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The one living from the Silence, he or she becomes more at-home in the world, while being drawn closer and closer into Life. This one perceives what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call "glory"; that is, the Something that shines through the veil of Nature.
We do well, here, to recall, as well, that the human body is Nature, is this Earth. There is no boundary separating the human body from the body of Earth and Sky. This is a reason the body is not merely an object, and we need to respect the body of others and our body as means of the Light. However, it appears that some faith paths do not see that the body is an expression of Glory. This does not mean the body is pretty, for "pretty" and "Glory" do not equal the same thing. Yet, likewise, objects, to varying degrees, are luminous of the Light. This is so of art, for example, where one painting more approximates the purity and beauty of Life than another painting.
Also, as in the story above, our relationship to material things will shift as we realize more and more that no matter how much we may become at-home on Earth, this is, at the same time, a place we yearn for Home. Likely, each of us has had an inner yearning, even though we might not have known what to call it or refer to it in a way others may not. My book, from 2003, is entitled An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. I would not give the same subtitle now. I would use another word, a more inclusive one than "God." Yet, even there, I did not mean "God" in any particular sense, but "God" as a word pointing to Something we cannot call anything. Still, the ache I refer to is the same ache, regardless of what religion or no religion, of spirituality or no spirituality.
What we call this yearning or call That we yearn for is not of prime importance. Regardless of the words we use, we can recognize the yearning and observe how attachment to things, even what we might call spiritual things, cannot fulfill the inner ache and may well silence the yearning.
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Jesus, in words familiar with his culture and time, spoke of our being pilgrims on Earth and among matter, with all its forms, or things. In the Gospel of Matthew 6.19-21 NLT, we read:
Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
Jesus, being a spiritual sage, need not be understood here referring to another physical place somewhere, one in which we can get to, hopefully, after the body dies, but as speaking of a spiritual reality, a Home, of another dimension than the physical, emotional, or mental ~ all three of these being of Earth. He clarifies what we all know - anything here is transitory, no matter how esteemed wonderful, beautiful, or even holy. Simply put, an investment in things is a temporary investment.
Of most importance for us, possibly, to what Jesus says are the last words: "Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be." More literally, this reads, "..., there your heart will be." Just a glance at the transitoriness of everything would logically lead us to conclude that to invest our heart in things as an end in themselves, rather than to appreciate them as expressions of the Sacred, is a bad investment. Yet, how many of us forget this, that all else and this body we call "my body" is temporary? Even this Earth, we are told by scientists, will eventually burn up from the heat of the Sun. All we have seen, touched, tasted, heard, smelled is temporary, subject to death. This does not have to be bad news, however. When one experiences the Life not bound by birth-and-death, one discovers amazing freedom, wonderful spaciousness to love, even an enhanced appreciation of the fleeting and a profound enjoyment of it.
So, why the clinging to things as possessions? Simply, the ego knows itself as having life in itself, power in itself, and freedom in itself only in relation to what it thinks it possesses. In other words, the self cannot be self-centered without a belief in its capacity to possess something. The ego, then, will utilize even spirituality or its "God" to be a possession, so to prolong its illusion of independence. This, while in the Silence the ego is nothing and possesses nothing. In the Silence ego becomes another thing, like other things having no self-existence. So, how can something with no self-existence truly possess another thing with no self-existence?
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