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Letting Go: The Teachings of Meister Eckhart

Enjoy daily reports of this special event with James Finley, focused on the teachings of the 16th century Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart. The retreat took place in November 2008.

Day 1 Report: Detachment

Day 2 Report: Birth of World and Soul

Day 3 Report: Breakthrough to the Godhead

Day 1 - Detachment

After his highly successful Findhorn debut last year, James Finley has brought back his unique and powerful wisdom for another special event. Many of the participants have just attended the Caroline Myss conference at which James, who is a close colleague of Caroline, also spoke. This is what Caroline has to say about her friend and colleague:

"There are many compliments that I can pay James in my introduction of him to you, but of these, the highest is that I have never witnessed another teacher captivate his audience more profoundly than James Finley. The combination of his mastery of mysticism along with his style — that of a well-seasoned and astute spiritual director and psychologist — allows James to create an unparalleled atmosphere of receptivity, essential for piercing the depths of the human soul."

After having attended the first day of the event, I have to agree. We're in for a real treat over the next two days as we delve into the teachings of Meister Eckhart, the 14th century Christian mystic. Meister Eckhart asks, 'What is the joy that death does not have power to destroy and how can I discover it?' In this retreat, the teachings of Eckhart will guide us toward this deathless joy in which we come to a profound experience of God as the reality of ourselves, others and all things.

James began by warning us that this is 'highly evocative material' and so advised 'to your own self be true.' His understanding of our time together is to give us the opportunity to renew our understanding of the path on which we find ourselves. Our heart has been awakened by a desire which has brought us here. Our heart intuits that we can still go deeper and that it is a path not of our own making. We obey the call of our own heart as contemplative men and women: 'How do I understand myself, what's happening to me, and how can I learn to be more faithful to the call and the impediments to it?' God, the architect of our heart, tells us that nothing less than a union with the infinite will do. A union with anything finite is not enough for us. So we're looking for the ways we lose sight of that. We're looking for the grace of awakening.

The paradox is that to God the union is already there. The question is the reciprocity. The infinite love is giving itself completely to us, where love comes home to itself in union. In religious traditions, this is what's meant by the veil before death. It's full frontal, interpenetrating union with the divine. We can realise deeply the infinite love with every beat of our heart. We're turning to Meister Eckhart as our teacher, our guide, bringing ourselves into the presence of the mystery. We're going to sit at his feet in the classical sense. This is Meister Eckhart 101, James said in jest, no prerequisites required. It's extremely simple. The more childlike, patient, and slow we are, the deeper the experience.

To appreciate Eckhart spiritually, it's good to know who he is historically. He was born in Germany in 1260. He entered the Dominican Order in 1277, at the age of 17. He studied at the University of Paris. At age 34, in 1294, he became the Prior of one house and Provincial of another. In 1300, at age 42, he was sent to Paris to teach and in 1303 was made Provincial Superior for 47 houses of Dominican Prior. By 1310, at age 50, he held the chair of the University of Paris which is a recognition of his intellectual prowess. In 1314 he went to Strasbourg to live with Dominican nuns. He gave sermons to his nuns who recorded them. He was later accused of pantheism (the belief that God can be identified with the universe, or that the universe is a manifestation of God). He died on the way to one of his trials in 1328.

Three things suggest his relevance to us:

1. He was an administrator - the path we're going to lay out is accessible to all of us — to experience the profound oneness of God in the midst of the busy world.

2. He was a teacher, a scholar, with a trustworthy clarity, steeped in the understanding of spirituality and fidelity to his own Christian tradition. He has a spiritual way of laying bear a universal truth. He has a specificity of language that opens up the human heart.

3. He was a preacher - a spiritual master. People in his presence intuited that they were in the presence of someone whom God had deeply touched. The primary purpose of a preacher is to give living witness to the seeker that what the seeker seeks is real. Deep calls unto deep in a resonance with the listener. This is Meister Eckhart — he had been so transformed that there in his words people resonated in their own heart.

In laying out our foundations we might understand the word 'mystic' as someone who lives in a daily abiding awareness that although I am not God, I am not other than God either. There is a boundaryless oneness. The teachings of Meister Eckhart allow us to grow. He speaks that we might be awakened — to actualise the awakening to our true nature.

There are two aspects to his teachings:

1. He bears witness to a unitive vision of reality — to what life looks like through the awakened eyes. If you could look through clear eyes, what would you see?

2. He acknowledges our tendency not to see. We spend most of our waking hours in exile, in estrangement from this awareness. He helps us to understand these estrangements.

The first step is to slow down enough to understand your pain — this is already the process of transcending — liberation from the tyranny of what hurts ( this mysterious estrangement). Our light is the very manifestation of the God we can't find — we're confused. The vision of God's indistinction from us is the very reality of us. We're the finite creature — God is the infinite creator. Paradoxically, I am the manifestation of the mystery that is God. When two people are in love, they experience moments of oceanic consciousness in realising they are one. Although they are still two, they live by the oneness. The oneness is realised day by day in the 'two-ness'. We distinguish in order to unite. The 'two-ness' is utterly permeating.

If we could all see who we really are, we'd see God, but we don't see it, hence the sorrow and confusion. There are really two aspects to union for Eckhart: 1) the pre-existing essential union that is God's abiding indistinction from all things as their very reality, and 2) the union to be achieved by our becoming aware, through a knowing of that presence, by the process of detaching, birthing, and breakthrough.

In God we live and move and have our being, therefore, Eckhart helps us to understand our situation. 'How can I awaken to the already present?' We need to have an intuitive way of understanding life. Eckhart asks the question, 'What does it mean to be real?' You possess within yourself reality. God is the word that we use for reality itself. There is no beginning — God is beginningless presence. Defined that way, none of us exist. Your next heartbeat belongs to God, not you, because you have no control over it. It's a gift, but outside of that gift, we're not at all. We don't have the power to sustain ourselves in existence. What a precarious moment the present moment is.

God is very laidback about being God — not uptight about it at all — so released about it. Giving God away is what God is — the generosity of the infinite. Infinite love is infinitely generous. The miracle of your existence is that infinite presence gives presence away. If God were to withdraw the gift of presence, we would not be present. Apart from that you are nothing. You cannot exist. So our very presence is the presence of God.

Eckhart asks, what's going on with us? If we're the generosity of God, what are we worried about? What is the intimacy of my estrangement and how can I be liberated? Ultimately, the reality of torment is God manifest as torment in the world. Even that which torments has its own mystery and is a teacher.

