Life sends us no sorrow. It is only our perception of it – our misunderstanding of life – that causes us hurt. We are the authors of our own grief. The journey from an imperfect world to divine paradise is within us. It begins and ends in our own hearts. By progression is not meant outward movement or change, but rather for us to take “the step of the spirit”, and enter the world of “no defect canst thou see in the creation of the God of mercy; repeat the gaze: seest thou a single flaw?” In that place, “He seeth war as peace, and findeth in death the secrets of everlasting life.” “From sorrow he turneth to bliss, from anguish to joy; his grief and mourning yield to delight and rapture.” All of this is a change in the heart, a triumph within. For how often has He told us that, “We are closer to you than your life’s vein”; “Ye are but one step away from the glorious heights above and the celestial tree of love”; “behold the shores of that ocean are near, astonishingly near unto you. Swift as the twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this imperishable favor, this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift, this most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty”; “Yeah, although these journeys have no visible ending in the world of time, yet the severed wayfarer – if invisible confirmation descend upon him, and the Guardian of the Cause assist him – may cross these seven stages in seven steps, nay rather in seven breaths, nay in a single breath, if God will and desire it.”
In another place Bahá’u’lláh states: “Likewise, reflect upon the perfection of man’s creation, and that all these planes and states are folded up, and hidden away within him.”
Does thou reckon thyself only a puny form When within thee the universe is folded?
The entirety of the journey, its beginning and end, are with you now. The Divine Creation is all around you, at this moment. Paradise, everlasting peace, reunion, communion with God, our heavenly home: These are all about us, as though a veil – not distance – separated us. The veil of our own lack of knowledge – or perhaps the fact that we have taken our ignorance to be knowledge, and therefore have thrown the true God behind our backs, the God we can never know because He is unknowable, and yet the God Who is forever present, and evident, because it is impossible to escape Him?
Take thou one pace, and with the next, advance into the immortal realm, and enter pavilion of eternity.