Burst into Tears

A voice whispered to me last night: 'There is no such thing as a voice whispering in the night! -- Idries Shah, Wisdom of the Idiots

What is the quality of your relationship with the cashier, the parking attendant, the repair man, the customer?
Eckhart Tolle

“It happens sometimes that a sweet and joyful love is awakened in the heart and swells like a great wave through the soul by itself without any effort at all on our part. One is so powerfully moved by love, so passionately drawn up into love, so strongly taken by love, so tenderly embraced and utterly mastered by love that she surrenders herself entirely to its power. In this embrace the soul experiences directly the radiance of the Divine, a wonderful bliss, pure freedom, ecstatic sweetness, complete overpowering by love, a waterfall of ineffable delight. She feels that all her senses are sacred and she is so totally engulfed by love and so deeply immersed in love that she is one with love, and will never cease to be love. For the beauty of love has clothed her, the power of love has submerged her, the holiness of love has consumed her, the greatness of love has so sublimely drawn her into herself that she will always love and do nothing but acts of love.”

"Furthermore, the blessed soul has a more sublime way of love, giving her a lot to do inside, i.e. she is being pulled in love above human nature, above human senses and reason, and above all the workings of her heart.

Only with eternal love is she pulled into the eternity of love, into the incomprehensible wisdom and the silent highness, into the deep abyss of the Deity, who is everything in all what exists, elusive, elevated above all things, imperishable, almighty, all-encompassing, and who powerfully execute everything.

In love she is so profoundly sunk and by her desire she is so strongly pulled, that her heart is intensely moved and restless inside. Thus her soul flows out and melts of love, and her mind is ardently bound to strong longing. All her senses set themselves to the fact she may live in the pleasure of love.

With urgency she desires this from God and with her whole heart she requests this of God. This she must desire a lot, for love does not let her calm down or recuperate. Love elevates her and pulls her down, puts her suddenly to the test and again torments her. She brings death and gives life, she
makes healthy and hurts again. She makes her foolish and then again wise.

Thus she lifts her up to a higher being. Thus she has spiritually climbed up above time, in the eternity of love, which is without time. Above the human forms of love and above her own nature she is lifted up by the desire to live above.

There is her being and her will, her desire and love, in the certain truth, the pure clarity, the noble highness, the beatic beauty and the sweet company of the highest spirits who all flow in abundant love, and who exist in clear knowledge, in the possession and pleasure of their love.

Then she desires to stay there among the spirits and most among the blazing seraphs. In the sublime Deity and in the Trinity she finds her lovely resting-place and her joyful house.

She seeks Him out in His majesty. She follows Him there and sees Him with her heart and her mind. She knows Him and loves Him and desires Him so much, that she cannot respect saints, human beings, angels or creatures, unless with the same love by which she loves everything through Him. Him alone she has chosen in love, above all things, under all things and in all things, so that with the full desire of her heart, and with the whole strength of her mind, she longs to see, possess and enjoy Him.

Thus the earth is a great misery to her, and a tough prison and a heavy agony. She disdains the world. The earth has become a burden to her and what belongs to the earth cannot satisfy or content her. It is a great pain to her that she has to be so distant and seem so strange.

Her misery she cannot forget, her desire cannot be stilled, her longing harasses her miserably, and by this she is exceedingly and without mercy tormented and tortured.

Thus she lives in a great longing and in a strong desire to be freed from this misery and to be dissolved from this body.

Then she says with a sad heart, like the apostles : ‘Cupio dissolvi et esse sum Christo’, i.e. ‘I long to be dissolved and to be united with Christ’. In the same way, her desire is strong and her restlessness painful to be freed and live with Christ.

Not out of sadness for the present or out of pain for future grief, but only out of holy and eternal love she eagerly, yearningly and full of longing desires to go to the land of eternity, in the glory of delight.

This longing is great and strong in her, and her existence is heavy and tough, and the pain she suffers out of desire is inexpressibly great.

Nevertheless, she has to live in hope, and it is precisely this which makes her ache and languish.

O holy desire of love, how strong is your power in the loving soul ! It is a heavenly passion, a sharp torture, a long sorrow, a murdering death, a dying life !