Eckhart is not proposing any particular belief or practice. He is a teacher who teaches us to see life in a certain spiritual way and how to remedy our confusion about the nature of the life we are living. In realisation, there is abiding joy and peace. Our fear, anger, confusion arises in our estrangement. How might our eyes be opened to see that our fears have no foundation? Gently, unhurriedly, we allow the opening of this horizon.

Eckhart uses another word — image: 'An image is not of itself; nor is it for itself.' The working metaphor is an image in the mirror. Let's reflect on this image. Imagine you are looking at this consciousness image in the mirror. It's been in therapy and it lets you know that it thinks it's progressed enough to no longer need you. 'I can cut you loose and I'll be fine,' it says. You tell the image this is not so and to demonstrate your point, you move half way away so that half your image disappears. Your image goes straight back into therapy! It's real, but it's an image of the generosity of God — the birthless, deathless you, beyond your ego. You're being loved right into your chair as you sit here. We imagine that we can be real without the reality that is granting us reality.

We're all sitting here like melting candles. What is the destiny? Thomas Merton said someone's taking really good care of you. You couldn't have planned your life if you tried. Surely there is a benevolent path. Eckhart said the root of the problem of life is possessiveness of heart — attachment. We're clinging to the gift as a possession — trying to own our life on our own terms — trying to possess what is always given as a gift in generosity. Why wait til the final moment of your life to give up the fight — to open to receive what cannot be explained — the generosity of God which is your life? To be unknowable to God is already too much privacy.

We need to practise detachment. Notice the vision that we're struggling under the illusion of — who we appear to be in the eyes of others and ourself. Dispossessed of possessiveness of heart, the mystic says, 'Look what love has done to me.' How can we come to this childlike transparency?

Imagine a ring that has a huge gem. Without the setting it's not a ring. You can't wear it. So there's a setting — the 'What am I to do?' A person carries within them this longing to touch the infinite. Our society does not encourage us. It's a holy discontent. The precious gem is, 'What am I do to?' Once you've tasted the infinite, nothing else will do. With all our fragility we long for teaching that shows us the way — that sets it within a context that gives the quest meaning. God in his infinite generosity is so laidback — God gives being God away as the reality.

It's always the mind that's asking, 'What is the mind?' The mind is not a problem — it's a mystery. Being a human being is a mystery because it's always the answer asking the question. God responds to us in our dilemma by becoming one with our dilemma (not condemning it). God identifies with us in the preciousness of our dilemma.

The teaching goes like this: intuitively I'm like a riddle unto myself. I myself am the manifestation of the mystery — the concrete immediacy of God. God is closer to me than I am to myself and is also painfully aware of how unaware I am of this. How can I close the gap so I can realise this vision? How can that vision become the way I really experience my divinity — the preciousness of being a human being? If you were God, you'd choose to be yourself. We long to be stabilised in the realisation of the vision — in the contagious energy of awareness — 'mystical union or bust.'

Eckhart offers us simple but lifelong guidelines:

First guideline - to realise the root issue is attachment — possessiveness of the heart — clinging to the futile effort of living life on my own terms — to become so bound up by itinerary. Although spirituality is infinitely more real than ego, spirituality is the very reality of ego. The density and intensity of ego's illusion eclipses the capacity to experience all that we really are. Psychotherapy allows people to relax in their suffering so they can be intimate with their pain.

Second guideline - detachment from images — to have a virgin mind. What he's saying is hard to get because it's so fundamental. An image is a thought in the mind, so all our thoughts are images. An image we may say is a belief. He's not saying push the reset button — it's the attachment that's the problem. The intensity of our belief blocks our view. Beliefs about myself, my culture, my religion, where I live, my family — the internalised repertoire of ideas about myself and the person I am. Eckhart would say, as helpful as these are in relative consciousness, no idea is you — you cannot think yourself — you are unthinkable, but not unknowable. You can learn to know yourself. We're trapped in the idealogy of ourselves. All that we really are is beyond anything we think we are. However, we can taste the mystery of ourselves. Wean yourself off the idea of who you are. Come to terms with the futility of the effort. Practice this attitude. Don't come to any resting place within yourself. Imagine a stone falling into a bottomless body of water and imagine you are that stone. There are protrusions falling from the cliff — the movement of the water rolls you on. This will go on through all eternity. It's a journey that has no end and the subjectivity is you. Everything is always giving way to something that is deeper.

Third guideline - other people. Think of the people you live with. They have emotional valances (screens hiding what is beneath). There's no such thing as a foreseeable encounter with somebody else. It's a mystery. See everybody this way. No idea of a person will ever tell you who they are. We didn't come here to understand each other; we came here to believe in each other. Every idea of God is infinitely less than God and therefore the extent to which we cling to any idea of God is the extent to which there is an obstacle to God. We need to have a willingness not to know God so that in the unknown we begin to know. In love-filled silence, the word God evokes from the heart the awareness of God. God is never reducible to any of our ideas of God. And it's the same with ideas about any other person or ideas about the earth — no idea of the earth is the earth — or ideas about the universe. The universe is God's body — it's unthinkable, but not unknowable. The things of this earth are seductive to us. When you walk through a forest, you realise the Beloved has passed this way in haste. You see the mountains — the Beloved is the mountains.

Fourth guideline - the path of suffering. Eckhart teaches that we should always do our best to avoid suffering, to help others to avoid suffering, and to help heal suffering. Each of us has an unfinished edge of suffering in our heart — the hurting place. It's in you and in me — the place where we taste the intimacy of our own suffering. Your suffering does not belong to you. Loneliness, for example, makes you one with all the people around the world who are lonely. This is true of all your suffering. It unites you with all who experience this suffering. God is the infinity of your suffering. To approach suffering in a sacred way is to hold it with reverence and respect. The paradox is that you do your best to avoid it while at the same time being intimate with it. Give intuitive priority to the creative stream and recognise the sacred quality in everything.

Eckhart was very aware of moments of ecstatic experience. He didn't focus on them because he felt we could become attached to mystical experience which is sublimated ego — strategies of the ego. Rather he was trying to experience ordinary experience in a new way, to appreciate the ordinary as a manifestation of great depth. However, he also acknowledged they can be extremely helpful — to taste it you then know the experience of it. It's no longer just a theory. It's like a marker in your heart.

