Theosophical Heart-Devotions Directed to the Highest Sole Jehovah

whole life into a wretched disorder, having departed from your love with our free spirit, and presumptuously claimed the use of creation in self-will. Oh! Here we have lightheartedly separated praying and working Original: Beten und Arbeiten—likely a reference to the monastic tradition of Ora et Labora, suggesting that spiritual devotion and daily labor should never be divorced from one another., and completely torn apart your order, according to which we should rule over creation under your reign. Alas, truly all this disorder came about because we, in Adam The author refers to the "Fall of Man," where Adam’s original sin is seen as the moment humanity stepped out of divine light into spiritual darkness., departed from your light. And so it became dark within us, and the beasts of self-willed desires stirred in our hearts; but in this darkness, man no longer went about his field-work and labor according to your order. Alas, we still find ourselves in this wretched state of our darkened hearts. We poor children of Adam have never yet risen again in such a light as Adam rose on the morning of Creation. For then you yourself were a light to him, and in your light he saw the light, and walked in the light. Ah, truly, dear Lord JESUS! as long as it is still dark in my soul, the wild animals of my earthly desires stir in this night. And the more I fill my heart with those things that are outside of you, my God, the more I lose your light and life, so that it remains truly dark, desolate, and empty in the depths of my soul. For the darkness of the soul is the love of this world and my perverse self-love. O you great and heavenly light, you surely wish to shine into this my darkness; but my scattered senses are a thick darkness that will not comprehend this light. Your light is indeed the heavenly, fertilizing, spiritual salt of life Original: Salz des Lebens—a metaphor common in 17th and 18th-century Pietist and mystical literature, representing the purifying and preserving power of God's grace within the "soil" of the heart., which the earth of my heart cannot reach if the storming winds of the dark, evil airs scatter the powers of my soul. O, then grant that I [may gather] all my senses