The Reluctant Messiah

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Christ on the Mount of Olives’ – Paul Gauguin, 1889 – Wikimedia

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“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
~ Luke, 22:42

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Maybe it is more serious than you think. Maybe the line has been crossed without your noticing. Maybe there is no return to being what you imagined to be: A self, a person, self-contained in a body, armed with all the thoughts needed to represent you. Maybe there is no memory left of this old belief, and that you have to let it all go, all the kaleidoscope of separation, all the daunting suffering, all the interplay and thrill contained in being just one piece in the puzzle of life. Now all pieces have been joined to fade into one single presence with no pieces in it, a presence that you have espoused, that you have recognised to be your home — inherited and inhabited since before the dawn of time. Now you may have to move in with fear and reverence, for living in that new identity has consequences. It might transform you beyond your recognising, and in more drastic ways than you had expected.

It might shatter your dearest hopes and expectations, that were here in your heart, entertained to the point of cultivation. It might give you what you have sought all along, and stop dead every single desire for an ‘other’ to satisfy and fulfil you. It might demolish a dream, and disintegrate the map of yourself, that described who you were in such lively, never-ending details. It might silence you, when you so much enjoyed the delightful babbling of your anxious mind. And I won’t mention all your intimately held treasures of belief, all your ideas and opinions, that have put together that carefully built image of yourself: how they might be dampened, damaged, discarded for being found redundant.

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Read more about how our resistance can be made into surrender… (READ MORE…)

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An Abundance of Being

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Spring’ – Theodore Rousseau, 1852 – WikiArt

There is a subtle recognition that takes place on the way back to yourself, when you stop keeping your mind at the level of avoidance or entertainment. At that binary level you are unrecognisable. You live in a world of your own, in which nothing represents who you are. You live in your mind, pushed around by a never-ending storm of endless reactions and pursuits, unaware of what you are — or even that you are. You are surrounded by opinions and beliefs that limit you, and plunge you into a self-made ignorance. You live in a bubble where illusions have formed the world in which you are caught, and to which you have given yourself up. In there you are as it were hidden from the gaze of god, and the awareness of your divine making or reality is eluding you.

As there is no sense of belonging there, you may feel cut off, lonely, lacking an essential part of yourself. You are suffering from having deviated from your inborn identity. You have forgotten who you are, and are roaming from thought to thought, and from experience to experience, in search of something that will finally complete you. And the tragedy is that you will never find it in the place where you look, for that place is precisely what is separating you from your real self. That place is imaginary, for it is the stage of your misunderstanding. You live in a vacuum, in your world of misunderstanding. All your life takes place within the limits allotted by your false beliefs about life. Where there is only a seamless reality, you have created an illusory boundary between yourself and reality. You have missed that you were yourself that reality. You have lost faith. You committed the sin of being a somebody, and in doing so have pushed reality out of sight, at a distance from you, making it, through the senses, the world in which you live, when you are yourself the reality in which the world appears, and from which it borrows its thousands forms. You have given birth to duality when there was none. Out of oneness, you have invented separation, and have invested all your life in this falsity.

But there is more to it. In veiling your true nature, you have made god unknown to you, and rendered yourself unknown to god. This is why you have religion and the need for a belief in god. But the reality that you have unknowingly pushed away through your desire in being a self separate from it, that reality is in fact what you have been longing for all your life, to complete you. And this completeness is nothing but god coming to live in you, as you, and electing your being as its being, while you yourself recognise God’s being as being your being. That’s how you know god, and are known by god. Simply by being only being, by purifying your identity to its ultimate, indescribable, indestructible, unsoiled essence. So nothing lives away from yourself. You contain it all. You are the receptacle for the spectacle of life. And knowing this will place you right where god has its gaze. It will place you in God’s being, which is the only place where you can be known or seen by god. So knowing yourself is knowing god, and god knowing you, without there being a god or a you. Being only suffices. God is where and when there is an abundance of being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Theodore Rousseau (1812–1867)

