Lilian Staveley

“ Finally, total mental solitude closed around me. In spite of my doubt as to the existence of a woman-soul, I still felt the same piercing desire and need for God—the acquisition of knowledge in no way lessened this pain. What, after all, is knowledge by itself? The light of the highest human intelligence seems hardly greater than the wan lamp of a diminutive glow-worm, surrounded by the vastness of the night. In sorrow, in trouble, in pain, could knowledge or the mind do so much more for me than the despised body? ”

“ There is nothing else in life so wonderful, so rapturous as this swift reunion of the soul with God; and the joy is not only the joy of the soul, because the heart and mind have their fill of it too, for they too have ached and thirsted and hungered and longed, and now are satisfied.
If this measureless happiness could only be imagined by us before we experience it, how many of us would be spurred to greater efforts instead of falling back amongst the dust and cobwebs of Vanity!—but it cannot be imagined, and the only way to come to it is by faith and obedience ”

“ If Divine Light, being also Perfect Freedom, consents to the wandering of the soul, but Divine Love, being also Reciprocity, may not consent to a perpetual wandering, how set limits in a life in which perfect freedom must continue? A limit can be fixed by Evil, Evil the outermost circle from God, the shore on which, continually breaking and being broken, the soul turns herself in longing to a long-forgotten Lord. Evil is the hedge about the vineyard of the Parable. The soul is free to touch it, free to pass through it if she will, but touching it she knows Pain. ”

“ The Presence of God was with me day and night, and the world was not the world as I had once known it—a place where men and women fought and sinned and toiled and anguished and wondered horribly the meaning of this mystery of pain and joy, of life and death. The world was become Paradise, and in my heart I cried to all my fellow-souls, "Why fret and toil, why sweat and anguish for the things of earth when our own God has in His hand such peace and bliss and happiness to give to Every man? ”

“ I am too easily undone by suffering and by the sight of suffering in any living thing; but although one may be a coward—that is to say, one may inwardly shrink from every kind of suffering,—one can be, and it is necessary to be, quite submissive; and to refrain from the slightest rebellion or selfishness—this is what God takes note of. What a difference there is between the selfish and the unselfish sufferer: how the one makes everyone around him miserable, wears them out body and soul; and how the other calls out all that is best in others and strengthens all that is best in himself! ”

“ I despaired, for I perceived that God does not reveal Himself because of an imperious demand of the human mind, and I had yet to learn that those mysteries which are under lock and key to the intelligence are open to the heart and soul. But indeed there was no God to reveal Himself. All was a fantastic make-believe! a pitiful childish invention and illusion!
My intelligence said, "Resign yourself to what is, after all, the truth: console yourself with the world and material achievements." The heart said, "Resignation is impossible, for there is no consolation to the heart without God." ”

“ My consciousness is alight with a new fiery energy of life; it feels to extend to an infinite distance beyond my body, and yet remains connected with my body. I live in a manner totally new and totally incomprehensible, a life in which none of my senses are used and which is yet a thousand, and more than a thousand, times as vivid. It is living at white heat—without forms, without sound, without sight, without anything which I have ever been aware of in this world, and at a terrible speed. ”

“ Who is it, what is it, that so punishes the soul? Is it God? No. Patiently, lovingly He waits. Our pain is the difficulty of consenting to perfection: every virtue has a hammer, every perfection a long two-edged sword; and the punishment we feel is the breaking and wounding of self-will under the hammers of the virtues and the sword-thrusts of the vision of perfection. ”

“ Is it all joy to love God? How can it be? For Love carries in itself a terrible wound of longing which can never be healed till we come before Him in possession Face to Face.
And many times a day in an unpremeditated natural anguish Love remembers the sufferings of that meek and holy Saviour; how can it be a joy to the soul that passionately loves Him to stand before a tortured Lord, tortured for her? ”

“ In Spirit-life we meet the Ideas of God uncrystallised into any form. They penetrate the soul—she flashes to them, she becomes them, she reaches unimaginable heights of bliss by "becoming." This form of joy is incomprehensible until experienced: it is stupendous living, if it may be so expressed it is happiness at lightning velocity; but it is a lightning happiness which must flash to God. When it ceases to do this in a full manner, it ceases to be full happiness. ”

“ It is obvious that in learning to do this we shall often suffer. The soul has painfully to learn that without God's Grace there is no virtue, no righteousness, and no sanctity: she learns by going forward upon Grace—perhaps to some great height: then Grace is withdrawn, the soul falls back, and feels to fall lower than she ever was before, and usually she falls over a trifle. Amazed, unspeakably surprised and humiliated, and ashamed, the soul learns to know herself—to know herself with God, to know herself without God. ”

