We Share One Life, We Are One Life
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*Mystery, *sapa*, Flickr
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I am, and there is no need for me to strive in order
to find this "I am." I am not an "I" searching for itself ....
*Abhishiktananda. Saccidananda.
A Persian story tells of a sage approaching the door of heaven and knocking on it. From within God inquires, "Who is there?" The sage answers, "It is I." God says, "In this House there is no room for you and me." The sage goes away and ponders many years in deep meditation, trying to understand God's reply. The sage returns a second time. God inquires, "Who is there?" The sage answers, "It is I." God does not open the door. Again, the sage ponders the enigma in meditation. After some years the sage returns to the door of heaven and hears God inquire, "Who is there?" The sage cries out, "It is You!" God opens the door.
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I ask you two questions...
What if the source of frustration in seeking a self-identity is that the self we are seeking to identify does not exist; so, the more we seek this self-identity, the more divided we are from the Divine Presence, others, and life?
Have you ever, for even a single moment, experienced an "I" that is not part of immediate experience?
Let us try an exercise...
Start reading one of the above questions. In the middle of reading, shift from the experience of the reading to awareness of the reader, while maintaining the experience of reading apart from experience of the reader. You were not able to do it. Yes? No?
Now, I ask you another two questions....
Who are you apart from some conceptualization of who you are? Can you say even one thing about your "self" that is not an idea and derived from social convention - so defined by others rather than experience prior to the definition of self being already given to you?
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In Prayerfulness we are led to the self that is who we are prior to experience of a self, and the self prior to is prior to any claimed experience of a self prior to experience. We can, in some sense, conceptually know this self only by knowing what it is not. We can know this self nonconceptually, or prior to experience of a self experienced as object, neither by knowing what it is nor what it is not. In this knowing, neither God nor self is known in any way conceptually. One cannot say they are One or they are two. One can say nothing, so the witness of Silence to the humbled recognition of the mystery of Grace, or Life - but even these words are a step away from the Silence, though arising from the Silence.
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WE ARE EACH A LOVELY ROSE
IN THE GARDEN OF GRACE
*Just a Rose, Kat~Morgan, Flickr
The Sacred in Me Bows to the Sacred in You
BLESSINGS!
BRIAN .
