Dec 212015
 

This series presents, in no particular order, what I regard as the scriptural teachings most essential to Christian mysticism. It draws attention to key words and phrases, and poses some questions about them that I simply leave for interested readers to address as they see fit.  Part 1 was on the Great Commandments. You are welcome to respond in the comments section.

Teaching 2: The Farewell Prayer of Jesus

Christ_Taking_Leave_of_the_Apostles

My prayer is not for them [my chosen disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them. (John 17:20-26)

Key Words & Phrases

“I pray also for those who will believe in me….”

Jesus’ farewell prayer begins by expressing his hopes for everyone who believes in him. In contemporary Christian life, we often take the word “belief” only its connotation of agreement, consent, or submission to a doctrine. But deeper than this intellectual position is the attitude of trust, and so Jesus is saying that his prayer is for those who trust him, who have enough confidence in his claim of oneness with God.

“…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”

The end of this sentence suggests that the belief, the trust and confidence, he has spoken of is not an end in itself, but that it is a step that opens us to the possibility of existing in oneness, to “be one,” experiencing and knowing it, “just as” he does.

“you are in me and I am in you,” “May they also be in us,” “I in them and you in me,”

Note the interchangeability of subject and object in those statements:  God in Jesus, Jesus in God, us in God and Jesus, Jesus in us, God in Jesus, and thereby God in us.  This interchangeability communicates oneness as well as can be done in dualistic terms.

“complete unity”

In John’s Gospel, the Greek for “complete” is teleioo, and like our English word it speaks of something finally accomplished, in a state of fullness, and perfected.  The Greek for “unity” is the same as that used for “one” in this passage. Thus “complete unity” speaks of being fully one.  In the state of complete oneness, there is no longer two or any other number of things, only the one.  The subject and object dichotomy becomes meaningless, and all these statements are, in effect, simply different ways of saying the One is one.

“I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

Here, at the very end of his prayer, Jesus says that all the ways in which he has made and will make God known to us are for the purpose of having us come to experience the same love (agape) that God has for Jesus, and thus he will be one with us.

Questions for Meditation

  1. How does your meditation from Part 1 on the oneness of God inform the way you think about the meaning of oneness or unity in Jesus’s prayer?
  2. In mystically loving God, what is the role of belief and how does it relate to the Great Commandments?
  3. How does belief in someone or something differ from knowing someone or something? How does believing in something differ from being in it?
  4. What does this prayer say to you about possible outcomes of following Jesus, ones that he greatly desires for us?
  5. How might your life change if you were to ever know oneness with God so completely, even for just a single second, that it no longer made sense to speak of you and God as separate from each other?
  6. What would be the implications of such oneness for your relationships with other humans beings, the world, and all of existence?
  7. What relationship is there between being loving and knowing oneness?

 

Christ be with you!

Maranatha

Agape

Mar 032015
 

This piece is dedicated to my dear friends and brothers, Justin Glosson and Matt Smithey, and to all others who, like them, are musicians on the way of the heart.

Practice is another one of those words that gets used a lot when describing the mystical or contemplative life. It makes no sense to speak of “achieving” the contemplative life, let alone “completing” it. The contemplative life is like an art, something that we craft, that we experiment with, practicing and practicing, and thus becoming more skillful and having it flow more naturally. Yet we never get to a place where something has been attained so that we no longer need to practice, but how we practice may change significantly. In fact, a genuine music lover is simply driven to some form of practice as part of enjoying both the experience and the expression of music. In the process, one naturally refines the ability to let the music flow, and to flow with it, as freely and beautifully as possible. For contemplatives, the “music” we love is the ever flowing presence of Being Itself, of Love Itself, in all Its diversified unity. Our practices are therefore quite diverse, and so it is that there are at least as many different means and styles of practicing the way of the heart as there are means and styles of enjoying music. Just as every music lover must love music as one is most moved to do so – whether playing an instrument, writing music, singing, dancing, or simply listening deeply – so must each of us on the way of the heart practice somewhat uniquely. However, just as all ways of enjoying music have some things in common, so do all forms of contemplative practice.

St. Cecilia with Two Angels

The way of the heart, like music, urges us toward wholeness in the moment, to be willing to give ourselves over to it, fully present, deeply attentive and alive with a harmony of both focus and fluidity, of both intentionality and spontaneity. It requires awareness and acceptance of the moment just as it is, most importantly including ourselves, just as we are, with all our talent and skill, as well as our apparent lack of talent and skill; with all our knowledge and understanding, as well as our apparent lack of knowledge and understanding; with all our patience and perseverance, as well as our apparent lack of patience and perseverance; with all our peace and joy, as well as our apparent lack of peace of joy; with all our awareness and acceptance, as well as our apparent lack of awareness and acceptance. When we play, or dance, or sing along with music in this spirit, with this attitude, we become aware of mysterious depths in which we intuitively realize our oneness with the music. This unity inspires and informs the unique experience and expression of it in the moment, and therefore even what might have been regarded as a mistake can be experienced as a delightful quirk, if not the creative spark of some entirely new expression of music. So it is with the contemplative way of the heart in lovingly realizing, experiencing, and expressing our oneness with the One and All. Finally, just as the love of music has both solitary and interpersonal dimensions, so does contemplative practice. In music and the contemplative life, greater development and enjoyment of one’s potentials comes through practice in private as well as in companionship with others. Both dimensions are part of the whole love we are experiencing and expressing.

Agape

Feb 282015
 

After writing my last article, On Self-Love, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to explain what I mean by “self,” and to examine some important connections of that meaning with mysticism.

Defining “self”

The term self is used in many different ways. In fact, significant confusion and disagreement can happen between people communicating with each other with “self,” often simply because the different parties don’t realize they are using “self” in significantly different ways. The same problems arise with other words like psyche, soul, ego, and even mind.  I currently tend to use self, soul, and psyche interchangeably.  It is important to note that I say “currently tend to,” because I have not always thought, written, or spoken in this particular way, and I might not at some future time. With these terms I refer to the whole being of an individual human, and not any particular part or function of the whole.  My use of “self” is thus essentially equivalent with an ancient Christian use of “soul” in reference to an individual’s totality of body, mind, and spirit.  It also seems helpful to point out that the term ego does not equate for me with “self.”  Ego is a word I use to describe certain aspects of the self.  So, in Freudian terms for example, the psyche is that which contains the ego, id, and superego, and has both conscious and unconscious dimensions.  In that respect, I use self and psyche synonymously.

