Jun 042015
 

Recently, I got very ill for a few days. I lost over 6 pounds in 3 days! I was in such pain with fever one night that I was in tears. That has happened once before in my adult life, and the previous experience actually Opnamedatum:  2011-04-29facilitated an epiphany.  In the depths of misery, I realized there are many people in this world who would willingly take some or all of that pain on themselves to give me relief. Just the knowledge that someone would be willing produced a feeling of gratitude that was immensely powerful, and relieving in its own way. I found that this willingness to give up some of one’s own comfort to relieve the suffering of others is part of how I understand the presence of Christ in the souls of all people. I know prayer for others is part of living with awareness of this presence in our own souls. Jesus was constantly uttering prayers for others, and he also knew what it was like to desperately pray to be spared from suffering. So, as I reconnected with these memories in my recent suffering, I thought of the times others have prayed for me, and my gratitude was magnified. When I hear or say, “Christ be with you,” it means, in part, that I hope you know the beauty of both giving and receiving from such willingness.

There is another connection here, which is my awareness of people’s misery in feeling distant from The One we call “God.”  I have felt that misery, and the memory of it is part of whatilluminor drives me to serve those who feel it.  My prayer is that the words I write may in some way comfort others with hope and by knowing that they aren’t alone, at the very least. But it is also my prayer that what I write helps facilitate the realization that, no matter how lost anyone feels, we are all already intimately connected with God right now, no matter what we are thinking, feeling, or doing, no matter how distant God seems.  In this sense, when I say “Christ be with you,” it is an expression of my hope that you know the mystical truth that Christ is with you.

Christ be with you.

Maranatha

Agape

Apr 242014
 

As a topic of interest, mysticism includes thinking about theology and other spiritual subjects, and states or events of consciousness are certainly among them.  In fact, it seems to me that those of us who are fascinated by mysticism spend a lot of our time thinking and talking about these things.  To people just beginning to scratch the surface of mysticism, it could even look like that kind of thinking and talking is pretty much all mysticism is about!  But mysticism isn’t just a topic of interest, or even a way of thinking.  Mysticism is a way of life, and this article will join others in this blog by trying to offer an approach to its practical dimension.  Said another way, today I’m inviting us to consider how to bring mysticism into our everyday ordinary experience and action, and more specifically by considering the practice of empathy.

What is Empathy?

Here is a definition of empathy provided by Merriam-Webster:

the [capacity or] action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner

Let’s note that empathy can be in thought or in feeling, and in both at the same time.  This is an important point, because most of us lean more toward either thinking or feeling in our way of connecting with and understanding others, some of us are at one of the extremes of this polarity, and all of us can find one or the other more challenging at at times.  Therefore, as it is defined here, empathy is possible for anyone to practice at anytime, although each of us will vary somewhat in exactly how that practice comes most naturally in the moment.

How can Empathy be Mystical?

Mysticism is about the faith and hope in, and the pursuit of or opening to, realizing direct, unmediated, union with the Divine One.  The essential mystical experience is thus a complete loss of any subject-object duality between self and God, and involves a dissolution of all concepts, feelings, and perceptions of any “other,” even if it seems to have been only for a brief flashing moment when reflected upon from ordinary consciousness.  Yet empathy actually requires the subject-object duality of perceiving another entity with its own inner experiences.  So how can it be mystical?

Many mystics who claim to who have had the essential mystical experience have realized in its aftermath that at the deepest levels of their being they were already intimately connected with God.  In fact, Genesis 2:7 makes it clear that the Nishmat Hayyim (nishmat = breath, spirit, or soul; hayyim = of life) that animates Adam is God’s own breath or spirit, which in Christianity we call the Holy Spirit.  This breath is obviously not literally the air we breathe, so the analogy informs us that the Nishmat Hayyim is just as necessary and universally present to all human beings, both around us and within us, as the oxygen that is essential to our physical existence.

Those mystics who have received and realized the essential mystical experience can know this truth as immediately as we each know our own existence – we are all children of the Divine One, each of us always in direct communion with the Holy Spirit, and thus we are always in communion with each other in our deepest or highest dimension of being.

For example, the Book of Acts records the Apostle Paul  as preaching this:

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth … 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.’

In her Revelations of Divine Love, the great mystic St. Julian of Norwich similarly says:

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.

And this is also the greatest significance of  words Jesus Christ speaks in prayer according to the Gospel of John:

I have given them [my followers] the glory you [God] 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.

