Today as I hiked through the beauty of a Wyoming winter landscape freshened by a lively breeze, I realized that in solitude I am never alone. For Nature's silence and solitude elicit an awareness of the fact that contentment - otherwise known as bliss or ananda - is always MUTUAL. Abhishiktananda, a French Benedictine monk whose birth name was Henri Le Saux, realized that "Man does not possess this ananda; rather he is possessed by it." "There cannot be a solitary bliss, any more than there can be solitary being or solitary self-awareness." For when we experience bliss while in solitude, it GRASPS and holds our awareness because it is alive with PRESENCE. As a medieval Cistercian monk named William of St. Thierry once wrote:"What you can grasp gives you knowledge. But what grasps you makes you wise."
In silence, we sense that we are gripped by the loving Gaze of God. But this experience is non-dual by virtue of the fact that our being-grasped by Divine Love is a reality that is always and forever emptied out into OUR experience. In other words, the fact that we are grasped and held in the loving gaze of God is an insight that only occurs only through OUR spiritual perception. In fact, if we were to follow the magnetic pull of that gaze endlessly within or endlessly toward the horizon of Being, we would NEVER come to its source - that is, to the One who is gazing. And yet - and here is the amazing part - this grasping within God's gaze still occurs, but only through OUR perception of it!
Photos: (Top) Rose Hips in the snow; (Middle) Lichen; (Bottom) The sun sets through dead Lodgepole Pine trees. All three photos were taken at Vedauwoo Recreation Area, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY, on January 10, 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment