If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than yourself, you will not succeed in loving yourself, but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man. Thus he is the great righteous person who, loving himself, loves all others equally.” ~ Meister Eckhart
For 26 days we have focused on the inner mind and soul in an effort to reach deeper into the contemplative mind to find union or at least contact with God. Now we get a curve ball. We have to look outside ourselves and love all of our fellow humans as we do ourselves. That is, after all the, the most important commandment we have in the New Testament, to love one another as we love ourselves.
This love thing is kind of tricky. We tend to associate self-love as being narcissistic and vain. To love yourself is negative habit that reeks of pride when we are constantly reminded to be humble. There something more here to consider about self-love because we are asked to compare that love to the love shared with us with Christ and to imitate it.
The nature of that kind of love all encompassing. There is affection, friendship, patience, compassion, empathy, enjoyment, pleasure, faithfulness and kindness all wrapped up into one embrace of grace and mercy. We have to be all of those things to ourselves. This love is not about achievement, success, material things, superiority or even gloating and haughtiness toward others.
That seems to be a strange notion, to be kind to yourself. Of course there is action involved. Because God is love and we know God through his love for us, our love for ourselves has to be outwardly expressed. We don't get to just pretend we have affection for all others but we have to love them in the same we love ourselves with all of the attributes listed above. As hard as is it to love myself, it is even harder to love others in the same way. Heck, there seems to be a larger number of people I don't even like much less love than I can bring myself to like or love.
If we all did, however, love ourselves and one another just imagine what life would be like here. The truth is it will never happen here because our humanness always will get in the way. All we can do is imitate Christ to the extent we can and hope we can experience and ability from the effort.
“There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.” ~ Meister Eckhart
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“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.” ~ Meister Eckhart
I am conditioned to look for God in places the Irish call “thin places”, places of beauty like rivers, mountains, forests, lake or ocean shores, gardens and so on. I am also conditioned to expect to hear God in the noise as if he were trying to complete with the chaos around us. We can hear his words, sometimes, in the wind or the falling of rain but God is truly in the silence. Where all else ends, only he remains even though he was always everywhere. The encounter him stillness is to have found a way to empty ourselves of our daily noises, concerns and questions. We stop talking. We stop listening. We stop waiting. We just encounter the stillness and know love and peace. I long for those moments. The promise of them haunt me.
The stillness can be found here and now even in the cacophony of life. The silence I seek is not in the material, physical world, it is the spaces inside where no other thing exists. Wow. That hurts my brain.
“Wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.” ~ Meister Eckhart
It was once attributed to St. John Vianney, the patrol of priests, “A need in the world is met by a deep joy in me.” I struggle with this even though AA tries to teach us every day to have the courage to do the next right thing. AA has been around for just over 75 years. Eckhart taught us this around 700 years ago. There are no original thoughts, only restatements of principles that exist through time.
AA does not dwell on doing the next right thing with your whole heart or to do so with delight. It would seem that doing the next right thing should be enough. Perhaps the doing the next right thing implies doing it for the right reason and with the right attitude but that is left unsaid.
The point here is that is not enough to just do the right thing because an action does not speak to devoutness of character. Any one can do the right thing once in a while but the commitment to do the next right thing every time does require a commitment. Such commitment requires a positive action and not a negative reaction because negativity does not regenerate it self to do right. If you have to do something, anything it will seem to be drudgery, a burden , a waste of time. If you WANT to do something the opportunity brings pleasure, satisfaction and even gratitude for the opportunity. Wisdom, then, becomes a routine and not just a momentary achievement.
Seeking wisdom can offer us the glimpses into the next world which will reward our efforts and reaffirm our sure and certain knowledge of life in the next world where only joy exists because of a complete devotion to doing what is right.
“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” ~ Meister Eckhart
The imagery here is so powerful and so moving, the description of unity so hopeful and reassuring. It is also unsettling. When my eye is focused on creation, on things of beauty and purpose, I am pleased there is but one eye between us. There other times, many other times when my eye is not so focused.
I may be looking on things which I perceived to be material value, things that would provide fleeting pleasure but which also might simply be against his teachings and a temptation to sin or simply divert my attention from where I should be fully engaged.
There is no doubt of the truth of this. The eye through which we see God connects not only to the brain but to the soul as well. The soul is where God is so he instantly knows at our core what our sees, where our attention devoted and from there where our intentions lie.
One eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. If only we could keep blinking much less looking away in an act of separation.
