The Word ‘God’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Italienische Landschaft’ – Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes – WikiArt

Long before any idea of a God, before any belief or possibility of a deity, of a divine command, God is already here, hiding within yourself. Or rather you yourself have just come hiding God. It means, don’t make God into an idea, a form, a projection born of your fears, of your eagerness for peace or relief. God is not ahead of you, or before you, or above you. God is not an entity, or anything that would not be your own.

God wouldn’t be God if it were an idea, a conceptual form far away from your self. For God is not something abstract, vague, distant. God is resplendent. God is shining. Not in a far away, unreachable place. God is brightly here, just as you are. You are, because of God. Because God is, you are. God is the very essence and quality of your being.

There is nothing above or beyond your being. It seems that there is, because you have limited your being by giving it a qualification. You have found it better to clothe your being with something. Then God goes hiding. Or you yourself are hiding your own divine self or essence, the possibility of your being only being. For there — in being — is the key to god.

In that being, God is. God is doing your being. That’s the extent of the presence of God in your life. In that, there is not even the possibility of a belief in God. In that, you feel God’s presence every time you feel your own presence, which makes God very present indeed in your life. In that, a belief in God would in fact trample God. It would make it an entity. A distant thing. A poor meaning. Not God at all.

Who do you think is ‘doing’ your being right here, right now? Think of that for a while. What is this being that I am? What is this I am that I am? Answer that in verity, through your actual experience, and God won’t be a secret to you anymore. God will cease being distant. You will be yourself made of the presence of God. No belief in God could ever match that.

But remember that once God’s being is recognised to be your being, then you won’t find room anymore to have your own personal being. Your own being will be lost to God. Now there is only God, which actually means there is no God at all. The idea of God is for when you have distanced yourself from God, when you don’t know yourself — that you are God’s being. In recognising yourself as God’s being, you will have lost both your being, and the idea of a God. It is a form of death.

So think twice before you say that you want to know God, or to know yourself. For this knowledge will leave you with being only. There won’t be a you. And there won’t be a God. There will be the purity of being, which is the everlasting life in death, which is to live as the One. You will lose your apparent doership, the control that you think you have, every objective identity that you believe makes you.

But in that loss is the finding of yourself, of who you are. In that loss is the end of your suffering, and the discovery of your nature as peace. This finding of your essence is the meaning behind the word ‘God’. In finding God, you will have rid of God, and of yourself. What is left is more than any word can tell. More than the word ‘God’ could ever convey. There would be no word at all. Except you. You would be the living word for ‘God’. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819)

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Website:
– Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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Harp of the Spirit

Posted on by Alain Joly
Fresco of Ephrem the Syrian, 14th AD (part) – Protaton Church,  Mt Athos – Wikimedia

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If you go for its gems, you will find the Christian tradition to be unbelievably rich of the highest wisdom. The work of Ephrem the Syrian is one such gem. He was a prominent Christian theologian and hymnographer born in 303 AD, expressing himself in the Classical Syriac language of early Christianity, in the eastern part of modern-day Turkey. But he was also known for his outstanding poetry, which he used as a vehicle for theologian purposes. Over four hundred of his hymns have come down to us, and many more got lost along the way, that have earned him the title of ‘Harp of the Holy Spirit’. It is said that his poetic descriptions of the Last Judgment influenced Dante Alighieri in some sections of the Divine Comedy. There is no doubt that he had a passion to put his long years of studying and reading into the fire of experience, as can be felt in this eloquent verse:

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“On a certain day a pearl did I take up, my brethren;
I saw in it mysteries pertaining to the Kingdom;
Semblances and types of the Majesty;
It became a fountain, and I drank out of it mysteries of the Son.”
~ The Pearl, Seven Hymns on the Faith (1:1)

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Ephrem the Syrian is said to have been baptised as a young man, and to have been a deacon, with a more limited liturgical role than a priest, and a duty centred on service. He had a great knowledge of the Scriptures and was devoted to his mission as a teacher. He made theology accessible through his poetry, and is recognised as one of the first to introduce songs into the Church’s public worship. He was eager to transmit his passion and devotion in whatever way was possible to him.