Up there she still cannot come and here below she has neither rest or duration. Because of longing, she cannot bear the thought of Him anymore, and to lack Him is, because of her desire, a torture. Thus she has to live with great discomfort.

So she cannot and does not want to be consoled, like the prophet says : ‘Renuit consolare animam meam’, i.e. ‘My soul does not want to be consoled’.

Accordingly she rejects every consolation by God Himself or by His creatures. For the pleasure this can give her, lends love new strength, pulls her to a higher mode of being and renews her longing to devote herself to love, to enjoy love and to bear her exile without any pleasure.

Thus, despite all gifts, she remains unsatiated and unsatisfied because she still has to miss the presence of her love. This is a very hard life, because she does not want to be consoled if she has not acquired what she so restlessly seeks.

Love has dragged her on, has led her and taught her to go her own way. This she has followed faithfully, often with a lot of trouble and effort, in great spiritual powerlessness, with strong desire, with a lot of impatience, in great unrest, in weal and woe, with much grief, in seeking and begging, in lacking and possessing, in growing and failing certainty, in imitation and longing, in worries and fear, in languishing and rotting, in great faith and a lot of unfaithfulness. In joy and sorrow she is ready for all things. Dead or alive she wants to belong to love. And in the intimacy of her heart she suffers.

Because of love she wants to deserve that land. If here she is tested with every kind of misery, then her refuge is in glory. For the work of love precisely lies in that she desires the nearby creature, and pursues that nearness the most in which she can love the most. So she always wants to follow love, experience love and enjoy love, and in this misery this cannot happen to her.

Thus she wants to go to her own land, where she has established her house and in which she rests with love and with desire ! All hindrances taken away, she is lovely received by love ! There at last she will behold what she has so tenderly loved, and shall possess for eternity Him she has so loyally served. With happiness she shall enjoy Him who, with love in her soul, she has so often embraced.

There, happy of heart, she shall enter as Saint Augustine says : ‘Qui in Te intrat in gaudium Domini sui ...’, i.e. ‘O Lord, who enters in You, he enters in the joy of his Lord ...’. Fear has no place there. For there she shall possess Him the best way in the very best. There, the soul is united with her Bridegroom and wholly becomes one spirit with Him, in inseparable loyalty and mutual love forever.

The soul that, in times of mercy, wanted to do everything for Him shall enjoy Him in eternal glory, where one shall do nothing else but praise and love. May God bring us all to that.

Amen."

-- "Blessed Beatrice of Nazareth or in Dutch Beatrijs van Nazareth (1200 in Tienen – 1268) was a Flemish Cistercian nun. She was the very first prose writer using an early Dutch language, a mystic, and the author of the notable Dutch prose dissertation known as the Seven Ways of Holy Love. She was also the first prioress of the Abbey of Our Lady of Nazareth in Nazareth near Lier in Brabant...

She was singing at the end of compline, which is the last service of the day, when it happened. Onlookers later said that she appeared to be sleeping. Beatrice recalls a vision of following Jesus Christ up through different levels and layers of heaven. She ascended with him up into the presence of God and yet still ascended higher. This was a very shocking revelation as it implied something higher than their lord. Above God Beatrice saw “in an ecstasy of mind” the Holy Trinity. According to the Vita the vision was seen “not with bodily but with intellectual eyes, with eyes not of the flesh but of the mind”. One of the nuns that thought she was sleeping woke her up and immediately Beatrice burst into tears.

After this vision Beatrice was in a prolonged state of gnosis and ecstatic emotion. There is recorded two signs or “miracles” resulting from it. She was brought to the dormitory to rest after her ordeal and became sick. She overcame her sickness and cured herself by crying. And the second starts with her laughing in gratitude loudly. This was immodest at the time, so while she was overtaken with this expression she was also ashamed of her behavior. She wished during this ecstatic bout of laughter to hide from the other sisters. Suddenly the lamp lighting the dorm fell to the ground and went out, effectively “hiding” her. The nuns at the monastery basically decided to give her lots of space during this time period..."
-- Western Mystics