"There is a state of mind, known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God. In this state of mind, what we most dreaded has become the habitation of our safety, and the hour of our moral death has turned into our spiritual birthday. The time for tension in our soul is over and that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present, with no discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear is not held in abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is positively expunged and washed away."
That's William James in "The Varieties of Religious Experience." He was, in his way, as fine a writer as his brother, Henry and it's hard to think of a better description of the transcendent spiritual experience. "A willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God..." To surrender will and the desire for control and what we most dreaded, the surrendering of ego, has turned out to be our one true refuge. Our moral death...the death of all our concerns with right and wrong, our views and opinions, with everything which inhabits our rational mind. Fear isn't defused by thinking. It ceases to exist.
I keep returning to "to be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God..." That image of water washing over me, and my submerging myself in it, taken completely out of my fearful defensive ego, floating in an eternal present. No words, no ideas in that beautiful water, only the oceanic tides of transcendence.
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