thesoulpurposedotorg

‘I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.’ (Michelangelo)

“O Divine Sculptor, chisel thou me according to thy desires.” (A prayer taught by Parmahansa Yogananda)
This is my paraphrase of a portion of an informal lecture by a devotee of Yoganana, Brother Anandamoy:

Our souls are like the angel that Michelangelo freed from the marble: perfect and beautiful. The circumstances of our lives are the primary way the Divine Sculptor releases our beautiful soul. Troubles come and a chunk of stone (sin, or in other words that which keeps us from God’s intention) is carved away. This is very painful and we often react by grabbing that big chunk of “stone” and glueing it back on! Troubles come again, often the very same sort of trouble that has plagued us before….and the chunk of “stone” is released once again. When we finally surrender and hang on to God rather than our need to be right and perfect in other’s eyes, that chunk of stone is really gone for good. We no longer have to experience that same set of troubles.

All of life is this process of being sculpted, or rather, being released from this stone that entombs the beautiful soul that is ours as sons and daughters of the Divine Sculptor. It is a most powerful prayer: “O Divine Sculptor, chisel thou me according to thy desires.” I commend it to you but with caution – having one’s soul set free is quite the painful process. But being freed is the point of it all.

The celebration of the resurrection of Christ, the rolling away of the stone from the tomb will soon be upon us. It is tempting as Christians to believe that a simple prayer of repentance or being “born again” frees us in a magical way, suddenly taking away the “stone” of sin from our lives. On a cosmic level, this is true. But on a practical level of life in this plane of existance, the spiritual practice of surrender to Christ requires our daily cooperation. Surrender (i.e. devotion to Christ, not just an intellectual belief) is the process by which the soul is set free.

“O Divine Sculptor, chisel thou me according to thy desires.”