And yet, it isn’t possible to be fully present to our individualized places in creation, and thus in dualistic interactions with others, while simultaneously having our awareness completely dissolved in the Divine One without the faintest hint of subject-object duality.  It is possible, however, to be mindful that our individual beings are occurring in and of the One, just as the more or less distinct thoughts of a mind are nonetheless each expressions of and united with the mind that thinks them – their essence is one.  In fact, just as the words prayed by Jesus suggest, the fully realized mystic can be immediately aware of union with and in the Divine One that both encompasses and flows through all our dualistic perceptions of self and others.

Sacred-heart-of-jesus-ibarraranBecause each human being is one with God at heart, it follows that empathy, the capacity or act of seeking deeper understanding and communion with another human being, leads us into deeper and more complete communion with the Divine One.  The scriptures teach us not only to love God with all that we are, but also to love others as ourselves, because both are necessary for the most complete experience and expression of the unity Jesus prayed for us to know.  This is also the deepest understanding of Christianity’s tradition of regarding an encounter with a stranger as a potential visitation from Christ.   To practice empathy with this understanding is therefore to engage it as a mystical practice.

How do we Practice Empathy?

As noted before, there are two primary categories of empathic experience – thinking and feeling.  While we may find ourselves spontaneously experiencing either or both, to actually practice empathy requires us to intentionally engage these potentials.  In other words, the practice of empathy is the conscious choice to try understanding and/or feeling what another person thinks and/or feels.  It’s that simple!  Yet, as simple as the explanation is, the application can be more complicated, and it has a number of dimensions that can be attended to and refined.  Rather than go into a more lengthy examination of those dimensions, for now I prefer to offer some steps to actually develop our abilities to empathize.  We’re going to focus primarily on empathy for the feelings of others, because most of us get much less training and practice with this in Western culture than we do with paying attention to and understanding the thoughts of others.

Step One: Perception and Identification

This step requires that we turn our attention toward the experience of another person with the intention of identifying the thoughts and feelings the person is having.  This requires not only listening to what the person says, but also paying attention to facial expressions, gestures, posture, and other non-verbals or “body language.”  At this point, the aim is not to analyze, critique, or judge the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the person, but to try recognizing them as clearly as if they were our own.  Such recognition in thinking includes the ability to accurately restate the other person’s thoughts, but in our own words.   It also includes the ability to understand how one idea connects with another in that person’s chain of thoughts.  In feeling, empathic recognition includes the ability to actually experience some degree of the sensations or emotions of the other person.  Empathic thought and feeling begin to combine when we not only share in the feelings of another, but we are also able to name those feelings and understand how they are related to the other’s thoughts.

Step Two: Enhancing Perception and Identification

For this step, I suggest you try an experiment, and that you repeat it often.  During your ordinary daily activities, find times to carefully observe another human being.  The person might be someone you live with, a stranger out in public somewhere, or, as a last resort, someone in a movie or some other video medium.  As you observe the person, pay attention at a physical level and try to recall or imagine what it physically feels like to do whatever it is the person is physically doing. If the person is walking, call up the feeling of your feet impacting the floor or ground, the movement of your legs and arms, and so on.  If the person is talking on a phone, feel the phone in your hand, pressed to your ear, etc.  Is the person drinking a cup of coffee?  Feel all the sensations of holding the cup, smelling the coffee, and sipping the warm liquid into your mouth and swallowing it.

Once you have conducted this experiment several times, start to bring in the emotional dimension.  Listen to and watch people having emotional experiences.  As they do so, make an effort to share in those feelings to a manageable extent.  If the person is laughing, recall not only the physical sensations of laughter, but the happiness that goes with it.  When people laugh at themselves, feel the added emotional “flavor” of that experience. (We all know what that’s like!)   Similarly, seeing an angry person, imagine what that anger actually feels like.

Step Three: More Fully Integrating Empathic Thinking & Feeling

A useful tool in identifying emotions, and thus to integrating empathic feeling with empathic thinking, is building a vocabulary rich enough to distinguish subtle differences in the intensity and combinations of emotions.  There are many models and resources available for anyone interested in developing a vocabulary and understanding of emotions, each with its own appeal, but I’d like to offer Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions as a good starting point. (This model doesn’t entirely suit me, even though I find it immensely useful.  For instance, I prefer the word “affection” where Plutchik shows “love.”  I don’t agree with labeling an emotion as “love,” because love isn’t simply a function of emotion, yet it can be experienced and expressed in any emotional state.)

