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By Connie DeMillo
The Seven Valleys was revealed in 1862, before Bahá’u'lláh declared Himself as a Manifestation of God. Written in eloquent, poetic language, this Tablet encourages the reader to break out of the rat race of the material world, and pursue a spiritual approach to life. It is intended for a broad audience, and lays out, in order, the seven prerequisites for success in the quest to know God. The main message is: God’s Manifestation has come to teach you the straight path to companionship with God. Now.
Each valley is a treacherous, dangerous place the spiritual wayfarer has to experience in order to reach the next. Each valley’s objective is to help the seeker break ties with the material world to find Bahá’u’lláh, and obey Him. Doing that builds the seeker’s own character and helps develop their unique, authentic self, not aligned with anyone else’s opinion of who they are and what they should do with their life.
Valley 1: Search: patience
Our human soul craves connection with the Divine, with each other, and connection to our home, the Earth. But that drive is obscured by our separate self, our ego, that wants the drama to be all about our own singular preservation. We are “wandering distracted in search of the Friend.” Our Search involves sacrifice and strength, until we gradually find that God is literally everywhere. Connection made, though there is still interference from competing forces in the material world, like advertising, which bombards our feeble attention spans with ways or parting with our money in order to satisfy our lower desires. It gradually dawns on us that the lower desires only grow when fed, they are not satisfiable, and what we really are searching for in this behavior is connection with our higher power. And once the connection with God is made, we are able to move forward, however slowly and painfully, with His assistance.
2. Valley of Love: pain
Love is addicting — the hungry ghost inside us asks, “is there more?” Humanity’s quest for approval and putting on a holy appearance veils truth, and is like an iron cage over the lamp of our heart. Pain forces us to look at the light of truth through our own eyes, and that experience propels us forward; we can’t stay still in the Valley of Love. Seeing reality for ourselves allows the soul’s light to glow through our being. Seeking love involves simultaneous contrasts, like shame in glory. Love is heedless, reckless, flaming out any trace of reason. We burn off our lower instincts in this valley.
3. Valley of Knowledge: the last station of limitation
Here, the gates of materialism are unlocked and the Oneness of all created things can be glimpsed. Opposites abound: death is life, war is peace, hell is heaven, our tormentors become our guides on how to deal with others like them. There is no contradiction here, no flaws in God’s mercy. We treat injustice with patience and wrath with love. Our longing yields despair, but mercy lies just behind the veil of injustice. We enter the Garden of Nearness where we are free from self, and have gained the capacity to lift the veil of love. It’s like stepping aside from our rote emotions or patterns we have been taught by our culture, and seeing with our own eyes that we all love music and food and gardening and laughing.
4. Valley of Unity: oneness
In this Valley, we have gained the capacity to hear with the ear of God, we can experience world through the senses of God, see all things through the eye of unity. The candle in our heart is lit, even if it is obscured by the iron container of our vulnerable ego, our separate self. We strip illusion from our heart so our candle can shine out, and others will be able to perceive the light. Unity involves the spirit of inquiry, not persuasion, insinuation, or other mortal means of distraction.
5. Valley of Contentment
When the veils of want are burned away, words cannot describe the warm feeling that is left in the embers.
6. Valley of Wonderment
Wealth is poverty, independence is impotence, we are struck dumb with beauty. Everything we thought was reality contains its opposite, like yin and yang. Artistic vision and creativity live in the Valley of Wonderment.
7. Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness
Feelings of ecstasy. Poverty is glory. We are detached from the material world. The mirror of our human heart is as clean and polished as we can make it, and we work day by day to burnish it further so as to stay connected with God.
Further study on the Seven Valleys:
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