Thomas a Kempis

July 15, 2008 Link Amma's Grace

Dearest Friends and Family,

We find these words to be very inspiring for us right now, and wanted to share them all with you, so you can see how they are for you. It is meant to be a dialogue between Jesus, as the ideal, since he was no longer around physically, in the normative sense when Kempis wrote this, and the sadhak or spiritual aspirant or seeker. Enjoy!

From: Kempis, Thomas, A. The Imitation of Christ. Translated by Tylenda, J. Vintage Spritual Classics. Book 3, Chapter 53.

God’s Grace is not Granted to the Worldly Minded.

Jesus:

Son, My grace is precious and it allows no intermingling with worldy affairs or earthly comforts. If you desire this grace, you must remove very obstacle to receiving it.

Choose some quiet place for yourself and love to dwell there alone. Don’t look for occasions for idle conversation, but pour out your devout prayers to God so that you may continue to preserve contrition in your heart and maintain an unblemished conscience.

Look upon the whole world as nothing and prefer serving God to everything else. It is impossible for you to serve Me and at the same time take delight in ephereral things.

Withdraw from your acquaintances and close friends, and keep your mind detatched from all worldly comfort. This is what the apostle Peter meant when he instructed the followers of Christ to regard themselves as strangers and pilgrims in the world.

Great is the confidence of the man, who is about to die, when he knows that he has no attachment whatever to anything in this world. But a weak individual cannot bear to have his heart detached from everything, nor can the unspirutal man understand the liberty enjoyed by the spiritual man.

2. When a man sincerely desires to be spiritual he must renounce all his friends, those near and those far away, and must beware of himself most of all.

If you have completely conquered yourself, you will easily conquer all other things. The perfect victory is to triumph over one’s self. The man who has so conquered himself that his flesh in now subject to his reason, and his reason, in turn, is obedient to Me is all things, that man, I say, is master of himself and lord of the world.

3. If you wish to rise to this degree of perfection you must manfully begin to lay the axe to the root and dig out and destroy your hidden unregulated inclinations towards self-love and material advantage.

From this one vice of self -love proceed nearly all the other vices that need uprooting and as soon as self-love is eradicated, great peace and calm will follow.

Because there are only a few who strive to die perfectly to themselves and thus, rise far above themselves, countless others remain caught in their own webs and their spirits languish in their incapacity to soar on high.

Whoever wishes to walk freely with Me must put all evil passions and unregulated desires to death and must never cling to any creature through self-love or self-interest.

Thus did our Anni. And so we want to do.

Loving you,

Kamala Aunty, Anni and Link