21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S

Simon Parke also speaks of how mystery engages with the world via ourselves as persons:

‘At the heart of the mystery is your essence. It rests wonderful and wild at the heart of your being, untouched by the savagery of life and indestructible against its onslaughts. It remains as it was at the beginning, perfect and unscarred, at the centre of your soul. ‘Your soul is the adventure of your essence. It is through your soul that your essence engages with life.

‘It is also through your soul that you lose your way.’

Grace is the normal English translation of agapé. Grace is also defined as love in action. Eros and Agapé are often seen as being opposing nodes of love, but I hope it is now evident they can work together. Agapé is the basis of the ‘beloved community’ in which Eros can properly flourish. The alternative symbolic — ascendancy embraced by descendancy, spirit tempered and made wise by soul. The masculine brought back into correct relationship with the feminine.

The fulfilment of desire, as discussed previously, may become another ideal to which we aspire — a compulsion of the ego rather than something genuinely lived. Grace is in danger of being this too if we treat it wrongly. Is there a danger of creating another ideal out of grace? What makes it different from any of the other abstract goals we have identified? I will return to these questions in the Conclusion, but for now this quote from Matthew Fox suggests that we are already grace and provides us with part of the answer:

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