The capitalized “Self”

Sometimes we see the capitalized word Self in psychological and spiritual literature. In Jungian psychology, this term is used in much the same way as I use the un-capitalized “self.”  However, like many other spiritual writers, I use the capitalized “Self” to denote a Supreme Identity that transcends individual human existence. This Supreme Identity is a universal and divine Self that is regarded by mystics as infinitely beyond all manifest things, yet nonetheless immanent within the finiteness of all things.  In this way, “Self” refers to the whole of the One and All just as “self” does to the whole of the individual human.  For me, the capitalized “Self” is thus practically synonymous with “God.”

The self-concept

It also seems useful to clarify that there is a significant difference between the way I use the terms self and self-concept.  The most significant point I want to make here is that the self-concept is only one’s more or less specific sense of who one is as an individual human being. By analogy, the self-concept is to the self as a video about your body is to mirror_and_maskyour actual body; one is only a limited representation or reflection of the other.  Furthermore, such a representation is always more about how an actual thing was sometime in the past than what it presently is.  This distinction is important because when someone speaks in terms of myself, me, or I, one is very often actually referring to the self-concept rather than the self, which is to say one is speaking about particular perceptions of the self by certain aspects of the self.  In fact, we so rarely speak of the whole self that we frequently make it a point to highlight that we are doing so by emphasizing the word “whole.”

A fundamental self-deception 

This conflation of the self with the self-concept is evidence that most of us live in a pervasive state of self-deception and confusion about our being!  In this confusion, habitually thinking and speaking of the self-concept as if it is the whole self, we construct and maintain an illusion that serves as a kind of barrier between our present awareness and the broader range of truths about our being.  To some extent, this barrier exists out of simple ignorance, but we can also maintain it because we semi-consciously sense the need to protect the self-concept from realities or potentialities within the self that we regard as unacceptable in some way.  Freud’s theory of the ego defense mechanisms is based upon his recognition of this dynamic.

The mystery of the self

When we meditate carefully on the self, it becomes clear that we lack complete awareness of it. The many autonomous functions of our organs are themselves sufficient evidence that there are parts and processes within the self of which we are rarely if ever aware. Further and perhaps even more powerful evidence is found in the mental dimension, where intuition, the storage of memories, and the unpredictable and often puzzling content of our dreams reveal the existence of what psychologists refer to as the unconscious mind. So it is that, even when we understand the distinction between the self and the self-concept, we cannot think, speak, or write about the self with complete knowledge and understanding.

We are often unaware of the mystery of the self, perhaps even blissfully unaware, but it is ultimately an inescapable fact.  Sometimes it seems to loom around us, filled with foreboding uncertainties.illuminor It is as if we stand upon the edge of a cliff in complete darkness, where any movement at all might send us falling to our doom. Yet, as we touched upon in the previous section, the doom that we fear is in actuality often only the loss of our cherished illusions. Entering into the mystery of the self is therefore essential to liberation from some of the falseness and limitations of our self-concepts.  It is the path of freedom in realizing and actualizing more of our unfathomable potentials, for out of this mystery emerges the amazing light of creativity we express in our love of play, romance, philosophy, art, science, and spirituality.

The mystical potentials of the self

According to those who have penetrated most deeply into the mystery of the self, one of its potentials is the realization of mystical union. At first, one may make the rational observation that simply in its mysteriousness the human self is like all of reality, for there is some degree of mystery in everything. Likewise, whatever it is we mean by the word “God,” we must acknowledge that it is significantly interwoven with our sense of the most profound mysteries.  In this regard, we can gain a special appreciation for what it means to have been created in the image of God; being mysterious to us is something that both the self and God have in common. Pondering this commonality leads many of us to consider that there might be more to all of this than a parallel of two different mysteries. It is natural for us to wonder if self and God might actually intersect within the single mysterious category of all that is beyond complete apprehension by our sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Indeed, those who have experienced mystical realization insist that such an intersection is real, that it is the deepest crux and universally shared point of reality within the circle of all creation; it is the spiritual heart of the Cosmic Self and all the individual selves It begets. It is here that we discover the unity of self-love, love of others, and love of God, the very oneness of Love Itself manifesting in all Its many forms. The mystic way of the heart is thus the contemplative path of practicing devoted attentiveness and responsiveness to this Heart within all hearts.

way-of-the-heart

 Agape

Dec 022014
 

The season of Advent is upon us. This is a time when we traditionally meditate upon the themes of Christ’s coming, whether in the birth of Jesus or in the Second Coming. We therefore may be simultaneously aware of the absence of Jesus and hopeful for his return. While it would seem that this is all taken very literally by most Christians, there is another way that it is meaningful for some of us. The coming and ensuing loss of Jesus, and the hope for his return, can be taken as a pattern for the way an individual’s sense of God’s presence can come and go.

While it seems that some mystics claim they never again felt distant from God after realizing mystical union, others acknowledge that they have found themselves passing through periods of greater or lesser awareness of that union, and sometimes painfully so. Furthermore, one of the most frustrating things about this pattern is that there is nothing that can be done about it. No amount of prayer or other spiritual disciplines provides a magical formula that restores the greatest awareness of God’s presence.  Consider the parallel meaning of these words from Jesus:

At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There He is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you, ‘There He is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here He is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. (Matthew 24:23-26)

This limitation on our power to realize unity with God should be no surprise; the finite mind of the human soul simply cannot fully comprehend the Infinite, let alone command it.  We may be able to raise ourselves up into higher consciousness in some ways, or remember different forms of God’s presence, but the ultimate fulfillment of our hopes is simply out of our control.  In this context, let’s reflect on the relevance of Jesus’s teaching about the coming of the Son of Man, taking it as a metaphor about the coming of a complete realization of mystical union:

No one knows about that day or hour. Not even the angels in heaven know. The Son does not know. Only the Father knows. … So keep watch. You do not know on what day your Lord will come. You must understand something. Suppose the owner of the house knew what time of night the robber was coming. Then he would have kept watch. He would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready. The Son of Man will come at an hour when you don’t expect him. (Matthew 24:36 & 42-44)

Isn’t it striking that Jesus himself said not even the Son knows when the coming will occur!?  These words are spoken by the man we traditionally revere as the Incarnate Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity, whom the Apostle John records more than once saying that he is one with God! And yet Jesus also felt moments of distance from God, as evidenced by his own words on the cross, his agony in Gethsemane, and his temptations in the desert.

