union is a marriage of Love, not thought.

And, I think it possible, that this state of spiritual marriage does not come all at once. Likely, we have many brief to longer moments of such bliss, preparing us to be able to receive a final ecstatic and coitic oneness with the Spirit of Life.

Scripture speaks in an acculturated way of this coming back to the Divine, universally, in Love:

And to the glory
of God the Father
everyone will openly agree,
"Jesus Christ is Lord!"

*Philippians 2.11 (CEV)

Such en-cultured hints imply a universal acknowledgement of the Divine Presence and union with Such. Other Scripture does the opposite: for Love did not write the Bible, humans, like you and me, who had not entered the spiritual marriage fully, did. These humans often did not write out of a "seeing" beyond the prevalent cultural and religious biases of their time, they simply "pulled down" their experience of faith into the forms of the collective mind, as it was in the over-all social consciousness of the time: thoroughly tribal, linguistically prejudicial.

And this is a reason mysticism is feared in conventional faith: mysticism defies and transcends all tribal boundaries. Christ will not be confined within any limits set by our consciousness and boundaries. When you marry Christ, you marry Everything.

Many call this heresy. They look to a heaven with people like they are now. Sorry, but you shall be surprised: Heaven is this marriage to the Child of God. Heaven is not a place now or later with people who share your particular faith or view of God. That would just be another hell.

So, if you want hell, cling to "your faith" and "your God." If you want Heaven, receive Heaven. Indeed, you can decorate your hell with nice buildings, doctrines, scriptures, rites, ..., but it is just an adorned hell. Heaven needs no adornment; Heaven is the Good, the True, the Beautiful: Love holding all in Love.

I have been told by a conservative Christian that I am going to hell - while another says my writings are not Christian. Okay, but what he calls hell, in Christ I "see" as Heaven. I would not want to go to the "heaven" these persons consider "heaven." Nor, can such contain the Love I have come to know, not know about. Rather, I would go to hell, to know this Love; rather, than a heaven with only people like them and only "their god."