We live day by day in ego consciousness (in our intellect, memory, will), in our bodily being, the five senses which connect us with the world around us, emotions rising and falling within us. If we look at the next frame, ego experience is illumined by faith — the awareness of a presence beyond the senses — divine mystery, beyond words. Religious traditions give us a language for the mystery that transcends us, is the origin of us, and is calling us. Still, ego and its thoughts about God is still thought, memory of God is still memory, desire for God is still desire.

Next, there is a moment of spiritual awareness which is not explainable. It transcends all aspects of the ego, places you in a state of heightened awareness in which you are not thinking. Likewise with the experience of the light of the moon in its virginal newness. It's an experience of an inner fullness that by the sheer bruteness of the mind you can't make happen. It transcends the will; it's beyond intellect, memory and will, and is not reducible to any thoughts or emotions. It's oneness realised in direct experience of what faith proclaims — the sacredness of life. It's an internal reference point, a marker in our heart, a habitual state of consciousness. What if we were not subject to the tyranny of time and lived beyond the will? What would it be like to live in the habitual awareness of love giving itself to us....?

Eckhart is saying that there are ways to detach ourselves so that the fullness can come flowing in — accepting life as it is with all its suffering. Meditation is another way we can practise detachment. To complete today's session, James presented the basics of meditation practice from the Cloud of Unknowing written by an unknown disciple of Eckhart. We need to mature in the act of life. If we try to enter the contemplative life, we won't be able to sustain it unless we are ready. We have to grow up, face ourselves, be ourselves, ripen ourselves in the act of living. Sometimes we are given a taste of awakening. Take one of these moments in which you are touched. Stop and think about the moment where your heart was quickened, and with your intention lift that place up. Don't say anything, just stay there like that.

Stilled by the beauty, we freely choose to approximate the stance that awakening brought. We close our eyes or lower them to the ground, we bow at the beginning and at the end of our practice. When we bow, we give ourselves up. As contemplative men and women the least we can do is bow. We then rest our hands in our lap, sit straight, poised and alert, and we relax into the present moment. We allow slow, deep, natural breathing. With the mind, be present, open and awake, neither clinging to nor rejecting anything. You may want to explore this at home, sitting quietly with all your heart. Settle in to being present in the present moment. We're not trying to stop thinking. In meditation, we neither think nor stop thinking. We just stay present, open and awake, just observing thought. If you watch it very carefully, it arises, it endures, and it passes away. As it arises, it gathers an energy field. Keep returning to the stance of observing thought. The goal is to discover as thoughts arise that you may see for yourself God appearing. We're trying to taste the divinity of arising, enduring, and passing. Do the same with feelings as they arise. Simply observe. In non-judgemental compassion, return to the stance of observing.

Awareness of breathing helps some people to sustain the stance. Feel the oceanic love of God for you breath by breath. For others a word helps. This practice grounds you in the miracle of the present moment — the ungraspable miracle of being here. Wean yourself off your addiction to the storyline of who you think you are. Give yourself over to the present moment. At the completion of your meditation, express gratitude and bow.

James recommends doing this every day to establish the habit. It's subtle. It may be helpful to meditate at the same time of day, for the same length of time, and in the same place. Choose the time of day when you are most awake and sit for perhaps 20 to 30 minutes — short enough to fit practically in to your daily schedule. It's not a theory and it's something we do faithfully with all our heart. You know that you are called. Throughout the day there are glimpses and flashes of something holy happening, opening to you in daily fidelity of your practice, and eventually it becomes one.

Join us tomorrow as James takes us further into the divine fullness of the birthing stage of the spiritual journey.

- Mattie Porte -

Photographer: Sverre Koxvold

Day 2 - Birth of World and Soul

The day began with a review of the previous day. In summary, Eckhart is trying to help us wake up. There is the universe and infinity, and where they meet is the point of oneness that is perpetually birthing itself moment by moment in a dynamic activity of love. God holds nothing back. To wake up and realise this unity, we must become detached. This is a lifelong, intimate practice. The morning session followed, focusing on meditation and detachment.

Meditation
Meditation is listening to the virgin mind. There are thought systems of God from different cultural perspectives, e.g., Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, etc. This is a culturally specific music of language of divinity trying to express what cannot be said. Eckhart advocates that whilst accepting all traditions we think clearly in an orderly way questioning what reality is. We practice being clear minded and not getting caught up in a web of thought and ideas. Meditation is a practice to this end that embodies life and suffering. There is no agenda or ulterior motive in meditation. We sit quietly and calmly in awareness. Take a backward step and observe what arrives in consciousness. We sit attentively and watch the thoughts arise. Observe what arises without thinking about the thought. When the mind flips into thinking take a backward step to observing. The practice is the same with body sensations and emotions. Observe all that arises with non-judgmental consciousness and compassion. As we will fall into thinking – observe and step back. Meditation is a non-judgmental awareness of all that has arisen.

Detachment
As we watch thoughts arise, endure and pass away, we begin to endure the divinity of thoughts arising. Oneness is the fruit of detachment. The ‘I’ that is aware of this is the infinite observer who observes everything arise-endure-pass away. This distinct consciousness is the infinity of oneness.

James quoted from Eckhart on the subject:

‘Here in the ground (God’s ground) is my ground and my ground is God’s ground.’

‘There is something in the soul (namely in the ground) in which God is bare and the masters say this is nameless, and has no name of its own …. God is always present and within it. I say that God has always been in it, eternally and uninterruptedly …’

… God is nowhere so truly as in the soul, and … in the inmost soul, in the summit of the soul.’

‘There is something that transcends the created being of the soul, not in contact with created things, which are nothing: not even an angel has it, though he has a clear being that is pure and extensive: even that does not touch it. It is akin to the nature of the deity, it is one in itself, and has naught in common with anything. It is a stumbling block to many a learned cleric.’

Meditation Practice
The ten-minute practice started with a bow then line by line participants repeated the following words which lead into the meditation:

Be still and know that I am God
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know
Be still
Be

Suggestions for studying the writing of the mystics and finding a teacher
Find the person (mystic) whose words open your heart for the desire of the Great Way – that person is your teacher. It is a gift to find your teacher – the transmission is heart to heart – mind to mind. It is highly personal – beyond you and yet with you. The mystics write in a way to open the heart and cells. Mystics don’t just say everything is one; they use a language that provokes the realisation and experience of this. The following steps are helpful in studying a mystic text:

1. First read the complete text making notes to yourself about things that strike you.
2. Go back and read the first paragraph and outline the structure of it.
3. Sit with the paragraph and meditate on it.
4. Note how you have experienced the content.
5. Paraphrase it in your own words.

