Evelyn Underhill: InexhaustibleRiches of Reality

But now the watering-can is taken from you, and you must depend upon the rain: more generous, more fruitful, than anything which your own efforts could manage, but, in its incalculable visitations, utterly beyond your control.

Here all one can say is this: that if you acquiesce in the heroic demands which the spiritual life now makes upon you, if you let yourself go, eradicate the last traces of self-interest even of the most spiritual kind—then, you have established conditions under which the forces of the spiritual world can work on you, heightening your susceptibilities, deepening and purifying your attention, so that you are able to taste and feel more and more of the inexhaustible riches of Reality…

This new way of attending to life—this deepening and widening of outlook—may at least be as helpful to you as many things to which you have unhesitatingly consecrated much time and diligence in the past: your long journeys to new countries, for instance, or long hours spent in acquiring new "facts," relabelling old experiences, gaining skill in new arts and games.

These, it is true, were quite worth the effort expended on them: for they gave you, in exchange for your labour and attention, a fresh view of certain fragmentary things, a new point of contact with the rich world of possibilities, a tiny enlargement of your universe in one direction or another. Your love and patient study of nature, art, science, politics, business—even of sport—repaid you thus.

But I have offered you, in exchange for a meek and industrious attention to another aspect of the world, hitherto somewhat neglected by you, an enlargement which shall include and transcend all these; and be conditioned only by the perfection of your generosity, courage, and surrender.”

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) in Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, LTD, 1914) 131-144.

Today marks the last of seven posts from Practical Mysticism at this time. Download this classic work freely here.

The purpose of my posts this week has been to position the forces of the spiritual world to “work on you, heightening your susceptibilities, deepening and purifying your attention, so that you are able to taste and feel more and more of the inexhaustible riches of Reality.”

Or in other words, I have aimed at the perfection of your generosity, your courage, and your surrender.

By generosity, I mean that if you tear down the artificial world and see what is real, you will live, give, serve, and love differently. You will be much more generous.

By courage, I mean that if you discover that there is more to life than the game of acquisition, you can find freedom from egotism and the world of multiplicity by living in Reality.

By surrender, I mean that you detach from things and die to self. You go from No-Eyes to Eyes. And your union with Reality, who takes care of everything, lavishes you with abundant life.

God, help me not lose the ground I gained this week. Continue to perfect my generosity, courage, and surrender, I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.