So the mystic simply keeps watch.  We make ourselves ready with the prayer of stillness and silence. We tend our house by loving God, our neighbors, and ourselves, remembering that God is love.  We try not to deny our feelings when God seems distant, and we avoid masking them with the vanity and arrogance of false spiritual powers.  We may suffer, but we do so with faith, hope, and generiosity of spirit. We allow that very suffering to transform us into greater vessels of compassion and kindness, greater instruments of God’s grace, and thus more fully realize our union with God.

To close, I offer one of my poems that addresses the waxing and waning of mystical awarness:

A Rose Needs to Bloom

O Beloved One,
how often I wish You were here with me,
always here in the flesh to receive
the misty gaze of adoration from these eyes,
the trembling touch of affection from these hands,
the husky whispers of appreciation from these lips.
Oh that I might see Your acceptance
of such spontaneous offerings
in the joyful sparkle of Your eyes,
hear it in the soothing tones of Your voice,
feel it in the welcoming warmth of Your embrace.

But You are the oracle of my soul,
my Cherished One,
knowing my heart and mind
from within their deepest depths.
So I would be a fool not to know
that the need to have this love expressed
is not Your need but my own.
I need it as surely as a rose needs to bloom
simply because it is a rose.

In this pining I believe I feel
something of the bittersweet pain
of Lazarus or the Magdalene,
reborn, renewed, bursting with gratitude,
and then losing You so soon,
always in hopeful longing
to be near You once more.
Yet You remind me that Your spirit
is ever near, both within and without.

O my sun and rain,
my fertile earth and restful night,
You feed this rose to bloom
and be seen by You through the eyes,
and felt with the skin
and in the heart
of everyone I meet.

rose_heart_cross

Maranatha
 

Agape

Nov 212014
 

The Feast of Christ the King is celebrated on the last Sunday before Advent, and this year it is November 23rd.  It is an official Solemnity instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1952.  According to his encyclical, it should be a time of remembering that a Christian’s allegiance to God should come before all other loyalties, and thus serve to unite us in peace regardless of whatever personal, political, and sectarian issues might divide us.  As I consider the meaning of this Feast, it very easily connects in my mind with the world into which Jesus would be born and the place that he would take in that world.  Beyond that, it speaks to me of a common experience for those pursuing a mystical relationship with God.

The nation of Israel and the Jewish faith have a long history of desire for the coming of the Messiah, and especially in the form of a Divine King who will bring peace and harmony to all humanity.  This theme runs throughout the story of Jesus and his disciples, some of whom were zealots and hoped he would lead them in a divinely sanctioned political solution to the plight of Israel.  We Christians, and Muslims too, are heirs to this doctrine.  In some accounts, Jesus seems to have promised he would fulfill it, even if only after his crucifixion and resurrection.  It also appears that some of his followers continued to expect him to return and play that role after his ascension to heaven.  Even now there are many Christians who consider that to be the prophetic promise of Revelations, just as there are many Jews who continue to wait for the Messiah King, and Muslims with similarly fervent beliefs.  For just a moment, take some time to reflect on the many millions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who have spent their lives hoping, praying, longing, and even pleading for God’s presence to manifest in this world in such a tangible and dramatic way.  How many of these people, how many generations of them, have staked their lives upon it, have gone to their graves and even sent others to their graves for it, and yet never saw their hopes and prayers fulfilled?!  That history may be a powerful testimony of faith, and even beautiful in some ways, but are there not also profound threads of tragedy and sadness running through this legacy of our religions?

Interestingly, it can be argued that Jesus never meant to be taken literally about any of that, but that he was instead urging his followers to completely reenvision the Kingdom of God.  Many of us regard Jesus as teaching us to seek a transformation in our hearts that then radiates God’s love out into the world through our presence. We consider this to be closer to the life Jesus actually lived, and more worthy of our time and energy than begging for a Holy Dictator to come clean up our mess for us.

For now, I’d like to note that many people who consider themselve mystics, or perhaps aspire to be mystics, have a parallel notion in their minds and desire in their hearts.  When we read the accounts of some of the great Christian mystics, it can be easy to expect that the coming of God’s presence will be a dramatic experience that overthrows all our doubts and sense of separateness from God.  We hope for an event in which Jesus descends from the heavens to fill us with a fantastic flood of light, life, and love.  We dream of a personal Apocalypse in which the Messiah delivers us from the mess of our own personal humanity.  And why shouldn’t we want something like that, especially when some of those who have claimed it happened to them also claim that we can have it too?

But, just as there is a parallel between our desires for a political Messiah and our desires for a personal revelation of mystical union with God, perhaps there is also a parallel with the fact that Jesus didn’t come back as a Messiah King during the lives of his immediate disciples, or during the lives of the following generation, or the one after that, and so on for generation after generation through the present day.  Perhaps, just as we can come to a new and more fruitful understanding of what Jesus meant by the coming of the Kingdom, the parallel is coming to a new and more fruitful understanding of mystical revelation that doesn’t depend upon an extraordinary experience.

What might that new and more fruitful understanding be?  I think there were some well known scriptural answers to that question even before Jesus.  Consider first the story of Elijah:

Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

So, unlike the dramatic way in which Moses encountered the immediate presence of God, Elijah’s experience of direct communication was only “a still small voice.”

Likewise, in Psalms 46:10, in the middle of many dramatic verses about God’s power in the world and praising and exalting God, there is this one small statement about actually knowing God:

Be still, and know that I am God

These scriptures that Jesus and many of his twelve would have known, urge us to realize that knowing God’s presence isn’t always a sudden and dramatic event. An experience of God may be very quiet and gentle, and perhaps so much so that we might not even recognize it for what it is.

And then there is the prayer that Jesus spoke for his followers as recorded in the Gospel of John, chapter 17.  In that prayer he expresses his desire that his followers and their followers will come to know their oneness with God just as Jesus does, which is certainly one of the most mystical things in the Bible.  He finishes that prayer with these words:

And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved me may be in them, and I in them.

That statement highlights love as the revelation of our union with God, and it is echoed in 1 John, chapter 4:

If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us.  Hereby we know that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit. … And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love; and he that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him.

There are many important things that could be drawn out of these words, but for now it is especially noteworthy that the love that is God is not something highly unusual that only comes to a specially blessed mystic. It is the love we have for one another!