Next, go on to the following paragraph. To study a book this way can take a year or two. When you are finished you may go back and start again in the same way. You can do this over and over again. Reading a book like this can access your heart beyond the words. It is a flow of consciousness.

Questions, Discussion and Sharing
Next, participants broke into groups to discuss these two questions:

1. What is it about Eckhart so far that particularly inspires you?
2. What is it about Eckhart so far that seems particularly confusing?

Once participants had gathered again in the large group, James invited comments and questions to which he responded.

Comment: It is difficult to get the essentiality of the message. The message is a benevolence of spirit.

Response: When we are in this realm, are we responding to essence or being moved by essence? We are moved because we know - this is translogical. We cannot pin down from whence it arises - God, speaker, book, etc. The response is getting ‘joy without a cause.’ We cannot explain this gracious benevolence. It is a quiet amazement about our life. This is not about ego. It is a preciousness of life and existence that is a place of rest and reassurance.

Comment: You are the archetype of the priest channeling grace. You enable me to pick up what you are channeling easily. I would like to go to your sermons if you lived near-by.

Response: You like being with me; I like being with you. There is recognition and affinity that opens up this dimension of our lives. This is the love that makes community possible.

Comment: This understanding at a heart level is difficult to regurgitate intellectually. It is hard to study this material in an academic environment.

Response: The vocation of the theologian is a practice of reflection in thought. When Eckhart chose to be a preacher to the contemplative nuns he used this language to evoke experience and this dynamic is the important part – it is not until it is energised that it becomes alive.

Question: Is it meant to be oral tradition rather than written?

Response: If I could bear witness anywhere I would love to hear Eckhart speak to the contemplative nuns. I am convinced that when he spoke a power opened up. Plato said he did not write down his central teaching as they are transmitted by mind-energy from teacher to student. When you then read the text, the words come alive. Once you have tasted oneness, the words will come alive and you can regain the experience.

Comment: It's the articulation of the jewel of non-word.

Response: This was how the wisdom was passed.

Comment: I am struck by the simple and beautiful practice of Gelazeinheit - surrender versus control; however, my son committed suicide and I'm not ready to surrender to this.

Response: Gelazeinheit is inspiring and simple, yet when one really gets into it, it is daunting. In one sense, it is a purity of simplicity, but it is very challenging to really open up to this. It is in-depth transpersonal work. Struggling with this, with loving patience, is in itself the path – a rite of passage. If you are drawn towards the discipline of articulating the language, inwardly this humbles, transforms and deepens you.

Regarding the tragedy of the loss of your son, suicide is a tragic misdirection. It is never the answer. It is very sad that the last act will be an act of violence to the self. The pain is so great that suicide is a paradoxical way to leave pain - a paradoxical act of love. This helps us with compassion, yet it does not destroy ourselves. Being grounded in love transcends this suffering. It is a mysterious richness that sustains you. Silence is a gift of sustenance. It's transformative - sitting with the presence of God. Be humble when asked to speak as all comes out of silence.

Question: What is the practical application of this material?

Response: Ask what is truly practical. The worldly view is that the task at hand is practical and this can lead to a drowning in practicality. Ask yourself, 'Is the universe practical? Are play, joy and poetry practical? Philosophy is not practical, yet it feeds the soul. Places like Findhorn bear witness to ultimate practicality – true practicality. Being here at this retreat is true practicality.

Question: If I detach from physical possessions, does this bring me closer to the spiritual level?

Response: What helps me is seeing what is going on in my life that has power to name who I am. I believe this constitutes my authority/inauthority. Regarding possession of things, letting go of excess can be a way of manifesting spirituality, but if we are attached to this idea it will not happen. Discernment is important. When we look deeper we are being asked to respect more, rather than let go. Letting things flow in unexpected ways is detachment. It is a willingness to ride the crest of the wave.

Question: When I woke up this morning, I observed anxiety momentarily then confronted the terror of unconditional love. I glimpsed it and wanted to run away into shame and addiction.

Response: Anxiety - we can wake up and think ‘oh shit another day’. There is a difference between the absence of anxiety and freedom within the presence of it. If you wake up with it, it does not mean you have to act on it or drive it away. We can learn to befriend anxiety and be graciously present and calm in its presence. We can learn the inner and outer triggers, round the edges of it, and devise strategies to work with it.

Eckhart's 'Three Phases of the Spiritual Journey'

i) Detachment - growing and becoming spiritually mature (laying bare the Ground).

ii) Birth of World and Soul - a divine generosity welling up out of life. This is the fullness of God/Life (and the impellment to share this with others).

iii) Breakthrough to the Godhead

These are three aspects of a process that happens simultaneously. Sometimes even before one thinks of detachment, one gets flooded with grace. This foretaste of wonder is a stimulus to pursue the path. The process is linear and non linear at the same time.

Vision of the Birth of World and Soul
Setting of the tone (in the language Eckhart used):

i) Emptiness - understanding God as emptiness prior to all distinctions (this is similar to Buddhism and Daoism). The infinite void of presence is without any trace of distinction. Emptiness is God essence, an abyss of oceanic presence - a state of eternal stillness that is pregnant with God. The universe is in all of us, yet utterly hidden, empty still and void. Stillness of the Godhead is our destiny – we come back home to emptiness whilst pregnant with God.

ii) Perpetual Motion Gives Birth to Intimacy – this oceanic stillness is perpetually in motion. It is a boiling paradox of stillness in a state of dynamic activity. This boiling is the manifestation of emptiness. It gives birth to divine intimacy and this intimacy is the first manifestation of emptiness. This divine relationship of knowledge and love is the infinite oneness (trinity).

iii) Boiling Over of Emptiness is the Origin of All - the divine emptiness boils over and the universe is the super abundant overflow. This manifestation is a perfect expression of God and everything is divine. Creation is God bringing through to existence the trees, stars, sun, etc. - the birthing of eternal nature. God and the universe arise simultaneously. It is the creation that makes the creator with no infinite distance between. There is eternal pregnancy and birthing perpetually evolving manifestations of emptiness – a paradox.

Letting go of Attachment
As we let go of attachment, we start to sense the beginningness and endless nature of all things. As Jung said, this is: ‘The secret that whispers in the brooks.’ This is a lucid immediacy – heard in the detachment of meditative stillness. All opens up in the fruit of attachment – the sacredness of God being given as concreteness of each thing. However, in attachment we do not see the light. We are the apertures through which it shines and the more we open up through meditation the more awareness we have of the light.

