Posted by Charlie 10 on February 09, 1999 at 09:22:18:
"The inmost self is beyond the kind of experience which says 'I want,' 'I love,' 'I know,''I feel.' It has its own way of knowing, loving and experiencing which is a divine way and not a human one, a way of identity, of union, of 'espousal,' in which there is no longer a separate psychological individuality drawing all good and truth toward itself, and thus loving and knowing for itself. Lover and Beloved are 'one spirit.'"
Thomas Merton [20th C.], "New Seeds of Contemplation"
each of us is never quite out of touch with our ground of being as we want beauty, feel the demands of justice, know truth and seek and give love. we wonder if this immanent, contingent and provisional being has a destiny in transcendent, uncaused and substantial Being.
might we awaken to find that we needn't fetch the water-buckets of goodness and truth and justice from the stream? we needn't draw the waters of love from the deep wells of this neighbor or that?
because we, ourselves, are water ...
we are not only water
but we are water on which is being rained down justice, goodness and truth
and are water which is, itself, being overtaken by the flood of beauty, drowned in the torrents of love ...
and as we, the created, dance in this ocean of the uncreated, each time we crystallize, we are the same unique and hence, precious, snowflake ... and each time we vaporize, we perdure as the same fluffy cloud making our way over ever-new horizons and ever-changing vistas ...
where, again and again, we precipitate back into the streams and cascading falls and flow back into the river of immanence, emptying back into the ocean of transcendence
thus, we remain individuals even as we lose our illusions of separateness
and, without your snowflake, and, without my cloud ...
the ocean would be something else ...
what would it be?
i don't know ...
but it wouldn't be THE ocean that IT IS ...
as it pertains to life's most important matters, i'm not at all convinced that i know anything that most others don't already know by the age of reason
all that i bring to the table is much reflection on, and careful and deliberate construction of, an ever-changing paradigm ... a model setting forth, with great precision and no small amount of
detail, exactly what it is that none of us know, a model especially detailing that particular dearth of knowledge which, if known, would seem to have the greatest bearing on our most insistent longings, our most cherished aspirations, our most inflamed passions and, let's not forget, our unrelenting concern about ultimacies
i call this model, this paradigm of mine, for lack of a better word, God
now, don't get me wrong, there are those who have stepped forth claiming to have wrapped their souls around this existential vacuum & their minds around this ontological ignorance and
i strongly suspect that some of them are truly on to something;
the thing about it is, one must be both vigilant and quiet in order to hear what they have to say, because they (whom i suspect know the most) seldom speak, and, when they do, there is no clamor or shouting in the streets, for they whisper almost inaudibly, or speak, sometimes, only with their eyes; they quench no smou
ldering wick and break no bruised reed
even at this stage of discernment, there is no fail-safe method to separate the authentic mystic from the charlatan save for this: for the mystic, mystery perdures and for the charlatan, everything has, long ago, all been figured out
at least, i think i have this figured out ;>)Charlie 10
written in memory of Ed Murray, S.M. an old friend who went to be, more fully, with God at 3:30 a.m. 2/08/99, an authentic mystic and a true friend, i love you Ed