O Holy One Who is Love itself, help us to be aware of Your mystical presence in our ordinary lives. Let us know You are with us through the love that we receive from others and that we give to others. As we encounter every smile on the faces of others and on our own faces, every kind word spoken by others and by us, every gentle touch given by others and by us, as we experience every simple act and expression of human love, let us realize it as an immediate manifestation of Your love, a ray of Your light that stretches directly back to the Source, the very Heart of Divine Love.  May we know Love as the great King of our lives. Amen.

Maranatha

Agape

May 072014
 

St. Isaac of Stella wrote:

Love incited by something external
Is like a small lamp
Whose flame is fed with oil,
Or like a stream fed by rains,
Where flows stop when the rains cease.
But love whose object is God is like
A fountain gushing forth
From the earth.
Its flow never ceases,
For He Himself is the source of this love
And also its food,
Which never grows scarce.

It’s been several years ago now, but after meditation on those words, and a moment of contemplative stillness, I wrote the following poem:

Deep within the well of this heart,
sliding down in the silent darkness,
sinking into the caverns of spirit,
I found You, Beloved One,
the hidden waters,
a mighty rushing in the stillness.

There at Your edge,
where I might have plunged
and fulfilled the fantasy
of a supreme union,
I found instead
the fear of oblivion in You,
and upon this halting
I piled remorse and shame
for my self-judged unworthiness.

Still I dipped a begging hand
into Your ceaseless current,
washed the tear-stained dust
from this mask of sadness
and sipped a drop of Your cool purity.

Such sweet wine You are,
Beloved One,
for this single taste
bestowed an unimagined sobriety,
a joyous awakening to the memory
that this resistance to Your fullness
is among the greatest gifts from You.

In these depths,
all things left within me
that had seemed to interfere
with my dream of perfection
were revealed as channels
for a unique upwelling
of Your goodness.

You created me to be Your lover,
my Beloved.
By Your will we are two
who are nonetheless one.
Never let this be undone
so long as there are others in this world
who thirst for You.

There are many things we could draw out of these two poems, but today my focus is drawn from the very first line of St. Isaac’s work.  So long as we think of God as something or someone entirely separate from and outside of ourselves, external, I believe we are missing a vital point of St. Isaac’s mystical statement.  For those of us who have been  in traditional religious institutions, a great deal of our spiritual thoughts, sentiments, and practices have indeed been incited by something external.  Our attempts to love the Great Mystery we call God can often be almost entirely directed by doctrines and authorities urging us to relate to God as anything but present within our own souls and those of others.   So it is that many of us are led into the recurring misery of feeling that God is separate and distant from us, unresponsive to our prayers and devotions, and that we must therefore be far too corrupt to merit God’s thirst-quenching love.  Yet, it is possible to break free of this psychospiritual tyranny and rediscover the presence of God as Love within us.  But it would be an incomplete understanding of St. Isaac to think this means we should turn all of our attention within, giving our time and energy only to that inward experience.  To accept that the Kingdom of God is already within us begs the further realization that it is within everyone else and all of creation, just as Jesus taught.  In that realization, our love for things external to us, certainly including other people, is directly connected with cherishing and serving God, or Love itself.  Finally, my poem ends with a kind of Christian Bodhisattva vow, a commitment to not make the spiritual life about trying to escape from the world’s suffering, but rather to accept the fact of our presence in this world, and to answer the call to transform that presence for the good of all.

Agape

Jul 232013
 

A Non-Dualist Foundation

Those familiar with my previous writings know that I am most drawn to a non-dual perspective as the starting point for my theological and moral thoughts. Non-dualism is not anti-dualist in the sense that it attempts to ignore duality or entirely escape from it. Rather, it holds that duality is itself subsumed by a greater reality, that of interconnectedness, oneness, unity. In order to address the subject of this blog post from that greater perspective, let’s begin by considering how it can be consistent with scripture. While I am very cautious about taking any scripture at face value, there are some that I gravitate to as strong hints, if not simple and direct statements, of non-dualism expressed in theistic terms.

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. Isaiah 45:7

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.John 1:1-13

Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the Kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the Kingdom of God is in your midst.” Luke 17:20-21

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ … ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’Matthew 25:40, 45

[Jesus prayed] “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

“I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.”John 17:20-23

For in Him we live and move and have our being.Acts 17:28a

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.Ephesians 4:4-6

‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, beginning and end,’ saith the Lord, ‘who is, and who was, and who is coming — the Almighty.’ Revelation 1:8

So, as I now understand such passages, while we perceive a world of dualistic oppositions – like light and darkness, peace and evil, spirit and flesh, or life and death – all of it is nonetheless united in God’s oneness. I don’t want to engage in mere prooftexting, so I acknowledge other passages that appear to declare something is rejected by God, or not of God.  Still, I think such statements are clearly made from the perspective of dualism, and thus speak to how something seems to oppose the things we prefer to identify with God, such as light, peace, and life. Furthermore, I suspect that even the most inspired writers of scripture could move back and forth between these two perspectives just as we do today.   In any case, the common scripturally based theological assertion is that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, and so nothing within the realm of duality can be outside God’s mind, power, and presence.

Non-dualism is right there in the midst of ordinary Christian theology, if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear.  The Logos, the Kingdom, and the King are always here, in everything. We just fail to realize it because we are so captivated by our dualistic perspectives, and so desperately trying to achieve an either/or type of certainty through the judgments we make. In making such judgments, no matter how well intended they are, we nonetheless mentally cut something off from the whole, and thus we reinforce the illusion of separation from God and each other in some way. In short, we have made our own dualistic reasoning and concepts into a false god to which we bow rather than embrace the Mysterious One and All.

Realizing Unity

We are all already united with God because God is both in and around all. All of our experiences must therefore be experiences of God, which might seem to challenge the notion of a mystical path, a way of seeking union with God. What seeking is necessary?! It’s already happening! One response to this challenge is that what we are actually seeking is not a union with God that has yet to happen, but greater realization of the unity that already exists, always has, and always will.By ‘realization,’ I mean to experience something with awareness and understanding, and to express such awareness and understanding through our actions. For example, people who have fallen in love know that sometimes it isn’t realized until after the fact. Suddenly, there is simply the awakening of “Oh! I’m in love!”, followed by changes in behavior intended to more fully act upon it, to experience and express a more complete manifestation of its possibilities. Each of these elements – experience, awareness, understanding, and expression – is necessary to make something more fully real in our lives, to real-ize it rather than leave our consciousness of it within the realm of speculations, hopes, and potentialities. Thus, the actual aim of mysticism is neither to make union with God happen nor to wait for union to happen (although we often fall back on wording of either sort), but to let go of the illusion of separation and more fully realize the ever-present fact of unity.

