|
* * *
Estelle Frankel shares, in her The Wisdom of Not Knowing, about the heart of communion.
The Zohar portrays Abraham and Sarah’s practice of welcoming strangers into their tent... According to legend, their tent was open to the four winds to welcome the stranger. Both Abraham and Sarah would sit and wait at the opening of their tent looking for wayfarers they might invite in. They would then feed and care for them in body and soul, and teach them, through their own example, the art of loving-kindness. Abraham and Sarah’s generosity was their signature spiritual practice. They gave without ulterior motives, simply as an expression of their awakened state.
One way of seeing this image of the tent open to the four winds is that it indicates the open-hearted person. This being is welcoming by nature. He or she does not see others as strangers-the sense of the other as a stranger signifies a lack of living in communion. When one becomes communion, communion always is for the open-hearted ones.
* * *
Seeker: Sir, what do you mean that we can be in communion with everything? I find it impossible to do that. I'm just one thing.
Sage: You commune with everything when you as one commune with any other as one, be it seen or unseen, human or nonhuman.
Seeker: Can we have the same communion with animals?
Sage: Why not?
Seeker: And what's this communion?
Sage: It's in the word: co-union. Hence, sharing as-one, or oneness.
Seeker: Is this something I have to choose, or does it just happen?
Sage: Initially, it's a conscious sharing. The range of fellowship is limited, based mostly on like and dislike. When self returns into the Heart, then communion is unceasing. One abides in the Light; hence one does not leave anything. Communion is no longer intermittent but is unceasing.
Seeker: Then, if we're already one in the Heart, why communion?
Sage: Oneness expresses itself in sharing. One wishes to experience Itself in the many. That's the best answer I can give: it's all a mystery.
Seeker: What's the feeling associated with this communion?
Sage: Feelings arise. These feelings will be subtle to gross. The feelings will always be loving; words speak of shades of this lovingness, such as compassion, empathy, tenderness, sadness, kindness, joy, patience, generosity, prayer, praise, appreciation, and reverence.
Seeker: Is there not one feeling?
Sage: Not one emotion. One knows the Feeling, or Sense, by living the oneness. Oneness has a Feeling registered in the body. No one can speak of that Feeling. Once you live in that Feeling, you forget what it was to live without that Feeling. Not everyone here lives on the same planet.
Continued... |
