And when one sees the eternal light, he shall never again be blind towards what he

wishses to see, for that sticks to him and reminds him of all that is necessary, of
all that is to him important, of all that is to him significant---that is GOd, that
is the Divine Principle, that is the uncoordinated, unrestricted, unlimited being
that immerses everything within it, that fills everything up and is, at the same
time, at the peak. It is both the ladder and the top of the ladder.

And when one looks, when one stares into the abyss, naivete dissipates like cloud,
smokes up into flames, and is burned forever---then a rotting cynicism disturbs his
affects, burns like a fire within him and tortures him for he can no longer trust
anything, anybody, any truth: all is to him distrustful, untrufhful, fit only for
the perverse and the profane. ANd yhet---and yet cynicism seems more to us to be
the thing which is the precursor of a boundless optimism. Foro nly when one
recognizes his capacity for evil can he, in any sort of way, be called: good. One
is not good inasmuch as he is powerless---that is nothing but an impotence
disguised as virtue. He who is meek---who has the sword but does not draw it---only
he can be called virtuous, for he---chooses---to be that which is virtuous.

Then, my friends, it is revealed to us what boundless optimism is: a choosing to

love in spite of, an accepting and a surrendering and yet a courageous yes to life,
a necessary step towards becoming that which is transcendent of this fallen
world---he who calls upon the mercy of God, seeing this broken zeitgeist, now
withstands the fire with ever mire might such that it ceases to him to be a test of
his inability to love, biut trather as something that purifies him, a washing, a
tender flame that is akin to the embrace of a loved one. The fire as both
destruction and purification---a union of opposites, an etinandromeia that can only
be possible through the confrontation of this abyssmal world and accepting it
despite the suffering, despite the losses, despite the countless devastations that
plague this world: taht is love! that is Christianity! that is worhip!

To our fellows who are stil lsick we look at them with pity and care for them and
love them: for tis necessary o think well of one's neighbor always: only in this
willingness to see that which is good, which is redeemable, which is in fact the
holy thing in the other---that, my friend, is love. It is easy to love
impersonally; it is easy to love that which is far-away, that which is abstract,
that which is hidden in a cloud of concepts, ideas, vagaries (and we are not too
foreign to those kinds of loves, those fake loves) but only in this ability to feel
flaws, gaze at imperfections, and listen to the squawking screeches of a sinner---
and still love them: that is love. For we are sinners ourselves, who are we to
cmplain about this faults of theirs? Why do we look at this fault of theirs and not
the thousand folds and nooks in our own souls and lives? Are we not, too,
hypocrites? Then let us look for that which is transcendednt, which si divine,
which is the goodness within our brother, within the foreigner, within the Other---
that is our love, my brothers, that is the Christian love: the love ins pite of.

I spoke of repentance, my friends, as the only pathway to God. And I stand by it, I
do not feel that I have erred in what I have said, although many have felt such an
unpleasant reaction towards it: the love of GOd can only be felt by the human
person fully insofar as he is willing to leave that which is earthly, that which is
material, that which is bodily, and climb the ladders of spiritual ascension. My
friends, repentance is the only way up that! It is only in repenting, only in
recognizing our follies and foubles, only in praying and placing God where He
necessarily belongs (in Heaven), only then can we come closer to that which is
divine, only then can we be, to say it rather heretically, be gods, but only
insofar as we can participate in Him, in the glorious creations, in the universal
being, one should say. We must remember God, let us cease forgetting Him, let us
cease having our attentions stripped from us by a rolly-polly of a million
flickering devices, technologies that melt our humanity little by ilttle,
necessarily degrade us into that which is animal, that which is pathetic, that
which is ungodly, pagan, and, of course, satanic. That lord of trickery has
deceived us all: every distraction we focus on is the root of all our evils.
Memory, my friends, let our memories be strengthened! Let us pray for it! For in
memory, in remembering, in recalling God and His love for us, we necessarily come
closer to Him, are drawn to Him---only in relinquishing everything else can we
become godly.

Can we ever discover who we truly are? I do not think so. Realizing the bottomless
pit that is "us" is an immense task, an ordeal of Herculean proportions that few,
or even none at all, have so far done. But perhaps that is not our task here on
earth. Perhaps what is the marginal must remain for the marginal. Let the
individualists gallivant and swagger about with their "digging-up" of:
individuation, which they believe to be the highest good, the only thing of value,
the one thing worth pursuing. It does not do to remind them that this was the
sickness of Lucifer and of Adam---perhaps...nay, in fact, the first sins were of
that: a tendency to wish for too much light. To the individualists, there is
nothing more than the idiosyncratic, to the Overman, there is nothing more than
being unique, than being the fullest one can be---they are fulfilling a pattern
related to the arrogance, pride and, eventually, downfall of the blindling light.
And yet let us not stray too far to the other side either: for in losing ourself
within a community, a nation, an epoch or an age, we cease to become ourselves and
identify with a label: such is the case of mass production, the case of the
mechanism, the robot, one should say, the massly manufactured tool by which
everything efficient is conducted. They are two opposing extremes: aesthetics for
its own sake and a disdain for aesthetics.