Every now and again it is important to stop ... and look up. Then you will see the looming mystery that lays over all things, some constant, some eternal, some evanescence. I call it the light of Truth. It is a divine glow.

When you experience the Philosovo—the call of the Divine—it is like a call from Truth itself. You drop everything. It is the most urgent command you have ever heard. It is like the cry of a small child you must save from a speeding automobile or the plea of a kitten being savaged by a ferocious dog. Or the story where the cop risks his life to save a suicide and remarks that he couldn’t have lived for one more day if he hadn’t tried to save him.

You drop everything and flee to the call of the Philosovo, because there is no time to waste, because time is merely relative and doesn’t matter much beside the great resonance of eternity. But, more than that, you drop everything because you are compelled through passion, urgency and complete distraction to abandon everything and be only together with and as the divine. There are no words for this, no appendages or accompaniments, only truth, only reality.

Distraction is not something to resist. You have senses and thoughts and emotions. Therefore distraction and engagement are bound to occur toward something. The question is: will you direct it to something that is sustaining, satisfying and ultimately real or will you direct it to something superficial, transient and unreal?

In the world today it seems that people are interested in what is shallow, what is immediately apparently rewarding and ultimately unreal. When it is difficult, involving a struggle of some kind, loss or pain, they shy away from it and seek an easier option. But the easier option is not necessarily the best one. Knowing the Divine is not easy. You need to be involved. You need to go deeply into your innate wisdom, to practice and gain insights and eventually understanding. Familiarity with truth is no easy matter. To live in truth constantly and not just part-time takes application, consistency and discipline. These words are not in themselves necessarily attractive. The popular new paradigm is not to have to try too hard, not to have to necessarily question, perhaps not even to think. As for practice, well that may simply be asking too much; it may be too hard. But what else do you have you to do? If you are involved in truth, if you have heard the Philosovo and if you are filled with a divine longing, always, occasionally or intermittently, there is only one real response, one genuine reply.

That reply is yes with all you heart, soul, body and mind. All of your response must be gathered together in a single act of submission and surrender to the Divine and the act of submission of course is another unattractive notion to the modern mind. We have become a race of individuals. We humans have come to prize our individuality over all else. Our preferences, our opinions, likes and dislikes, prejudices, comfort, self-pride, aggrandizement, ego-feeding, relationships, personal ambitions and desires have displaced all other concerns, even the concern for the divine, real love, wisdom, compassion, selflessness, dignity, honor, reverence and peace…even happiness.

This realm in which we live and breathe and love is a realm of sadness, a realm of loss and heart-break. Everything is dying, everything is ultimately going, leaving, including ourselves and everything we hold dear, as well as everything we hate or are averse to, everything we notice or don’t notice. Sometimes this awareness of the very transience of existence is enough to stimulate the Philosovo, the call to go beyond, the call of Truth. Look up now, just above your friend, your partner, your dog, a tree—anything in this manifest world. The looming light of the transcendent domain of Truth hovers brightly over all things and—here is the wonder!—this light connects all things and transcends all things and relates to the world of maya, samsara, of temporary arising forms as the Divine itself. This earth, the very heaven; this body, the sacrifice, these thoughts and emotions, the cloud of unknowing…just by looking up you see that everything is the Divine.

BLOG entry #156

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Look Up and See that Everything is The Divine’ was first published in 2012.