Another post from my other blog; am consolidating them all to this one.
I have tried to listen, a couple times, to a lecture by Prof. Bernard McGinn on the abyss language in the writings of the mystics. He cites Angela of Foligno's writings, initially. It is true, that especially in the temporal, a mystic can especially experience the very real sensation or life reality of being "lost in the abyss" of God, of a nothingness.
This is my own situation, off and on in life, and increasingly with the amount of physical suffering I am experiencing in this phase of life, more so in the past nearly 37 years of physical and emotional-types of suffering that can be attributed to the fall-out from tremendous physical suffering. Yet the physical suffering and the incumbent emotional effects in trying to live in the temporal schema of everyday, temporal life amidst those who do not experience the manifestations of God to the extent which a mystic lives these experiences, are similar or a temporal imitation of what one experiences in the soul being lost in the abyss of God on a spiritual level.
Last night I had another bi-location or being taken in Spirit to another place, an actual place on earth, but one in which there is interaction with others in real, temporal locations and real people. This time it was with strangers. Somehow I do not think it was in this country (USA), but I was sent to assist some persons with a project involving their needing a building in which to meet. The specifics are not clear in the waking, early hours, my being back in temporal time and place.
The temporal suffering, which does indeed have spiritual implications and source, take the mind's attention from what was in the other, but recall of detail is not necessary in such experiences. The mission was completed, although the mind cannot shake off aspects of having been amidst others, intervening on their behalves. If not in some other country, which it seems, it would have been in some rural area, sparsely populated and poorly developed--I'm thinking eastern European but also not with much landscape of woodlands. It was more barren landscape, and the buildings simple, stark, and area more a small-sized community, in the outskirts of civilization yet in contemporary times.
This is the second such travels, two nights in a row, after a long time without such experiences. I have recently given over myself to the Trinity, to His Real Presence, in acceptance of His will for me, to utilize me as He wills, and my relinquishing much of the temporal other than in what ways I am to subsist in basic temporal aspects, including those closest to me, or those I encounter which is not often, to which I relate in the here-and-now with what love and kindness and interest is needed.
Usually there is not bodily pain when I've been sent in the Spirit to places and persons elsewhere, on a different plane of reality. That is not at all being "lost in the abyss"--those instances are of a soul's utilization by God in ways that on rare occasion one has the reality verified by someone in the temporal or other temporal sign that the experience was actual. When a person experiences the emptying out and sense of the abyss, the effect is of nothingness.
That sense of nothingness can be as if breath taken away, hope removed. If the nothingness pervades the temporal as well as the spiritual, the point of being in the temporal seems as lost and the abyss itself. The temporal world becomes another abyss of pointless nothingness. This is not the same ad depression, although it can seem similar or even that if whomever is trying to analyze the situation does not have spiritual acuity or awareness.
As for the sense of temporally being lost in the abyss of a temporal world that is seen sharply, clearly, for what it is--God's creation but a passing nature, a testing ground, a stage, a theater of soul school with persons learning to varying degrees of success depending upon graces given, upon desire for and love of God and His graces. Otherwise, the soul is actually more comfortable in the abyss of God than the abyss of recognizing the temporal in its stark nothingness, of sorts, a nothingness of actuality in spiritual meaning beyond the means of passage of learning what it is we are to be learning through our God-blessed and God-created purpose in our temporary, temporal existence.
Does this seem dark? It is not meant to be! This is the expression of description of two forms of lostness in the abyss: the temporal reality of nothingness, and the spiritual reality of being lost in the abyss of the spiritual realm, of which that nothingness has more an eternal meaning. Both forms of abyss, of deep calling unto deep, are the soul's longing for God. The soul longs for meaning through being God's created purpose in the temporal realm; and the soul also very much longs for ontological meaning in the abyss of God Himself in the spiritual, the eternity and true reality of that abyss that is God's love enveloping and absorbing each soul as if a lone soul meaning all to God, and God meaning all to the soul.
The abyss is that of God's totality; I so yearn to be subsumed in God in all facets of God abyss temporal and spiritual, and more so the mystical abyss that is God forevermore.
We of the temporal who are aware of the temporal abyss as well as the spiritual abyss, must simply keep progressing in the temporal, knowing that the spiritual will be ours in God, and to pass through the temporal abyss that calls out to the spiritual abyss with patient but persevering longing and transposition, ever forthward.
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