Experiencing the mysterious still-point essence of each thing . . .

"Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you . . . We cannot look at Nature directly, but only with the side of our eye . . . The important fact is its effect on me."

Henry David Thoreau

"That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things is called delusion. That the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self is enlightenment."

Dogen Zenji

In the very moment when we go to know a thing, it empties itself into our perception, leaving us with a flashing awareness of the "still-point" that is its essence. Meister Eckhart calls this still-point "the silent desert into which no distinction ever peeped," while Zen Buddhists call it "suchness." But ultimately - like the mysterious and magical spirit of Yellowstone - it is utterly unsayable. And yet it transforms our life to the core!

Photos: Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 5-6, 2015

If we dig deeply enough into the well of our childhood faith tradition, we WILL hit water!

The semester ends this week, and yesterday I met with a student in my Christian Mysticism class who drove all the way from Boulder to Fort Collins (about fifty miles) to meet with me. I was stunned when Michael told me he felt amazement and inspiration at the fact that I've remained rooted in a Christian perspective all my life, even when most spiritual seekers who are open and progressive like myself have abandoned it. He noted that for most seekers, the negative aspects of exoteric Christianity far outweigh any richness that might be present in the mystical wing of the tradition, and so they end up going East instead to find spiritual nourishment. The fact that the media focuses so heavily on the judgmental, dualistic, "Tea Party" wing of Christianity only adds to the perception that the entire tradition is spiritually bankrupt, and causes many honest seekers to avoid Christianity like the plague.

I told him that I've been able to stick with a Christian lens because I experience this faith as innately kenotic; that is, a mature Christian mysticism leads the practitioner to empty out and focus on the beauty of THE WORLD and on the goodness of other spiritual traditions - seen through Christ's humble, loving eyes - rather than turning back and making ITSELF the object of attention. In other words, in my daily life, I hardly ever talk about Christ or Christianity because I am so focused on employing him and it as a lens for admiring - and awakening - the beauty and goodness of Sophia / Mother Earth / the Goddess, who is abundantly present in Nature, in other spiritual traditions, and in the uniqueness of each individual human being. When the 14th century German mystic Meister Eckhart said that we should "pray to God that we might be FREE of God," he wasn't recommending becoming an atheist. Rather, he was encouraging us to become ONE WITH God in the act of focusing on THE WORLD through the eyes of love. The same could, of course, be said not only of God, but of Christ.

However, as I talked with Michael, I also had an intensely fresh breakthrough realization. Through our conversation, I suddenly became aware of the fact that I have remained with the faith of my childhood - even if I've left its negative elements behind - because I somehow, inexplicably, have been given the faith to trust that if any person remains rooted IN PLACE and digs deeply into it like a well, an abundance of spiritual water WILL eventually be found. And this, I realized, has nothing to do with Christianity. It is simply the realization that EVERY person - no matter what their faith - has the capacity to trust that the Divine IS INDEED present within their own spiritual roots and tradition, even if that tradition - like exoteric Christianity - also contains an abundance of negative, oppressive elements! And when I realized this fact, I began to cry, for I understood that such faith in that Presence is not a thing I've ever consciously tried to adopt. Rather, it was GIVEN to me as a grace by THAT VERY PRESENCE!  It has always been an ASSUMED reality, a perspective of which I've never actually been aware until our conversation yesterday revealed it :)

And so, I pray that ALL of us, no matter what our faith or tradition, may find the grace to plumb more deeply into our own roots - even as we may decide to adopt the practices of other faiths as well - in order to find a Presence who is always there in hiding! For if any of us digs deeply enough, we WILL hit the hidden divine aquifer that connects every single faith, tradition, culture, people and individual together into ONE!

Photo: Western Wallflower rooted in desert soil, Lory State Park, CO, May 7, 2015

God is a still desert.

"God is a still desert."

Meister Eckhart
14th century German mystic

Photos: Arches National Park, April 18-20, 2015

Mistakes are the ground out of which fresh seeds of good can unexpectedly sprout!

For some reason, I used to think that as I got older, I would make less mistakes. As it turns out, it seems I actually make MORE mistakes than ever! Part of the reason, I realize, is because I currently put myself "out there" into the world more than I used to. I have a greater number of social connections, which results in a higher chance of making a verbal blunder, "sticking my foot in my mouth," doing or saying something that gets misinterpreted, hurting someone's feelings, or misjudging what is needed in a situation, and then doing the exact opposite instead.

