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As in Satsang's song "Remember Jah" - a spiritual law is not a suggestion. Life works in a way that is true to itself. We cannot change the way the Way works. Only "Yes" works, all else does not. You cannot alter the fact that rain descends and smoke ascends.
Theistically speaking, "Yes" to God cannot supplant "Yes" to Nature, for Nature is the template of Intelligence. Nature and God cannot be seen as separate - to see one is to see both, and to see both is to see one.
A natural shift when walking the Way is from belief to wisdom, from propositional faith to insight. My experience as a past participant, educator, and pastor in Christianity is the Christian church has focused on doctrine and almost totally ignored the wisdom teachings in its Scriptures, including Jesus' great wisdom teachings, turning Jesus into an idol, moralist, and sectarian.
Turning wisdom into propositional faith and exalting belief and morality over insight is deadly to any aspiration to live a life in tune with Life unseen and seen, including our living together in harmony on Earth. Wisdom unities; belief and moralism divides.
To study Nature is to study God. This, not for Nature is the same as God, but for Nature is not separate from God.
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July 29, 2006 - in "The Inner Meaning" -
A monk sits under a tree. A lady passing by asks him, "Venerable Master, did you see a woman pass by earlier?" "No," he replies, "I saw only a combination of bones and flesh."
The monk, in stressing only the observable qualities of the human body, reduced a living woman to a walking carcass. This reductionism applies to religion. If religion has no inner meaning, it is at best a social phenomenon and at worst the biggest illusion propagated in history.
A friend was teaching a Sunday School class. Some persons discontinued attending. The complaint? She was being too spiritual in her teachings. However, religion becomes a carcass if it seeks to find its Life outside the spiritual, the domain of Pure Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
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August 9, 2006 - in "A Soaring Beyond" -
I drank the wine
so dark, I could not see;
stripped of knowing,
I was free. Beyond other,
One in me, I in He.
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August 30, 2005 - in "At the Edges of the Familiar" -
What do we do when we bump up against the frontier of the unknown? I mean, the mystical. I do not mean the mystical as an airy, nebulous, and private spirituality. I do not mean an experience for only a few "initiates." I do not mean the mystical as some evasion or escape from this good earth and our bodies, as well as the relationships our lives are lived in and from, daily. I refer to an experience that anyone can have when she opens her heart to the Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.
A pastor and friend of mine, back in the 1970s, spoke to me of a time of spiritual dryness in his life. For a long time, he had felt separated from God, and he agonized over this sense of abandonment. One day, he walked into his field and, suddenly, inundated by the felt Presence of God, he knelt on the ground beside his pond. As my friend spoke to me of this, he could describe the scene but not define the experience. All he could talk about was that this Otherness overwhelmed him, completely, surprisingly, and unforgettably.
* * *
Sitting in my truck, looking out on Damariscotta River, I have just read about awareness again from the late Thich Nhat Hanh. I aspire to be aware in this looking over the water and into the sky, along with birds on surface and in flight, and the slowly setting Sun. Then, as many times before, it dawns on me, as learned and still learning, "You must let it come to you."
The awareness of Presence is not gotten, it is received. Presence gives itself. There must be space for it to give itself, to come to us, for awareness to arise like the dawning Sunlight from the night. Let us not sleep walk through this world, but see.
The Beauty is all around. We live in a Buddha-field, we breathe with Christ - but do we see?
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
