Eternal Now

There exists only the present instant, a now which always, without end, is itself new. There is no yesterday, nor any tomorrow, but only now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years from now. 

People who dwell in God dwell in the eternal now. God cannot know himself without me. Existence itself stands in me. Nothingness has no need, for it lacks nothing, while everything else depends upon it, because outside of it there is nothing. 

Yet nothingness stands in need of existence, as a sick man lacks health and is in need, though health has no need of the sick. To want nothing, therefore, is the highest perfection; it is the fullest and purest existence. 

Everything is meant to be lost so that the soul may stand in unhampered nothingness. The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out. If you want the kernel, you must break the shell. 

If you wish to discover nature’s nakedness, you must destroy its symbols. The farther in you go, the nearer you come to its essence. When you reach the One that gathers all things into itself, there you must stay. The soul in which this birth is to take place must remain absolutely pure, living in noble fashion, collected and turned entirely inward—not scattered outward through the five senses into the multiplicity of creatures, but drawn within. 

In its purest part is God’s place, and he disdains anything else. The soul, scattered among her powers and dissipated in outward actions, loses her ability to work inwardly; a scattered power is imperfect. Do not imagine that your reason can grow to the knowledge of God. 

Whoever possesses God in their being has within them the divine source. For such a one, all things taste of God, and in all things they see God’s image. It is a certain and necessary truth that whoever resigns their will wholly to God will catch and bind God, so that God can do nothing but what that person wills.