Who of us can live without inspiration? Such insights guide and formulate our lives. Perhaps this is the true message behind the psalm 95:8: If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
How do we discern the Voice of the Divine? Its nudges are small, and sometimes drowned out by the many other voices that battle for our attention. How do we know that Voice from the voice of reason, of family, of society? Inspiration comes from inside of us, where our heart and our desires reside. The other voices come from outside us, and judge apart from inspiration, often in practical and worldly ways.
Olivier Clément writes in The Roots of Christian Mysticism that the purpose of ascesis…is to dissolve in the waters of baptism, in the water of tears, all the hardness of heart, so that it may become an antenna of infinite sensitivity, infinitely vulnerable to the beauty of the world and to the sufferings of human beings, and to God who is Love…(131).
This is how we discover inspiration, by journeying toward the Divine, where all hardness of heart becomes dissolved, and I learn sensitivity to the Voice.
Clément maintains that in our journey, by constantly seeking the Voice, we can reach a point where we are so immersed in God that we no longer have need to seek God, so to speak, because God is there. And we know it. We have learned, through discernment, the Voice and we remain aware of Presence.
If today you hear his Voice, harden not your heart. You will find a wondrous inspiration.
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