Desert of Your Own Being

Desert of our being. That is what George Maloney calls that place deep inside ourselves, where we meet God. To quote: But he [God] can only be met in the desert of your own being, in the depths where you encounter the dread of loss. So few of us have the courage or the discipline to cut ourselves off from all the attachments by which we define ourselves, to go out into the desert and be at the mercy of the unknown. (Journey Into Mystical Prayer, 8)

According to Maloney, then, the journey "down" begins with surrender. It's a concept not often talked about these days, with the need for consciousness, awareness of God, purity of intention, etc. Maloney is in fact telling us there are many things in our lives that simply don't make sense. They can become road blocks toward our progress toward the descent, or we can surrender to the fact that we cannot understand them, and so continue forward. I like his term mercy of the unknown. It begs for trust. It begs to believe in a being bigger and more capable than yourself. And it begs for surrender.