“ When a soul knows herself, has repented and become redeemed, she knows all other souls, good or bad: there are no longer any secrets for her, no one can hide himself from her: she sees all these open and living books, reads them, and avoids judging and bitterness in spite of the selfishness, stupidity, and frailty revealed on every page: she finds the same faults in herself; selfishness, stupidity, and weakness are engraven upon herself; the redeemed and enlightened soul with tears perpetually corrects these faults: the unenlightened soul does not—this is the difference between them. ”

“ But beyond This of Him which He will allow her to Behold, beyond This of Him in which she may repose in bliss, and beyond this Repose which He wills her to know of Him, He shows her that yet more of Him Is which He will share—heights of Felicity beyond all measure, holding the soul till she must pray Him to release her, or she will perish—reeling depths of rapture in a mystery of light; bliss beyond bliss for that lover who shall venture—all Eternity unfolding in fulfilment. ”

“ Wonderful temples, gems of classical sculpture, masterpieces of colour in oil and fresco—the genius and the aspirations of men rendered permanent for us by Art; but the Temples, those silent emblems of man's worship of an Unknown God, with their surroundings of lovely nature, affected me far the most deeply: indeed, I do not pretend that sculptures and pictures affected me at all. I was interested, I greatly admired—they were a part of education, but that was all. But in the vicinity of those Temples what strange echoes awoke in me, what mysterious sadness and longing, what a mystery of pain! ”

“ In all these experiences of the soul which has refound God, what is it that truly rejoices her? Is it the learning and knowledge that the pursuit of Truth may bring her to? She values Truth and knowledge because they lift her towards Him Whom she seeks and loves. Does the soul rejoice in ecstasies because they are ecstasies? No: what she values is the recaptured knowledge and certainty of heavenly living—in however small or brief a degree she is able to attain it in flesh: and because in the experience of ecstasy she knows Him to Whom she belongs. ”

“ If we say that we apprehend God by that which is not Mind, what reason have we for saying that it is not Reason which receives Him? Because for this living which God's touch causes us to share with Himself we find that Space, Infinity, and Eternity are required and Reason stands, and remains, uncomprehending and dumbfounded before all three. It is Spirit, the flash-point of the soul, which receives and transmits and which lives this living. As we have an heredity of flesh so we have also an heredity of Spirit which of its own nature comprehends the ways of God and the mode of God's living. ”

“ When the process of Return is sufficiently completed and, being still in flesh, we enter for a brief time this living, Reason, Pain and Evil, Yesterday and To-morrow disappear. Reason is gathered up into, and superseded by, the spiritual and wordless Intelligence: Pain and Evil, their part and work accomplished, are dispersed and banished into the mists of darkness.
So the soul may learn even from this world something of the mystery of the Depths of God. She may enter into the happiness of Union with the Three in One: the One Whom in a state of glory yet to come she may Behold. ”

“ It is not because she is worthy that she possesses Him: the soul never, under any circumstances, feels worthy: it is love alone which enables her to possess Him, and this love that she knows how to shed to Him is His own gift to her.
So the soul cries to Him, O mystery of love, was ever such sweet graciousness as lives in thee: such exquisite felicity of giving and receiving, in which the giver and receiver in mysterious rapture of generosity are oned! ”

“ Not even the greatest of all the Angels can alone bear to endure Him? Only into a vast multiplicity of individuals can God pour and expend Himself to the fullness of His desire, the One to the many. Each individually receives from Him, and each individually and collectively—the many to the One—returns Him those burning favours which are in Celestial-living.
Is it all joy to find God? How can it be? Can faults and sins be eradicated without pain? Life here for the lover of God is one long eradication of offences. How can even the daily requirements of flesh be fulfilled without pain? ”

“ It is not so important whether we are secretly cowards or heroes; what matters is how we deal with sufferings when they come, what reaction we permit or encourage on their account in heart and mind and soul. There is nothing but suffering that can cleanse us, nothing but pain and misfortune which can so thoroughly convince us of our own nothingness, and break self-pride: joy will not do it ”

“ Having ceased to think godly, the soul loses God, becomes insensitive, and falls into darkness, thinks of her own wretchedness and, thinking of it, is held fast to it. Being miserable, she thinks to Self; thinking of Self, she is bound to the solitude of Self—blank solitude without fixed objects to amuse, without fixed Beauty to lead higher, to restore, to calm. Is all this tantamount to saying that when separated from God Spirit-life is less desirable than earth-life? It is: for then we are "dead" to celestial-living, and in Spirit-life all other living is miserable living. ”

“ In the Fall of Adam we see merely the continuation in the stay-point of time and of flesh, of the history of the fallen soul—sinning the same old sin, Self-will.
The way of return to God is the same way by which we came out from Him—reversed. We came away by means of greeds and curiosities imagined by Self-will. The return is by casting away these greeds, casting away all prides, all selfishness; and what self-loving soul is there that could or would, left alone to herself, conceive of following such a way of cruel necessities, of such hard endurance without an Example before her? ”