Collected Essays of Valerie Lynn Stephens (Part 4)

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ISBN: 978-1-365-35197-6

©2021 Valerie Lynn Stephens

LETTER TO ECKHART, MEISTER

Sometimes when we are hurting, we begin our own slow but sure self-annihilation. It is almost a sort of wishing of ourselves into nonexistence, as if the phantasy of our own demise can somehow magically substitute for the inevitable actuality of our own mortality. So we construct all sorts of eccentric excuses and philosophies to pull the wool over our own eyes to the glaring Truth-that we do care, and perhaps even more so, in these lucidly sentient moments of quiet desperation. It’s not as if we wish for Death although we very well may have earnestly attempted to sever all possible ties with Life. For, as many intuit, Life is what we truly fear.

And the funny thing is, when we have emerged once again from our caves of isolation and darkness, how we look back and can never seem to recall what we were ever fighting against in the first place. Yet this is the nature of all war & truce. And perhaps we do this because we were mistaking what was truly our valiance and our virtue for self-preservation & its methods of retreat. And yet each phase & turn of suffering & then relief bears a seemingly new longing for a time when we will learn how to walk strong and proud, to never falter again. Yet just as much as we wish we could believe this into fruition, we also know that it can never be. So we just reason that maybe this time we will at least gain something worth suffering for.

Otherwise, the clock stops and every minute is an eternity, every hour, 100 of them, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, century, millennium and the cycle of our innermost evolution continues. And yet still we wonder: Can a human entity, thus so fragile, complex & limited, truly ever evolve? Can we ever really change? And then suddenly someday, we sense a shift from deep within, indescribably intangible yet there, nevertheless. And before we can fully decipher what it is exactly that we had passed our time so studiously & yet seemingly fruitlessly, the fog lifts, and, in a kind of perverse joy & unburdening revelation, we find that we have become the Soul Of Eckhart, laughing at its Creator, as its Creator God, smiles fondly back unto His Creation, knowing that the punch line could never be read in The Answers, but in the absurdist but in the end redemptive tragedy being played out in the edifying process of The Asking itself .

NOTITIA INTUITIVA:

ON THE PREEXISTENCE

OF HIGHER WISDOM WITHIN MAN

Sometimes we feel the Joy well up from deep within, only to just as surely, and just as quickly, beat down its indomitable flames with the highly flammable encloakments of Repression, of course succeeding in merely crafting an incendiary device with far more potentially destructive energial reserves. And the abiding dread of Uncertainty which holds us affixed & enthralled by this fire concerns matters which may consume us, if we heed them not. For that living Gehenna stoked by the friction of our resistance to Nature, & to Life's rites of initiation into the metaphysical membership of Faith & Surrender, is a fire so fierce that it singes either way.

But what is it that truly incites the anguish of Man? Perhaps it is not the ominous presence of some dark, unseen principalities which haunts & plagues us so, but rather the undeniable propinquity of the Holy & the Seraphic. For only the beaming face of Love, Hope, & all things transcendent, divine & altogether wholly elusive to the human entity are what rile him so to such Madness & Profligacy. But what of before? And had we an ontological precedent? And will we evolve to some higher ontological antecedent? Had we always, the foreknowledge of all matters celestial, hellish & ecumenical? Is perhaps the mortal's longing for Heaven & his compulsive push towards a Hell of his own making the trailing afterbirth of worlds prior & henceforth?

Furthermore, is this proof of the existence of a wholly sovereign Deity divine? The Platonists exalt The Ideal as the assured forerunner of “The Actual.” They believe that if the human Imagination & Intellect houses such Ideals, then surely they must consist of substantiality within some realm. In other words, they believe not only in mind over matter, but Mind as the original essence of matter. Nevertheless, in these current incarnations, this analogia entis is the only epistemic access that humankind has to such esoteric ponderings & pontifications. Although these ruminations indeed serve their purpose as well, guiding us with the aid of Phantasy & Mythos, to the sacred temples of our most meritorious & worthwhile endeavours.