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“In its brightness I beheld the Bright One Who cannot be clouded,
And in its pureness a great mystery,
Even the Body of Our Lord which is well-refined:
In its undivideness I saw the Truth
Which is undivided.”
~ The Pearl, Seven Hymns on the Faith (1:1)

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There is no doubt that he was an influential man, being honoured with titles like the ‘Sun of the Syrians’, or the ‘Column of the Church’. He lived a simple, ascetic life, embracing the ideals of poverty and celibacy. During the last decade of his life, he moved to Edessa, and stayed there in a small cave overlooking the city, devoting his time to his writings. In Hymns on Faith (VIII.9), he stressed that “the intellect was not intended to pry into hidden things”, emphasising the fact that our deepest identity as being cannot be understood conceptually, through the mind, but is a living, subjective reality. In his Hymns on Paradise, he described this with these exquisite words:

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“Your nature is far too weak
to be able
to attain to its greatness,
and its beauties are much diminished
by being depicted in the pale colors
with which you are familiar.”
~ Hymn on Paradise, XI:7

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Discover the hymns of ancient theologian Ephrem the Syrian… (READ MORE…)

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A Universal Cure

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Creation of the World XIII’ (part) – Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 1906 – WikiArt

The part that we’re playing is not small. We are not living in a corner, limited by the skin of our bodies, and the world is not limited to the time and space in which it seems to unfold and have its conflicts and sufferings. The world has a foot in the infinite. In fact not just a foot, it is bathed in infinity, in eternity, and so are we, we who have been made small and suffering entities by our limiting beliefs and prejudices. We are ruling the world with our thoughts and then blame ourself for it. For the results are of course as limited as our thoughts can be. We have made the world the hostage of our limitations, and its hostility is in fact our own, that we have projected unto it. We believe and think we can only play small and limited, but in fact, we haven’t quite seen ourself as we are, and from this blindness comes the entirety of the world’s agony, and ours too.

Fortunately, ours and the world’s true essence comes spilling over in every possible way through the manifestation of beauty, and through the many expressions of love or peace. That’s what makes it so attractive in spite of all, and that’s where we should be way more curious than we are. Beauty, love, intelligence, peace, are not created by the random structure of a body and the passing thoughts in our mind. This is not where they are manufactured. They are born of infinity and wholeness. They are the expressions of the One, which we can never own. We are in fact rather owned by them, embraced by the infinity that is their reality. We must surrender to this god given identity. We don’t have to play small. Would we think of god playing small? So why would we of ourself, who are like the arm and willpower of God in God’s dream? So we don’t have to play small in this world. We ought to play our given, sacred part. We ought to be what we are and recognise ourself and the world as a whole, indivisible being. A being that is nothing but our own, that is experienced here and now every time we say ‘I Am’, and that we are fortunate enough to share in.

Act on the world from within. Mould it from there, from the source of yourself and of the world, from the ground of being that you feel as your own being, and that is the common ground of all beings and all things. This ground has the best ability. Religions haven’t called it Paradise or Eden for nothing. There is always a truth behind every misunderstood word. This ground of being is where you can play big, from within, from the interior of everything and everyone. You don’t have to create a new reality. It’s already there within and without, for the taking and for the looking. This reality is already here, already yours. There is love and harmony woven in the fabric of life, just here and now in and as our given experience. Our efforts to heal ourself and the world are veiling this reality, and so are our limited thoughts, which carry the false reality of there being persons and separation instead of the reality of one being and the peace contained in the infinite. Our own unlimited being is the ground where we can play big, for it is as large as God’s being if we are willing to notice its real, undefeatable nature. In fact, being is a universal cure, and it’s always at hand.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)

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Website:
– Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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‘I Am with You Always’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The rest’ – Marc Chagall, 1968 – WikiArt

