(I'm taking advantage of a "day off" on these meditations to catch up posting diary entries from the summer that never made it here.)42. There is a deep taint beneath the ineffable bliss; it is the taint of generation.
At the touch of the sublime, the mortal part of our minds - not surrendered in the Adept (for whom they, in fact, are essential) - feels our smallness, imperfection, and unworthiness - whatever "favorite bad feelings" we habitually horde. Part of the sweet, bitter, painful, fulfilling union with the infinite is the magnification of our smallness. The initial
feeling I get from this verse is the restirring of every personal sense of smallness and inadequacy we bear, comingled with the bliss and truth of union with the Angel.
...And thus are those feelings of smallness and inadequacy sanctified.
This is not the only place that
Liber LXV uses "taint" in this way. In 3:8-9 we find, "But I beheld in thee a certain taint, even in that wherein I delighted. I beheld in thee the taint of thy father the ape, of thy grandsire the Blind Worm of Slime." It does seem linked to unredeemed Nephesh but, even more (in the context of Chapter 3), to mortality and transiency within the field of time. ("I gazed upon the Crystal of the Future, and I saw the horror of the End of thee" [3:10] - and see the surrounding verses.) The "taint" of which this speaks is mortality itself.
Taint, though having moral implications of degeneracy and corruption, is simply
tint or
tinge. The verse above, therefore, is saying that the experience of the union with the Holy Guardian Angel is deeply
tinged with recollection of one's mortality. (The "corruption" or "decay" is simply the natural breaking down of that which is born, lives, and dies.)
My attention directed by this verse, today I experience this "ineffable bliss" as
seasoned with the actuality of mortality. Not imperfection, certianly not unworthiness (not in the embrace of the Angel), but certainly smallness - so long as I continue to identify with my mortal self.
43. Yea, though the flower wave bright in the sunshine, the root is deep in the darkness of earth.
Adepthood is a
union and
equilibrium of the mortal and immortal. Neither is surrendered and both are essential to the equation of 5=6. Tiphereth exactly equilibrating Kether and Malkuth. Neither human nor God alone, but God-Human.
This coexistence - this taint, tint, tinge, seasoning - is, in fact, part of its sweetness. Verse 43 declares this single dual-truth. At the specific level called Adepthood, the attainment is the fruit of mortal roots.
44. Praise to thee, O beautiful dark earth, thou art the mother of a million myriads of myriads of flowers.
Praise to thee, O beautiful dark earth, thou art the mother of a million myriads of myriads of flowers.
The essence of this particular practice is simply the continuing awareness of, and abiding within, the interminable Love of the Holy Guardian Angel.