1000px-Plutchik-wheel.svg

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions
(Click for Expanded Image)

As you study the wheel, try to recall how each emotion actually feels, and how it affects your thinking, behavior, speech, and so on.  It may help to remember specific moments in your life when you felt each emotion.  Then, as you practice perceiving the feelings of others, use your growing vocabulary and understanding to more fully connect with their personal experiences.

Empathic thinking can be even further integrated by trying to identify what the feelings seem to be about.  What is it that’s so funny or angering?  Why is it so?  How can this feeling affect the way a person thinks and behaves?  What has it been like for me to feel and manage this emotion in my own experiences?

In working with that last question, and with the previous recommendation of recalling similar experiences of our own, we are engaging the aspect of empathy that we commonly call relating.  Relating to others can be a very helpful aspect of empathy, but it can also distract from empathy when we allow it to lead us into hasty assumptions about what others are experiencing.  It’s therefore important to be mindful that relating may offer us clues to deeper understanding of another person, but we cannot take this for granted; there is much room for error.

Step Four: Communicating Empathy

At this point, we are no longer merely observing and empathizing with another from some distance, but reflecting back to the person our effort to accurately feel and/or understand their experience.  Perhaps the most basic way of doing this is to simply state an awareness that the other person is experiencing some feeling or feelings, and ask them to speak about it.  Just these two very basic acts of empathy — (1) recognizing the fact that another is experiencing something, and then (2) opening to share in that experience — can be immensely powerful!  On the one hand, they demonstrate to the other person that we are loving them in one of the most fundamental and unconditional of ways.  On the other hand, these acts also welcome the honor of a clearer connection and deeper understanding of the other person’s experience with less potential for distortion and misunderstanding from our own assumptions.

Once an experience has been communicated to us by other persons, we then have the opportunity to test and refine our empathy for the experience.  We do this by reflecting upon it with our own words, summarizing and paraphrasing what they have said, appropriately expressing relevant emotions through our own non-verbals, and perhaps also offering some insight about the experience’s meaning in one way or another.  As they receive the reflection, they can indicate to us where our empathy is or is not accurate and helpful, and we can then work with them to gain clarity.   In this process, we may use the practice of relating their experience to our own not only to more adequately feel and understand their experience, but to reveal to them and ourselves that we have these things in common.  In other words, accurate empathic relating is a very intimate and profound way of communing, of realizing union, with other human beings.  It is one of the most beautiful ways of loving others as ourselves, and thereby more completely loving God.

Conclusion

While the practice of Christian mysticism is commonly understood to include thinking about theology and other spiritual subjects, it also has a practical dimension without which it is only a topic of academic interest, at best.  Certainly there are many forms of ritual, prayer, and meditation that come to mind for mystical practice.  Yet we should also realize that mysticism as a way of life is incomplete if it isn’t integrated into the social dimension of our everyday experiences.  The practice of empathy is one of the most meaningful ways we actualize the mystical life.

No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God lives in us. God’s love is made complete in us.We know that we belong to God and God belongs to us. God has given us the Holy Spirit.  1 John 4:12-13

Blessed_Virgin_Mary

Agape

 

May 302012
 

This post isn’t about Adam from the book of Genesis, or even Jesus’ declaration of “I am,” although there are meaningful connections that could be made with both of those topics.  I am instead referring to the everyday use of first-person pronouns. The intentions here are to reflect on some aspects of the first person, to suggest mystical significances in doing so, and to explore some very practical implications for life in this world.   (Just in case a little refresher on grammar would be helpful, the singular first-person pronouns are I, me, my, mine, and myself, and the plural first-person pronouns are we, us, our, ours, ourselves.)

One of the first things about this topic that might come to mind for many of us is some idea about the illusoriness of the self.  Many mystical teachers and traditions suggest if not explicitly declare that self, or at least our understanding of self as a separate entity, is an illusion.  In this view, the words me and I refer only to abstract ideas of personhood arising and disappearing in the ever-changing field of Existence Itself. In other words, I have no essence unique to me, no independent existence of my own.  In Christianity, this view may be found in a number of scriptures, including Acts 17:28 and Galatians 2:20.  Furthermore, it is often asserted that the mistaken belief in the self as an objectively real and permanent entity is the primary or most significant obstacle to the greatest liberation and peace, the deepest wisdom and understanding.   It is considered such a tremendous obstacle because so much energy is required to defend and maintain its illusory concreteness amid the unceasing reality of change, and because it is the most central point of our attempted refusals to accept impermanence in all its forms.  It is the common thread running through all the other illusions we strive to weave and maintain.