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Website:
– Theodore Rousseau (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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God Unveiled

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Illustrated Depiction of God with Holy Bettmann’ – Tintoretto, 16th AD – WikiArt

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For many of us, god is nothing more than the idea or belief we have inherited of such a being, an idea that is conditioned by religion as the lazy representation of an omniscient, omnipotent entity that is both our creator and protector — in the popular Christian imagery an old bearded figure who lives far and away from us, in a lofty, elevated place for a good view on its creation and creatures. The existence of such a god is almost only a matter of belief or faith, and the relationship we have with it one of reward and punishment, devotion, fear, prayer, praise, but rarely of understanding and exactitude. It seems that we better have god in a hazy place, feel more at ease with not knowing too much about the wisdom that may hide behind that term. So our ignorance is a calculated one, a refusal to rock the boat, and a patting of our carefully assembled opinions from which we derive our sacrosanct identity and security. But let’s tackle god here. Let’s undress the myth and have a thorough eye-contact with the divine. Let’s dare some experiential understanding. Let’s have god out of its hiding place.

Maybe god was never defined because it is the one thing in life that is indefinable. Everything objective that we can know, see, hear, touch, smell, taste — qualities and all — can be described with words and given a name. We have our life surrounded by objects. The objective has filled our experience to the brim, and we are being choked in it — with no breathing possible, and no space allotted to the unknown. God is one such unknown. But how could we describe something that we cannot know as an object? So to god we can only give a generic, provisional name. Because god cannot be pointed at and recognised as an object or entity. God is not an easy catch. The divine defies our understanding, and this defiance is at the core of our misinterpretation of god. So if you want to know god, you have to look for it in your life, and turn every stone and pebble that crowd your experience. So start by removing everything in existence that you can know, see, hear, touch, smell, taste — qualities and all — that have an objective quality and can be given a proper name. You know: everything that you can show to another fellow, and that he too can see, hear, know, understand, and comprehend, just like you. Take it all away, and then see what remains behind.

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An explanation of the nature and reality of God’s being… (READ MORE…)

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Four Variations on Love

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Branch of apple blossoms’ – Gustave Courbet, 1871 – WikiArt

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“God is love, and he who dwells in love
dwells in God and God in him.”
~ The Bible (1 John, 4:16)

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I have been reading Meister Eckhart’s sermon n°5 lately, in the translation by Clare de B. Evans, from an old publication named simply ‘Meister Eckhart’. It’s a sermon dedicated to love and its many aspects. At the very beginning, Meister Eckhart sums up the nature of love in four magistral sentences that had a deep effect on me. So I decided to write down some of my take and understanding on each of these quotes by the Meister and present them to you. I hope they will be of interest…

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“‘God is love’. That is so, inasmuch as all that can love,
all that does love, he compels by his love to love him.”
~ Meister Eckhart

It is greatly convincing to think that we can love someone or something. That there is something inside us, a quality or emotion, that can spring out of our mind and body and direct itself towards an object, a someone loved, a something loved, and that this love is a personal affair. Well now the question arises: What is it in us that can love, and what is this other that is loved? Notice first that there is nothing in you that can love but love itself. Our mind is in no capacity to love. Rather love happens, shows up naturally, when our mind is set aside for a while — for our thoughts, most of our thoughts, have the power to defeat love, to render it unfelt, dormant, as if inexistent. So if you love anything, anyone, it is not because of him, or her, or it. It is because you have been freed from yourself as a private, separate self or mind, and that in this freedom, love can arise, unfettered, can stretch its dormant limbs, and shine in all directions. After all, have you ever been in love with someone without at the same time loving everyone, everything, around that one? Love is an awakening, an opening. And in that opening, in that crack, reality shows its profound nature. Love is the profound, intimate nature of everything. So when you love someone, there is nothing there, and nobody, no other, that can be loved, except the essence that this one is. Therefore you can only ever love the essence. And you could not love the essence of anything if you were not yourself the essence of everything. That’s how you are compelled, when you love anything, to love god first, which is the essence of both the lover and the loved.