Practicing Unity

How might we go about letting go of that illusion and realizing unity? There are many possible varieties of unitive experience. Let us again refer to the analogy of lovers. Think of all the ways lovers can experience and express their connection with each other; it can be sensed with the body, felt with the emotions, understood with the mind, and deeply intuited in silence. When lovers look upon each other, there is union in sight. When they hear each other, there is union in sound. Likewise, there is union in touch, smell, and taste. When they share attraction and affection, there is union in emotion. When their thoughts are focused on each other, and especially in those moments when they know each other’s thoughts, there is union in mind. And, of course, the most complete realization of their union occurs when they are consciously experiencing and expressing all of it. We may realize union with God in much the same way, with all our heart, soul, and mind.

As the scriptures teach, God is over all, in all, and through all, and so we are constantly surrounded and interpenetrated by opportunities to realize union with God. Thus, a practice with significant transformative potential is to regard all of existence, including oneself, as a work of art in which God is at once the inspiration, the artist, the medium, the tools, the actions, the product, and the audience. Everything we experience is a combination of divine forces formed in limited and particular expressions of God’s infinite potential for creation.

Jesus said, “It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the All. From Me did the All come forth, and unto Me did the All extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find Me there.”Thomas 77

Feel the warmth of the sun, and recognize that it is but an infinitesimal speck of God’s power. Gaze upon a fluttering leaf, and there is God’s hand waving to all within sight. Listen to thunder roll, and hear God drumming for all with ears to hear. Smell the decay of death, and so inhale God’s slow sigh. Feel the mysterious rise of tears when listening to a hymn, and feel the unspeakable beauty of God. Discern the mathematics of a circle, and there is a thought from the infinity of God’s mind.Feel closeness of spirit in the company of others with like minds, and sense God’s arms reaching for you and through you toward others. Enfold yourself with a lover, and welcome communion with God. Experience the pain of grief, and there is God letting the present flow into the past.  Empty yourself completely into stillness and silence, and there is God’s unfathomable fullness beyond space and time, ever annihilating and renewing all within the field of space and time.

That last sentence refers to the most valued practice in contemplative Christianity, and to what may be called the mystical experience, which is to say the quintessential or most transcendent mystical experience.  Prior to this event, all the anthropomorphic metaphors we project onto God, even in an attempt to more fully unite with God, continue to raise the veils of dualism and thus some degree of the illusion of separation. The great mystics, like St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, the Blessed Jan van Ruysbroek, and many others, have tried to point beyond these veils toward a realization of union that is free of all doubt, all hope, and all speculation. Robert Forman calls it the Pure Consciousness Event. Yet, as these other mystics do in their own ways, Forman also notes that we re-emerge from the complete unity of the Pure Consciousness Event. We always come back into duality to some degree, but sometimes with an awareness, a “memory” if you will, and a greater realization of the unity that subsumes duality and expresses itself through duality. Forman refers to this development as the Dualistic Mystical State, a concept similar to that of the unitive state or unitive way in traditional Christian theology.

Prior to the Pure Consciousness Event, we can approximate the Dualistic Mystical State through the practice of regarding all other forms of experience as limited encounters with God. Such a practice can help us prepare for the ultimate experience, and might even facilitate it. It is certainly a valid attempt to more fully realize the union with God that we intuit, hypothesize, hope for, or sense in some way, but do not yet actually know. But, once the mystical experience has come there is no more need to “regard” other experiences as connections with God, for then we know it just as surely as a lucid dreamer recognizes a dream for what it is while it is actually happening.

Practicing Unity is Love

Whether regarding all of existence as in and of God, or knowing it is so and being engaged in further realizing it, we are loving God more fully. We are opening our souls, our minds, our hearts, and our arms and hands to welcome the Divine in the light and the darkness, in peace and evil, in the flesh (incarnate) and the spirit, in life and death. In this context, we may find even greater depth in Jesus’ teaching to love everyone, even our enemies. While an enemy might be another human being, in any given moment it might also be an idea, a desire in one’s own soul, a machine, or a natural event such as a flood. To love even these enemies is the unconditional love that isn’t caught in dualistic oppositions with hate, fear, or apathy. It is a transcendent love that acknowledges and accepts everything and all just as it is, appreciates the inextricable interconnectedness of everything and all, and rejoices and participates in the never ending transformation and renewal of everything and all.

His disciples said to him, “When will you be visible to us, and when shall we behold you?”

He said, “When you strip naked without being ashamed, and take your garments and put them under your feet like little children and tread upon them, then you will see the child of the Living, and you will not be afraid.”Thomas 37

Even if only for one brief and yet eternal moment, let’s strip off the layers of dualistic clothing on consciousness to directly know the One that is Its own Father, Mother, and Child, and thus more fully realize That which is living, dying, and being reborn in, around, and through all of us and everything else in every moment.

Maranatha

Agape

Feb 162013
 

Christian mysticism is frequently written and spoken about as a very solitary and private thing.  In many ways, that is certainly the case, and understandably so.  The shift into mysticism from the more common experiences and expressions of spiritual life is, for most of us, a shift toward introversion in our religious attitudes and practices.  In this shift, we remove some of our attention and effort from conforming with externally imposed doctrines and behavioral norms, and place more attention and effort on plumbing the depths of Spirit immediately present within ourselves.   The desire for belonging to a community, or for the acceptance and approval of some institutional authority, thus becomes a lower priority. We can experience both internal and external resistance to this change.  With some of us, that resistance is encountered as a threat to answering the call to union with God, and so it sometimes happens that relationship itself is narrowly judged by us as a distraction.  All of this plays into the stereotype of mystic as hermit.  Yet the messages of Jesus consistently emphasize relationship as central to our spiritual lives. Relationship with God and relationships with our fellow human beings are not only presented as equally important but as inseparably intertwined.  The centrality of this theme suggests there could be much to gain in thinking more about relationship itself.  Therefore, in this post we will begin with the most abstract examination of relationship, and from there consider various implications for the significance of relationship.