The generosity of God is the totality reality given in the concrete immediacy of each thing – one thing/person is not loved more than another. There is equanimity of love in every twig, flower, person, bee, etc. People have the capacity to awaken and intimately experience this. Our responsibility in the universe is to bare witness to the generosity of the universe by the way we live our life. God, the father, is eternally giving birth in one and the same act of birthing. The following quotes allude to this: (this kind of quote got Eckhart in trouble)

‘everything that Holy scripture says of Christ is entirely true of every good and holy man’ (37)
understands everything I say …… whoever loves justice remains so firmly established in it that what he loves becomes his own essence. Nothing can distract him from this, and he heeds nothing else.’

Apart from justice, the person described in the quote above has no life of his own. Become the medium that justice can manifest through you. What is the birth of the world in soul as a light energy? Find that person, community, creative process, ministry, form of service within. When you give yourself to it with the whole heart, it unravels and strangely brings you home to yourself when you are closest to origin. The finite exhausts you in a way that energises you with the force of life itself.

‘He (God) has borne him in my soul. Not only is she (the soul) with Him and He equally with her but he is in her: the Father gives birth to His Son in the soul in the very same way as He gives birth to him in eternity, and no differently. He must do it whether He likes it or not. The Father begats His son unceasingly and further more I say He begets me as His son and the same son. I say even more: not only does He beget me as His son, but He begets me as Himself and Himself as me, and me as His being and His nature…. All that God works is one: therefore He begats me as His son without any difference.’ (38)

Authentic Giving
The more you give away the more you have. This is a paradox. The invitation is to look deeply at how and why we give. Sometimes people hear this language and respond by giving themselves away. They extend to others generosity they don’t give themselves. It does not work to give everything away and this can lead to metaphysical burn-out. This is not true generosity. Authentic giving is being there for yourself and the community supporting this. We extend to others generosity that we hold back from ourselves because of a deep inner shame.

What are the signs of this birthing in this life?

‘Now pay attention and look --------- fruitfulness of gift is the gratitude of gift’

‘He who understands my teaching about justice and the just man'

Attachment/Detachment Realms
The following comparison shows the difference in perceptions of the attachment and detachment realms:

Attachment Realm:

Body - Preoccupation with pleasure, appearance, and avoiding pain.
Attachment to self through body.

Relationship
Projecting onto others unmet needs and getting angry at others who do not fulfill our needs.

Work
Arena for power, reputation, identity through doing, self esteem – I am what I do ‘The moment you make anything out of anything you are dead.’ (Merton).

Religion:

Thought realm - need to be right - believe what I believe. If you differ from me you are in error.

Experience Realm - Quest for spiritual experience and perception - attainment is the aim.

Detachment Realm:

Body - experienced as a fragile, wondrous, sensual miracle - an incarnation of deathless love. A deep respect for mystery of falling asleep and waking up.

Relationship - Experience of the ‘thou’ – I and thou that fills entire horizon of being.
Recognition of preciousness of the other. Endless relationship.

Religion:
Birthing is the communal wisdom of tradition. An Inner system with its own integrity.

A global mandala – an expression of the divine. Transparent metaphor of all thought - provoking sense of awe and beauty.

‘The Ology’ The Word that expresses. Birth of the word in soul (illuminating experiences).

Experiential, childlike spirituality. An endlessly trustworthy mystery.

The Ground
The ground is a place deep within us that remains untraumatised. God’s ground is your ground; your potential is God’s potential. Formal creation is finite of soul, body, mind, and senses the interiority of our lifeforce. Virtual creation is infinite. The ground is the uncreated, the oneness - God and ourself that is realised in detachment. It is the learning of a language to awaken the soul and unearth the ground.

Mystic World View
Each mystic is unique yet there is profound resonance between them. For example, Jesus and the Buddha had the same inner landscapes. They were mystics and in their own voices made similar statements. What the Buddha called ignorance Jesus called blindness. They both saw that:
* we do not recognise the light we live in (ignorance)
* in our confusion we are afraid
* in our fear we cling (attachment)
* in clinging, the suffering is worse - intensity of suffering
* ignorance, clinging and ego are the three modes of suffering
* the remedy for ignorance is to wake up; the remedy for clinging is to let go; the remedy for intense suffering is to die (reduce the ego)
* we are addicted to finiteness, e.g., striving for enlightened ego.

Join us tomorrow for the final day of our retreat with James and a deeper exploration into the third phase of the spiritual journey according to Eckhart: 'Breakthrough to the Godhead.'

- Jane Rasbash -

Day 3 - Breakthrough to the Godhead

The stage is set for the experience of manifesting ourselves as God, James began, reiterating the material from the previous day's sessions. The sadness of our life has its roots in not knowing who we are. Our vocation is to realise and bear witness to the divine nature of the universe.

God is like a woman in labour, giving birth. We are powerless to do anything but be loved by infinite love. The question is, 'What good does it do if we don't realise it?' I am it, therefore I'm at odds with myself if I don't see it. If one person is in hell, God is in hell. The mystery of hell is love unaccepted. Let's say you've hurt someone you really love and you come into their presence and they say they've forgiven you, yet you can't forgive yourself - that's love unaccepted.

The vision is a call that we may awaken to, in obediential fidelity, that we may bear witness. How illusive. We know it's there because we've tasted it. It's like a homesickness - a holy discontent - that, although uncomfortable, is the gift. The discontent impels us to touch this underlying abiding awareness.

James further explained using the following analogy.... Imagine you've inherited an elaborate mansion, but you don't have the keys, so you have to sleep in a tent outside on the grounds. You've invited all your relatives and you say to them, 'Would you like to see the place?' You gather round and look in the windows, peering through to the library and the grand ballroom and you get a ladder so you can view the upper floors through the windows. Another version of the image is that you're already in the mansion, but through some tragic mental condition, you don't realise it. The point is that we are already in the palace of nowhere. You've already tasted it. So, again, the question is, why do we spend so many hours trapped on the outer circumference of the richness of the inner life we're living, and what do we do about it?

This is when we turn to the teacher, James advises. The teacher knows what it's like because he's been there. He's a seasoned seeker who says, 'Let me show you the way.'