There is no ambiguity with God. This has been said in a thousand different ways, in every corner of every page of the Bible for example, that God is with us, that there is in us, as us, a presence hidden in plain sight, that won’t let go of us ever. That it is the very making of ourself, our sublime identity — what we live our life with and could never depart from. We couldn’t doubt it in the least, for with just the right kind of looking, and with no effort whatsoever, we could see it, feel it, sense it, that we are that, and not truly our body or mind, let alone our thoughts, our story, our problems, our suffering. “I am with you always, to the end of the age”, that’s from ‘Matthew 28:20’. So there is no worry to be had. We are not alone. That’s just an impression, an invention, that we are separate, insecure, fragile. In fact, we couldn’t be without it. In ‘Zephaniah 3:17’, they say “The Lord your God is in your midst”. That’s what they mean, that our mind finds its ground in this very presence, in this being of ours that is in fact borrowed from God’s being. In ‘1 Corinthians 3:16’, they are even more specific, clearer on that subject, “God’s Spirit dwells in you”. It couldn’t be plainer and clearer. Why don’t we listen?

And we profit from an inbuilt, intrinsic protection in our life. After all, haven’t we gone through illnesses and floods, through a thousand aches, and is not death itself called eternal rest? Haven’t we lived in the constant grip of desire and worry, hassled by a quiet, ever going despair? And yet, are we not beautiful now as we are, after having gone through all this? Are we not pristine beings, untouched by it all, made of this unsurpassable, never changing awareness of being? In ‘Isaiah 41:10’, God is reported to have said: “I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And in ‘Zephaniah 3:17’, it is written that God is the “mighty one who will save”. They wouldn’t say that if they don’t mean it. But we won’t be saved in an hypothetical future, at the time of death. We are being saved now, kept virgin of every objective experience, if we are willing to look. Furthermore, there is an inner peace that has landed in and as our very being since time immemorial. This inner peace expresses itself as joy or love, which we have experienced even amongst our ignorance. Isn’t life worth living for these fleeting moments of joy? And isn’t love our most precious, cherished, sought after experience, that seems to be a miracle beyond understanding? In ‘Zephaniah 3:17’, they say, clothed in the most exquisite poetry: “He will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

So, as is advised in ‘1 Chronicles 16:11’, “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!” Which means we ought to stay with that part of ourself that lies peacefully below the hustle and bustle of existence, before everything that can be pointed at and named, and that is therefore not truly ourself. But God is not happy with only being our being, with filling us with its own infinite being. This presence is also made of the gorgeous fabric of love. This is where love finds its reality, in the innocence of our being, in awareness. So if we love, this love is not our own. We have not manufactured it, let alone directed it. “We love because he first loved us”, it is said in ‘1 John 4:19’. This is what our being feels like, when it is kept pure, unsoiled by our attachment to experience. Love is what we feel when we have relinquished everything in ourself that is mistakingly taken to be us, but is not. In ‘1 John 4:19’, we are being reminded of this eternal truth, that “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” And this love, this being of God, is not something that can be had. It lives and breathes only through our being it. The world of things, of objectivity, cannot apprehend it, “cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him”, as is said in ‘John 14:17’. So we are it, not have it, not know it. As long as we believe to be an entity, a something, a someone, we have separated ourself from our reality as God or consciousness. Yet everything, everyone, is eternally made of this being, which is God’s being, and finds its identity and essence as that. After all, didn’t God make that very clear, when saying in ‘Jeremiah 23:24’, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” To which God could have added: I am all beings and all things, their secret identity, their essence which is only spirit. As I have said and proved a zillion times: ‘I am with you always’.

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Quotes taken from the Bible

Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

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Website:
– Marc Chagall (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Shreds of Infinity’ from the blog…

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On God’s Existence

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Calm on the Mediterranean Sea’ – Ivan Aivazovsky, 1892 – WikiArt

There is no god. God is an invention that we have placed far away, out there, as an object for our prayers and hopes. As an entity to whom we can address our suffering. God was given that role so that we are not alone. We have divided ourself up into a self here and another greater self there, between which reside our secret longings and our beliefs. We have made god into a handy projection, for our convenience. A soothing presence who will be there for us after death, whom we can trust and rely on, whom we can give ourself to, and find protection in. We feel good in that undoubted certainty of a god.

