This hug does not mean liking, friendship, warm feelings, tolerating, being nice.
You can turn away, walk away, and still embrace the world.
You can hug close the stars, the moon, the sun, the galaxies.
Love is more powerful than hate, inclusion is the action of grace.
* * *
Gospel of Matthew 13.33 -
And he [Jesus] told them yet another parable.
The Reign of the Skies is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with a bushel of flour and waited until the entire batch of dough had risen.
Of the Skies is a better rendition than the commonly used "Kingdom of Heaven." In Jesus' native language, "heaven" is plural and refers to the skies (ascent), in contrast to earth, the ground (descent). It misleads to read "heaven." To do so directs people to associate what Jesus refers to with a tribal-mythical place, way up, where Christians supposedly go to enjoy pleasure forever. At the same time, everyone else is excluded in torment. "Skies" and "heaven" are not places! You cannot locate them on a map, even a cosmic map. This, even as God is not a person, man, or woman sitting up there somewhere above the clouds!
Too, skies can speak of a higher consciousness (ascent), meaning more wise, subtle, and inclusive. So, not a place but an embrace. The Ladder to Heaven in Christian mysticism signifies growing from egocentric (I) to groupcentric (I-we; ethocentric, religiocentric...) to worldcentric [I-we; all earth others] to cosmiccentric [I-I...; all everything, everyone, anywhere]. One comes to see the I as a flowing interpenetration of forms with forms in a timeless, spaceless melody. Wonderful music! Amazing opus!
The one I "descends" into I-I for sharing, loving, giving and receiving.
Being comes from itself to become one, two, ,three ... to have others to dance with, share meals with, laugh with, be born and live and die with, and to cry with.
I becomes with. I chooses with, so as not to be alone.
The Alone does not want to be alone. The One does not want just to be one. So - Love is the cosmic hug.
* * *
Jesus says the woman prepares a batch of dough and places a small amount of yeast in it. What happens? It rises and becomes a loaf. Growth is the nature of life. Action is the Spirit's act. Wisdom and form commune to create.
How does the loaf become? The woman does her part, places it in the fiery heat, and she leaves the dough alone. She trusts the yeast. She trusts the fiery heat. She does not need to do what the dough, yeast, or fiery heat does. She does not need to keep checking on the dough. She does not need to understand how the dough and yeast become the loaf. Spiritual growth holds a secret, or it is not spiritual growth. Generally, we only witness spiritual emergence after, not before or during. One way we witness this is the dissolution of prior prejudices with expanding inclusion. Metaphorically, our arms keep embracing more and more beings - humans, other.
Had risen indicates process. The woman did not make the bread. The yeast did not make the bread. The fiery heat did not make the bread. She cannot accurately say, "Look at the bread I baked for you." It rose to become a loaf of bread by an interaction of varied causes and conditions. No one can point to any one thing and say, "That made the loaf." It takes all it takes for the dough to rise. It takes all it takes for us to evolve spiritually. We never know all the ingredients involved in the becoming.
* * *
One challenge is the secretive aspect of spiritual growth. The more realized you become, the more veiled the process growing you. You arrive at a place where you no longer try to understand or assess what is happening. Rather, you do! When you do, you just do. You are totally here and totally moving forward straight ahead. You do not try to move onward by looking in the mirror: Gospel of Luke 9.62 - "Jesus spoke, 'No one who starts plowing and looks back is capable of living the Reign of God,'" and Philippians 3.13 - "But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and pressing onward."
Note:Jesus statement in the Gospel of Luke is to those who might or might not choose to follow him. Anyone who has plowed land knows how they must continue looking ahead to keep plowing straight ahead, otherwise the rows do not remain relatively straight. His saying does not mean we can never reflect on the past, never go to therapy for healing complexes which arise from the past, ... We can recall the past while moving forward with our consent to walk the Way. Sometimes, we need to look back, in the sense of remember and reflect. That is one way we heal and grow. Likewise, "forgetting what is behind" is addressing a non-attachment to the past, not a forgetting of it in the psychological sense. We cannot forget the past. But we can bring it into the present and use it as fuel to continue onward.