The final day of the retreat led us to stage three of Eckhart's view of the spiritual journey: Breakthrough to the Godhead. James began the exploration with this quote from Eckhart:

Acting and becoming are one. God and I are one in this work: he acts and I become. Fire transforms all things it touches into its own nature. The wood does not change the fire into itself, but the fire changes the wood into itself. In the same way we are transformed into God so that we may know him as he is.

The stage is set now, so how do we do it - how do we breakthrough?

1. We detach from the illusion. We see the truth and correspondingly see that our task is to let go of the illusion (just as the alcoholic's task is to stop drinking). Live by love. Ask, 'What's the most loving thing I can do right now?' Be lovingly compassionate with yourself in moments when you can't do it - learn to be a great lover.

2. We develop a virgin mind. Let go of images and ideas. Free yourself up from the finite nature of labels - your idea of God, the earth, each other. As you learn to love the other person, you learn to know them. Don't trash the words, but see them as transparent metaphors for that which words can't see. It's a mystery. Words point to the mystery. Accept life as it is with all it's suffering and do your best to overcome it. We're not exempt from it. Be at peace with the hardships of your life. God is one with us in the mysteriousness of the hardship. The Buddha called it equanimity of mind. What if all your peace and inner security rested in more or less than what just is? The lack arises when we think the conditions existing are other than the conditions we need to be happy. In a state of equanimity, the peace that surpasses understanding is present. Look how far you've evolved - where would you be had you not experienced even the most horrendous? The new emerges out of the darkness. Knowing that this is true in your heart is the way to peace - the fruit of detachment.

Meditation practice is a way of embodying this. It's a love-filled silence in which you practice virgin mind. You're just a pure awareness being present in the present moment. When you inhale listen to the body teaching you how to receive the gift of life in the inhalation itself. It's received one breath at a time. Day after day, month after month, year after year, you can experience God breathing into you and you are in wonder. You come upon a fullness. You realise it not as a theory or a poetic statement, but as reality. Meditation lays open the ground. The moment we lean into it with childlike sincerity, the more intimate our effort.

Now we're going to move on to birth of the soul. Sitting in general loving awareness, there can come this heightened richness of oneness welling up. Ego says, 'What was that?' and starts to critique it. What James suggests is to just observe the ego asking its questions - that's what the ego does. Just let it be. Allow the purity of the flow to take care of it. The ego is then left to rest in its true nature. God wants us to have a healthy ego. If it's not healthy, we suffer and we cause others to suffer. The ego is a self-reflective bodily being in the world. The problem comes in when we think that's all we are.

We're at this place in the journey now of the deeply transformative process of detachment. We deepen this process in the day by day by being a loving, non-ideological person, accepting life as it is, intimate with each other's self. Up close, live, breath by breath, with deep attentiveness to the inhalation - God giving us love one breath at a time through the generosity of the infinite. Direct realisation of all of this lays bear the ground. In this receptive stillness, we taste oneness.

Now, one must bear fruit by allowing the generosity of God to flower through your life - take it in, taste the fullness then you in turn generously respond by giving yourself back, living your life with all your heart. Find that act, that creative process. It unravels your petty preoccupation of your self-absorbed self. Give to your work, your community, each other. You're just yourself, without pretense, without posturing, without your masks. How do we live without the masks? Of course, in our roles, there's a certain appropriateness of behaviour required, but we take it too far. So instead, you start showing up, living your life with all your heart, one day at a time. You're giving yourself back to God. God gives birth, detachment lays bear the gift, and we give it back by living our life fully.

Eckhart says:

'In the inmost part, where none is at home, there that light finds satisfaction and there it is more one than it is in itself for this ground is an impartible stillness, motionless in itself, and' by this immobility all things are moved, and all those receive life that live of themselves, being endowed with reason. (bold, James)

'In this I believe we can see the suggestion of a truly novel form of experience. For me to thus Breakthrough to the Godhead means that somehow I must come to share in these facts of the Godhead and go beyond all distinctions: those between the powers and the spark, between creatures and God, and even the subtle distinctions between the Trinity and the Godhead. Most importantly, all creatures must come to be cognised as nondistinguished from the divine expanse which has been (since the Birth) encountered within myself. The peculiar oceanic feeling is hence encountered not only internally but externally. Eckhart is describing a coming to perceive that BY THE VERY IMMOBILITY WITHIN MYSELF “ALL THINGS ARE MOVED.”

To Breakthrough to the Godhead is apparently to directly perceive just this: all things are moved by that which I myself am. It is a coming to see and encounter all things as having God at their ontological core.'

'Appeal could also be made to the example of music. The hearer of such melodious beauty is “all ears.” If he does not know how to reproduce inwardly, simultaneously, identically, that which his ears hear, if by distraction or incapacity he omits to accompany in himself the sounds that the senses perceive, then he does not know how to listen. Properly speaking, perfect listening implies that the distinction between the soloist, on one side, and the listener, on the other, is no longer true. Through the unique event of the song that enraptures us, one identical being accomplishes itself. Thus the fundamental determination of existence is “operative identity” or, in homage to Aristotle, “energetic identity.”

According to Eckhart, human existence seeks to fulfill itself in identity. This trait appears particularly in the most decisive acts of life: in the foundation of a family or of a community, in a dialogue that actualises two “words of existence,” or again in the acceptance of destiny. These events always unite those whom they affect. They are destined for man. It is not someone's will that has favoured the course of things, but the course of things that favours us. We say: “It” so happened, “there were” circumstances, “there is” being. Hidden under the anonymity of these neuter forms is a power that gathers men to their fate. When anonymity befalls us, it delegates destiny to us. Such a mittance, geschick, is not a matter of the will and asceticism. One has to be very release, gelassen, to respond properly to what destiny sends.

Eckhart suggests an example to explain this: consider what happens in conversation. Through your words a clearance of understanding opens up which points towards the word of existence murmured in all that you say or do. But the event of such an opening is the work of neither you nor me. The “we” is not the achievement of the “I” or of the “you”; rather it comes to be of its own accord. When it occurs there “is” nothing else besides itself. In such moments two existences are determined as identical: identical in the gerûrke, that is, in the event.'

Eckhart is trying to help us understand modes of awareness that live within us. We have the responsibility to realise the divinity of all things. This is where the earth comes in and ecology - all are one as shown in Eckhart's universal metaphor:

'With the affirmation that all things are identical in God and with God, the third partner is introduced into the universal symballein; after releasement has playfully brought together man and God, the part of the world is played. Releasement is now a thought about the world. God, man, and the world are joined in the free play of identity where “God is altogether our own and where all things are our own in him.”'

