I keep this book beside my bed or at my reading post because it is for me like a deep well of wisdom into which I dip whenever I want or need to renew my commitment to my spiritual path, and every time I dip, I am inspired all over again.
This book is a splendid compilation of writings from Christian mystics from many Christian traditions - Fundamentalism, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Gnostic etc. - even some from Taoist and Hindu philosophies .
One of my favourites is by a Russian Orthodox monk, Hieromonk Damascene, whose essay is based on the teachings of Lao Tzu (not coincidentally one of my favourite philosophers).
“Emptiness penetrates the impenetrable”, he writes,
and “Controlling the breath to make it gentle, one can be as a little child . . . . . Descending with the mind into the secret place of the heart, and gently checking the breath, Followers of the Way now call upon the name of Him who had once been nameless. And the Way who took flesh...” (pp. 49-50).
The words of the Ancient Chinese Sage are the words of the Christ who called himself the Way, and who also taught that to enter heaven (the sacred within), we must become as a little child.
Some of the most enigmatic and challenging passages in this book are on the nature of emptiness, its deepest spiritual import. For some, including the Desert Fathers, emptiness requires the humility to recognise that our own impurity and ignorance and error prevent us from seeing the Divine that is all around and within us.
“The extent of the illumination is not dependent upon the ray of sunlight but upon the window”,
wrote St. John of the Cross, a sixteenth century Spanish mystic and close colleague of St. Teresa of Avila (pg. 239), so we must empty Self of self (small self or personality) to let God’s light can enter and shine forth.
According to ‘The Gospel of Thomas’ (written about 150 years after Christ), emptiness requires freeing the mind from the worldly illusion of opposites so that one can recognise the essential Oneness of being.
“When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside . . . . . and when you fashion an eye in place of an eye . . . . . and a likeness in place of a likeness, then will you enter the Kingdom” (pp. 159-160).
Then the mind-bending passages from C12th Meister Eckhart and C16th mystic shoemaker, Jacob Boehme, both of whom write from mystical experience of the true nature of things. Mystical experiences are experiences of the ineffable, and as such, a beyond description, so they are often described in highly metaphorical language. This makes Eckhart, Boehme and other mystics sometimes difficult to understand. But their message is clear.
Boehme writes that even the desire to hear God, to feel the Divine Presence can stand in the way. To be empty, you must:
“stand still from the thinking of self and the willing of self . . . . For it is nothing indeed but your own hearing and willing that hinder you, so that you cannot see or hear God” . . . . “. . . when you are quiet and silent, then you are as God was before nature and creature; you are what God was then” (pp. 5,6).
Centuries earlier by Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) descibed this primordial state of being “before nature and creature." In his essay, ‘To be quit of God’, Eckhart describes the poverty that Christ taught and illustrated in his own life as emptiness even from ideas about God, even from the will to know God.
“As long as a person keeps his own will, and thinks it his will to fulfill the all-loving will of God, he has not that poverty. . . . . . if one wants to be truly poor, he must be as free from his creaturely will as when he had not yet been born . . . . . a man ought to be empty of his own knowledge . . . . and be as untramelled by humanness as he was when he came from God” (pp. 250 - 251).
A tall order for a mere human, I think, but a strong reminder that the spiritual journey is, ultimately, not about gaining knowledge or good intentions, but the practice of letting go, giving up or sacrificing what we think we know, and who we think we are and listening for the small, still voice within that is the only true guide.
Cutsinger, James S. (Comp. & Ed.) 2003. Not of this world: a treasury of Christian mysticism. World Wisdom, Bloomington, Indiana.
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