Now is the Time

"Behold, now is a very acceptable time; now is the day of salvation."
--2 Corinthians 6:2b

"People often say to me: 'Pray for me.' Then I think: Why are you coming out? Why do you not stay in yourself and hold on to your own good? After all, you are carrying all truth in you in an essential manner. That we may so truly remain within, that we may possess all thruth, without medium and without distinction, in true blessedness, may God help us to do this. Amen."
--Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5B

I don't believe Eckhart is telling us not to pray for others, or to ask for others' prayers. I think he is suggesting that we often miss our own essential blessedness, we mistakenly assume that wisdom will come from outside of us, when in fact, pure awakening is our natural state, and an awakened mind--and a redeemed mind--is our birthright.

The One

"Where the creature stops, there God begins to be...The smallest creaturely image that ever forms in you is as great as God is great...because it comes between you and the whole of God...But as the image goes out, God goes in...Go completely out of yourself for God's love, and God comes completely out of God's self for love of you. And when these two have gone out, what remains there is a simplifed One."
--Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart

I read Eckhart and my mind is nearly brought to a standstill. Just to try to intellectually grasp the meaning of his words is a challenge. The issue, of course, is that one must experience what Eckhart is trying to describe. Intellectually, it is so paradoxical and mysterious, the words just back one into an intellectual corner.

The "smallest creaturely image" that Eckhart describes seems to correspond with any thought or feeling in the mind that we grasp or turn away from. In other words, any phenomena that we take to be separate, unchanging and permanent, including elements of what we think of as our "selves." These "images" stand as a direct obstacle to awakening and realization of the Truth. But when we cease to grasp or turn away from these images, they are no longer obstacles, and the boundaries between me and not-me fade away. There is just the One.

As the Lenten season begins, may we all let go of that which separates us from the One.

Beyond Why

“If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: ‘Why are you living?” life, if it could only answer, would only say this: ‘I live so that I may live.’ That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living. If anyone asks a truthful man who works out of his own ground: ‘Why are you performing your works?’ and if he were to give a straight answer, he would only say, ‘I work so that I may work.’”
— Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5B

Eckhart was a Thomist, a thinker in the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. Everything has an essence, and its nature is to be what it is. The nature of Life is to be living; the nature of Being is to Be; the nature of Love is to Love. When we get past all the clinging and aversion within our minds, we arrive at our own essence, the “Ground” as Eckhart calls it here, which is the Ground of all things. And from this source, we don’t have to ask a lot of “why” questions. Things just are as they are.

This same Ground has been inspiring spiritual thinkers since the dawn of human awareness. Consider this passage from the second chapter of the Tao Te Ching:

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

There is No Way

“It is out of this inner ground that you should perform all your works without asking, ‘Why?’ I say truly: So long as you perform your works for the sake of the kingdom of God…you are going completely astray…when people think that they are acquiring more of God in inwardness, in devotion, in sweetness and in various approaches than they do by the fireside or in the stable, you are acting just as if you took God and muffled his head up in a cloak and pushed him under a bench. Whoever is seeking God by ways is finding ways and losing God, who in ways is hidden. But whoever seeks for God without ways will find him as he is in himself.”
—Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5B

I can’t read the medieval German in which Eckhart wrote these sermons, but I would love to know the German word for “ways” that he uses in this passage. The Meister seems to be giving sage advice about the tendency of spiritual seekers to get attached to particular methods (ways) of spiritual practice. We confuse the method for the outcome. As he notes, the Truth is just as easily revealed by the fireside and in the stable (in others words, in our normal, everyday, secular life) as in these pious spiritual practices.

The wonderful paradox of so much teaching from the monks, nuns and hermits of the contemplative tradition is that you don’t need to be a monk, nun or hermit to “get it.” In fact, that’s the essence of mysticism: the Divine is revealed in the ordinary, in everything, everywhere. There is nothing to “get.” It’s already here; it’s what we’re made of.

And how do we act when we see things just as they are? We are able, as Eckhart says, to perform our “works” without asking “Why?” Without an agenda for how things ought to be, we are able to respond to whatever this moment brings with clarity and spontaneity. As Zen Master Seung Sahn used to say, life is not complicated: “Green light, go.”

The Birthing Ground

“As truly as the Father in his simple nature gives his Son birth naturally, so truly does he give him birth in the most inward part of the spirit, and that is the inner world. Here God’s ground is my ground, and my ground is God’s ground. Here I live from what is my own, as God lives from what is his own.”
—Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5B

Meister Eckhart is considered one of the greatest stars in the constellation of Christian mysticism. Born around 1260 CE in Germany, he was even more thoroughly steeped in the medieval Christian worldview than the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, who followed Eckhart into the contemplative stream some century or two later. But Eckhart presents an understanding of spiritual experience far deeper than the conventional religious ideas of the Middle Ages.

Eckhart’s language is dense, mysterious and shot through with paradox. But what emerges from a careful study of his teachings is a rich experience of silent, meditative insight that blurs the boundaries between the contemplative practitioner and the Ultimate Reality, which Eckhart identified as the “Godhead.” This Godhead is not what we normally conceive of as “God.” Eckhart says our normal idea of God is but a feeble human attempt to understand something that can only be experienced.

Here, in Sermon 5B, Eckhart explains that the Christian teaching of the Incarnation is more than just an historical event. The Christ is born deep within the human spirit, and it is to this birthing ground that gives rise to Christ-consciousness that Eckhart draws our attention. And the startling revelation that emerges when we look into this inner landscape is that there is only oneness. The boundaries between the finite and Infinite vanish.

It is interesting to study Eckhart’s sermons alongside The Cloud of Unknowing. There is no evidence that the author of the Cloud was familiar with Eckhart and his teachings, but the parallels of experience they describe are striking. Whereas the Cloud describes a method, Eckhart focuses primarily on the experience that emerges when the method is put into place. The Cloud describes the pathway; Eckhart describes the destination.

Moment of Silence

The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me.
--Meister Eckhart

My postings here have slowed to a trickle in recent weeks, and now I have officially decided that I am putting the Hobo Journal on temporary hiatus. I am spending more time looking inward, into places that do not translate into the kinds of words that make sense for a "blog." My journaling will probably continue (it's nearly a twenty-year habit for me now), but only for myself, at least for the time being. Thanks for stopping by, and when I have something to say again, I'll put up a few words.
-G