What might be done with these observations?  To some minds, the illusion of self is considered nothing but a barrier that must be overcome, or a distraction to be ignored.   One person I know has developed a disciplined practice of never using the first-person singular; he always refers to himself in the third person, just as he would any other person.  Among other people, the illusion of self is seen as a necessary part of this ongoing work of art we call Creation, a dynamic which permits the emergence of an unlimited diversity of individual perspectives and relatively independent co-creators to assist in unfolding the possibilities of this ever-changing field of Existence Itself.  In almost any case, speaking in the first-person can be regarded as an opportunity to remember the illusion of self, and thus include that awareness in mindfulness of the present moment.  One positive effect of such awareness is its capacity to facilitate a greater acceptance of change and one’s involvement in it.

But what might this line of thought suggest in the more specific context of Christian mysticism?  I want to begin addressing that question from the centrality of love.

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.  1 John 4:16

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. Matthew 25:37-40

These two verses, among many others, reveal the interconnectedness of all humans with each other and with God, who is Love itself.  They highlight that we most realize this oneness in and through love, and not only through thoughts and feelings of love, but also through action.

To return to the theme of this post, let’s recall that speech is an important form of action.  Many of us were raised with an old saw that says, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  While we can sincerely appreciate the value of this as a lesson about not overreacting to words, we also cannot deny the immense power that words do indeed have in this world.   The speaking and writing of words are actions for transmitting thoughts and evoking feelings among other souls.  Words are therefore among the most direct and intimate of ways that we touch the lives of others. They can lead to war, facilitate peace, communicate admiration and affection, encapsulate agreements, define partnerships, inflame passions, push people to the edge of suicide or bring them back from it, soothe hurting hearts, cool hot heads, and express awe and praise.  When we are honest with ourselves about the power of words, we know their use carries great responsibility.

But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned. Matthew 12:36-37

The significance of words and the power of language are so profound that we even call Christ “the Word.”

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.  John 1:1

We should not take words too lightly, but instead recognize that they are a form of action we are called to execute with love.   This call has direct relevance to our use of the first person, not only in reminding ourselves that the first-person singular doesn’t refer to some entity apart from God and our fellow human beings, but also in acknowledging that all forms of the first-person plural accentuate our unity without denying our diversity.  We are humanity.  We are God’s children in God’s own womb.  A very meaningful aspect of this realization is that it makes the objectification of the second and third person – you, your, yours, yourself, they, their, theirs, themselves – as impossible as it does for the first person.  In effect, it tends to make us more wary of any movement into language that plays into the dichotomizing illusions of me versus you or us versus them.  There is no one who does not belong.

In this light, it is important for us to speak in the first-person plural as often as possible, evoking awareness of diversity-in-unity, and especially when we are being critical.  To speak this way does not require a denial of difference or an evasion of accountability among particular individuals or groups.  It does, however, challenge me to see within myself the potential for anything that I might identify as sinful, sick, or problematic in another person or group.    This shift of perspective is automatically a step into empathy and compassion, and perhaps even into forgiveness and healing (making whole again).   Instead of speaking of “them,” and their shortcomings, I can speak of mine as common examples.  Instead of speaking of a solution that I have for them, we can speak together of how we would like things to be different and what we can all do to help things change.

Dear friends, may we allow the mystical awareness of diversity-in-unity to transform our minds and renew us such that we speak in more loving ways.  May we increasingly overcome the temptation to speak in ways that foster  illusions that encourage Christians of one sort to be at war with Christians of another sort.   Even further, may we become ever more mindful and cherishing of the beautiful diversity-in-unity of all humanity and, in doing so, more fully and clearly express the loving will of God.

Feb 062011
 

jesus-sweating-blood-in-gethsemaneThis is a perennial topic in spirituality, and Christian devotion is certainly no exception. We have our ascetics who have glorified the value of suffering to the point of practicing the most extreme forms of mortification.  We’ve had clergy and elders who have directed the faithful to always quietly submit to whatever abuses, cruelties or injustices they may have suffered as trials of faith.  I’ve heard of Inquisitors who went into raptures of ecstasy at hearing people cry out to God as they burned at the stake.  Mother Teresa allegedly did not allow patients in her care to receive pain medication because she believed it was so important for people to suffer with Christ.

