While we generally strive to perceive spiritual truth within the "sunlight" of certainty, we actually experience it with a more "moonlight" type of awareness; that is, with a degree of obscurity.
Whenever we look for "clear and distinct ideas" (Descartes) available for our perception through a clear sunlight-awareness, we find them slipping away from us. Often we bemoan this fact. But we needn't feel bad. For there can be no objectively-perceived certainty in a world where human beings are called to sink into a more unitive, moonlight type of awareness. Here, just as the full moon reflects a light whose source (the Sun) is hidden from view, so all spiritual insights are actually reflections of a divine Source which is nowhere to be found. After all, God is eternally and blissfully self-emptied into the world! This means that our experience of spiritual truth is like having a mirror-image present but no Original, or an echo with no original sound as its source. Or - in this particular context - like having a dazzling silvery moon with no Sun ever to be found!
On moonlit nights - especially when the moon is full - we find ourselves EMBRACED by a silvery landscape - a condition that is associated with an obscure sense of union - rather than SEEING it in any crystal-clear sort of perception. Indeed, the experience of moonlight points to the fact that spiritual truth is less a thing that is available to be objectively perceived, and more a presence that GRASPS and holds us - body, mind, soul and spirit. In fact, part of the reason why spiritual truth is not available to be "proven" comes from the fact that it has a habit of embracing and holding us in the nighttime mystery of spiritual intimacy. It is like having the divine "arms" holding us in intimate embrace, preventing us from ever seeing the One who is holding us. Yet this lack of clarity is precisely the condition that allows us to experience intimate union with the beauty of the Divine Presence.
Photo: A nearly-full moon peeks out from the clouds at sunset; Larimer County, CO; December 26, 2012
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