Session Two
Table Talk pages 15-26
Many mystics and other Christians find their way to God through creation. A flower in bloom, a child at play, a sunrise, a special relationship, a vision, a dream, these things of creation and many more are pathways into the experience of God. Created things mediate the God-experience, then in some cases the created thing effaces or yields and one is left wonderfully in an unmediated experience of mystical intimacy with God. This is, perhaps, the way of Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila. It is good. However, it is not the way of Meister Eckhart. Instead of taking the winding path through created things which mediate one’s experience of and with God, Eckhart storms the castle moving through each room without taking note of creatures and created things because he is moving straight to the innermost chamber where he and God are not other than each other. Thus his call to radical detachment. From this innermost place of union Eckhart then comes back out into the outer rooms and indeed into the wider, bustling world with God as one who is one with God.
Eckhart’s teaching on detachment is so radical that it’s startling and can be unsettling. Just remember he’s not taking us into isolation and solitude so that we can stay there. Rather he’s taking us there so that we can start there and from oneness we can proceed into the marvelous hustle and bustle and wonder of daily life.
Glossary
Along the way we’ll add words to our glossary understanding that with Eckhart the best we can do is point to working definitions of his complex, mystical lexicon.
Godhead - Formless, ineffable divine ground beyond or transcending the named God. Similar if not synonymous with Truth in Eckhart.
Truth - the Word that was before the origin of all things. The infinity of divine being without the name(s) we humans have pressed upon it. God without my fingerprints and words on God. The ineffable, unamable, unknowable divinity that is the source and sustenance of all creation. The stillness and silence that is the ground of the universe.
Powers - the 5 senses along with the faculties of the mind that one uses to engage the world and live one’s life in the day to day. Memory, reason, intellect, will, imagination.
Knowledge - as Eckhart commonly uses it the word knowledge does not refer to knowledge acquired with the senses, with the mind, intellect, memory or will (the powers). Knowledge in Eckhart’s teaching and preaching refers to a knowledge of God in which all distinction between God and self is dissolved in absolute oneness because in the marrow of the soul there is only oneness with God. This is not the result of union. That is, the oneness does not derive from a uniting of God and the soul (self), rather the oneness is because it has always been. Your ground and God’s ground are and ever have been infinitely one.
Detachment - letting go of attachment to all people, places, and things, all creatures and created things, that one might fall into the abyss of God, realize or awaken to one’s oneness with the divine in the ground of one’s soul, then return to all creation from this place of oneness to love all creation with God. This is not a retreat from life, quite the opposite, it is an enrichment of life as life becomes lived from a deeper place, less frantic, less attached, more peaceful. As Augustine says, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O God.” Detachment is abandonment to this full rest in God.
Ground (grunt) - this is the deepest recess of your own being or soul. It is the place within you where the divine spark pours into the universe manifest as - you. It is a place of pure oneness where you and the divine are absolutely one. You are not two things (dual) brought together in the ground, rather you are one (non-dual).
Birth of the Word in the soul - this is the awareness that the Christ current of the Holy Trinity (the 2nd person of the Trinity, the Son) is born not only in Bethlehem from the womb of Mary, but also in the ground of your own soul in which you and God are not other than each other, you are one. This birth is your divine, eternal origin, your true source, from which and in which God is pouring you into existence moment to moment.
Table Talks
The most powerful prayer of all and the highest work of all - the quiet mind is the totally detached mind which has loosed itself of all created things including the self and self-will. The quiet mind has descended into the abyss of God and been subsumed in the ground of God which is the ground of the soul. One with a quiet mind such as this can’t then enter into life’s activities no matter how small without God. The quiet mind does all that she does with God.
Solitude and God-getting - if we give ourselves entirely to God, then we do not need to be alone, in solitude, or sequestered in the church to have or be with God because God is everywhere we are if we give ourselves entirely to God. The quiet minded one’s will has been entirely united with the will of God, so in all he does is done by God.
We should not be satisfied or even on the lookout for thoughts about God for when the thought goes there goes God. We are after the real presence of God which transcends all thoughts and images. We are called not to think about God, but to turn toward God in the depths of our own being. Then we will see God in all that we see. It will be God in us who is doing the looking.
Find the “solitude within” in all circumstances no matter where you are or who you are with.
At a certain point you will begin to see God in things with less attention paid to the things themselves.
With practice after a while the quiet mind, “pervaded with a sense of God,” will see God without effort.
3. Unremitting effort in the highest progress - detachment and the letting go that quiets the mind are the spiritual work of a lifetime. Don’t let up.
4. What to do on missing God who is in hiding - God’s greatest desire is that I should surrender my will so that it might be enveloped in his will and then his will be done. To give up my will is to surrender my greatest treasure. That is what God wants.
If I have lost touch with or lost track of God I don’t have to do anything different or go anywhere to find. He is right where I lost him, which is right where I am.
When you’ve finally let God you are entirely surrounded by God, then for anything to get to you it must pass through God and in doing so it gets a taste of God. In this way you partner with God to fish for people.
5. Why God often lets good people, people who are really good, be prevented from doing their good works - God wants to be your only comfort, hope, “prop and stay.” Sickness and misfortune serve to make us rely more on God. This trains us to rely only on God as only God is finally reliable.