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Now, we return to the potential of disconnection in the process of spiritual connection. As a corollary, disconnection from the connection can happen in quietude alone, when one sits in a time of reverent receptivity, and mundane feelings and thoughts arise. The personal, with its agenda and need for reestablishing control, can banish the transpersonal Silence, which in freedom does not manifest as control but Love. These thought and feeling visitors, in themselves, are not a problem. They may continue to circle around the quietude, which is now the center of alert receptivity. They can, however, dissolve the quietude, if the thoughts and feelings move to center stage, so displacing the quietude. And, of import, following this temptation to displacement is a self-sense against unmediated Grace, Pure Spirit being the undoing of the centrality-of-I. See, any subtle connection with anyone, anything, in that connection the self-sense is absent from the center and, at times, may dissolve fully: in the body, spiritual connection manifests at differing degrees. Indeed, consciousness, or Oneness, Itself manifests all the way from gross to subtle, matter to Spirit.
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So, sitting on one side of the table, the young lady on the other, I had an experience I had never had in the presence of another, even though I had had many experiences of spiritual connection ~ not one like this. Sitting with her, a sense of powerful presence came over the body or, one could say, up through the body: again, this cannot be spoken. The mind was aware of this and the resultant struggle to speak, and the mind itself was blocked from its typical efficiency. Within this connection was, also, appreciation, for there was awareness something we could call spiritual was happening, something beautiful. There was knowing that, in some way that could not be framed conceptually, this sharing was not merely about two persons, so personalities. Likewise, awareness was present that this was not a mere physical attraction. Looking back, the sense is that speech was of a lower consciousness expression and not conducive to this Sharing. Trying to speak was like trying to move forward into this communion and backward, at the same time, utilizing means of ordinary relating. This can happen in quietude, when one cannot verbalize a prayer or mantra, and, if one is able to, it has no power, only dissolves in the Silence. Ordinary mentality, likewise, is of a lower order expression of Spirit than direct relating silence with silence, when the silence is manifesting freely from the Silence.
Later, thought did arise to a potential knowing of each other in a prior lifetime, but that does not fit. To me, claiming such is another trick of the self sense to explain what needs no explanation. Even if she and I knew each other in a prior lifetime, how would we know? I have read such, and, as with so-called near death experiences, or NDEs, I find persons ascribing to such being under-appreciating of the workings of mind from gross to subtle. Anyway, if this related to some knowing in a so-called past life, what happened at the table was in the timeless Now, and, frankly, I am not interested in what did or did not happen in some so-called past life. I am only interested in the amazing holiness of that Moment, that Now, of Love meeting Love, of Beauty appearing untouched by any past, any future.
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Past life talk is another diversion from Grace happening again and again and again, fresh each time. The past is dead, for it never is. And that meeting with that granddaughter lives always in the intimacy of Life Itself. Spiritual connection never happened, absolutely, for is not born in time, so does not die in time. The context of the connecting is within time, the connection itself is arising from the Eternal, in the Eternal.
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So, one could wish to inquire, "What about the understanding of such sharing, what Grace may be teaching me?" The answer of the meaning of the sharing, if one needs an answer, is in the sharing itself. You cannot grasp spiritual Truth, you can only let It show Itself to you. Hold within what you have experienced with another, and, when you are prepared to see, you will see. Yet, I, likewise, encourage you not to turn spiritual experience into something that must be understood. Does the perfume of the rose not have value in itself? Is not the knowing of it free from needing to understand it? We need to be careful of turning our spirituality into a pragmatic matter. Beauty needs not explanation, Grace is free of our understandings.
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Appreciation of is more important, by far, than knowledge of, in the sacred Meeting. Admiration, one with appreciation, draws us silently to the Source by the attraction the Source has for created creatures. These apparent two attractions, Source and creature, are one attraction. In the words of the mystical philosopher Nicolas of Cusa, translated by William F. Wertz, in "On Searching for God," 1845...
For our intellectual spirit has the power of fire in itself. For no other purpose is it sent by God to the earth than that it glow and grow into a flame. When it is excited by admiration, then it grows, just as if the wind entering into a fire excited its potential to actuality. If we apprehend the works of God, we marvel at eternal wisdom.
Simply put, in religious language, in the connection, the young woman was an icon, a means of the effulgence of God. She was an invitation to God, from God. In admiring beyond her appearance, a quiet transformation occurs, unspeakable. Every such appearing is the appearance of Grace, for beauty does not exists in itself to be admired, only in and by Beauty.
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