Reverence

Why does God need reverence, since He is perfect without it?

No, it is we who need to show reverence. It is necessary because of its effect on us. It helps to make us humble, thereby reducing egoism.

The Role of Devotion

Attachment is the chief obstacle to spiritual life. Desires lead to attachment.

Coping with desires one by one is difficult, but coping through worship is easy. Worship of God, or of a divine incarnation, or of anyone you deem worthy of worship, will absorb the lesser desires.

Worship, which is a kind of desire in itself, will drive out the other desires. But this desire is pure, ideal, life-giving. The others are wasteful.

God is Love

God is Truth, but our experience of Truth is usually not as overwhelming or transforming as our experience of Love.

Love should be our guide, then.

God is Love. God is the origin of Love, and the origin of our Love.

When we love, we feel infinite, powerful, selfless, immortal. We feel, in other words, god-like. It is the actual presence, then, of God in us when we love.

Let us be guided by Love to the fount of Love in us, which is God.

The Divine Lover: Bestower of Peace

In secrecy approach the Secret One, in silence the Silent One, in humility the Shy One. Lovers are shy with each other because of the mystery that hedges them. So will we be shy with the Great Lover of our Souls. When we renounce all that is not Him, all that does not lead directly to Him, then the Divine Lover will bestow upon us the Peace that passeth understanding.

Beyond peace of Mind is peace of Soul. This is among the first fruits of our spiritual life, and the best of the early harbingers, the first intimations that the riper fruits―Realization of Truth, Perception of the Divine Light―lay not too far ahead on the self-same path we have so carefully trodden, so diligently guarded.

Hold Back the Mind!

For those with a devotional nature, too? Shouldn't they spontaneously follow their outgoing devotional impulses?

No. They should check them. Turn them inward.

RESTRAINT is for devotees too.

Restraint and Rapture. Restraint checks the outer. Rapture then discovers the inner.

BACK TO WORDS OF WISDOM ARCHIVES

Note: All "Words of Wisdom" are quotations from Paul Hourihan, unless otherwise noted.