Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Being receptive to symbols is a condition for spiritual progress

Besides his five physical senses, man has a sense of a higher order, which is a sense for symbols.

This sense can be cultivated or crushed.  Today's culture overwhelms the sense of symbols.  It replaces true symbols with symbols that are really nothing.

In a soul who has not killed his propensity to consider true symbols, he sometimes discerns the symbol in its fullest beauty and expression. And there are times that the symbol looks faded, because the conditions that surround it make it look that way.

File:Weltliche Schatzkammer Wien (197).JPG

There is a line of progress in the spiritual life based on a greater sense for symbols.  And from time to time - whether in the supernatural or natural order - the symbol speaks so powerfully that its message stays with us forever, and is never completely erased!

Plinio Correa de Oliveira

(Primeval Innocence;  Parte II, capítulo 4.)

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