The person who begins on their spiritual path…falls upon hard times in the world will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers refuge and comfort and encourages the old self to survive.
Rather, we will seek out someone who will faithfully and relentlessly help her to risk ourselves, so that we may endure the suffering and pass courageously through it.
Only to the extent that we exposes ourselves over and over again to the annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within us. In this lies the dignity of daring. Thus the aim of spiritual practice is not to develop an attitude which allows a person is to acquire a state of harmony and peace wherein nothing can ever trouble us. On the contrary, our practice should teach us to let us be assaulted, disturbed, insulted, broken and battered. Our practice should dare us to let go of our vain desire after harmony without pain, in order that we may discover…when we do battle with the forces that oppose us, that which awaits us is beyond this world.
The first necessity is that we should have the courage to face life and to encounter all that is most terrifying in the world. Now then our meditation and prayer would be the means by which we accept and welcome the demons which arise from our unconscious, a process very different from trying to find protection against such forces.
Only when we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation can our contact with the Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable. The more we learn whole-heartedly to confront the world that threatens us with separation, the more are the depths of our Being revealed and the possibilities of New Life and Becoming One opened.
Revised
Original by Karlfried Gras von Durkheim