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More reflections on some Meister Eckhart’s statements about love… (READ MORE…)

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The Nature of Everything

Posted on by Alain Joly

We don’t apprehend reality, or ‘what is’, directly, fully. Thought is in the way. There is a thin screen — in fact not so thin — that prevents us from seeing reality. This layer between ourself and our true being has the consistency of an old, worn out thinking habit. We have projected a pseudo reality of ourself as an entity, before we have even comprehended the reality of everything. So we have made a mash up of it all. We have made thought into a confused and a confusing device, entangled as it is with feelings and perceptions. So thought is slowing us down. And the result is that we as thought have created this world such as it is: divided, broken up, split apart, and therefore confused, angry, in capacity to hate another. Then, thought has set itself up as the one that can solve it all. Don’t get me wrong here, thought can help solving many intricate problems, and can create the most wonderful things. But it can never be the saviour of our world, or of ourself. It has first to go down its pedestal and take a step aside.

For thought is not just thought. It is much more than that and this is where the problem lies. Thought, strengthened by feelings and experience, has developed to the point of being us. We are a thought that has grown two legs. This is how we imagine ourself to be separate: by thinking ourself to be a body and mind; and by thinking the world to be out there. But thought has here produced an illusion. In trusting thought, we have failed to see that we are not on an equal footing with the world. We are not an existing thing along with ten thousand other existing things. We are the presence that is hosting every single existing thing including our body-mind, in its one infinite, all-pervading embrace. So we never have the right focus. We are always wrongly favouring the dictates of thought, which is the most conditioned instrument there is. So thought has become that bit of haziness in front of our vision. It is that made up confusion in front of our inborn clarity. It is an illusion made entity. But a well-conducted thought can be of help to see itself as being the problem. It can be the thorn that helps removing the thorn, and then is discarded. When the thought of ourself gets out of the way, our being is then seen to have espoused reality. The distance between ourself and ‘what is’ is seen to be non existent. And we will then have vision and clarity, for our self as a being separate from reality is nowhere to be found.

Without a self, whose structure is nothing but a thought swollen by its many identifications with feelings and experiences, the nature of reality is seen in a new light. Without a self to break it up, the structure of reality appears undivided. Because it is undivided, it is one. Because it is one, nothing in it can appear that is other than itself. Not a person. Not a thought. Not a world. Nothing. The world, the person, the thought, everything, has been revealed as being the One — a reality so infinite that nothing can be by its side, with its own separate existence. Therefore this reality can only be who we are, since it is the only one thing that is in capacity to be. So we are that. Or rather ‘that only is’, since there cannot even be a ‘we’ to be it, let alone to become it. So we don’t need a thought to exist, or to represent us. We don’t need an idea of ourself. And our identity is not dependent on objects of any kind. We are ourself by ourself. And this recognition can never be made by thought. It is alive. A living truth whose reality can only be seen, like something that suddenly comes into focus. Then our self, the world, everything, is that living truth — what we all participate in. This shared being is sometimes called love. Unless you prefer to call it happiness. Or God.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Of Dimitry’s Prayer

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘A Quiet Monastery’ – Isaac Levitan, 1890 – Wikimedia

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“Open, O doors and bolts of my heart,
that Christ the King of Glory may enter!”
~ Dimitry of Rostov

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Prayer is an invitation for what is already here to show itself up. It is not that you already know who you are, and that you-the person are begging for a supreme entity, or for an other, to come and soothe you, for an external, benevolent providence to shower you with its benefits. Remember that there is no other entity than the entity of your self, no other providence than the providence of recognising who you are. Nothing, in matters of peace and happiness, could ever enter into you that is not already there. So don’t make that mistake over and over again: to wait for someone knocking at your door, to hope for something to fulfil you, to expect a new element to enter your life. The benefit of life is not with something you receive, but in what you recognise yourself to be. So prayer is prior. It is not in reaching but in realising, not in expecting but in recognising, not in receiving but in noticing, and not in having or possessing, but in being.