And truly, perhaps an embrace of our more intuitive faculties need not be viewed with such hostility & suspicion, as the most egregious sin committed against the demi-gods of all Scientific Inquiry. Indeed perhaps it, in & of itself, is their Redeemer, their Sovereign, their Messiah. For all that we glimpse upon with the Eye of the Anatomy & the Eye of Higher Percipience first took seed within realm of Mind & Spirit. Moreover, a militant stance of corrosive cynicism merely degenerates into all forms of de-humanism, & digression. And as the numinous agencies within Man are again neglected & shunned, he forgets his foreknowledge of both The Future & The Now, leaving him sullen & empty before the crumbling shrine of the false idols of Exigency. For the stuff of the Ultimate can be attained only through the riches of the inmost self. For the implicate order is the Mother & the Father of the very Universe itself. Nothing explicate possesses true ontological bearing without this genesis. For it bears the seed, Pronoia, the forethoughts of God Himself.

In finale, truly what separates man from the Beast is not so much his reasoning faculties but that of his discernment, or his higher wisdom. For there is “knowledge” which is of the lower, earthier & ecumenical depths, and there is “wisdom” which is of the higher realms, a distinction which gets lost so easily amidst the socio-political hubris of human society. Yet perhaps we are here now to learn how to properly honour both our earthly, symbolically-denoted“mothers” & “fathers,” while also bowing before the altar of The Divine or Heavenly Father, with those offerings which bloom up from within a human soul, sacrificial offerings which we have salvaged from the ruins of this world's enmity. And perhaps in the process of our individual Life's lessons, we will someday gaze out upon all of the Universe, crafted as it is with such splendid architecture, & alas will see, not only the imago of our Creator God, but most of all, how equally wondrous & exquisite, that of our own.

ON REACHING A STATE OF HARMONIC DISSONANCE

We will never be able to know what “really” is-at least within our current corporeal incarnation. We all exist within our own subjective bubbles of relative perception and variations of experience. This is why harmonic coexistence with our fellow humans is oftentimes so difficult. For we are all bound by the laws of inevitable solipsism. The only thing we can know for sure is fully real is that of our own internal phases of consciousness. Although we still must not rely too much upon this existential assurance, as it can so easily be disturbed when we come into conflict with others’ own worlds. It seems, at least upon the macrocosmic surface, that the nature of the natural, material world is chaotic, random and even cruel.

Yet many physicists use the term "unitary transformations" to denote the inherent order & consummate Logic to the Universe. A preferred statement of mine is that there is indeed order, albeit order of an "infinite complexity". In other words, there exists an order that, to our "naked" human eye of finitude & myopia, cannot be fully comprehended. Moreover, the problem arises when “I” begins in a tenable position of being in agreement with itself yet comes into hostile or even merely indifferent opposition to that which is not “I” that its own existence begins to assume a menacing or persecutory aspect. Thus, the question is: How can one be both for oneself & for "the other" without losing total ego integrity? This is perhaps a question best left to rhetoric, or to the late but brilliant humanist psychoanalyst R.D. Laing, rest his soul, if he were still with us.

It just seems to be a characteristic of this human experience that a great deal of life is spent in seeking harmony between the "inner" & the "outer." And when the “I” does not first trust itself, such existential dissonance is identified with even more strongly, thereby potentially leading one to crushing despair, disillusionment & even projective rage, hostility or even violence towards the so-called "externals.". For in this particular state, the world “out there” seems obstinate and/or hostile towards us, but all begins first from within. And this is important wisdom to adhere to, for once we turn against our very own organism, the search for inner and outer unification is rendered fruitless. For after all, perception molds reality. But are we doomed to repeat an endless cycle of wholeness to fragmentation to wholeness to fragmentation? I think we are. It is yet another intractable feature of our human condition.

Yet I suppose, even when we manage to come somewhat to terms with the fact that conflict, suffering & loneliness are inevitable, we nevertheless seek to quell them. There evermore will remain yet another intractable feature of our humanity, to ask questions to which we already inherently possess the answers. Yet perhaps the lesson to cultivate a quiet and full embrace of life and all of its glories and vagaries is, in & of itself, the purpose of this very existence. I suppose the reasoning Intellect will never make sense of the logic of the Spirit, as it will always view, to a certain degree, a submission to life’s vagaries as an act of debasing & ignoble prostration before it.

