St. John of The Cross
Plot of his Spiritual Canticle
In the Spiritual Canticle St. John of the Cross tries to
explain the mystical process that follows the soul until it reaches
its union with God. In
order to get this, the poet uses an allegory: the search of the husband (Christ) by the wife
(the human soul). The wife feels itself wounded by love, and this makes it to
start the search of the Beloved (el Amado); the soul asks everywhere for
him in despair until they finally get together in the solitude of the garden (Paradise).
The Soul Personality Self’s Journey to find God:
A Spiritual Canticle for 2014
by Brenda Harriet Nelson
The Soul Personality
Self is like a husband who has lost interest in his true Wife (his Soul) and so
has lost his ability to find God—who is himself and who resides in his true
Home, at the center of his being. This husband may take on the form of either gender.
He feels forgotten by Her. Yet it is he, himself, who has forgotten Her.
He no longer values his own first wife—His Soul (who may appear as either gender)—nor does he
even see/feel Her any more. He has
forgotten his mother as well—God/The Great Mother who lives within
him, in the Home at the center of his being.
He seeks instead to
find satisfaction by searching outward among his many other
wives, friends’ wives, concubines , prostitutes and flirtations (symbols for all of
his human activities).
He finally gives up in despair as none of these bring him
lasting happiness (Alignment with God). Some did momentarily, but only
because he had inadvertently stumbled onto the path of happiness-inducing alignment when he did
a certain thing. So he went on doing the thing, but the happiness it originally brought crumbled to dust as the
path of alignment wended elsewhere.
At
the point of complete and utter despair, because he is in a state of profound surrender, She
makes herself known to him. She helps him find his way Home to who he really is—God—the
perfectly imperfect being he is right now.
“You are already there and you will never arrive” he says of The Journey as he finally looks around and sees the magical beauty of the Paradise
at his center and "out there" (which is still within)—a paradise that has always been where-ever he was, but which he was
blind to, because he looked only outward rather than inward and outward simultaneously. Or rather, because he looked outward through only his soul personality eyes and not the eyes of his Soul or The Great Mother.