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"Jesus did not leave us the New Testament. That came later. He left us the Holy Spirit. ... In meditation, we try to go beyond the limitation of words and thoughts to open our hearts to the hidden mystery of the Spirit and to be really in the presence of Christ and the Father, to enter into the mystery of the Trinity. ... We are trying to break through to the ultimate truth of reality. As long as you are in the world of dualities, of churches and doctrines and rituals, there are always conflicts and always will be. It is only when we go beyond all outer expressions, all sacraments (outward signs) and enter into the hidden mystery that we can touch the point that unites us all."
*Bede Griffiths, The One Light, Ed. Bruno Barnhart.
Pema Chödrön writes, in The Wisdom of No Escape, "The basic creative energy of life--life force--bubbles up and courses through all experience." She observes that the energy "can be experienced as open, free, unburdened, full of possibility, energizing." The same energy "can be experienced as petty, narrow, stuck, caught." We can equate the first expression of energy with the Fruit of the Spirit and the latter with the passions: energy of negative emotions.
However, beyond the opposites of human experience is the unity of Divine Reality, the Blessed Trinity, or Godhead. From Godhead flows the energy that is the movement of life.
An intent of spiritual practice is realizing that we are part of the energy that we project outside us. We are part of nature. All nature derives from the Godhead. The Godhead includes us within Itself; we are surrounded by the Divine.
The Creation Story begins, in Genesis 1 of the Hebrew Scripture, "When Elohim began to create," and a beautiful array of form issues from the energy of chaos. If you read closely the Creation Story, you see an amazing truth: Everything Elohim creates is formed out of the energy already present. Nothing exists at the end of the Story that was not at the beginning of the Story. Formation occurred from Elohim seeing forms inhering in the energy, through foresight, and utilizing the energy to fashion forms. So, the chaos and the forms are of a single energy: one is unstructured, structured is the other.
In Hebrew Scripture, then, contrary to much teaching, creation is not portrayed as "out of nothing," but the formation of already existing energy-with-potentiality. The Scripture assumes existence of preexisting energy and never seeks to give a scientific or theological explanation for it. Possibly, that non-attempt at explanation on origin itself is a teaching.
This Genesis Story teaches that we are part of this creationing energy. We are life, and so is every other thing. Since we are part of what arises as life, we can take an optimistic attitude toward the possibilities in the Universe. We can remain open and trusting. We can learn to appreciate that we are immersed in the universal Communion.
In Spirit we discover convergence of all dualities of good and evil. Spirit transcends both good and evil in nondual simplicity of Spirit, for Spirit cannot contain absence: Spirit being Fullness, or Pleroma. We discover that while all is many, all is one. We discover evil is the result of the basic energy of life being used in harmful ways. So, we can take that same energy and make choices to bless. The potential to do good implies potential to do evil; the potential to harm implies potential to help. We are creative life forms, and we have potential to shape forms for good or ill.
With this realization we understand that the beginning never ends. Life is always in process. We are part of the whole from chaos to order and back to chaos. Chaos and order are part of a single drama. We find that we are both observing the drama and part of it. We find that we can change the drama at any point, for we are endowed with freedom of will, and the drama is never predetermined, even if the Divine knows its full course in advance: in terms of time.
So, in contemplative practice to trust in a Creator is to trust the goodness of nature. We trust that wholeness and order resides in what is chaotic and broken. We no longer walk around pessimistic or depressed about life and world events, while we talk of trusting God.
Faith in the Drama Maker, from whom the drama arises, opens us to a non-problematical relationship with nature and our individual lives. Rather than your life being a problem, you see it as an opportunity. With trust we see creation and ourselves as unfolding potentialities, which ultimately derive from the Godhead, the essence before all essence.
We are part of the one Communion. This Communion is none other than all things seen and unseen that have existence: for evil is the absence of the Good, not a creature in itself. This Life Flow is always able to encompass all change. Practicing going beyond dualities of matter and spirit allows us to be an energy potentiality rejoicing in the potentialities and possibilities inherent in the domain of inspirited matter.
Love flows from God to man without effort
As a bird glides through the air
Without moving its wings --
Thus they go whithersoever they will
United in body and soul
Yet in their form separate --
As the Godhead strikes the note
Humanity sings,
The Holy Spirit is the harpist
And all the strings must sound
Which are strung in love.
*Mechthild of Magdeburg
Karen J. Campbell, Ed., German Mystical Writings
OneLife writings are offered by Brian K. Wilcox, a United Methodist pastor serving in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. He writes in the spirit of John Wesley's focus on the priority of inner experience of the Triune God; scriptural holiness; ongoing sanctification; the goal of Christian perfection (or, wholeness). Brian lives a vowed contemplative life with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, in North Florida. OneLife writings are for anyone seeking to live and share love, joy, and peace in the world and in devotion to God as she or he best understands God.
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