{"id":4923,"date":"2026-06-17T07:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T07:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/?p=4923"},"modified":"2026-06-17T07:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T07:47:09","slug":"the-birth-of-the-spiritual-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/2026\/06\/17\/the-birth-of-the-spiritual-process\/","title":{"rendered":"The Birth of the Spiritual Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The “eye” of the spiritual process comes with a sense of instability, and the need for a full withdrawal of illumination on the soul.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

From the opening of Purg X:13-16<\/p>\n

E questo fece i nostri passi scarsi, <\/em>
\ntanto che pria lo scemo de la luna <\/em>
\nrigiunse al letto suo per ricorcarsi,\u00a0<\/em>
\nche noi fossimo fuor di quella cruna;<\/em><\/p>\n

The literal meaning: “And this made our steps short, so much that first the receding of the moon reached again its bed to lie down again, than we were outside of this eye.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The depth here is profound. It describes the birth of the spiritual process for the soul. As the Pilgrim and Virgil have entered the gate of Purgatory (as spiritual process), the path is swinging back and forth, indicating disorientation, and with Virgil’s advice that they need a bit of skill\/art to navigate this.<\/p>\n

A key learning is this: it will be a destabilizing experience at first, and, a necessary threshold is the complete withdrawal of the current Divine illumination on your soul, the shining of the moon. The moon must wane completely, the reset must be a full one. That, is what is needed before they are outside of the “eye”, the biblical image for spiritual initiation in many ways.<\/p>\n

So in terms of the whole Divine Comedy, this is the description of the soul’s reflection withdrawing, and the consciousness in a “wavy” state, before they find themselves on a deserted and empty plain. A kind of total nothingness.<\/p>\n

This is the entrance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The “eye” of the spiritual process comes with a sense of instability, and the need for a full withdrawal of illumination on the soul. From the opening of Purg X:13-16 E questo fece i nostri passi scarsi, tanto che pria … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-purgatory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4923"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4932,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions\/4932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailypurgatory.com\/purgatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}