Course XVII - Teaching 7: Eventual Trials during Mystical Death

In the beginning of his path, the soul is too much busy with his troubles and sorrows, and that is why worldly evils are to him just a mere consideration to which he sticks by attachment or sympathy. But the Divine Mother teaches through sorrow.
In relation to understanding and faith, trials seldom appear alone; usually they derive from sentimental trials and inner conflicts, and the latter often derive from seemingly trivial events.
External events do not give rise to conflicts; the latter just open the way, and then conflicts rush in. While Renunciation was just a mental attitude, sorrows and trials were not so deep. But life tries by itself, and always it is high time to painful and deep wounds.
It is then when the soul feels as if the Divine Mother had forsaken him. She does not forsake him, but he cannot perceive Her Presence at all when is totally absorbed in his internal struggle.
All becomes darkness, and just a cruel sorrow remains, as if it was the only reality of his living. If a soul really loves Renunciation, then his sorrow becomes expansive.
In selfish beings, the more intensive suffering, the more closed in themselves. But the Son’s heart grows through sorrow. In spite of seeing nothing and being deprived of sustenance, and in spite of all his illusory ties and attachments, he witnesses an alive, frightful and enormous reality, that is to say, sorrow of life upon earth. He becomes conscious rapidly through his own sorrows, –a sorrow ignored by thousands, a sorrow that not only is of those who are living in the world now, but also that of those who were and of those who shall come.
Life appears as a vast darkness, where the dark red of passion and despair covers all. And all is meaningless in the unfathomable depth of his heart. Not only his whole flesh and his whole blood ask, “Why?”.
This is a hard question to answer, which deepens even more the wound of his heart.
His boundless compassion makes him feel he is separate from the God of light, and sunk in the dark of human misery. He refuses to have eyes; he rather prefers to be blind and sunk in an apparently meaningless despair in regard to life, than to join to the highest bliss and good, which he knows is within his reach.
To the disciple, the world is a boundless pit of blood, flesh and despair, where souls are immolated continuously, and also a world without light, explanation, excuse or destination.
This is beyond the ordinary capacity of common emotions; it is a cruel and deadly anguish, an outburst. Even death seems consolation, but he refuses it. A human heart is unable to feel it.
The soul feels more human through his own sorrow by escaping from God and joining to man, but, on the contrary, he becomes divine. He believes he is detached from God, but joins to the Divine Mother. His boundless sorrow and his renunciation to understanding, light and peace, and his awareness of pain and darkness life, lead him to stand the burden of the world; so, his expanded soul can go beyond sorrow and through absence of sorrow, light and darkness.
The last questions of your mind cannot be responded; you cannot account for life by means of an answer. Life makes sense through Renunciation.
Certain Spiritual Director said to a disciple who was experiencing these states: “Look up to Christ on the Cross, there you shall find answers to all your dialectical questions”.
This trial is totally spiritual, and your whole being takes part in it. Peace comes after this, and your soul experiences a transformation; your soul is Christ on the Cross. Your understanding, your love, your consciousness, everything is participation. Now your life is that of all beings and, at the same time, a life in the Divine Mother’s heart.
You do not take part only in sorrows of human beings, or in the love of God; all is unity. In this unity, which is living and permanent holocaust, you shall find the great mystery settled –the sublime Divine Mother’s mystery in the souls.