Saying For Today: When the truth within me meets the truth within the other, there is a sense of kinship, a resonating spirit with spirit.
Brian Wilcox. 'view from the cove'
Note: In this writing "verse" equates to "truth," yet not in the conceptual sense. Truth shows Itself to us, we can not find Truth, we can only receive Truth. Trying to conceptualize Truth blocks Truth showing Itself, so intellectualization must be exhausted for most of us to celebrate Truth. This being ineffable, "verse," "truth," and "Truth" has been left nebulous in the following, as it must be but in the immediacy of revelation, whereby Truth reveals Itself through truth within us each.
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The truth within us can be likened to the Sun. There is one Sun, but many expressions of It. And rays of the Sun and the Sun are one, though many. We never see the same Sun twice. The Sun is alive. The Sun is changing. The Sun changes all It touches. One can deny the Sun, but the Sun remains independent of all beliefs, denials, and betrayals. What one believes about the Sun does not change the Sun in any way. The Sun may be hidden by darkness, yet the Sun remains. Even the moon appears aglow, for borrowing light from the Sun. The Sun touches all without discrimination. The nature of the Sun is to give Itself, without losing Itself at all. The whole world of creatures could close the eyes, yelling, "There is no Sun, it's just a lie!," and the Sun would be, and the Sun would be untouched by any defense against Its glory and grace and graciousness. And the demands that the Sun would not be, these would be, by the Sun, affirmations of the Sun, for the denial of the Sun would be possible only by the Sun affirming Itself.
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Rabbi Mordecai was in Minsk expounding the Torah, or Divine Teaching, to some men hostile to his way. They laughed at him. "What you say does not explain the Scripture verse in the least!", they exclaimed. "Do you really think," he said, "that I was trying to explain the verse in the book? That doesn't need an explanation! I want to explain the verse within me."
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Like many good spiritual stories, like life, we are left with a conundrum. The question arises, "What is the verse within the Rabbi?" And, more, "What is the verse within me?", for in some sense the verse is the same, yet particular to each one of us.
Beyond this question of "What is...?", we cannot find the verse and live with it, as though the verse today will be the verse the next day, then the next, and on and on. The verse is living, moving, it cannot be located, it is not something simply sitting stationary in the mind or heart. The verse is not in a book. No one can speak it to us, nor we to ourselves. The verse is not outside, so we can find it.
Yet, we may wish to hold a verse, someone to give it to us. So, we can learn a doctrine, find our teacher, a guru, a favorite author; study ardently a holy book; go to church, a sangha, a mosque, retreats, workshops ...: this to hold the verse that cannot be held, to be given the verse that cannot be given.
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We can explore indefinitely the verse we think we have, that we came upon sometime in the past. We may even fight off any threats to the verse, "Don't touch my verse!" We may fear it will be contaminated, like hovering over it, protecting it from all bacterial viruses. We become the guardian of our verse or assign someone else to, maybe a group to help us protect it. We may have forgotten that the verse that was is no more. We grasped it in time, now try to keep it in time. We treat it like a precious heirloom. We are not respecting that we cannot have the verse, and we cannot keep the verse as the verse was. The verse is becoming new continually, and without our permission. This is like the Buddhist saying, "You never see the same river twice." So, we can be left hugging a verse that is no more, like a lover we once embraced but is no longer our lover to embrace. Such can be the illusion of some sense of stationary, stolid veracity.
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But the verse lives and will do no other than live. If this verse were not to change, it would die, and we die with it ~ here, not physically, but that part of us that lives with and by the truth. The past, see, does not live; only now lives, and timeless means always present.
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I was awoke one morning weeks ago, and music, silently, was flowing from my chest. I had never known such a happening. This reminds me of the verse, for it lives within us, even as the music lived and lives within me. To me, that music was the song of the verse, of truth. The mind does not create such music, it flows from even prior to the soul. We can speak of your or my verse only as relative, and not as being the possession of the self, or ego. Only in the soul-and-spirit can one say, "I have a verse."
Yet, this does not mean the verse within is dissociated from matter, body, and mind. Wholeness means the ceaseless creation of the verse, and while from spirit, the verse arises in an alive interface with the created world ~ the seen and unseen in holy communion. The world of matter, with body and mind realms, is the expression of this same Spirit world from which the verse arises into the world of matter.
So, the verse is now, participating in the present tense of Life. And we feel deathly when we struggle to live on the leavings of yesterday. Life is ever-unfolding, and we along with it. Many of us, therefore, are not living where we are, for we are not living where our verse within is. To fail to live the verse, is this living at all? Possibly, we are only existing.
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The key is to be fully alive, aware on-the-spot, the moving spot. We can mourn the losses, but we cannot live them.
I cannot, for example, write from where I was yesterday, but only where I am today, this moment. I recall, when a Christian clergyperson of several decades, looking at the many outlines of messages I had delivered over the years. I stood with papers in hand, under my carport, looking at those papers, feeling them in my hands. Those papers represented years of diligent work. I, with some reluctance, placed the papers in a trash container, realizing I could never share them again. The verse within had changed, and those papers, with those words I once offered heartedly and in love, while in continuity with the present, did not represent the present faithfully.
The verse within will always be in continuity with the past, for the present is a continuation and fruition of the past. Writings I offer, they share a seamless whole with the past writings from over forty years. Sometimes, I am surprised when reviewing my past work, for I find more continuity than I thought present.
