Ruysbroeck

Excerpt: ...ye out!' for the essence of love is generous, outflowing, expansive, 97 an "upward and outward tendency towards the Kingdom of God, which is God Himself." This outgoing, this concrete act of response, will at once change and condition our correspondences with and attitude towards God, ourselves and our neighbours; expressing itself within the world of action in a new ardour for perfection-the natural result of the 'loving vision of the Bridegroom,' the self's first glimpse of Perfect Goodness and Truth. We observe the continued insistence on effort, act, as the very heart of all true self-giving to transcendent interests. Whilst in the volitional life drastic readjustments, stern character-building, and eager work are the expression of goodwill, in the emotional life it is felt as a profound impulse to self-surrender: a loving yielding up of the whole personality to the inflow and purging activities of the Absolute Life. "This good-will is nought else but the infused Love of God, which causes him to apply himself to Divine things and all virtues; . when it turns towards God, it crowns the spirit with Eternal Love, and when it returns to outward things it rules as a mistress over his external good deeds."27 We have here, then, a disposition of heart and mind which both receives and responds 98 to the messages of Reality; making it possible for the self to begin to grow in the right direction, to enter into possession of its twofold heritage. That completely human life of activity and contemplation which moves freely up and down the ladder of love between the temporal and eternal worlds, and reproduces in little the ideal of Divine Humanity declared in Christ, is the ideal towards which it is set; and already, even in this lowest phase, the double movement of the awakened consciousness begins to show itself. Our love and will, firmly fastened in the Eternal World, are to swing like a pendulum...