Saying For Today: The illusion is that I must be with you to be with you. That is the illusion.
Reality is infinite, thus unseizable. We cannot take hold of it. We can only allow ourselves to be seized.
*Jean Klein. Be Who You Are.
* * *
In the solitude I learn, you are not a riddle to be solved, you are a mystery to be loved.
This morning, I read from an author I read much years ago, in fact, all his major works. I read, Flee from creatures and hide yourself in God. These words from John of the Cross do not speak the same as when I was seeking to hide in God from the world, back when I was hiding from the created things of which he counseled me to hide. Yet, John was of an ascetic tradition, and one that saw the world more as a hindrance to loving union with the Divine, rather than a means to and celebration of that union. However, there is a way of seeing this going into God as a way to go even more into the world, and, certainly, in compassion for creation, even as you and I are creation.
Yes, sometimes I need time alone, in fact often, but not from the world as much as with the world, for the Quiet embraces us each. Here, I discover, again and again, the created in communion with the Uncreate, presences with the Presence. One cannot be without the other, I cannot be without you. I know I am, for I know you are. And how would I know love if I did not love you, for we know Love in the loving? Is Love not more than a static state, some abstract something? Is Love not a movement, a seeking, a healing, a joining?
I need, to be more with you, not as to time but as to depth, solitude alone, apart from you. Then, we can share that together, the solitudes within ourselves.
I find I cannot leave you outside the solitude when I am alone, for you come there, you are there. It seems, the more Love is present for you, the more you are, for you become more you in this environment wherein I know you, not merely know about you. I know, feel, you are so much more than the details of your life, I know you are. I learn this, with you, even apart from you, and that even to say 'apart' is not the full truth, only a way of speaking as beings who frame words bound in the confines of duration and space. So, to know you more in time, in place, I must welcome you otherwise. The illusion is that I must be with you to be with you. That is the illusion.
Truly, if I hide in God, feeling a need to hide from the world, I hide, not in God, I hide from God. And more, I hide from you, you through whom God comes to me and I to God.
Later, continuing morning readings, I read words of J. Krishnamurti that remind me of the way of not-hiding, and how the world becomes my solitude, enriches my solitude, and, so, the world and I become one in a single solitude.
So ‘clarity’ is in the sense of seeing things as they are within oneself. Because oneself is a part of the world. Oneself is the movement of the world. Oneself is the outer expression of the movement that goes on inwardly—it is like the tide that goes out and comes in. Merely to concentrate on, or observe yourself, apart from the world, leads you to isolation and to all forms of idiosyncrasy, neurosis, isolating fears, and so on. But if you observe the world and follow the movement of the world, and ride that movement as it comes within, then there is no division between you and the world; then you are not an individual opposed to the collective.
And is this not the gift you give to me, that you invite yourself to be seen by me within myself, not you in yourself seen by me outside myself?
So, we can speak of a paradox regarding solitude, one that cannot be resolved by plunging into solitude within the self, leaving the world outside, or plunging into the world outside oneself, forgetting the sacred within the self. As we go more and more within, away from, we go, at the same time, more and more inside, into.
The more intimately I know you, the more intimately I know myself, while the more intimately I know myself, the more intimately I know you ~ one intimacy, a single knowing. Yes, you are unseizable, I cannot have you, I cannot fathom the deepest mystery living within you, but that you are so, this makes it even more possible to love you. In solitude, I both adore you, and I reverence you. Solitude does not diminish you, solitude shows you as you to me, and the revelation continues, for there is no end to that we are.
Access video on original site via upper left artist-title of video below...
*Sources... John of the Cross from Doris Grumbach. The Presence of Absence; Jiddu Krishnamurti. On God.
