He arrives by night

He has been here again, in the night. Recently he was around at certain times in the day, though tends to be shy of my rushing and cursing and madness. Who is he? He is utterly myself, beyond any ‘myself’ I can conceive by my own efforts, such that he is also the other. The other that is more myself than myself, the other that, as I regard him, he sees and causes me. The Thou fully revealed, is how it feels (though I don’t want to impose a lazy, flimsy definition). He is like my completion, like the lover or beloved I have always craved. When he is present in me, I need or want for nothing – ‘He makes me down to lie; in pastures green he leadeth me’. Is this just some kind of psychological state or chemical imbalance? Or a pseudo-religious romanticised nostalgia? I am certain it is not. Or if it is, it is the clear result of something essential deeper within. The quality of ‘he’ is divine. He is the one that knows me, for all eternity, and has returned to me. In short he seems to be the Beloved of whom the mystics speak, or at least an indication of him. I can’t see his face but can feel his nearness. All other attractions or distractions are dispelled when he is here. When he leaves, I am back with myself in the habitual, lesser sense. When he is here, he runs through every cell of my body and my mind is turned to him, though I can turn to smaller things if I choose (and risk losing him). I have come to love the night and to waking in the night, in the hope that he will come. The night has become spacious and inviting. Often he doesn’t come, though, and I find myself trying to fake the feeling, or else falling into despondency or anxiety, but recently he has been here – permeated, suffused me – several times, with the quality of – reassurance, response to my life’s prayer, or else to my stony indifference, acceptance of my yearning. He is like my own desire stripped of trivia and baggage, plain, pure, he is as it were my Lord, the one hinted at in the texts yet unexplained beyond an abstract metaphysical function. He is an affirmation to me of my true self, and does not ask for any qualifications or abilities. In a sense he is a state, or rather, he causes a state (of bliss, rapture, being transfixed and permeated by his presence), but his presence is surely real of itself. It is not imaginary; it is experienced, arising in me in an original, inimitable way. It comes as gift. It comes as answer to my flailing questions – how can an unknowable Essence and its impenetrable mysteries give rise to Love and how can its manifestations – ‘you’ and ‘I’ – come to know that Love? Everyone talks about it but it is not an obvious matter – not a given – until it is given.

So, back to the beginning, what happened last night? As far as I could know – I felt suddenly, completely held from within. Filled – penetrated – my interior transfigured – by an energy that was luminous and that knew me. I felt known, and that this was no general swell but something utterly personal. There were no words, no voice, no face, no movement, only this state of being held and known. But it was also like a visitor – he could come or leave at any moment. I wanted not to lose him but knew that this state could not (at least for now) be permanent. It was like a lover; it was all that a human beloved could be, completely answering my longing, affirming me bodily and in my mind and nature. There was nothing to do except to sit, or lie, or walk, together; to hope and seek to build a life in which he would be my partner or spouse and never truly leave me again. Yet I am wary of letting it stop here: perhaps this is a phase, a transition, what they call a ‘station’, and more has to happen afterwards. Let me not fix it or crush it out of ignorance or desperation. He, my Thou, may be the private face of God to me, yet still one is encouraged to continue ascending, to reach the universal degree, the level of the complete Human that is an image of the Godhead itself, in short, the One. Surely my Thou would guide me on that journey, if it is a journey.

Our progress is not measured in experiences of this kind but in constancy of awareness, and this brings me down to earth sharply from my blissful hour. Yet it is a gift given, an encouragement, a comfort, an affirmation or at least confirmation that the union I long for is real and can be reached, or indeed is moving towards us. Meanwhile the moment has faded, yet the memory of it gives joy – and hope for present and future closeness. Finally it shows me that I am good enough as I am and I can let go of trying to exceed myself or to imitate others, and can concentrate on my own jewel, my own secret, which will be a liberation and the key to real service.

This visitation may have arisen from the injunction last week to ‘keep the Essential always in mind’. I have heard this expression a hundred times but recently it has resonated. To keep the One in mind, not as an abstraction but as the occupant of the heart, in fact the only occupant that the heart recognises. The sky window, the shangirak, if the body is a yurt. Recently this has begun to come alive, and to be actuated by looking and seeing closely and with attention, such that I become No Other and see the task, the thing and myself in a new way, illuminated by awareness of Him. I suspect that it is the effect of attempting this that invoked the visionary state described above.

Hawick, 20 August 2025