'With this free interplay detachment itself fades away. There is nothing left for man to detach himself from. He is perfectly released. The effort of detachment has overcome itself into pure releasement. As releasement loses all voluntary or ascetic connotations, the totality comes to presence. Their primitive flow from the origin renders all things, God, man, and the world, present to one another. Releasement accounts for the restorative new birth of all things to identity. The symbolic identity is thus more primitive and, as it is uncreated, more real than substantial identity. Likewise releasement is more primitive, uncreated, than detachment, whose function is to regulate man's dealings with things, that is created substance.'

'God gives to all things equally, and as they flow from God, they are all equal. Indeed, angels and men and creatures are equal in their primitive emanation, by which they flow from God. Someone who would get hold of things in their primitive emanation would get hold of them as they are all equal. If they are thus equal in time, they are still more so in eternity, in God. If we take a fly, In God, it is more noble in God than the highest angel is in itself. This is how all things are equal in God and are God himself.'

Imagine you're meditating and an archangel comes to you and starts whispering the secrets of the universe in your ear. You hear the buzzing of a fly, and say to the angel, 'Just a minute.' You go over to the window and swat the fly. All falls silent and God says, 'You just swatted God itself - the flyness of God.'

In God, as God, God loves everything equally. This is the essence of God - not this hubris of the ego, the human being trying to dominate nature - we are one with nature. Every religion has its own way of honouring. The sin is the irreverence, the callousness, not to separate from the cyclic interplay. Climate change, for example, is the earth speaking back to us. What matters is to see it. To be born into the biosphere, we become integral to the pattern by taking it into ourselves and giving it back in our activities and finally we give our bodies back in death.

'I wondered recently if I should accept or desire anything from God. I shall consider this carefully, for if I accepted something from God, I would be inferior to God like a serf, and he, in giving, would be like a lord. But in eternal life, such should not be our relation.

'Why do you love God?” - “I do not know, because of God.” - “ Why do you love the truth?” - “Because of the truth.” - “Why do you love justice?” - “Because of justice.” - “Why do you love goodness?” - “Because of goodness.” - “ Why do you live?” - “My word! I do not know! But I am happy to live.”

Eckhart prefers to live in the mutuality....

'Therefore, I say, if a man turns away from self and from created things, then - to the extent that you do this - you will attain oneness and blessedness in your soul's spark, which time and place never touched. This spark is opposed to all creatures; it wants nothing but God naked, just as He is. It is not satisfied with the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Ghost, or all three Persons so far as they preserve their several properties. I declare in truth, this light would not be satisfied with the unity of the whole fertility of the divine nature. In fact I will say still more, which sounds even stranger: I declare in all truth, by the eternal and everlasting truth, that this light is not content with the simple, changeless divine being which neither gives nor takes: rather it seeks to know whence this being comes, it wants to get into its simple Ground, into the Silent Desert, into which no distinction ever peeped of Father, Son or Holy Ghost.'

In the beginning we lived out of ego as our base of operations, then we got a taste of oneness and, in the tasting, realised how claustrophobic and one dimensional ego is, and so set out on a path of detachment, birthing, and living life with all our heart. We see that when we live this way, our ground is the divine birthing of God. We're so grateful that we are growing in the realisation, then we see that our fulfillment is really something deeper. We come home to the oceanic consciousness that we're homesick for. The emptiness, prior to expressing itself, is calling us to itself. And we'll only come home when we come home to that emptiness. The nothingness is pregnant with God. There is no beginning, no end, no distinction. This emptiness is ourselves and becomes the ground out of which we're living our lives. This emptiness is the manifested form.

It makes sense that the deeper we go in this journey, the less we're able to say in our customary language. It is no longer adequate. We almost have to use language that carries a certain lack of burden it's not used to carrying.

To the extent you've experienced it, you recognise. The effectiveness of your communication is to the extent you've recognised it. It's illusive. As the birth of word deepens, there comes a mysterious sense of mutuality and equality. For example, even though an ant is not at the biospheric place of consciousness emerging, the ant is no less sacred. There's a strange kind of communal oneness that you intuit in your heart because you've tasted oneness. Your receptivity to the gift has been so refined that there's a pure, empathic resonance of purity with the gift. The perceived dualism of giver and receiver is no longer. It's no longer 'relationship with' - it's oneness.

Moving on to the stage of breakthrough to the Godhead, let's assume we are living our interpenetration of the oneness of all things, then you ask yourself, 'Why? - Why such a wondrous interplay? Why is there something rather than nothing?' It begins welling up from the richness, 'What is the unmanifestation of emptiness? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there someone rather than no-one?'

The response in your heart is that there is no why. God has no intention - it's the anarchy of the ineffable - the anarchy of emptiness that gives itself up. The rose blooms without asking why. It's a loosely held structure that keeps breaking forth. Transcendence surpasses all set limits, playing itself out delightfully. Oneness is the freedom of this love.

Eckhart: '“Paul rose from the ground and with open eyes saw nothing.” I cannot see what is one. He saw nothing, that is: God. … When the soul is unified and there enters into total self-abnegation, then she finds God as in Nothing. It appeared to a man as in a dream – it was a waking dream – that he became pregnant with Nothing like a woman with child, and in that nothing God was born. He was the fruit of nothing. God was born in the Nothing. Therefore he says: “he arose from the ground with open eyes, seeing nothing.” ' (bold, James)

Eckhart uses the word nothingness as 'no - thing - ness', for example, a watch is a being in the act of being a watch; however, God is not. God is a pure 'be ing' being 'be ing'. There is no thing being God. We start becoming less and less distinct.

'It is a strange and desert place and it's rather nameless than possessed of a name, and is more unknown than it is known. If you could naught yourself for an instant, indeed I say less than an instant, you would possess all that this is in itself. But as long as you mind yourself or anything at all, you know no more of God than my mouth knows of colour or my eye of taste … '

Even nothingness is a no-name name. If you can disappear from yourself as observing yourself you'll know yourself.

