At the foot of the mountain Prokletie, in southern Serbia, surrounded by thick, velvety forests that lure you to comb them with your fingers, where springs of clear water compete with swift streams that, entwining, grow into rivers, there is a place where time stands still, where all ages and souls, from rulers and monks, all the way to ordinary people who went through it, still remain there - to this day.
It is a holy place where spiritual service has been carried out without interruption for more than six hundred years, whose stone doorstep is worn and dented by an infinite number of pilgrims’ shoes worn by those who have visited it for centuries, seeking refuge for soul and body, admiring architecture and art and, most of all, imbuing themselves by the presence of the Divine that powerfully fills the interior of this magnificent building.
We arrived to Visoki Dechani.
Built by the skilled hands of the masters of their craft, back in the 14th century, this monastery with its church was empowered by the continuous meditation, prayer and awareness of all the people who have ever set foot on its soil. Visoki Dechani is a testimony of the divine and human factors’ joint creation.
The divine channel, a pillar of white energy that descends through the central part of the church, exists in a dynamic and living relationship with the energy of the monks and other people who reside there every day. Energy that is exchanged with the energy of people in the immediate vicinity, most often monks, emanates from that pillar of strong spiritual channel and then it is transmitted from them to all of us who pass through the monastery. This pillar of energy is not only strong because it is steadily and firmly connected to the source and rooted into the earth - it is empowered by the people who have invested their presence, awareness and energy in this place for centuries.
As a result of such a fusion, a strong presence of the divine infused with the human is gained - a feeling in the body that can not be forgotten. It is that feeling when tears come to your eyes, and your mind cannot understand what is happening, where tears and sobs come from, nor why do they occur. The only thing left for the mind is to surrender to the present moment... and the unconditional love that envelops it.
Those are not the tears of sadness, nor of any specific kind of joy... something invisible and magical touches your heart and incites the longing of the soul: pure, unmotivated, flawless.
Is it divine love, the ecstasy that mystics talk about in various traditions? Maybe... Unexpectedly, for no reason and seemingly undeserved, you are touched by grace.
The awareness of this fusion of energies has the power to elevate you to other spheres, without forgetting the human one, which is the basis of everything spiritual in this world. Like a bowl that holds milk, like a riverbed washed by a swift and clear river, like human awareness that contains nectar... the body contains both.
And now, after a few months of my physical visit to Visoki Dechani, a wave of that divine-human ecstasy and tears washes over me.
Let it be.
May this source of love and life keep on nourishing, cleansing and strengthening me, the source of dedication, centeredness and a magical heart which expands an inch more each time when this river touches my being with its waves. At the same time, it makes me both big and humble, centered and limitless, soft and strong, vulnerable and fearless. Such is the life of the Divine Human, who is created at a time of great changes that surround and infuse us at this moment in time.
May these experiences and places on earth keep us in a timeline that preserves and maintains humanity, contact and respect for human life.
Because truly, human life is sacred. There is no difference between the human and the divine. And places on our planet, such as Dechani, persistently remind us of that. With their spiritual power, they can purify us in an instant, both physically, emotionally and mentally, and therefore also spiritually. They reconstruct and rearrange our individual energy field in an instant and leave us in softness, joy, love, strength and unity... they place us in the purpose of our existence, in the focus and center. Fear disappears as if it never existed.
Then we remember who we are, why we are here and what we came to do on this holy land.
And so... this is already happening, whether we know it or not, for more than half a millennium in this sacred place of Visoki Dechani. I express gratitude to all the people who have invigorated it over the centuries, gratitude to the divine that continues to manifest in it, gratitude to those who preserve places like this on our planet and keep them a living source from which souls can be nourished - again and again.
Photo credit www.decani.org
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