“We have too much self. We are too full of ourselves. We always have too much us in us. Julian [of Norwich] wants us to push ourselves aside and see that although we are in so much pain, woe, and unrest, we can be at great rest if we have patience, if we wait, if we attend to that which exceeds us and our creaturely strivings. This excess is the experience of ecstatic love. And this is a much harder lesson than misery. It requires giving ourselves up, as much as possible, giving ourselves over to that which is larger than the self, outside the self: a pliable ground of love that is prior to the will.”
Simon Critchley, Mysticism
