The Arc of Descent

It is absolutely clear that we each, in our own way, are completing the Arc of Descent, what Sufism calls the "Arc of Creation," and that we must if we are ever going to be able to complete the Arc of Ascent, which is the Arc of mystical quest and Transformation. We have been called/sent into the created order in order to do our Work here--the work of loving compassionately the Other. What we experience in this world is a confusing complexity, a plural mess in space and time, and we would want to escape it all if we could, but embodiment is our Work.

Escape gets easily confused for spirituality, but it is not. To be here we must not escape but descend into the confusion and the mess of it, for the knowing that we desire, the knowing of God and of the Divine Presence, must first be experienced here in time through the revelation of its multiple theophanies before we can fully know the Oneness and Wholeness of Divine Reality. This is a true paradox in the monotheism of the Abrahamic faiths. Descent-Ascent is the other paradox. We are always descending and ascending through the gracious Presence of the Son of Humanity, who is for us both templar, and universal prototype.