“You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.” ~ Meister Eckhart
Eckhart has a genuine ability to simple take a half step to the side and then offer a totally new perspective on a familiar theme. For my entire life God has been presented as being all about love and goodness. These are characteristics which certainly describe. Indeed, Eckhart himself the best way for us to know God is through his love for us. His love, however is not passive. It is active, ongoing and ever present in how lives yet Eckhart says our best name for him is compassion.
Curious. As I sit and dwell on how his love has been bestowed on me the most apt to description is that he embraces us and he does so with compassion. We are in a world where freedom of choice can bring us good things and bad, pleasure and pain, happiness or sadness and love, sorrow and grief. He celebrates our happiness and our good times with us be we have to struggle to share those times with him because we tend to be caught up in the moment. He loves to go with us wherever we go, in my case, fishing, hunting, hiking, church, work and countless other places. He is there at those time but he is closest to us when we are in a state of loss. That is when his goodness shines through. He brings to us compassion regardless of our needs. He can't promise us sunny days or good health but he can promise us he can be there for when we need him.
I find it interesting he did not use friendship as a name for God. To me it seems more encompassing of the all aspects of human life. He is with us always and is with us a friend with him we can share the exigencies of life. Compassion is but one of the gifts he offers us through his friendship with us. Perhaps compassion is the most important aspect of our relationship with him because we need his encouragement, support and kindness to get up and get moving again in the face of adversity.
I don't intent to disagree with Eckhart, only to question how what he says fits for me or if I need another cloak to describe my relationship with him.
“Between God and Me there is no ‘Between’.” ~ Meister Eckhart
“I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God.” ~ Meister Eckhart
“God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.” ~ Meister Eckhart
There are three beautiful excerpts here that support the premise God is always home, one is humorous, one is simple but deep and the third profound.
The first one is the simplest. To say there is nothing between us and God is to recognize a transcendent God is everywhere and that includes within us. He inhabits my soul and that has to mean he is the core of my being. He not only created me but he sustains my existence. As I reflect on this notion, I am alternately comforted and discomforted. It is, at the end of the pondering, a comfort to know God is always with me. Always. Until the end of time. There is hope in this knowledge, there is the promise of a reward, a justification of my existence and being.
The discomfort is knowing he knows all, everything, all the time. Given my humanity, I never perfect in thoughts, words or deeds. Well, maybe sometimes I actually have some good moments but as a rule, un-holiness dominates holiness. There is no hiding it, ignoring it or wishing all the bad out of existence.
The second quote leads us to the first. The nearness of God and His critical presence is so near there is no separation. God wishes to bring us into himself and give everything he has to us. The boundaries that separate us a temporary and illusory. The kingdom of God is not out there somewhere. It is within each of us.
This leads to the last quote. How true. When we think we have been abandoned we really miss the point. It is us who have turned away from his presence so we can't see it but he remains present, within and without. When we ignore him we ignore our true self which leaves bereft of hope and purpose. God is always home. He is at home in us whether we see him or recognize him or not.
“To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.” ~ Meister Eckhart
“Whoever wants to receive everything must also renounce everything. That is a fair bargain and an equal return … Therefore, because God wants to give us himself and all things as out own free possessions, so he wants to deprive us, utterly and completely, of all possessiveness.” ~Meister Eckhart
I struggle with really grasping this idea. It is as if there is no room for anything else in our souls except God. In reality, to be empty is more conceptual than literal. We are human and we have in a world in which we have exist. We need food, shelter, clothing, companion ship and whole long list of things which we really can't just ignore. I don't think Eckhart is truly saying we should just withdraw and sit around all day expiating. There are very few of who would have the luxury of doing so rising great harm. Indeed just yesterday I reflected on the need to engage the world in order to allow Christ to bring us into his peace sustained by love, grace and mercy.
So what does he mean by empty? Perhaps it means we should not mistake wants for needs. Do I need to have a collection of fly rods, fishing gear, firearms and firearm accessories simply because they bring me pleasure? Surely I don't need them in any sense but finding pleasure can be an overpowering and intoxicating addiction which pulls me into an unbalanced relationship with material things.
Finding God requires us to be empty of being dominated by our possessions. I am feel like the young man in the scripture who when told by Jesus that he must give away all he owns simply went away sad because he had many things. To think about the need to give away all of my belongings gives me pause and fills me with the angst. I like my things. I worked hard to buy them. Fair enough but are they keeping me from being bound to my creator, an entity with whom I have more of an abstract relationship than one of defined reality? Yes.
Now what? Coming to grips with that fact is the first step. Now it has to take root so I can move toward renouncing things of this world to find God and experience his love.
