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'Sunset Over The Hill'
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Saying: In matters of Spirit, when you do not see, you see. At the limits of outsight, is the opening to insight.
A dear friend told me of coming up in a Christian sect. She was told what to believe. She was to repeat the belief. Even as a child, she wanted to know why she should believe so-and-so. The only response she was given was to believe, for she was told to. Whether religious or political, this is a reason belief can be facile and dangerous. Belief goes from harmless to disastrous. This is not faith, a beautiful expression of trust, this is ideology. My friend is blessed to expect and demand more than being told what to think, hence trust; she seeks insight based on her experience. And, after all, what other insight is there but what one experiences for herself? Others' experiences can inspire us, but it cannot be our experience. We have too many persons who live in agreement, so opinion, rather than living from insight, so truth. Churches are filled with believers, hence we see a sore lack of transformative fruition in such institutions. You may be a believer, yet you cannot grow much without welcoming wisdom based on direct experience, and this may lead you far from what you were indoctrinated to see - which is, really, to close the eyes to all else except that sanctioned by the so-called elite, those who claim they are chosen to hand-down an heirloom of dogma to others, and to keep them in line, keep them so-called faithful to the faith. Yet, how can one be faithful to the faith, when one clings to belief, denying faith?
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Huston Smith, in The Soul of Christianity, tells of an experience of his daughter. Friends introduced Huston and his wife to a conversation piece on a coffee table. When activated, it would display a variety of colors shifting like a kaleidoscope. The Smiths' little daughter spoke out in delight, "I love it and I don't understand it at all, and that's why I believe in God."
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Simply because many say something does not make sense, that does not mean it does not make sense. What these skeptics often mean is, "It does not make sense to me."
The wisdom paths worldwide have spoken of Reality's two aspects: the immanent, known through the senses, and the transcendent, known through what the early Christians called gnosis, a Greek word speaking of intuitive insight.
Hence, we embrace what makes sense and does not make sense - and both make sense. We lean on knowing more than understanding. You can know a tree without understanding it, even as you can know a friend without understanding her. Even more, you can love her without understanding her, and you may love her more once you accept you do not and cannot understand her. You can know Spirit only in not understanding It.
We delight in celebrating what we cannot think is true but is true - and we know to be true. There is an interiority the mind does not enter - it is where Love lives.
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The Christian mystics have pointed us to the Divine Darkness. This Darkness is not the absence of Light. The Darkness is present, for the Light is present.
This Darkness is dark, for the Light is inaccessible to what we call "the light of reason." This Darkness is like looking directly into Sunlight; hence, the Darkness is the Light - like when the Sunlight is still present, but the eyes have closed, unable to endure the brightness.
So, to know what you know is always a new beginning. This knowledge moves you closer to that beautiful, joyful Darkness, to where you can say, "I do not see, for I see."
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Why do we not see already? We have been submerged in the reasoning and reasons of the mass, stretching over eons of time, accumulating the data of what we can and cannot experience. Thomas Merton, in Thoughts in Solitude, wrote of this collective-belief hypnosis -
In other words, since faith is a matter of freedom and self-determination - the free receiving of a freely given gift of grace - man cannot assent to a spiritual message as long as his mind and heart are enslaved by automatism. He will always remain so enslaved as long as he is submerged in a mass of other automatons, without individuality and without their rightful integrity as persons.
Therefore, as we are drawn beyond the horizon of reason, we may feel pretty much alone in a horizonless space - we are. This solitariness and lostness are profitable, for no one can see for you. When you see for you see, you have a real possibility of insight. You cannot borrow anyone else's eyes.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
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