In finale, it is this fallible assumption that becomes the ruin of most things dedicated to transcendental inquiry and exigency. For there is much convenience inherent in casting God as a petty tyrant than as a kindly sage, as we often feel that we could never possibly prove our worthiness of such Divine heritage, & go on seething with a seemingly indefatigable rage against demons & angels we have merely invented inside of our own heads. Hence, where is all of this leading to-this life? An answer? No, because there are just as many as there are questions to complement them. Thus, perhaps the fight has already been won. Must we have it all "figured out" beforehand? We weren’t taught how to breathe now, were we? Perhaps every salient aspect of our human biology & metaphysiology is a function of the autonomic nervous system. Perhaps all this Life & its Guardian & Bestower requires of us is to trust in the inherent perfection of His design & plan, merely awaiting our actualization of it. Perhaps the only way to kill an enemy is to love him. Because the thing is, he was never the true enemy to begin with. Then it would follow that perhaps the only way to kill that so-labeled egoistic, false “I” which threatens to consume us, is not by dying to it but rather bringing it back from the Death it has been for too long already dying, into a life well-versed in Harmonic Dissonance.

ON SIN & CONSEQUENCE:

A Brief Exegesis

When we experience conflict & suffering as either a direct or an indirect consequence of sin, this is in large part due to the perception of the loss of God's protection & benediction over us. We are told in the Judeo-Christian Scripture that evil does indeed exist, albeit manifesting itself in ways both overt & subtle, through the malicious words, actions, and even inactions of human individuals acting either in service to Good or to Evil. We are also told that we are not battling against the flesh & the spirit insomuch as we are battling dark, unseen principalities. I personally theorize, as many scientific-minded do, that the spiritual forces we so often commonly refer to as “good” or “evil” are subatomic phenomena which, although they cannot be directly observed, are nevertheless very much sensed & intuited by many sentient beings attuned to them.

We are also told that when one serves other idols, demi-gods or gods before the one true & living God, that we will eventually face the consequence of the myriad bodily & even mindly manifestations of illness or disease which afflicts all creatures great & small. And these idols can take the manifestation of both those classical idols of stone, metal, gold, etc. or of more intangible idols such as those afflictions & addictions of thought & emotion. However, contrary to fundamentalist evangelical sentiment, God is not some petty, white-bearded tyrant in the sky who delights in sadistic glee whenever we humans succumb to our various foibles & weaknesses. This variation of theological anthropomorphism however, does seem to be a contentious issue of human cognitive tendency. But the analogia entis reminds us that we were fashioned in God's image, & not the other way around. And, thank God for that!

In actuality, it is when we are not seeing God accurately in who & what His character & imago truly is, that we are led into all sorts of venary, plight & other assorted unnecessary embarrassments. And what are these attributes that I refer to in the aforementioned insight? I speak mainly of those concerning how God's nature is to delight in the childlike faith & surrender of His children & to bless us in accordance to our allegiance to Him, rather than to punish us whenever we go astray. Rather, He chastens & corrects in order to protect & preserve. Moreover, as a matter of theological discourse, the Scripture, both Old & New Testament, teaches us that it is actually the work of Satan, or demonic forces, & the work of other human beings which we often confuse with the work of God Himself when we become afflicted.

Furthermore, it is these satanic forces which work to give us a distorted image of ourselves, others & especially, of God, which wreaks the most havoc amongst human society. For the Devil wishes to turn us in self-hatred against ourselves, as this is the clearest path he has towards getting us to commit all sorts of injurious and/or ruinous acts upon others. And contrary to the blindly obeisant Nicenean indoctrination that the inmost, core essence of man is vile, base & corrupt, otherwise known as the doctrine of Original Sin, I believe that it is important to come to terms with our darker potentialities & urges. Furthermore, it is also much more psycho-spiritually sound to focus upon cultivating & actualizing our inherent & God-given virtues & character. Ultimately, I have found this to be a much more amenable & efficacious approach to the resistance of Evil.

In finale, God's love is always available to us. Is is the immutable essence infusing all of the good, and all of the beauty of this existence. But, it is we who must accept it. It is we who must allow ourselves to be crafted into the person God knows that we can be. And as He builds us up from the inside-out, we may then feel thus empowered & worthy to accept His love & guidance. For I believe that the blessings of existential security & even prosperity offered up to those who live according to God's precepts, are desired by each & every one of His children. For the devil & his legions know when we are feeling unworthy & use our human vulnerabilities & character weaknesses as deft instruments to keep us from experiencing the wholeness & completion that the Holy Spirit offers us.

