Recall the kind of feeling you have when you succeed, when you have made it, when you get to the top, when you win a game or an argument.And contrast it with the kind of feeling you get when you really enjoy the job you are doing, you are absorbed in, the action you are currently engaged in. . . .Notice the qualitative difference between the worldly feeling and the soul feeling.. . .Now attempt to understand the true nature of worldly feelings—of self-promotion, self-glorification.They are not natural, they were invented by your society and your culture to make you productive and to make you controllable.These feelings do not produce the nourishment and happiness that is produced when one contemplates nature or enjoys the company of one's friends or one's work.They were meant to produce thrills, excitement—and emptiness.
When we are endowed with the Wisdom of the heart, but do not have access to knowledge, we are ignorant. Then we only believe what we see, or what has been proven to our satisfaction. Since it does not occur to us that we may be endowed with supernal wisdom, we do not open ourselves to the mystery of the Spirit that invisibly permeates the created world. So long as we limit our explorations and activities to the visible world as though that were all that existed, we must remain blind to the transcendent beauty of the eternal world.