Michelangelo's
The Last Judgment.
Saint Bartholomew is shown holding the knife of his martyrdom and his flayed skin. The face of the skin is recognizable as Michelangelo.
Tear off this cloak of shadows.
This web of ignorance.
These shackles of decay.
This living death.
This conscious corpse.
This portable tomb.
This robber in the house.
This enemy that hates all that you love.
This garment that smothers you
and holds you down.
Ignorance floods the land.
Its currents sweep you away.
Don't be borne downstream.
Make use of the backflow.
Seek the haven of liberation.
Anchor there and find a guide
to lead you to the House of Knowledge.
There you will see with the heart,
the brilliant brightness. We Are NOT a Human Searching For a Spiritual Experience,
We Are a Beautiful Spirit Immersed In a Human Experience!
Awakening is a flowering of your innermost being.
It is a revelation of your essence,
hidden by long eons of self-delusion,
ignorance,
unbounded desires.
Enlightenment is an ending as well as a beginning:
the ending of the old, veiled, dark ego,
its longings, illusions, frustrations;
the beginning of a vast expanse,
an infinite field of the Unknown,
an adventure in consciousness.
It is a revolution:
it represents danger to the old way of life,
to old ways of thinking and living.
It is freedom from the known and the unknown;
from the real and the unreal;
from any appearance of division between you and Truth.
It is the abandoning of beliefs, dis-beliefs,
presumptions and stances,
self, ego,
call it what you will,
or call it nothing,
what it is.
It is the Path of the golden Dawn,
the Path out of the Night of Time
into the Bursting daylight of Eternal Now...