Hence, the verse within now, this is lived by having lived the verse as it was. For persons to deny the past, rushing into a new future, that is problematic. Such would be a Christian, for example, not honoring the fruit of the past in the church, seeking escape from that past in Buddhism, or anything else. The past lives in the present. One may change much, and including a group to be joined with for sharing and support, but the past lives on as the present and in continuity with it. We can deny that past, but it will not deny us. That past will work to get our attention and our respect. So, living with the verse within, we live with the past as the past has become and is becoming the verse in the present. And, in essence, in this we transcend the ideas of time being past and present, yet, as humans, we live within the sense of time, even if with the sense of time within the feeling of non-time.
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Sue Monk Kidd was a conservative, evangelical Christian. She wrote for the acclaimed, evangelical inspirational magazine Guideposts. Later, Kidd moved from her faith allegiance, while not losing faith. She took a nonevangelical, feminist pilgrimage. She had published, in 1996, as a memoir of the transformation, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. Kidd, having been a Baptist prior, tells of needing to express forgiveness and respect to her previous faith group. She stopped at a Baptist church building, and she placed flowers before the entrance door of the building. To claim wholly where she was, Kidd needed to express gratitude for where she had been. Her verse had changed, and with it her spiritual companions, but the past was part of her, living transformed in and as the present.
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So, what is this verse? To me, this verse is the Truth particularized within me. The verse is not an idea, doctrine, or teaching. There are many truths, there is only one Truth; universal Truth expresses within me particularized, alive within, lived out from within, so life-giving to others. ~ Beings emanating the truth, they are vivifying presences, blessing others with hope, with inspiration, with encouragement simply by presence. ~ This truth is the interface between the Sacred and myself, and this is in union with the truth within everyone. This truth is the expression of the Truth within me. When the truth within me meets the truth within the other, there is a sense of kinship, a resonating spirit with spirit. When the truth within me contacts the un-truth in another, there is a sense of lack of connection, of resonation.
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Truly, the first gift the world needs from you is your verse. That verse may manifest, and will, in many ways. One could be a seamstress or world leader, a monarch or a pauper, ... and equally manifest the verse. Yet, as God expresses as each verse, verses multiply themselves in many expressions of love, of grace, like many verses of a single song. Our lives become hymns of praise to the Unknown. Each expression of the verse will bear the flavor of the verse and of the song; so, there is harmony in the life of the verse-giver, and such a being spreads harmony for he or she embodies harmony. The lover-of-Truth embodies the harmony of the Universe, the One-Verse. He or she, as said of Jesus in the Gospel of John, is the Word become flesh ~ and non-human species can become the Word, according to their capacities.
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Nothing you could do or say, even all you could say or do, could wholly express or share your verse. When the truth within expresses in the world of matter-body-mind, the manifestation is a dilution. This leaves a witness, though incomplete, by the truth to the Truth, and that witness hints at a Wholeness we can welcome but only partially embrace ~ though It wholly already embraces us.
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I told someone, during a misunderstanding, "I love you." The person retorted with emotional aggression, claiming to have a right to know what was meant. I was to explain that meaning, in a subject-object manner: from me to her. After reflection in silence, I kept pointing the one back to two matters, avoiding the subject-object duality. First, what she had experienced in our sharing over time. Second, to her own heart, to inquire there, to listen, to let the truth be shown to her. I never explained what I meant, for I could not, and it did not feel like a sentimental love at all, which is often meant by those words. Looking back now, I see that "I love you" does not fit any "I love you" I had spoken before, as I was not anyone I had been before when speaking those same words. That I did not know what I meant indicated that I had changed over time to know love in a deeper, more mysterious and intangible, yet real way that seeks tangible expression, even in words like "I love you."
We tend to think we know what we mean when we say something, but the more awakened you are to the truth within and the universal Truth, the more ambiguous truths become, the more seen that we often are saying more, sometimes much more, than the mind is aware of. ~ Ego tends to assume what is the truth before being shown the truth, and one can claim not to know the truth to deny one truly does know the truth. ~ So, possibly, those words "I love you" were not only meant to affirm something to the other, but to invite the other to be receptive to that connoted by the words, a recepitivy arising from what is illumined within the heart.
See, the verse within us and its many manifestations have varied feeling-qualities, yet the truth escapes the attempt of thought and emotion to claim it or explain it, or even live it beyond partially. We could say that we do not live our verse, our verse lives us, and, at last, harmony arises in which we cannot separate the sense of the verse and the sense of our self. The holy union has been fulfilled in the marriage of self and truth and Truth, as one wholeness and harmony in Spirit.
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Video can be played on original site via upper artist-title below; below is lyrics...
Don't look back A new day is breakin' It's been too long since I felt this way I don't mind where I get taken The road is callin' Today is the day
I can see It took so long just to realize I'm much too strong Not to compromise Now I see what I am is holding me down I'll turn it around (Oh, yes I will)
I finally see the dawn arrivin' I see beyond the road I'm drivin'
It's a bright horizon and I'm awake now Oh I see myself in a brand new way The sun is shinin' The clouds are breakin' 'Cause I can't lose now, there's no game to play
I can tell There's no more time left to criticize I've seen what I could not recognize Everything in my life was leading me on But I can be strong (Oh, yes I can)
I finally see the dawn arrivin' I see beyond the road I'm drivin' Far away and left behind (left behind)
Oh, the sun is shinin' And I'm on that road
Don't look back A new day is breakin' It's been so long since I felt this way I don't mind where I get taken The road is callin' Today is the day
I can see It took so long just to realize I'm much too strong Not to compromise Now I see what I am is holding me down I'll turn it around (Oh, yes I will)
I finally see the dawn arrivin' I see beyond the road I'm drivin' Far away and left behind
Don't look back Don't look back Don't look back Don't look back
