Session Five
Sermons
Pages 65-88
The Love of God - 1 John 4:9
The essence of the soul, the innermost core, is one with God in absolute union. This is what it means that God took on human nature. He revealed himself as the very source of our lives. Thus when the scripture says that God sent his son into the world the deep meaning is that God sent him into the inner world of the soul as the soul’s source. When we want anything other than this pure union of being, then we are living in attachment.
I put it like this in the Consider this posting on Feb. 16th:
Life is not a problem to be solved, it is a gift to be lived.
When life feels like an obstacle course in which I simply move from one challenge to the next in an endless stream it is likely because I am holding onto expectations. I am caught up in expecting something from the moment and the people in it. When my expectations are not met problems arise, and soon enough life itself seems like a series of problems to be solved. It is then pretty easy to fall prey to the illusion that when the next problem is solved everything will be okay or at least better. However, what frequently happens is that one problem gets solved and another one almost immediately appears. If this happens often enough, then one can begin to view life itself as a problem, or series of problems, to be solved. I want to suggest that this happens because I have expectations that the people in my life and the moment itself be other than they and it actually are. If I view life as a problem to be solved it is because I do not accept life and the people in it “as is.”
Letting go of expectations can seem reckless and irresponsible. Who, if not me, will tell the people they are wrong?! Good question. I don’t know. But let me ask this question: How is correcting everyone and living life as a problem to be solved going for you? If you feel more and more loved and loving day by day as you correct all the wrongs in this problem-drenched life, then don’t let me get in your way.
But if it’s not going well for you, then consider this: underneath the surface of life where all the problems exist, God is waiting for us to let go. When we let go of our need to fix, manage, and control we fall. We fall into the arms of God. In the arms of God there is infinite spaciousness and freedom. In the arms of God we are held in problem-free love. In the arms of God one’s will is swallowed up and made one with God’s will. That spaciousness and freedom is always there, underneath the obstacle course. What we all really want is to be seen and held by God who is love. That is the great problem that gives rise to all the other problems. If we really felt seen and loved by our creator, then acceptance would be the lens through which we view all of life and our problems would dissolve in love.
Until I let go of what I expect from you, I am not free to love you fully. But when I allow myself to fall into the arms of God and be stripped of my expectations, then I will find that I am a person reborn with a new outlook on life. You are not a problem, you are a gift and I am free to love you with God from underneath the obstacle course.
Matthew Fox makes this important note: “Eckhart never tells persons to consider themselves psychologically nothing or to put themselves down or to deny their gifts. If we are, at a radical level of the source of our being, nothing, then a person immersed in divine knowledge and love would need to develop a way of seeing things transparently - of seeing through things to their divine source and origin. This is why Ekchart emphasized that we “see all things as nothingness” - because we see “God where we see all creatures are nothing.”
Our nothingness and God’s nothingness (no-thingness) is one in the ground of being.
To live without a why is to not strive for consolations from our actions, or fruits from our good deeds, or personal utility from our relationships. It is to never ask the question, What’s in it for me? Rather, to live without a “why” is to simply live for life’s sake, that is, live as a natural outpouring of life from the well of life that is your own source without any reason other than your unspoken consent to the outpouring of God in your ground.
Poverty
The soul who is growing finds eternal things far more attractive and interesting than material things that pass away in time.
If I surrender my will entirely to God, then I will not wonder what is right and what is wrong. I will simply go forward unafraid.
There 5 kinds of poverty
Devilish poverty comes on those who don’t have what they want outwardly (things) or inwardly (peace). This devilish want is their hell.
Golden poverty is the state of people who are unattached to their material goods. If all their belongings were burnt they would be unmoved.
Willing poverty is the state of those who renounce their goods and any honor that would come their way
The spiritual impoverished are those who have let go of everything and everybody to which they might cling. They are empty and driven and drawn through life by the Word/ground that dwells eternally within them.
The godly poor have experienced a death of the separate self sense. This person lives in objectless awareness with God, subject to subject, as one.
What Mary was doing when the angel came
“He of Sterngassen” - this refers to John of Sterngassen who was a Dominican theologian and mystic. A contemporary of Meister Eckhart.
Mary was living without a Why in and from her ground.
Peace
“It is evening in the soul when the light of this world fades and the soul goes in to rest.”
The Spark
“Soaring wishes lose us what we have and fail to bring us what we want.”
“If you would know the naked truth, then cast off joy and fear and faith and hope and pain and qualities in general; all of them are means….Discard all this and that and here and now and be yourself as you are in your innermost nature.”