Although it is tempting to try escaping ownership of the blunder by placing the blame elsewhere, when it comes right down to it, I know that I am the one who is at least partially in the wrong. However, today I received fresh light on the fact that admitting my fault is not necessarily as depressing as it seems at first to be. Lying on the ground while taking pictures, I recalled that many thinkers have noted the link between the word "humus" and "humility." When we admit that we did indeed make a mistake, we become "grounded" in the truth of the situation. And when that occurs, then our Source - the Beloved - is able to seed that ground with fresh opportunities for growth and goodness. When we finally admit our error, then a negative situation is transformed into one that can become fruitful in the good. This is, of course, something that can never occur when we decide instead to cycle endlessly around in the groundless "air" of self-justification and rationalization.

Thomas Merton puts it this way: "The victory of contemplative humility is the full acceptance of God's hidden action in the weakness and ordinariness and unsatisfactoriness of our own everyday lives. It is the acceptance of our own incompleteness, in order that He may make us complete in His own way. It is joy in our emptiness, which can only be filled by Him. It is peace in our own unfruitfulness which He Himself makes immensely fruitful without our being able to understand how it is done."

Merton reminds us that we "live then as a seed planted in the ground. As Christ said, the seed in the ground must die. To be as a seed in the ground of one's very life is to dissolve in that ground in order to become fruitful. But this fruitfulness is beyond any planning and any human understanding. To be 'fruitful' in this sense, one must forget every idea of fruitfulness or productivity, and merely BE. One's fruitfulness is at once an act of faith and an act of doubt: doubt of all that one has hitherto seen in oneself, and faith in what one cannot possibly imagine for oneself. The 'doubt' dissolves our ego-identity."

In fact, it sometimes seems that God even NEEDS our mistakes as a necessary condition for the revelation of SURPRISE at the fact that such blunders can turn - yet again - into something good. Meister Eckhart says that "God likes forgiving BIG sins more than small ones," perhaps because the big blunders contain the highest potential for a sense of awe, wonder and surprise to occur when we - together with God - watch spellbound as some new opportunity arises unexpectedly out of the very ground into which our own mistakes and shortcomings also dissolve!

Photo: Cottonwood leaf, red grass and ruddy cliffs at sunset, Lory State Park, CO, January 22, 2015

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.

 

"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love."

Meister Eckhart,
14th century German mystic

Photo: Michael Reading at Partition Arch; Arches National Park, UT; June 1, 2014

Hiking through a slot canyon embodies perfectly the practice of Contemplative Prayer.

 

During the practice of contemplative prayer, we sink below the level of thoughts and emotions, and allow ourselves to be drawn into the abyss or canyon of our innermost being. There, we sense obscurely that our awareness is magnetized by the presence of the One who dwells in love within the bottomless depths of the soul. It is there that we are held and embraced, while our thoughts and emotions flow - far, far above us - like stars, meteors, and distant satellites traveling across the sky. Because this embrace is so close - so all-absorbing - we are necessarily called to transcend experience and to exercise faith in its all-engulfing reality. For here, even the observer is absorbed in divine Love, making an objective observation of the union impossible. Meanwhile, we marvel at the fact that - even though we, and the Beloved, remain locked in this inner embrace - nevertheless, all things somehow make their appearance in the "sky" above us, like echoes resounding with no original word ever spoken! As Meister Eckhart once exclaimed: "It is an amazing thing that something flows forth and nonetheless remains within . . . All creatures flow outward and nonetheless remain within [in God] - that is extremely amazing!"

Photo: Joanne hiking through Peek-a-boo Gulch, Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument, UT; May 25, 2013

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All creatures are echoes of the Creator's never-spoken love-word, resounding with their own "added words" and in a "different voice"!

 

A few days ago, I mentioned a creation myth based on meditation experience. Here, the Great Beyond - whom we call "God" - was just about to "speak" a divine love-word. However, before he could utter that word - or even think it - he lost himself in ecstatic bliss, emptying himself out into the vast expanses of the universe as a sky-like universal awareness or ground of being. We discover his ecstatic presence in wilderness spaces and in the vastness of our own meditative awareness. However, even though his word was never spoken - SURPRISE ! - every species, individual and landscape feature somehow has managed to appear - through the processes of biological, geological, cultural and spiritual evolution - as though out of nowhere, as an echo of that never-spoken word! The amazing thing is this: even though that word is singular, all things echo it in their own unique and varied way. It is as though the word returns to the Creator in a billion different echoes, each of which has new words added on - words which he never even thought to speak - each one in a DIFFERENT VOICE! As Meister Eckhart exclaimed: "God spoke one thing, and I heard TWO!" And, we might add, three and four and a hundred and a million and ten billion! Indeed, we could even say that the purpose of creation is to bring this kind of surprise alive within each of us - in our own unique experiences of awe and wonder - which then transfer to the inner life of the One who dwells within us

Photo: Avalanche Lilies on a misty day; Spray Park, Mount Rainier National Park, WA; July 28, 2013

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The essence of each being is so deep that it engulfs its own simple ground.