The Ubiquity of Relationship

An interesting thing about relationship is that it is always present.  Nothing can exist in any way and not be in relationship, regardless of whether we are speaking of a material object or something as ethereal as a thought.  In fact, it is impossible to conceive of anything apart from relationship.  Even the effort to imagine or describe something alone, in isolation from other objects, nonetheless involves the perception of its own different characteristics, each of which is in relationship with the others through their participation in the whole.  In science, relationships are typically expressed in mathematics, which is nothing other than a system of describing and exploring relationship.  While this pursuit can be, as with quantum physics, very far removed from ordinary experiences of relationship in most people’s lives, we need only turn to the fields of accounting, geometry, meteorology, and psychological testing to see how mathematics helps us understand many common forms of relationship.  (Even the word under-stand shouts of relationship!)  Likewise, all art is an exploration of and participation in relationship.  Just these few examples from both science and art reveal that we cannot conceive of being in any way apart from relationship, and that the meaning we find in or give to being itself is likewise inseparable from relationship.  Being and meaning are so thoroughly dependent upon relationship that it would not be too much of a stretch to conclude that they are functions of relationship, that they are only able to emerge within relationship itself.

It should be noted that our usual way of thinking about relationship is being turned upon its head.  The typical thought process assumes that relationship emerges from and between the being of different things.  In other words, we usually think of an object or idea as something relatively static and self-existent, and our perception of relationship only emerges as we simultaneously consider that thing and something else.  Relationship is thus treated as a matter of how things that are assumed to be separate are judged to be different or alike, their locations relevant to each other, what effects they may have upon each other, and so forth.  Now, however, we are considering that there are no things, no objects or ideas, without there first being relationship. The awareness of a thing, even of oneself, is thus the perception of a constellation of relationships that we perceive as sufficiently unique to distinguish it from other constellations.    In other words, “thing-ness” is nothing other than the constellation of relationships.  Relationship is the basis of existence itself.

atom

Considering this possibility may be so radically different that it seems absurd, and so I invite you to try it merely as a thought experiment.  Try to set aside your usual habits of thinking and see what happens if you take it as a given that relationship is most fundamental, that it is that from which all emerges, that in which each thing has its being and thus its meaning.   In the language of various philosophies, we are now attempting to work with the possibility that relationship is the ground of being.  For a Christian, this means we are trying to think of God as Relationship itself, using “Relationship” in the same way we might use Truth, Mind, Perfection, Nothing, All, Spirit, Father, or another capitalized term to signify God in some particularly meaningful way.  So, to reiterate, for the present purposes we are speaking of God as the Supreme Relationship.

A Theology of Relationship

If we take Relationship as the ground of being, and thus being as a function of Relationship, then Relationship is more than being and not simply identical with it.  If this is so, then both being and non-being are subsumed by Relationship; they are states within the whole all-encompassing scope of the Supreme Relationship.  But what do we mean by these terms, “being” and “non-being?”   We may take the concept of being, even in this unusual context, as reasonably apparent and even self-evident.   To be is to exist in some manner; being is “is-ness.”  Yet we have just encountered the perspective that we cannot conceive of a particular being, a thing that is, without recognizing its distinctness as a constellation of relationships.  Non-being is thus a state in which there are no constellations of relationships to distinguish from each other.  There are two ways we can account for such a state – one is absolute chaos and the other is absolute order.  In absolute chaos, the relational principle of change is so completely dominant that nothing, no thing, can ever emerge from its “anarchy” to manifest as something distinct from the chaos.  In absolute order, the relational principle of stasis is so completely dominant that nothing can ever emerge from its “tyranny.”  Absolute chaos and absolute order are thus extreme conditions of relationship we conceptualize as opposites, which are, nonetheless, identical in their non-being-ness.  Within the whole of Relationship itself, we thus have a trinity of fundamental relationship states that are different yet inseparable from each other – non-being as absolute chaos, non-being as absolute order, and being.

order & chaos co-mingled

In this model, Relationship begets Creation (the totality of being represented in the graphic by white and all tints of red and blue), through the interaction of chaos and order.  One analogy that readily lends itself for understanding these states in Relationship is a magnetic field or electric current.  Just as magnetism or electricity arises between positive and negative polarities, all the possibilities of being are understood as arising in the tension between, and/or the co-mingling of, absolute order and absolute chaos.

We should note that unlike some theological models, this one does not dispense with the possibility for a personal relationship with God, it does not deny God’s personhood, and it does not minimize the significance of experiencing a spiritual or mystical presence.   All of these things are instead embraced as actual forms of relationship that can manifest in the field of being, and thus between the Supreme Relationship and us.

Practical Implications

Every theological model has practical implications.  In other words, the way we think about God has effects, both obvious and subtle, on how we think and feel and on what we do.  Consider, for example, all the possible effects of thinking about God in exclusively masculine or feminine terms, or as a jealous parent or temperamental judge.  Consider the ramifications of thinking about God in deistic terms, as a creative intelligence that crafted the cosmos and then retreated from the scene. Thinking of God as an impersonal force also shapes us in its own ways.  It’s important to consider these things because it can help us more fully understand ourselves and why we and others think and act in certain ways.  Furthermore, it can challenge us to ponder whether or not the way we think about God really serves the whole truth of our being as well as it might.  For example, we might say that we believe there is nothing more important than peace, but if we conceive of God primarily as a temperamental judge, then it’s likely that many of our feelings and actions will not be in harmony with the principle of peace.  In effect, this self-contradiction puts us at odds with ourselves, and our presence in the world and effect on others will reflect it.

The following paragraphs provide starting places for working with a few specific implications of thinking about God as Relationship.

An Implicate Ethic in Creation

golden-mean

The Golden Mean

One of the implications of this model is that the more thoroughly chaos and order are integrated, then the more optimal are the possibilities for being.  Movement from the middle toward chaos is a movement away from the harmonizing, stabilizing, sustaining effects of order. Therefore, being increasingly dissolves into anarchy approaching the non-being of absolute chaos.  Movement from the middle toward order is movement away from the liberating, diversifying, renovating effects of chaos.  Therefore, being increasingly solidifies into tyranny approaching the non-being of absolute order.   So it is that this model resonates very well with the ancient Greek doctrine of the Golden Mean, the Middle Way of Buddhism, the Pillar of Equilibrium on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, and the Tao.  The ethics of these doctrines typically highlight virtues such as moderation, temperance, integrity, and equanimity, while also not denying the freedom and possible value of moving toward an extreme from time to time.  There are limitless ways this ethic might actually be put into practice in our everyday lives, from such macro issues as international politics to such micro issues as what one does for dinner tonight.

