The scene painted in the previous encounter represents an ideal situation in which the damaging effects of an unbridled ego are not present. However, that is a case not realised in practice. Spiritual cataracts trouble the divine lens, and tendrils of blackness reach out to ensnare the soul. It is as if the soul forgets, "a hundred, a thousand times a day.
It is as if it forgets the treasure held in some dark, run-down, Dickensian pawnbroker's shop. There is a constant need to self-remember, but such matters go beyond the remit implied in the first incounter described earlier.
I spoke earlier of the need for the soul, imaged as an egg, to break through its surrounding shell and be hatched. This, perhaps, gives too strong an avian flavour to the event. That sense of hatching out is better described as a proto-star bursting out into full brilliance.
To progress any further would be to attempt to describe the steps that the soul deems to be necessary in order to escape its confinement. And that lies beyond the limits of this discussion. I will, therefore, bring these writings to a halt. The nightmare has been noted, and that is enough to bring it into focus.
I will leave with this final quote from Father Sylvan,
"It is not demanded of us that we always be in a state of the heart (or soul - my bracketed insertion) which grants us vision and self-mastery. It is only demanded of us that we know the state we are in. But this is difficult."