As mystics we seek to know union with God, and to live in accord with our faith in and knowledge of that union. How does suffering, our own and that of others, fit into this context?

The Roots of Suffering

Let’s avoid the temptation to slip into distraction with ontological tail-chasing about why suffering exists at all.  My preference is to begin by simply accepting the existential reality, and from that place begin considering what meaning it has for me.  And, before going further, it may be helpful to note that there are two general classes of suffering:  The first is the basic experience of physical and emotional pain immediately resulting from loss, injury or disease,  and the second is the additional suffering we create for ourselves with our mental responses to the fact or possibility of such things.  While this post has relevance to the first class of suffering, it is actually the second class that is of primary concern.  That sort of suffering is something we have more opportunity to prevent or transform, and not only for our own benefit but also because it so often spills over into the lives of others.

It first occurs to me that suffering reveals our illusions, or at least our attachments to them.  It is actually our resistance to accepting illusions for what they are that causes so much of our distress and dis-ease in life.  Sometimes this happens when we get what we thought we wanted, only to find the reality is significantly different from our dreams.  Sometimes it happens because of the experience of impermanence and our vain struggles to preserve what was.

“Attachment” and “impermanence” seem to be key words here.  It’s simple enough to see how our desires to keep and hold what pleases us must always be thwarted by the reality of impermanence here in this world.  A deeper truth of this is that we tend to define ourselves through our attachments, though we might not realize it, either on the whole or with specifics.   But anyone who has experienced a significant loss – like the death of a loved one, the breakup of an intimate relationship, the loss of a career, an ability, a reputation, a home, or even membership in some group – to some degree knows that anxious sense of having lost something of the self.  Sometimes in these situations we even ask ourselves, “Who am I now?”

So we can see how in the depths of such suffering one often, if not always, perceives a blow to one’s own self-concept, and there is little to nothing we want to protect and preserve more than the self-concept; it is simply the survival instinct, if nothing else.  The truth, however, is that the personal self is temporary.  It is always changing and, despite a more or less constant sense of a “me”, that “me” is obviously never precisely what it was a little while ago.  It is memories of “me” that largely form the collage each of us habitually relies upon for a self-concept, the patchwork emblem we have of the present “me”.  So at best the self-concept is a fluid theory or working hypothesis of who and what we have been and are becoming in this world.  At worst it is an illusion we mistake for a concrete actuality, the psychological equivalent of an idolized statue standing on fragile clay feet, destined to eventually be broken.

The Transformation of Suffering

I think this issue is close to the very core of the mystical impulse.  On the one hand suffering urges us to desire the eternal, to identify with it no matter how paradoxical that may seem.  On the other hand we are drawn to the fleeting unique beauty of impermanent things.  Is there an unresolvable opposition here that begs us to abandon one for the other?  There are many ways we can respond to this juxtaposition, but it seems the general tone of Christian mysticism is to focus on Love.  For us, the value of suffering can begin to be found in its revelation of our illusory attachments and reminding us of our obsession with protecting and preserving the self-concept.  We are thus provided the opportunity to transform temporal suffering from something to be fled at all costs into a catalyst for more fully knowing eternal Love.

Among other ways, people have tried to define Love as the very principle of union itself, the reintegrating power that resolves oppositions and dissolves separation into oneness.  However, when two or more join in love, another one often arises from them.  So it is with all forms of Love as we know it, and so it is that the principle of union is never the last word on the meaning of Love.  Love transcends the duality of separation, union, and the birth of the new.  It is in Love that we know and rejoice in both the eternal, transcendent mystery of non-duality and the temporal ever-becoming, ever-passing wonder of the relative world.

So, for Christian mystics, what are the implications about the suffering of others?  First and foremost it is a reminder of our shared humanity, and that awareness combined with the focus on Love naturally delivers us to compassion, kindness and service.  Yet, as the human heart and mind strive to express something of Love, it is often said that one can only love another to the extent that he or she loves self.  It’s easy to get the idea that one must place self-love first and foremost on some sort of love agenda, as if we would otherwise have less Love to offer others. On the other hand, much has also been said about forgetting self in the love of others, as though time spent in loving self always robs others of Love. But these distinctions reveal our fear that there is some absolute limit to our ability to express Love, if not a limitation in Love itself; it is an assumed lacking that reduces infinite Love to a temporal commodity rather than an eternal good.  Notions such as these are veils on Love’s transcendence of all dualities, for genuine love of self and genuine love of others each have the effect of magnifying the other, despite the suffering that may be intertwined with them.  Like mirrors facing one another, notions of giver and receiver evaporate into the infinite depths of their shared reflection. And so it is that in expressing compassion and kindness in response to the suffering of others, we become a unique temporal flowering of the transcendence of eternal Love; we actually participate in the mystery of the Incarnation, and thus, in the language of our tradition, shine as the light of Christ in this world.

