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This is the step beyond our highest experiences of love and union, a step in which self is not around to divide, separate, objectify or claim anything for itself. Self does not know God; it cannot love him, and from the beginning has never done so.

Bernadette Roberts

But coming home that day, walking downhill with a panorama of valley and hills before me, I turned my gaze inward, and what I saw, stopped me in my tracks.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Before Hills Home Self Shop Track Tracks Turn
In some ways, all our experiences of God are beyond belief, because all conceptual beliefs pale when compared to the experiential reality.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Experience God Reality Way
The assumption that the egoless condition, or union of self and God, is man’s final goal and ultimate destiny is a great mistake.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Assumption Destiny Final Men Mistake Union
Only God is love, and for this love to be fully realized self must step aside. And not only do we not need a self to love God, but for the same reason we do not need a mind to know him, for that in us which knows God, is God.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Aside God Love Mind Realized Reason Self
I went on to discover that in its deepest sense, the will is not primarily the faculty of desire for anything known, but rather, the desire for something unknown, animate desire for something that lies beyond ourselves, a longing for something we know is missing in us.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Desire Lying Missing Ourselves Something
The reflexive mechanism of the mind -or whatever it is that allows us to be self-conscious – is cut off or permanently suspended so the mind is ever after held in a fixed now moment out of which it cannot move in its uninterrupted gaze upon the Unknown
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Discovery Gaze Immediate Mind Permanently Unknown
Spiritual life is like a moving sidewalk. Whether you go with it or spend your whole life running against it, you’re still going to be taken along.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Along Moving Running Spiritual Taken
I can only speculate why so little has been said of this breakthrough; in fact , I may never get over the silence on the part of writers who say nothing about this second movement.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Breakthrough Movement Nothing Second Speculate
To go beyond the self, beyond even its most intimate union with God, and this is where we enter yet another new life- a life best categorized, perhaps, as a life without a self.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Another Categorized God Perhaps Union
It can no longer be tested by any force or trial, nor moved by the winds of change, and at this point the self has obviously outworn its function; it is no longer needed or useful, and life can go on without it.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Function Longer Moved Needed Point Tested
Instead of the usual unlocalized centre of myself, there was nothing there, it was empty, and at the moment of seeing this there was a flood of quiet joy and I knew, finally I knew what was missing-it was my “self”.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Empty Flood Instead Missing Moment Nothing Seeing
Since the moment of self-consciousness comes to a permanent end – and a new journey begins- is such a decisive stroke or milestone in the contemplative life.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Contemplative Journey Life Permanent Self
But this going-out is an upheaval, a complete turnabout of such proportions it cannot possibly be missed, under-emphasized, or sufficiently stressed as a major landmark in the contemplative life.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Emphasized Landmark Major Possible Proportion Sufficient Under
…a point is reached where the self is so completely aligned with the still-point that it can no longer be moved, even in its first movements, from this center.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Aligned Center Completely Self Trials Wind
When there is no longer a cyclone, there is no longer an eye. So the storms, crises and sufferings of life are a way of finding the eye.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Cyclone Eye Life Longer Storm Suffering
This is the step beyond our highest experiences of love and union, a step in which self is not around to divide, separate, objectify or claim anything for itself. Self does not know God; it cannot love him, and from the beginning has never done so.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS

Beyond Claim Experience God Objectivity Union

This is the step beyond our highest experiences of love and union, a step in which self is not around to divide, separate, objectify or claim anything for itself. Self does not know God; it cannot love him, and from the beginning has never done so.

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This is the step beyond our highest experiences of love and union, a step in which self is not around to divide, separate, objectify or claim anything for itself. Self does not know God; it cannot love him, and from the beginning has never done so.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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