So always pray as if you were utterly alone. Pray as if you couldn’t ask anything, anyone, any favour or event, to give you something that is not already there in you, as you, expressed as your very own being. Notice that nothing of worth could ever enter your house that is not already present, already eating at your table, already thinking the thoughts you think, already dreaming the dreams you dream. This is how Dimitry’s prayer ought to be uttered.

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More reflections on a prayer by Dimitry of Rostov… (READ MORE…)

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A Holy Formula

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Woman in the Wilderness’ – Alphonse Mucha, 1923 – Wikimedia

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“Consciousness is an internal relationship to the whole.”
~ David Bohm

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You cannot suffer when the world in which you live is discovered to be you. That’s mathematical. A formula that will work magic in your life. For you don’t live separated from everything else. You are not limited to your body, and the world is not something that is distinct from you, at a distance from you. You discover that the jump was made long ago, that you have been the totality already from the beginning of ages, eternally one with it, and that there never was an inch that separated you from the world you live in. That’s how you are complete, by knowing no separation, by entertaining no difference, and therefore having no preference. So you cannot be lacking anything, and suffering is always only the lacking of something, which is born of separation. So stay there, in your inseparable essence, in your world of completeness. Notice that this is what you are, or rather what there is, when you stop fantasising yourself being somebody. You never had an existence of your own. You are the flowering of something deeper. If you ignore or overlook this simple truth, well… then the trouble begins, all the travail of life, and the never ending seeking for fulfilment. This never was about you. Life is bigger, wider than that, and you are here only to honour that and to live by its gorgeous rules.

Then you enter into sacredness. You leave the limitations of being somebody — a projection, an idea that thought has sculpted over time — for a merging with infinity, with who you truly are. This is what sacredness is: an entering into your true self. A visiting of the truth of your being. The anointing of your self with its reality. This entering is a sanction from truth. It is the death of an old idea which you have entertained, for a ride into unknowing. It is a ceremony in which you are being elevated to a reality that you have been blind to. You are being sanctified, or made true. You were already that, already living as that reality, already tasting of that firmament, but were distracted. You were drawn to be something, insisted in being exclusively yourself, by yourself, so you have ignored it. You missed the chance to know yourself truly. You worked too hard to be what you are not. You lacked passivity. Not that you don’t have to do anything to come to this understanding. But rather, this understanding is nothing you do. It is here in you, as you, without your doing anything about it. It doesn’t need your participation, or rather it needs your non-participation, your staying away, your keeping quiet. Your abandonment. The hardest thing of all.

Then you enter into holiness. You taste of your true home, which happens to be the home of god. You are made holy, which means whole, uninjured, healthy. You realise where you are, what you are, the stone you are made of. You notice your true body — the consciousness of everything. You connect with a reality that could never be transgressed or violated. A reality which you could only fall in love with, for it is your beloved self, which you have lost sight of, and are now reunited with, consecrated in, and which you would never want to leave, or not live by. You are made of the same golden dust that the stars are made of. I don’t mean just your body, but what you are at the core, the essence of your self, what you happen to be when you say simply ’I am’. You are made into “an internal relationship to the whole”, as David Bohm expressed so beautifully. And you will struggle to see the world as a collection of different parts, or to see yourself as one such part amongst many others. The One will come to be your only experience. But you will be defeated again and again. You will come to feel a part again. You will be seduced to be somebody time and again. You will want to feel separated again, to win another last adventure or advantage for yourself. You know: your little devil wanting to be the likes of god. But keep going. Keep going. Until one day, it may dawn on you: you are no more.

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Text by Alain Joly

Quote by David Bohm (1917-1992)

Painting by Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939)

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Websites:
– David Bohm (Wikipedia)
– Alphonse Mucha (Wikipedia)

Suggestions:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…
– A page from the blog dedicated to David Bohm: ‘Insights into Wholeness’…

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