Meister Eckhart, the medieval German mystic, once exclaimed: "Because God has an overflowing being, He transcends all knowledge."  The same, I believe, could be said of every creature.  Its essence is always bursting out of itself and overflowing, confusing the mind that wants to grasp it in a static way.  Eckhart also said of God that “You are so deep that you engulf your own simple ground.”  In other words, the overflowing of a thing's essence floods its interior as well.  This is poetic, paradoxical language, but it helps us get in touch with the utter mystery of things!

Photo: Golden Columbine, Siyeh Pass Trail, Glacier National Park, MT; August 1, 2013

The Divine Seeing occurs at the center of the human heart.

"The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye.  This is the Eye of the Great Spirit by which He sees all things and through which we see Him.  If the heart is not pure, the Great Spirit cannot be seen . . . The person who is thus pure contains the Universe in the pocket of his heart."

Nicholas Black Elk

Oglala Lakota

Photo: Lower Blue Lake, San Juan Range; August 10, 2013.  I love the sense of mystical union expressed here.  

This is very similar to what Meister Eckhart said in the 14th century: "The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me. "  When we realize that we are held in the magnetic gaze of God welling up from the center of our being (experienced during contemplative prayer),  this realization IS the gaze of God, who - because of his humble self-emptying - has no "I" and who therefore exists only in the second-person as a Thou who is known by us.

We are all meant to be mothers of God, . . . for God is always needing to be born.

"We are all meant to be mothers of God, . . . for God is always needing to be born."

Meister Eckhart,

14th century 

Photo: Pasqueflowers and Buttercups at Vedauwoo Recreation Area; Medicine Bow National Forest, WY; May 10, 2013.  Apparently, "Veduawoo" is an anglicized version of the Arapaho word "bito'o'wu," meaning "earth-born".

Because God has an overflowing being, he transcends all knowledge.

"Because God has an overflowing being, he transcends all knowledge."

Meister Eckhart, 14th century Germany

Photo: Colorado Columbines proliferating just below Lake of Many Winds, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 25, 2012.

Since God continually self-empties through love, there is no way the faculty of reason - which must freeze a thing to know it - could ever grasp him in order to examine and know him.

In the resurrection life, God may be said to suffer and humanity is the creator of heaven.

“The ineffable union of the human nature and the divine, whereby God suffers and humanity descends from heaven with the divine, expresses the most excellent communication according to the exchange of properties which naturally belong to each nature of Christ.”

Maximus the Confessor, 7th century

“My suffering is in God, and my suffering is God . . . My suffering is God, and therefore is not really mine . . . God assumed me totally . . . In Christ there was so great a union of the Word with flesh that he communicated his own properties to it, so that God may be said to suffer and humanity is the creator of heaven.”

Meister Eckhart, 14th century

Resurrection doesn't mean that suffering and death are suddenly done away with. Rather, they are transformed in our union with the Great Mystery - in God.  Because of our union with the Divine - embodied par excellence in Jesus, who then mirrors our own union and sacredness back to us - divinity and humanity interpenetrate and exchange places.  Thus, when we suffer, it is actually God who is suffering within us. And when God creates the world anew, it is accomplished through us!

Photo: Pasqueflowers and a bee, with Greyrock in the distance, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, March 31, 2012

All Things Arise Out of the Spacious Desert of God's Simple Nature

 

"God's desert is God's simple nature . . . The soul takes God in his oneness and in his solitary wilderness, in his vast wasteland, and in his own ground . . . It is an amazing thing that something flows forth from God and nonetheless remains within . . . All creatures flow outward and nonetheless remain within – that is extremely amazing.” 

Meister Eckhart, 13th century Germany

"As we become more aware of the spacious awareness that is the essence of who we are, we come closer to God. Faith now looks more like a trust in the empty, spacious awareness that belongs to God and is God.  So instead of trusting in ourselves, in the story of I, to decide our next action, we can now have faith in God's spaciousness.  Here everything appears, here everything is loved . . . We have faith in no-thing . . . In fact, Life is love flowing out of emptiness . . . We are each a space of awareness which is also the infinite space of God's awareness.  It is out of the empty space of God that literally everything comes and to which it goes.
As each event arises in our clear, spacious awareness, it stands before us as an awareness of sound, movement, color, and so on.  Then it disappears back into clear awareness . . ."

Wesley Lachman, Eugene, Oregon

Photo: Alpenglow in the desert, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 25, 2011.  This glow lasted for only several minutes.