Words fashion empty glasses, thirst cries out into the night.
Be silent awhile, then drink freely - fresh wine runs down the sky.
Quietness watches over sorrow, preparing a space to receive.
The veil slowly parting - patiently awaits in the luminous night... Love.
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Quietness Watching."
* * *
Words fashion empty glasses, thirst cries out into the night.
Words transport us. Thoughts find shape in words. We need not disdain words. Where would we go and grow without them? Yet, you come to see words are pointers. We learn pointers - all, not just words - become less effective when trying to share subtle experience. Words fit better "See that rock" than "I feel so blessed" or "I love you." Still, a word never equals what is - anything that is: there is a depth dimension even to a rock. So, "rock" is just a representation. How much more so for the intangible.
"Empty glasses" point us to something other than empty glasses. They are Wind whispers. Spirit seduces - quietly. Spirit likes entering through back doors.
When an echo arrives, humans build shrines and worship the echo. If you wish to discover where the echo comes from, let the shrine within yourself burn down.
We are prepared by "thirst" to go on the hunt for the Source of the echo. This thirst means an inner urge, a frustration, a sense of dissatisfaction with shadows. The Source is a lover. Your thirst is the Beloved's thirst. Your wish to taste Her is Her wish to taste you. To taste means intimacy: not abstractions, theories, ideas, dogmas, ... - dry, dusty husks.
Recall Jesus said, "Eat my flesh, drink my blood." That means so much more than attending a ritual overseen by a priest. How do you partake, and there is no priest? All outer signifies inner, hinting. Look through priest. Host. Wine. Even Jesus. Even God. What do you see?
"Night" is you cannot see. You cannot find what you most deeply long for by the lamp of intellect. Reason is a walking stick that breaks when you walk into the night. When you cannot walk, you will be carried.
Be silent awhile, then drink freely - fresh wine runs down the sky.
Unless you can shut up and be still, you will not taste the intimacy. What does "fresh wine running down the sky" mean? Good question. Taste, then you will know. Taste arrives on the tongue. There is no separation between tasting and knowing. The Hebrew Bible says, "Taste and see the Living One is good."
Quietness watches over sorrow, preparing a space to receive.
I wrote a book, An Ache for Union, which was significantly influenced by the Christian Mystics, Buddhists, and Sufis. I had become aware, intimately, of the sorrow that one can feel when feeling separate from the Beloved. I had been trained to sit in silence, and what opened up after years of daily practice was a bewildering, powerful, and painful ache. By cooperating with Grace in preparing a place to receive in the night, the longing dissipated over time. I had to learn to befriend the darkness and not run from it. It might be interesting to publish another book: Beyond the Ache.
I came to see what Christian mystics spoke of: a bright darkness. This darkness is too bright for our natural faculties to receive. Even when we have spiritual insight, our natural faculties cannot accurately translate it. Hence, confusion arises as a precursor to insight.
The challenge - oh, the challenge! - is learning to receive, and little in life taught me anything other than to get and get and get, even to get God. The Tao Te Ching taught me to become a valley, to be like the female.
The veil slowly parting - patiently awaits in the luminous night... Love.
In the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew tribes, later called Israelites after nationhood, had a temple, before that a simple shrine tent. In both, a curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place, also known as the Holy of Holies. Only priests entered the Most Holy Place. This represents a gradual movement within you. One of the radical teachings of the first Christians was that all were priests: "you are a royal priesthood" (I Peter 2.9). This applied to early Christians, for it applies to you. It applies to persons, regardless of a religious faith or not. Everyone has direct access without having to go through a priest, guru, roshi, or whatever. This does not mean these roles are illegitimate, but they cannot replace you being your own priest or priestess. No one goes to the Holy of Holies for you, for anyone other than themselves.
For us, being shrines, or temples, "slowly parting" is a result of a need for gradual preparation to enter. We must allow time to be able to experience, as we move from what seems like differing depths of sacral experience. The Sacred does not withhold itself, while the degree of experience of it is related to preparation to receive it.
We are offered substitutes - ideas; dogmas; worship of spiritual leaders, teachers, and saints; entertainment; seminars and books and quotes - to quell the longing. Why so much distraction? One reason is the fear of intimacy. Humans like God - or however they see this I sometimes call the Beloved - to remain in the abstract. You cannot share intimacy with an abstraction. You cannot make love with "love." You cannot smell "rose." You cannot feel "joy."
The veil conceals what we long for. Yet, it hints and invites. When we realize that, the veil is seen as a messenger. Longing is a voice.
* * *
What do we finally want? We want to love and be loved. Whatever we long for, is Love seeking Love. The "luminous night" is filled with love - that is why it is luminous. The Christian New Testament says, "God is love." Yet, we humans can much fear love. And the more in-depth we experience love, the more our understanding of what love is changes and becomes less like what we had thought it to be.
Moving into the Most Holy Place, we will each likely prefer to relate with Truth in one of two ways: anthropomorphic, abstract. I integrate both in my work, yet lean toward abstract as a preference: Love, Truth, Grace, Presence, the Light, ...
So, we come to a wall. We keep pounding on the wall. The wall represents that place we cannot seem to move beyond; all our previous practices fail. We pound and pound and pound, still trying to break through. That becomes all we can do, it seems. But we can do more. We stop. We, finally, give up - exhausted. Surrender is a doing, a courageous, wise doing. A door opens.
When will the door open? No one can say. The door was always there. The door was always open. Now, how about that?
* * *
One last observation. We are surprised to learn when we meet the Truth, we meet ourselves. What we thought to be I, well, it is a reflection. Everyone is the same unreflected Essence - Yay! Some are unaware of it, while others are not. "Taste and see ... ."