* * *
One can embrace all forms and non-forms: universal aperspectivism. As in the book by Richard Rohr: Everything Belongs. And not just you, not just your tribe, not just humans, not just the seen, and not just earth. Nature includes it all - All. Your society becomes it all - All. You have moved from being a citizen of yourself to a citizen with everyone and everything. Spirit is borderless, and you have returned to the Heart-of-hearts, which is the return to the one True Self.
This embrace is the demise of groupism, ageism, religious exclusion, anti-religion, gender inequality, racism, sexual discrimination, war, nationalism, colonialism, materialism, corporationalism, billionaires, white supremacy, domestic abuse, homelessness, hunger, and poverty. In this embrace, immigrants are welcome. The Reign of the Skies is a scary thing for the world of egos, including those clothed in religion and nation, for it dismantles the whole egoic, groupish, people-crushing, and spirit-smothering show of lust for greed, wealth, and privilege.
When one grows beyond ethnocentric to worldcentric, nationalism is no more. I realized a sign of this when I no longer wished to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. I would tell people I would pledge to a world flag. This loyalty does not mean one must abandon devotion to one's nation or refuse to pledge loyalty to a nation, but rather that it becomes an allegiance only when it serves the good of all nations. When you have grown to this wisdom and compassion, you would have no wish to go to a tribal heaven overseen by a tribal deity.
This fact tells us how the majority of the two largest religions have yet to open their arms to include anyone who disagrees with them, and how exclusive their god-image is, for their god-image mirrors their own tribalism. This highlights a reason why so many have become attracted to Buddhism and other Eastern wisdom paths, and why the church in the West continues to decline.
Spirit does not need anyone or any group, even religion, to continue its expanding through the evolution of consciousness, which means embrace beyond tolerance to absolute inclusion. Thus, movements such as Make America Great Again are doomed to failure for what they are: resistance to progress and a denial of embrace, which means a refusal of wisdom and compassion. Such movements rot from the inside. They are based on a deeply-seated disdain, and not just of others, but of themselves. Their fuel is hate. Their happiness the suffering of others. Their life-span brief. They fall by their own designs. They are being felled by the axe in their own hands. The one thing thing they most are repelled by, while they say "God" and "Jesus" ..., is love. They crucify Jesus again, and again, and again, ... while professing the name. They ignore these words from their own Bible: "When you've done it to one of the least of these, my siblings, you've done it to me." This is a scene of a final judgement, where treated of others, not belief, is the litmus test.
Note: The MAGA movement is not Christian, does not even come close. It is a lie. It has betrayed and denied the Christ, and all decency. While wearing masks and guns and smoke bombs and pepper spray, it has beaten Jesus, dragged him along the pavement, kidnapped him, imprisoned him in concentration camps, and killed him. It has protected pedophiles and killers. It has robbed the citizenship. It has followed a vile, inhuman, beastly anti-Christ. Again, it is not even close to being Christian. The hug does not mean remaining silent about evil, and it does not mean denying evil exists. Yet, the evil is not an unseen, cosmic devil called Satan. The Light speaks into the darkness, speaking what it is, exposing it to be what it is, not what it claims to be. Yet, it does this from love. Love does not mean toleration. Love to be love sometimes is intolerant; intolerant of all that is abusive to the good Creation, to all beings, human and other. We are all siblings together of One Light, One Love, One Joy. Sad that MAGA, and all racist groups - including Israelis and Russians in their genocidal wars, one against the Ukrainians and one against the Palestinians- cannot see this. Sad they miss the joy of a love that can welcome the world, and beyond. Hate leaves one alone, whether one is a single one or many. And that alone is a self-created hell - no one else to blame: not Satan, not the left, not liberals, not non-Christians, not Hollywood, not science, not the taking of prayer out of schools, not blacks or browns or any color whatever, ... A god does not send anyone there, people send themselves, and now, as long as they hate and hurt others from that hate. The hell becomes a self-hate projected toward others, a misery seeking to make others miserable, a godlessness parading as righteous, anti-christ parading as Christian, and a rotting and rotten elitism that rejects itself by rejecting the other, for they are the other regardless of their denials of such. We are the other. The other is us, all of us.