Relationships as Spiritual Experiences

Ponder for a moment what it means to regard Relationship itself as utterly Divine.  It implies that all forms of relationship are therefore divine in some particular way, which further implies that all relationships are, each in their own way, a direct though limited encounter with God.  And beyond this, since everything is, in some way, in relationship with everything else, then we are constantly encountering God in an ongoing myriad of different expressions.  Even further, if we accept the idea that a thing is actually a constellation of relationships, and has no existence otherwise, then all things are inherently divine.   There is nothing that is not divine, including ourselves, and every relationship is interconnected with all others and thus part of the whole Relationship that is God, the Supreme Relationship inclusive of all being and non-being.   Relationship is unity in multiplicity and multiplicity in unity.   We therefore have the possibility of realizing every relationship as not only spiritual in nature, but also potentially mystical in significance.  This perspective makes it possible for mysticism to be more than an introverted pursuit; it is freed from the realm of private solitary practice and opened up as a whole way of life.

Love

As mystics often write and speak about the centrality of Love, the unity of Love, the transcendence and immanence of Love, of God as Love, it isn’t unusual for people to question what that really means.  Such questions are significant.  To think of Love as something not limited by duality, as something that, in the broadest scope, has no opposite such as hate, or fear, or apathy, can leave us empty of anything but the vaguest intuition about Love.  That befuddlement is fitting because it reveals we are plumbing the depths of the concept of Love all the way down into the mystery of the ineffableness of God.  It is pushing the finiteness of a word to its breaking point in an effort to make it an emblem for the Infinite. In classic theological language, it is following the Via Positiva all the way to the conceptual chasm where one can only go further by, ironically, resting in the Via Negativa.  Even so, perhaps there is some value in considering the possibility that the meanings of Love and Relationship merge at this point, with Love as relationship realized in wholeness, and Relationship as love realized in all things.

love-mandala-01-flowering-heart-17793368

In closing, I ask you to consider what it might mean to actually live your life from this perspective that Relationship is the Ground of Being, that God is the Supreme Relationship in which all other relationships live and move and have their being.  What effects might it have on your thoughts, feelings, and actions?  How could it impact your understanding of Christianity and your identity and self-expression as a Christian?  How might it affect your attitudes toward other religions, toward the non-religious, or on political and social issues?  What about your behavior as a citizen, your attitudes about sexuality, your presence among co-workers, family, friends, and so on?

Agape

Feb 062013
 

This post continues on the theme of the previous post, The Illusion of Separateness.

We begin before the beginning, outside of time and space, with the Nameless, Faceless, Indescribable One that is the Source and Ground of All, which we simply refer to now as…

1. Unity

Genesis

origen1

2. Duality within Unity

In some way that defies our complete understanding, ‘within’ the Transcendent Unity we call ‘God,’ there is an ‘intention’ for the freedom of otherness to be.  Some of our creation myths try to explain why this happens, yet others leave it as a mystery.  The story of Genesis, for example, does not explain why God wills creation; we are only given a beginning of space-time in which God creates the distinction of heaven and earth. From this basic duality, of Godself and other, arises all the diversity of creation in response to God’s will, and all of it is declared “good,” which is to say that, at least so far, things are as they should be.

Note:  In this context, ‘other’ refers not only to other persons, but anything considered to be ‘not me.’  This is an important point to keep in mind as further points refer to ‘others.’

The Fall and the Spiral of Illusions

3. The Illusion of Separateness

Despite the multiplicity of forms in creation, careful reading of scripture reveals that it is all actually one.  Everything and everyone lives, moves, and has its being in God. There is nowhere that God is not. Yet we can become intoxicated by duality and thus fail to perceive our unity with the All and the One.  This is the symbolism of being tempted by the serpent, eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and ejection from Eden.   The self-other binary of duality has become a veil on unity, a distraction from it, and is thus distorted into the illusion of separateness.  It is not a fall from grace, but a fall from the intimate awareness of grace.

4. The Illusion of Lacking

Our delusion of separation is at odds with our latent memory, or intuitive knowledge, of unity; it is a dissonance, an incongruity, felt by us as incompleteness.  It is the root of all uneasiness, all discomfort, with self and others. In Genesis, this uncomfortable feeling of lacking and need is revealed in Adam’s lonely desire for a mate, and later in the couple’s shame about their nakedness.  Out of our deep knowing of unity as truth, a desire emerges to eliminate the discomfort that accompanies the illusion of lacking and need.  Yet that desire can conflate with a desire to expand self, because self is perceived as the most immediate thing, and thus least illusory, within the illusion of separateness.  In such confusion, we believe others must be drawn into self in order to rebuild wholeness and thus relieve our existential discomfort.  Desire is thereby revealed as more fundamental than need in our existence.  Everything perceived as a need is actually something we desire in order to maintain or undo the illusions of separateness.  Even the need to survive disappears if one no longer desires to live.

5. The Illusion of Acquiring/Possessing

Acting in response to the illusion of need and the desire to expand self, self attempts to relieve discomfort through acquiring/possessing others (people, things, ideas, experiences, etc.), and thus ironically defends, perpetuates, and compounds the illusion of self’s separateness.

6. The Illusion of Strengths/Weaknesses

In the processes of acquiring and possessing, we perceive patterns within a binaries of (a) ease versus difficulty and (b) ability versus inability.  We compare and contrast self and others in these ways, conceptualizing different kinds of talent, skill, and knowledge, and judging each other according to competence in acquiring and possessing.

7. The Illusion of Conflict with Others

We experience that others acting to acquire and possess can interfere with our acquiring and possessing, even completely preventing or undoing our own acquiring and possessing.  We therefore conclude that some others must be outperformed, if not eliminated, in order for self to acquire and possess as easily and freely as possible.

8. The Illusion of Winners/Losers

We perceive a success-failure binary in the competition to acquire and possess.  Winners are judged as good because they model the illusory ideal of defending, perpetuating, and expanding self.

9. The Illusion of Self-Improvement/Self-Diminishment

We perceive a progress-regress binary in winning and losing, and thus in developing and maintaining (acquiring and possessing) self-efficacy, which is our sense of ability to achieve success in drawing others into self.

Notice how every step reinforces and compounds the previous steps, and thus our energies spiral out into an ever larger, more complex, and more unmanageable illusory existence.  Yet, every step also offers the possibility of awakening to these illusions.