EE Cummings wrote this poem about nothing in honour of Eckhart:

What Got him was Noth

What Got him was Noth
Ing & nothing’s exAct
ly what any one Living
(or some
body
Dead
like even a Poet)could
hardly express what
i Mean is
what knocked him over Wasn’t
(for instance)the Knowing your

whole(yes god

dammed)life is a Flop or even
to
Feel how
Everything(dreamed
& hoped &
prayed for
months & weeks & days & years
& nights &
forever)is Less Than
Nothing(which would have been

Something(what got him was nothing

Here we are stuck in 'somethingness' looking for emptiness....'Something' is emptiness manifest - pregnant with God and all things, so I, prior to any expression of God, myself must have been in that emptiness as that emptiness - the unborn you that will never die. So everything the emptiness did, I did. This is even deeper than God.

Eckhart: 'This is why I pray to God to rid me of God, for my essential being (min wesenlich wesen) is above God insofar as we comprehend God as the principle of creatures. Indeed, in God’s own being, where God is raised above all being and all distinctions, I was myself, I willed myself, and knew myself to create this man [that I am]. Therefore I am cause of myself according to my being which is eternal, but not according to my becoming which is temporal. Therefore also I am unborn, and according to my unborn being I can never die. According to my unborn being I have always been, I am now, and shall eternally remain. What I am by my [temporal] birth is to die and be annihilated, for it is mortal; therefore with time it must pass away. In my [eternal] birth all things were born, and I was cause of myself as well as of all things. If I had willed it, neither I nor any things would be. And if I myself were not, God would not be either: that God is God, of this I am a cause. If I were not, God would not be God. There is, however, no need to understand this.'

So I, willing myself into existence, non-distinct from what created me, therefore I am cause of myself according to my being which is eternal. I'm not saying we are God, I'm saying we're nothing without God. Therefore also I am unborn and I can never die. I've always been, am now and shall always be. This is why a kid on a merry-go-round will, every time he goes round, wave at his parents and they'll always wave back. God arose simultaneously with creation. God is God, of this I am the cause. If I were not, God would not be God. It's an articulation of incomprehensible love - deep calls unto deep.

There's a saying, "Sometimes I go about pitying myself and all the while a great form moves me across the sky." We begin to realise we are non-distinct from the hidden emptiness moving us across the sky. In the stillness within myself all arises. The ego is the subjectivity of otherness - the breakthrough of subjectivity is oneness. All acts - dying, loving, being born - are out of my stillness. I cannot explain it. It is no longer other than.

Commentary by Shurman: '…to reproduce Eckhart’s experience of being, but only on one condition:“He who wants to understand my teaching of releasement must himself be perfectly released.” An attitude is required for thinking to succeed. We propose to define mysticism as this reciprocity between existence and thought: to think of being as releasement one must first of all have a released existence. This appears to be a more satisfactory approach to the phenomenon of mysticism than all definitions that derive the mystical experience from the arrival in consciousness of an all-encompassing being that submerges us.

'Each line of Meister Eckhart testifies to uneasiness about the fundamental inadequacy of language when confronted by the joy without a cause. There are perhaps illogical murmurings which mobilize deeper forces in us than does the rigor of constructed discourse. Meister Eckhart undertakes the risk of “speculative mysticism,” explaining under philosophical guise the overwhelming closeness of the origin beyond God. That this clothing is full of holes suggest to us the fire that consumed him. The struggle for the right concept, when it has recourse to paradox, turns into combat, and, after reasonings and commentaries, at last invites silence.'

We can have this experience, but only on one condition - you must become released in order to understand releasement. You will understand this as you are this - out of the very intimacy of your presence, you are this - you're an unfolding story. The degree of understanding is proportional to the degree of releasement.

An attitude is required for thinking to be perceived. I am that of which I speak, you speak. Together, there is a communal recognition of what no-one can grasp. This is God's language - the reality. We are understanding it to become it. For example, compare a woman who has never had a child, but becomes an expert on motherhood through study and gives talks on the subject, with the woman who holds her newborn baby in her arms for the first time and doesn't say a word - she can't speak it because she is it. The living knowledge is to become what you know.

Eckhart chose the rigor of constructive discourse that transcends the discipline of language:

'An existence that dwells in nothingness is one in which everything just begins. It abides in the origin of the Creator. In this preorginary origin, says Meister Eckhart, only silence maintains itself.

'At the outset of his odyssey of detachment, man did not expect that much. His path appeared as one of voluntary poverty, but now it has led him into a region beyond God where he no longer recognizes himself. He feels as if he had reached that point of wandering that Japanese Zen masters depict by a canvas totally covered with black. God, man, and the world are no more, there is only the unspeakable intradivine “ebullience,” without a purpose and in which nothing lasts. But his wandering exploration of the origin has changed him. He has become playful. He asks no more for meanings and goals. As the preoriginary origin opens the play, it grants itself by “allusion,” ad-ludere. Earlier, God, man, and the world had appeared reconciled by the play of the symbolic identity of the three. Wandering identity, or dehiscence, goes a step further. The three subsist no longer, they allude to a oneness that preserved the manifold in the unity of provenance and imminence.

'A man who has experienced this “allusion,” Meister Eckhart says, goes back to the businesses of the world: the stable or some other trade. He is no longer eager to hold God; he knows that eagerness, even mystical, makes one forgetful. Eagerness wants to get hold of God as though to envelop his head in a cloak and put him away under a bench.'

What this means, James said in jest, is that we ended up getting more than we bargained for and we're no longer interested in lofty things.

James concluded the session by offering participants some thoughts to take home. He acknowledged that the customary way you tend to be at home is going to return. It's normal. The idea is to go home and live the intimacy of you, knowing that you've been touched by divine ordinariness. Here are some thoughts to help sustain you:

1. Have a daily quiet time with no agenda, just love. Sit alone with the attitude, 'Here I am - it's just me.' You're just yourself. Have a meditation practice with no ulterior motives. Sit still with all your heart.

2. Find your teacher - the one whose words touch you, who speaks to you about what you long for. Read slowly, studying the teachings.

3. Practice devotional sincerity. Ask for the grace not to break this thread - is it possible to live this way, to cultivate this mindfulness? Have faith in boundless value. It matters how you wash up the coffee cup. Do all by being present to it. Know that love is the fullness of this. Learn to be a lover of all. Trust that where you are in your progress is the fullness of love completing itself. Befriend your fragility as a teacher. Being fully alive in the present moment is the great reward. Daily life is all there is and daily life goes on forever.

Thank you for joining us in this divinely ordinary exploration of Eckhart's stages of the spiritual journey. How blessed we have been to have James Finley as our guide. James will be back at Findhorn 14 November, 2009.

- Mattie Porte -

Photographer: Sverre Koxvold

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