*Meister Eckhart
Merging boundary into boundary,
a sacred addition takes place,
return to a primal Beginning
without any cause or why.
Water and wetness flowing,
as one they move together,
sent from a common Source
toward the same Destination.
Smoke rises upward from a fire,
being embraced by the open sky.
The Way of the mysterious Spirit
Who wil not admit a separate identity.
*Brian K. Wilcox. An Ache For Union.
It is a great thing, an exceeding great thing, in the time of this exile, to be joined to God in the divine light by a mystical and denuded union. This takes place when a pure, humble, and resigned soul, burning with ardent charity, is carried above itself by the grace of God, and through the brilliancy of the divine light shining on the mind, it loses all consideration and distinction of things and lays aside all, even the most excellent images; and all liquefied by love, and, as it were, reduced to nothing, it melts away into God.
*Louis of Blois. Spiritual Works of Louis of Blois. 4th Ed. Edited by John Edward Bowden.
RECEIVING SACRED TEACHING
I write during transition from Good Friday and Holy Saturday. I wish to reflect on some of the mystical import of the Passion of Christ.
St. Paul provides an enigmatic, startling verse that arrests my attention each time I hear or think of it:
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ; certain that God is appealing through us, we plead on Christ's behalf, "Be reconciled to God." 21 He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
*II Corinthians 5.20-21 (HCSB)
Here is the conclusion, given by the contemplative Christian, Thomas Keating, of such a spiritual affirmation:
To become sin is to cease to be God's son- at least to cease to be conscious of being God's son. To cease to be conscious of being God's son is to cease to experience God as Father. The cross of Jesus represents the ultimate death-of-God experience: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The crucifixion is much more than the physical death of Jesus and the emotional and mental anguish that accompanied it. It is the death of his relationship with the Father. The crucifixion was not the death of his false self because he never had one. It was the death of his deified self and the annihilation of the ineffable union which he enjoyed with the Father in his human faculties. This was more than spiritual death; it was dying to being God and hence the dying of God: "He emptied himself, and took the form of a slave ... accepting even death, death on a cross!" The loss of personal identity is the ultimate kenosis [emptying].
In the crucifixion, his relationship with the Father disappeared and with it the loss of his experience of who the Father is. In his resurrection and ascension, Jesus discovered all that the Father is, and in doing so, became one with the Ultimate Reality: all that God is emerging eternally from all that God is.
Keating proceeds to apply this to true, spiritual Christians, in our transformation into the Life of Christ:
This passing of Jesus from human to divine subjectivity is called in the Christian tradition the Paschal Mystery. Our participation in this Mystery is the passing over of the transformed self into the loss of self as a fixed point of reference; of who God is into all that God is. The dismantling of the false self and the inward journey to the true self is the first phase of this transition or passing over. The loss of the true self as a fixed point of reference is the second phase. The first phase results in the consciousness of personal union with the Trinity. The second phase consists of being emptied of this union and identifying with the absolute nothingness from which all things emerge, from which all things return, and which manifests Itself as That-Which-Is.
Jesus, then, exemplifies for us a loss of - crucifixion of - even conscious union with the Divine, to merge into the post-Resurrection exaltation into All-God-Is.
We can be birthing a new, reborn, true Self. What do we do with this True Self? Well, we see that Self as a subject over against objects - a True Self isolated in an enclosure of self-reference, self-identification - now we call it True Self.
We have been transformed, but we have not been transformed to beyond-all-self-identity, all-self-reference. We are, still, seeing ourselves as a self-subject looking at self-objects, or a self-object being acted upon by self-subjects. To see ourselves as relatively this, that is one thing, to see ourselves absolutelly as such, that is another thing.
So, the cross mystically shows us the way to the death of self, at all identifications, into absolute nothingness. God is Nothingness, for God cannot be named within the world.
God can be "named at" or "named about." "God" itself is a "named at" or "named about."
Nothingness is not nothing. Nothingness is the ultimate Mystery. Fullness is Nothingness. God as Nothingness is not absence, but Fullness - Fullness that births the world, and is undefined by the creatures. See, God is not either-or; God, as Nothingness is All. Yet, these are words - and, so ...
So, when we die to all "names," we arise "nameless." We are in Nothingness, we are Nothing. Then, we can experience all qualities subjectively, by being in Fullness, but we know we are not one of them or any collective objectively - all are relative. We even see the selves we construct and identify ourselves as, as conditioned by many factors: language, culture, schooling, family, race, history, ...
To enter into This, our "spiritual self" - like all other of our selves - undergoes crucifixion. We are not a spiritual self, or a religious self - we cannot be, ultimately, for we are not a self at all. To enter into This, we die to conceptions of God - even if we use them like helpful means to relate to the Nothingness that is Fullness.
Most persons in religion cling to the self they identify by their religion - even as they cling to their images and names of God. Many will fight and kill for names and images - while denying the center of all true religion: Love. Jesus died to release us into the Name beyond all religions, all faith, all spiritualities, all names, ... In that Name, we have transcended both the subjectivity and objectivity of self, and other selves, into the Fullness that is Emptiness.
Keating hints at this mystical death through the Cross. We move from "who God is" into "all that God is." We are freed, thankfully, from a self-identity projected onto the Divine as another but-Almighty - or whatever - identity; for we are self-constructing creatures. We enter the subjective - by which I mean felt - experience of the Divine as All in all, and all in All. We no longer relate to God absolutely as a person, or Self, or anything in location - not here, not in heaven, not anywhere, not everywhere - for we are in All-That-God-Is.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
*Colossians 3.3 (ESV)
So, again, you are to place on the cross all religious and spiritual aspirations to attain this or that. There is, finally and ultimately, nothing to attain. There is all to Be in, and in Nothing you participate in Fullness - you have died to the "I" that struts around thinking things like: I am holy, I am good, I am honest, I am a Christian, I am a man, I am a woman, ... All that is an object to "I," and without the "I," not one exists. All are mental constructs.
Tell me one thing about yourself that is not a mental construct. You can not. Even your telling me is a collective of constructs defending constructs.
Can I say, then, logically, "I am a man"? Of course, but you have died into the remembrance - the subjectivity - that your identity is not "man," though "man" defines certain relative attributes that "cloth" Isness. So, yes, by all means, play with qualities, and you can enjoy them much more when you subjectively know they are just that: qualities, nothing more, nothing less.
Now, we are we in this mystical dying - which may go on well beyond this lifetime, even in the Other Side: we are, literally, in Love - not the emotion or doing of love as we know it...
When you begin to tell yourself that your emotional stance in life is a distortion of your potentional to love, then you have invited a flame into your life that will gradually destroy and transform you.
*Richard Moss. The It That Is We.
In the above quote, does not the writer use the language of a crucifixion? And this will be ongoing in this life. We are ever being pulled by a mysterious, underlying Orchestration into deeper, more embracing, more sublte aspects of harmony and grace.
Blessings!
Rev Dr Brian K. Wilcox
Holy Saturday
April 11, 2009
QUIETLY RESPONDING
Have you had a moment or more when you forget all "self-identity"? What was that like for you?
* * *
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian K. Wilcox, of SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. Brian is an ecumenical spiritual leader, open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
*Contact the above email to book Brian for Spiritual Direction, retreats, or workshops. You can order his book An Ache for Union at major book dealers.
