Nature and all of the objects of our daily use are preliminary and frail. As long as we are here, however, they are our friendship, accessories to our suffering and joy, just as they had been the intimates of our predecessors. It is thus our task not only not to malign and take down everything that is here, but rather because of the transience which we have in common with it, to comprehend and transform with an innermost consciousness, these appearances and things. Transform? Yes, for it is our task to impress this provisional, transient Earth upon ourselves so deeply, so agonizingly, and so passionately, that its essence rises up again invisibly within us. We are the bees of the invisible. We ceaselessly gather the honey of the visible to store it in the great golden hive of the Invisible.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) Austrian poet and novelist
Letters to a Young Poet
“The last part is almost like a meditative phrase for me, “we are the bees of the invisible.” And so, from all of our experiences around us, with nature, with everyone else, we are gathering that which is more durable, that which is of our soul’s essence, and we store this in the hive of the unseen, if you will, which is what we will carry further with us as we head on to into whatever comes next.”
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Ph.D. author of
Revelations of The Aramaic Jesus:
The Hidden Teachings on Life and Death
