She was frequently heard referring to how God was mysterious beyond understanding. When talking with the Sage and referring to this non-understanding ...
But you do understand God.
How can that be?
The understanding that you cannot understand God is your understanding of God.
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
Note: In this writing, as in this writer's other works, "God" refers to the Ultimate, while diverse groups and persons refer to the Ultimate in many different words and images.
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Those who claim to understand God without a keen sense of failure to understand God do not. Those who know they cannot understand God do.
Within the historical dimension, not understanding is not understanding, and understanding is understanding. In the ultimate dimension, one does not understand and, so, understands; hence, not understanding can be understanding. Then, silence.
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We can classify knowing in three ways. First, there is sensual knowing, which is the level of the ordinary mind. This knowing works well but is limited to the physical plane, which includes the ordinary mind. Next is intuitive knowing. This knowing is intuitive, spontaneous insights not processed consciously through the ordinary mind. This knowing is outside the world of signs. Last, we have spiritual knowing, which is the most subtle knowing. This knowing is a direct knowing of truth. When one lives in this knowing, they live in an unmediated intimacy that is nonverbal and nonlinear.
With the arising of this last knowing, one feels drawn more into silence. In this knowing, one is most receptive to the compassionate embrace of diversity and deep listening. The mind of love is most removed from emotion and, so, most free to be-with others and bless their freedom to express as they wish. One senses from these beings an effortless presence.
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One of the three marks taught in Buddhism of all beings is "signlessness." We are all signless. You are. I am. We are. What persons see and speak of when seeing you is appearance. Yet, if they look deeply and see what they cannot understand, they more truly understand you. Intuitive and spiritual knowing can discern this depth. Sensory knowing cannot access it.
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Preparing to lead a spirituality group, a man who claimed to have been an evangelical pastor came in. He angrily affirmed how he would not tolerate listening to anyone refer to his god as "Mother." Like I had been, he had apparently served in a setting where God was only one gender: male. Also, Jesus referred to God as "Father." He soon left the room, for he was informed persons would have the freedom to speak as suited them. He was attached to a sign, meaning a word. In this attachment, he confessed how his prior conditioning was blocking him from a deeper, more true appreciation of and connection with his god.
Attachment to appearance is attachment to something mental - a thought. This thought is wedded with emotion -hence, the anger. With a more intimate understanding of his god, this man would not have displayed anger or felt a need to leave. He would see no need to defend or evade other signs for his god. He could not enjoy fellowship with the group, sharing ideas and presence.
Is this love, to cling to signs and, thereby, deprive others of our presence and mutual sharing? This man, as many do, withheld God's presence as God could share through him. Likewise, he deprived God of receiving the love of others in how God could share through them.
God, to be God, is free of any particular sign. Hence, God is not diminished or expanded by one sign or a myriad, even as you are not. Yet, God being expressed by a diversity of signs offers persons a diversity of means of entryway to enjoying intimacy with the Ultimate.
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Clinging to signs does two things. First, it leads to conflict and discrimination. This is like the sign of "white" or "black" racially. If we look through the sign, we see with nondiscrimination. "White," "black," "male," "female," "tall," "short ... are signs; they do not define anyone. The heart knows no discrimination, for it is signless and sees the non-appearance through appearance. The appearance is enhanced by being seen with this right view.
Second, clinging to the signs hinders intimacy. In this, we relate on a surface level with persons. The depth dimension of all beings is intangible. When Buddhists refer to "emptiness," we mean empty of a separate existence, not a nothingness. To flip "emptiness" to its other side, we can say "boundless."
We are boundless, while our appearance is lived out in limitation. We arrive in a box. Yet, we are boxless, for we live in a natural connection with all beings. We can accept the box but not being boxed in. Sadly, most people are afraid to live outside the box or do not even know that is how they are living, so they live as an appearance. And this is validated by others living as a sign. We are only unfree in the mind, as a concept.
We are like a poem. Take out a word, and that poem is no longer that poem. Each word is the poem for being one with all words in the poem. When we say, "Wow! We got a lot of rain today," we do not say, "Wow! We got a lot of raindrops today." No, each raindrop is the rain.
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The heart searches for this depth connection. When this arises, we sense a union that nourishes self and others, for self and others are welcomed into that depth. Being unbounded, our nature is that of welcoming.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
*Abu Bakr Muhammad (600s) is credited with saying, "Our inability to understand God is our understanding of God." See A. Helway. Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam.
