Not because it fails to live up to the expectations of my mind, but because it fails to live up to any expectation of any mind at all. None of the given world’s noxious permeations strives to live up to anything. On the contrary, the dominant movement in the given world is living down; the lower, the better.
Thankfully, the manifestly malevolent elements of the given world can be overcome in the heart, assuming the heart is pointing in the proper direction. However, in that direction, the heart quickly encounters the given world’s second layer, which is considerably harder to overcome.
This second layer is the barrier layer of the given world; it obstructs all attempts at transformed vision. It is a surface layer of superficialities that only demands perception while simultaneously hindering thought. It is the layer of “out there” truth; it insists you can only come to know it while you remain where you are -- “in there.” It is a curtain that lures you toward lifting it with the promise that it will reveal all once you do, as long as you stay in your bubble, your little cut-off alienated shell.
One part goes in one direction, fueled by its own power, and consumed by its activities. The other part goes in another direction entirely, fueled only by its separateness, driven by unknown forces in unseen places. Connections between the two parts are random occurrences, signifying nothing beyond the surface of the connection itself.
The second layer of the given world is the manifest dualism that refuses to acknowledge any depth in connection. Subjects and objects frequently intermesh but never penetrate each other. In this layer it is always us and them; natural and supernatural; reason and revelation; secular and sacred; being and non-being; immanent and transcendent; matter and spirit; active and passive; subject and object.
The “and” groupings in the second layer are barriers that limit and restrict Creation to either/or. Here, the given world will only allow you out of your shell if you lose yourself and merge into the One. But the One is not an “and”; merely a variation of either/or. In the given world, only one side is allowed to "win".
Unlike the first layer, the given world’s second layer does not arise from psychic or spiritual contagion but from psychic and spiritual exhaustion – the lassitude and listlessness of being unable to engage with the other world that is the only world. The world that is alive, here, now.
It is this spiritual lethargy that causes even the best of us to falter at the threshold of the Created World.
And with every collapse, we surrender ourselves and all beings to tyranny of barriers.