“But what of free will?” so many then ask? Yes, God has granted us our freedoms but with the caveat and the expectation that we will utilize this free will & choice towards pursuits that are most actualizing in a godly way, and that are then, by extension, worthy of God. And many attempt to twist the word of God, precisely because they do not want to be held accountable for their lives. But we forget all too easily the allegory of Eden, don't we? And we cry out “Antinomy! Antinomy! Antinomy! Everything is mere Antinomy and thus is meaningless, meaningless, meaningless!” “But aren't we unconditionally loved by God?” we argue further. Yes, we are. But if one still has the urge to sin against oneself & others, then one hasn't truly reached a place within oneself where they either feel worthy of the love of God, or they are merely resistant to the attendant kenosis & metamorphosis which they must undergo from the inside out, which come along with a genuine acceptance of God's Love & Redemption.

Nevertheless and in the end, when all of the semantic & legalistic reductio ad absurdum maneuverings are deployed & depleted, one more transcendental proof continually testifies to the Immutable & the Absolute: God completes us. He fulfills us. He is the Ultimate Source from whence we came & to which we strive to return. In addition, when we are ready to free ourselves to feel worthy of God's love, and let Him into our minds and our hearts, we no longer feel the ominously omnipresent urge to go forth living our lives in resistance to surrender, for we will have been made whole & our weary, trembling souls, will have been quelled by the inimitable presence of His Grace, Benediction, & Assurance.

We are all loved unconditionally by God our Creator, and His love & guidance are always available to those who seek it. But we are also still morally accountable to ourselves, others & our God for how we use the lives & individual gifts He has blessed us each with. And indeed, we are likewise responsible for how we navigate the obstacles we have been cursed with. For contrary to popular opinion, there are moral absolutes in this life, despite the compulsions of cultural reductionism, to reduce the wondrous complexity of life into excruciating banality. However, there is, in every circumstance we are placed, a choice to do “right” or to do “wrong.” The variables may be intricate, even tricky & complex, but the solution is ever constant. And its divine alchemations can be found both in God's Word & in the transcendent wisdom granted to those who ask for it.

For when we open this sacred tome, humbly asking God to grant us His Holy Spirit that we might reflect upon its immutable truths, God always shines forth His light to guide us in our exegetical travails, however humble or sophisticated they may be. For ultimately, in imago humanus we may struggle & toil, but in imago divinus we are are freed, we are redeemed.

LADIES & GENTLEMAN, EXHIBIT A

I am the wild animal that never bites-even when cornered. Tamed by the fear of my own destructive potential, I remain held captive by Freedom in a jungle where Self-Preservation often comes before Thrivance. And thus is my so-called "Civility" perhaps often my gravest weakness, as I am forevermore endangered but never extinct.

As a matter of course, I am the creature most visible, camouflaged as I am by the finest wear of Reservation & Stealth. But worser still, I am the beast which must learn to live in passive-aggressive indifference & even feigned opposition to all which comes first-hence, best nature to me.

I follow a path both most potentially redemptive and fatally egregious, yet all the while, whatever may come of me, must maintain the pretense that I always come out clean on the other side. And it is indeed, a realm beyond Loneliness where I tread, militantly guarding as I must, against the common impulses of conformity, also knowing full well how such solidarity will merely seek to further estrange and even endanger me.

Yet I must remain upon my path nevertheless, as I am all-too-sentiently & wisely aware of how the subversively quiet yet raging hysteria & bandying about of the masses can so often be mistaken for the Utopian ideal attained. For truly, it is distinction which brings true honour, as this is always the most painstaking and perilous path to travail.

And it also reigns true that a higher synthesis of Society and Self is the only means to the end of an authentic & abiding soci0-political communion & reformation. And in the end, we must answer each to our own earthly perishing & celestial resurrection of triumphs ignoble or meritorious. For the truest task of our mortal life is not in winning the battles which wage against us in the iniquitous guises & causes of all sublunary magistrates, but lies within the maintenance of that canonical counsel offered up graciously by the hand of the Divine in the form of those truths which have been pillaged from their ruins.

