Old-time visions

In this month of non-common sense, I think we could us a lot of Plotinus, a Greek philosopher who lived 205-270 A.D. In his Enneads, a series of 9 tractates, he says "you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vison which is to waken within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use. ... The Soul must be trained - to the habit of remarking , first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty produced not by the labour of the arts but by the virtue of men known for their goodness... But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. Act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful; he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. When you know you have become this perfect work, ... when you find yourself wholly true to your essential nature...wholly that only veritable Light which is not measured by space... now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step - strain, and see."

"Thus our freedom of act, our self-disposal, must be referred not to the doing, not to the external thing done but to the inner activity, to the Intellection, to virtue’s own vision. ...virtue is a mode of Intellectual-Principle, a mode not involving any of the emotions or passions controlled by its reasoning, since such experiences, amenable to morality and discipline, touch closely ...on body... herein lies our will which remains free and self-disposing in spite of any orders which it may necessarily utter to meet the external."

"It is not in the soul’s nature to touch utter nothingness; the lowest descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: ... There is thus a converse in virtue of which the essential man outgrows Being, becomes identical with the Transcendent of Being. The self thus lifted, we are in the likeness of the Supreme: if from that heightened self we pass still higher - image to archetype - we have won the Term of all our journeying. Fallen back again, we awaken the virtue without until we know ourselves all order once more, once more we are lightened of the burden and move by virtue towards Intellectual-Principle and through the Wisdom in That to the Supreme."

Plotinus’ ideal sounds like the celestine prophecy to me. It reads as an aspiration to the good in literal sympathy with God. It sounds like each one of us could use some transcendence and transformation in this December, 2008. Each of us could strive to attain a vision of - and then the embodiment of - a good life. The assumption being - there exists a contrast between the Light of virtue and unnatural vice. The assumption being - one is free to choose to see and act.

At the moment of death it is reported that Plotinus declared to a friend, "Now I shall endeavor to make that which is divine in me rise up to that which is divine in the universe."