 

Nov 232010
 

Happy Thanksgiving!  The following post was originally written in 2008.  I’m putting a revision up on this blog because it continues to capture an important part of the Thanksgiving experience for me.  It also connects with major themes of the previous post.  I hope it connects with something in you.

During the Thanksgiving season, my attention is drawn to contemplating an intimate connection between gratitude and compassion.  I suppose I have always had some awareness that these two sentiments are related; at the very least they can both be easily recognized as aspects of Love.  Still, I don’t always take the time to actually meditate on their relationship.

The inspiration for this meditation developed out of a recurring awareness of how much I experience gratitude in my closest relationships; in my most satisfying moments of serving others’ needs; when I am attentive to the beauty of nature and art; or when my meditations, prayers, and moments of mindfulness are most saturated with awareness of the Divine Presence.  More specifically, this meditation first began with pondering how the sense of pride in feeling worthy of another person’s approval has increasingly given way to feeling grateful for sharing in mutual experiences and expressions of acceptance, admiration, affection, caring, comfort, devotion, empathy, forgiveness, trust, and all the other wonderful flavors of Love.  While I still feel pride, it naturally diminishes in the face of gratitude as I gain appreciation for how little being a participant in Love is dependent upon anything I can do to be worthy of it.

In the big picture, Love has nothing at all to do with whether or not one has earned it or deserves it in any way.  There certainly are aspects of Love that we humans understandably express in greater or lesser measure in response to different characteristics, attitudes and actions; yet Love itself remains ultimately inextinguishable. There is a common adage with which we acknowledge something of this truth: God and our friends love us despite our flaws.

In Western religious language the eternal and all-pervading presence of Love is known as Divine Grace, and many of us consider its realization to be the key to salvation, the deliverance from a life consumed with fear, shame, remorse and self-loathing.  Just as God is understood to be infinite, eternal, and unbounded, so must God’s attributes be limitless.  Love IS.  Love doesn’t depend on us to bring it into existence.  Thus, while we can know Love very directly and immediately, it isn’t something we possess, or something someone else has for us to get.  On the contrary, Love has us. It is living and breathing through us, from and to us, completely encompassing and interpenetrating us, forever without ceasing.

Knowing this, I cannot honestly assume any other position relative to Love than gratitude, and so my angst-ridden struggles to be worthy of being loved increasingly give way to a profound peace.  That peace is grounded in the faith that I think and act more lovingly as the immanence of Love further weans my consciousness from illusions of power and control.  Even so, there is something of me, call it ego if you wish, that resists this surrender to Love.  Every student of his or her own psyche knows this resistance well.

The writings of many saints and sages use words that suggest a kind of internal battle between the forces of resistance and surrender to Love.  Yet it’s somewhat paradoxical, isn’t it, to think of surrender to Love as contributing to a conflict?  In truth the only conflict must be within the part of us that maintains illusions of power and control.  In this one-sided battle we experience the last stand of such illusions in the belief that we must inflict self-derision and self-punishment for our errors and shortcomings.  In short, we mistakenly think we must be less loving with ourselves in order to become more lovable and loving for others.  We thus condemn ourselves to suffering with thoughts and feelings that leave less room for gratitude. So it is that gratitude is a measure of awakening to Love.

Each one of us knows this self-conflict, and here we can begin to discern the connections between gratitude and compassion.  When we deeply appreciate the fact that others are suffering in this same way, compassion is already blooming in our hearts.  The fullness of that compassion grows as the self-conflict of our self-pride/self-derision dissolves in the warm peaceful sea of gratitude for the immanence and transcendence of Love.  The more we know Love within ourselves, including the experience of gratitude for Love, the more freely Love flows through us as compassion for others.  We also find that to express gratitude to another, perhaps when that person feels least deserving of it, can be an act of compassion that awakens her or him to the Divine Grace of Love.  Gratitude is therefore not merely a passive response to Love, but is also realized as an active expression of Love.

It may sound a little trite, but my sincere hope for all of us is that the attitude of gratitude grows in our hearts during this Thanksgiving, and thus Love will graciously shine through us into the hearts of others.

Agape