For true Victory lies in Surrender-although not truce-for a side must indeed be chosen where both Heavenly ally & Hadetian foe vie for election. For all worldly authority lacks faith in both its constitution and its consensus. Yet we must also beware of marrying ourselves with blind rebellion against such forces, as this is a bridegroom which must be shared with many. Ultimately, the animal with the best chances for both survival and thrivance is the one which cultivates within itself, enough inner strength & solidarity to be perceived by outside forces as "weak" and "alien", enough righteously cultivated Pride to seek Humility, enough distinction of character to gradually become one with all "others", and most significantly of all, enough creaturely dignity to allow oneself to undergo a gradualism of the spirit, hence to become more & more, fully Divine.

BETWEEN THE PRIMORDIAL & THE NEOTERIC

Virtue is not born from a puritanically incitive invocation of will, but is a surrender to that which already lies intrinsically evident within man. An embrace of so-called "primitivity" is not what turns us into savages, but a denial & gross neglect of the sense of naturalistic morality already lying latent within us through a submission to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

And we so often smugly assume the methodologies of communal refinement & cosmopolitan acculturation to be the sole genesis of our human sense of morality, but, for the most part, in this case especially, the deemed "cure" is the cancer. For contrary to what the majority believes & socially engineers its inhabitants to become, the displacement of the so-called "primeval" self through the overzealous & spurious attempts at fanatical homogenization is often at the very root of most societal ills.

And yet we still project most of our failings upon some inferior "pre-historic" imago, exacting only all the more estrangement from ourselves as individuals & from our species at large, thereby also allowing evil to furthermore brand its indelible signature upon every de-humanist endeavor. Furthermore, working on an individualistic level to transcend each our own destructive potential, is the most effective contribution we can each make towards the preservation of humankind at large.

Every individual is responsible for each their own proper governance & actualization, yet this can be obtained only insofar as we each continue working within society at large to fully integrate all aspects of our "private" humanity into the public arena. For we continue to pander to the erroneous & insidious notion that we will be able to maintain our dominion, efficacy & sufficiency not only over each our own selves & lives but over the world without, while we continue to refuse to kneel before the shrine of our more primordial leanings.

And although it may very well be true that one cannot serve two masters with equal devotion & fidelity, we must nevertheless strive to appease them both. Yet the whole of this human existence, from the quotidian to the more transcendental, teems with plentiful esteem to be gleaned by all willing to humble ourselves before the altar of each our own humanity & that of others. For the glaring, superficial lights by which so many glean their modern-day esteem are not only harsh & blinding, but are unflattering to our imago on the whole.

Yet in the end, as long as we bask within the sickly-pallor of the aforementioned glow, we may at least rest assured that when this light finally burns out, another light altogether will reveal our true visage. And only then will we each feel bolstered enough to step unabashedly & courageously into this light, which will reveal our true totality of being in all of its splendour & inherent perfection. And only then will we come to realize, that the self we had been attempting to shun into silence & non-being all of these years, was the very self that we were striving to honour & preserve.

HOMONOIA: THE MIND UNIVERSAL

As children, we learn to see ourselves through the eyes of The Other, which very soon become our own eyes through which we discern an often distorted self-concept. And until we accept the complex, arduous lessons of individuation, embracing each our own Salvation & Redemption through the practice of Personal Accountability, we run the risk of peering too deeply within the mirror of others' reflections of us, thereby losing our center & direction.

Yet we eventually come to realize through the wounds that others have inflicted upon us, that rejection & criticism are often masked regard & esteem in cunning disguise on the part of our so-called persecutors. And we learn of the necessity of Authenticity & Truth, uncensored, as the keys to both Heaven above & Heaven on earth. And if we also learn to occasionally let down our guard just enough to the light of the realization that how others see us, is how they see themselves & everyone else, will we slowly come to terms with the sweet synchronicities of this mortal experience & human condition & the immaculate unity holding it all intact.

For we are all truly the same organism merely undergoing each our own variant phases of development & expression. Indeed, it is the very vagaries & complexities of our human condition which allow for its exquisite diversity, beauty & grace. Ultimately, by embracing Truth at all costs are we courting true Redemption & Transcendence, as some fine day we will finally come to see ourselves in our totality of entity, bathed within that kind of Light with which the Shadow has learnt, once & for all, to peaceably coexist, and thus will we come to see, that we were indeed all along, fearfully, wonderfully & perfectly made.

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