* * *
Those receptive to the emergence see the beauty and glory in diversity, that everyone is a Face of God, a silent smile of the Sitting Buddha. They realize the Sun is all the Rays of the Sun. So... Mirdad says...
God's word is all-inclusive. Neither barriers nor fences therein. Wherefore is yours so rent with fence and barrier?
I say, your very flesh and bone are not the bone and flesh of you alone. Innumerable are the hands that dip with you in the same fleshpots of earth and sky where come your bone and flesh, and where they return.
Nor is the light in your eyes the light of you alone. It is also the light of all that shares the Sun with you.
Nor is the breath within your breast the breath of you alone. All that breathe, or ever breathed the air, are breathing in your breast.
Nor are your thoughts the thoughts of you alone. The Sea of common thought does claim them as her own; so do all the thinking beings who share that Sea with you.
Nor are your dreams the dreams of you alone. The universe entire is dreaming in your dreams.
Nor is your house the house of you alone. It is also the dwelling of your guest, and the fly, the mouse, the cat, and all the creatures that share the house with you.
Beware, therefore, of fences. You but fence in deception and fence out the Truth.
And when you turn about to see yourselves within the fence, you find yourself face-to-face with death, which is deception by another name.
Inseparable is Human from God; therefore, inseparable from all humans and all the creatures that issue from the Word.
The Word is the Sea, you are the clouds. What would it reap from its foolish striving but disappointed hopes and bitter vanity?
Save one be emptied of oneself, that one cannot find oneself.
Ah, the joy of being empty!
*Adapted from Mikhail Naimy. The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery which was Once Called The Ark.
* * *
In the "skies," the illusion of appearances no longer deceives you. Everyone is a God mask. Preferences arise in this fecund emptiness, yet you do not attach to the preferences: they arise, they dissolve.
You may prefer chocolate ice cream, but you do not think or act like it is the best of ice creams or that everyone should prefer it. Your preferences do not dictate others' wants, needs, or choices. You know, without ice cream, there would be no ice creams. As in, without black, brown, yellow, and red peoples, there are no white people ... Buddhism and Christianity and Hinduism and Islam and Taoism and Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and Jains and Sicks ... are flavors of the One Taste. Whether you agree or not with them, they are, so they belong. Everything belongs regardless of the varying value. Not all has equal truth or benefit to the common good, and some oppose it. Yet, we know within contrasts, and we love within contrasts. The opposite o love inspires us to love, the contrasts to wisdom urges us toward wisdom. Those in the "skies" are receptive to the truth and the redemptive qualities any being or group offers the world. There is bright wisdom somewhere even in the darkness of profound ignorance.
* * *
As implied in the parable, spiritual growth moves from effort to non-effort. Effort is non-effort in that the only effort is to position oneself so the process can continue. We position ourselves like a moon to reflect the Sun's light.
This hands-off is a challenge to the ego, the I-sense. The I likes to accomplish. "Look at what I did." The I likes to judge the process. "Wow! That was a great meditation I had this morning." The I likes to call attention to itself. "Hey! I got enlightened. Let me tell you about it."
* * *
I do not have a good or bad meditation, even as I do not have a good or bad day. I used to, no more. Meditation is always meditation. The day is always the day. Period. The I is not gone. The I has progressively become an integral participant in the loafing of the loaf. I am still transforming - I cannot say how. I do not even try to know.
* * *
The late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said, "Enlightenment is an insult to the ego." It may be that way for a time, and likely will, but it becomes a joy to the ego. Freedom is sweet.
Christ's Ascension is not a floating away or disappearing somewhere else, it is a growing into what we could call godlikeness, Christ, or Buddha - uniting the skies and earth, dimensions known and unknown in one big, wise, compassionate hug. And when you hug another, even a tree or a rock or the air, you hug yourself, you hug God.