What are we to do about all of this?

Some spiritual traditions seem to insist that the whole phenomenon of otherness is either a cosmic mistake or a flaw in the spirit of humanity.  The fact of duality, of the self-other binary that is at the very heart of creation, is judged as the fundamental evil that makes all of creation corrupt.  This way of thinking often leads to re-assessing self as the most immediate falsehood rather than the most immediate reality, and thus to the conclusion that the only way out of illusion is to utterly destroy self.  A similar but more extroverted reaction is the quest for an idealized world in which all distinctions of otherness, and thus all differences, are eliminated.  It is, in effect, an attempt to eliminate diversity and establish universal conformity to some imagined state of perfection.

Unless we take the view that the Adonai of Genesis is a false god, a deluded and megalomaniacal demiurge bent on making a cosmic mistake, then we cannot conclude from our myth that creation, with its dualism, is an evil to be undone.  Instead, our creation myth suggests that the primary problem is the illusion of separation, and Jesus promises that it is possible to overcome, or be delivered from, this problem.  It might seem paradoxical, but he calls us to return to awareness of unity while still participating in duality.  As we shall see, such a call only seems paradoxical when viewed from a position still fully immersed in the illusion of separateness.

Lucidity

cosmic-eye-mandala-print

As frequent readers of this blog are likely to know, lucid dreaming is my favorite analogy for a state of being in which one has awareness of unity while still participating in duality; in lucid dreaming, one clearly knows he or she is dreaming while the dream is happening.  It is a state less enmeshed in the illusions of separateness between self and the various ‘others’ experienced in the dream, and yet the dream and one’s presence in it continues to manifest.  Anyone who experiences lucidity knows what a liberating moment it can be.  What may have, only seconds before, seemed like an unbearable nightmare can suddenly be experienced with a light heart, even a sense of humor, not unlike a Halloween house of horrors.  More pleasant dreams can have their beauty magnified as the wonder and awe of their artistry is more deeply appreciated.  Imagine what it is like to realize that the mind you call your own is somehow mysteriously creating and sustaining an entire world around you, and with incredible detail and vibrancy.   If you have had this experience, then you may also know what it is like to begin working with the dream as a piece of art, shaping and crafting it according to your own wishes.  A nightmare can be completely transformed into an experience of peace and joy.  A monotonous repetition of typical events can be seized as an opportunity to break the laws of physics and fly in the air or breathe underwater.  Almost anything is possible, and no ugliness seems quite as genuinely threatening to you or any ‘other’ in the dream.

Mystical insight, enlightenment, revelation, or whatever you want to call it, can impart a similar liberation with regard to our presence in the so-called ‘waking world.’  According to some mystics, philosophers, and physicists, our ‘waking world’ is like a shared dream in which all of our seemingly individual minds are participating with a consensus, both conscious and unconscious, about how things should work.  Individuals who become lucid in this world attain some measure of liberation from the ‘rules,’ and thus greater freedom and power to consciously shape the world.  Furthermore, just as one can fade in and out of lucidity within a dream, we can do so in the waking world.  One moment we can remember unity and enjoy our freedom in greater measure, and the very next moment again fall into the sleep of illusory separateness.  Therefore, the mechanisms of lucidity are, to some extent, obviously beyond our conscious control, at least for most of us.  On the other hand, the desire to experience lucidity, and the intention to maintain it, do seem to make a significant difference.  If the great sages and seers of history have spoken truthfully, then there is not only a Spiral of Illusions, but also a Spiral of Lucidity that we can engage.

Why?

Why… does God do this?  …are we here?   …seek lucidity? This takes us full-circle back to the beginning.  Genesis doesn’t say why God creates, only that God does, and that God considers it good. We can therefore conclude that it is not an evil to be destroyed, a mistake to be undone, or a prison to be escaped.  The Genesis myth further suggests that we are created to be God’s partners in creation, tending to God’s garden while directly aware of God’s presence; we have the innate potential to be conscious participants in manifesting the All’s infinite possibilities.  In addition, we learn that we are endowed with freedom, for without it we would be severely limited in our ability to intentionally transform things from one state into something new and different, yet that freedom also makes it possible for us to forget and ignore the unity of the One and All.   These observations lead me to believe that when we ask the why questions, what we are really seeking is some understanding of what we should do with our existence and freedom, as if that answer lies external to our own hearts’ desires.  If we are indeed created to be free co-creators, then the more meaningful question is this:  What do you want to do with your existence and freedom?

There are many more questions and implications we could continue to explore, such as what this model suggests about our perceptions of good and evil, sin and morality, heaven and hell, grace, salvation, and every other aspect of our lives, religious and otherwise.  But, in closing, you are especially welcomed to reflect upon how these possibilities might relate to our understandings of love – what it is, why it is the Greatest Commandment to love God with all that we are and our neighbors as ourselves, and the ways we can do so.

Agape

Jan 312013
 

One of the most common mystical insights shared among spiritual people of all times and traditions, and increasingly among physicists, is that our notion of separateness is an illusion, and that we are all one.  This post offers related quotes for our reflection.  More importantly, it poses some questions to ponder deeply.  Readers are welcome to share responses below.

I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!  …  As you have done unto the least of these, so have you done to me. … As you have not done to them, so have you not done to me. Jesus of Nazareth

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. … ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Paul the Apostle

Our soul is so fully united to God of His own Goodness that absolutely nothing comes between God and our soul.  …  It is more worshipful to behold God in all than in any special thing. Julian of Norwich

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.  Black Elk

The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated. Desmond Tutu

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another. Thomas Merton

A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical illusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.   Albert Einstein

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness. … Human beings are not separate from each other or Nature. We are totally interrelated and our actions have consequences to all. What we do to others we do to ourselves. What we do to the Earth we do to ourselves. Thich Nhat Hanh

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. Yasutani Roshi

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate “other.” You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is. Eckhart Tolle

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything. Swami Vivekananda

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. Herman Hesse

 

Questions

  • In what ways does the idea that separateness is an illusion appeal to you or make sense to you?
  • In what ways does this idea seem unbelievable or make you uncomfortable?
  • If you somehow came to a compelling belief in the truth of this idea, or perhaps even a direct realization or revelation of oneness, how might it change you, your relationships, your theology and ideas about sin and salvation, your politics, and other aspects of your life?

Agape