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Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Circles - The life of a man is a self evolving circle
Identifier
002043
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Emerson – Circles
The life of a man is a self evolving circle, which from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel will go depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed into a circular way of circumstance – to heap itself on that ridge and to solidify and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attempts again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulse it already tends outward with a vast force and to immense and innumerable expansions...
There is no outside, no enclosing wall, no circumference, to us. The man finishes his story.
…. In the thought of tomorrow there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the interactions of the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.
The source of the experience
Emerson, Ralph WaldoConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Spiritual pathScience Items
Activities and commonsteps
Activities
Suppressions
Beauty, art and musicBeing left handed
Communing with nature
Contemplation and detachment