But there is no god outside of ourself, no distant god, either in place or time. Of this we can be sure. Because wherever we may travel, however far we may go, we find only ourself. We are bound to our own being which we feel in a ‘here’, and in a ‘now’. So we fail in going somewhere that is outside ourself. It’s an impossible task. We cannot go there. Not in a million years. So god cannot be found outside of ourself. Nothing can. Everywhere is here. And every time is now. The only place for god to be is in our own being. There is no other place to be — even for god. There is no way around it. But we have first to understand our own being, our own nature. There, in ourself, is the resolution of the conundrum of god.

So what is this place of ourself, to which we are bound? What is it made of? If we leave our body aside, and our many thoughts and sensations, if we leave the world out of the picture, what is left of ourself that we can say is here, is now? What is this consciousness that we have lived with for as long as we can remember, and for which we seem to have but little interest ? This thing which has held our peace, our happiness, our perceived sense of beauty, even if only experienced rarely or fleetingly? This consciousness that is holding us, that is giving us our very existence, holding our suffering and our conflicts? Should we not feel grateful to have been held with such consistency? To have been held with our feelings, whether happy or sorrowful? To have been lent a body, whether healthy or sick, and a mind, though both may be just a passing dream?

This thing which is here undoubtedly, showing that peace is possible, that beauty is real, that happiness is within reach, is this not our most profound self? Is it not our very being? What we are here? What we are now? And this god which cannot be anywhere outside of ourself, could this god not be this, this very presence of ourself? Our very being? Our very consciousness? Which we are by nature every day of our life? That which can be felt in every bit of our heart and soul? That can give an explanation for ‘there is no god’? That can give a reality to ‘there is god’? That can show that, in fact, not only there is god, but there is only god? That everything, all that we are and experience, is god? That the god which we had thought at a distance, is nothing but the loving presence and reality of ourself and of everything? That life is nothing but the living, pulsating being of god, which we are only and wholly? And which we share with every other apparent being, and every possible appearance? And that this, is the one thing that ever was, and will ever be? And that this, is not inside ourself, for of ourself it is seen that there is not? And that this, is not outside either, for there is no being outside something inexistant? And that now, at the end of our journey, and all things considered, is realised that god is not even god? Because for a god to be, there would have to be separate things and selves to give it a form, and to call it god. There would still have to be a trace of suffering. There would still have to be separation. So there’s got to be no god. God is only for the poor fellows. But for who we are, there is no god. Only being being, at the most. Beyond that, nothing much can be said, lest we should invent some other god.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900)

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Website:
– Ivan Aivazovsky (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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The Possibility We Are In

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Old Sarum’ – John Constable, 1834 – WikiArt

Whatever there is is God’s presence felt. And whatever we may feel of God’s presence, is what there is here and now, including what exists and appears. It is all here for our recollecting, all here that we can be and be god like. Every experience that we may have, every sorrow and every joy, every fear or trust, every ugly or beautiful appearance, is felt and seen because of our being first. To watch anything is to be watched in return by a presence watching. We can make ourself disappear in it, and be without a self, without the self we have always known and colluded with. And we can share of that impersonal, infinite being that is not ours, but that we can be and embrace as our own. So ‘I am’ is the secret door opener within us, that will give us the world we are in. We will have an aggrandised property, or a world made of the very size of ourself, infinite, manageable, and towards which our being may shine a benevolent beam of light and peace. That I feel is a possibility.

The world will have its secret identity disclosed to us. And we too will have our secret identity revealed. Both being made one, and ourself being of it. Others will cease being others. They will join us as that shared one being. There won’t be any jealousy or comparison, but a rejoicing in and as that oneness felt. Our fate and destiny will be contained inside us, within our own being. There won’t be a time to hope for, or a place to fail in, or a self to mess up. There won’t be a fear of tomorrow, or a regret of yesterday, for both will have merged in and as the being that we are. Time and place will have come to be only convenience. And our very being will have come to be the time and place we are in. That too is a possibility.

The knowing of our own being will have come to be our only experience. The many will have shrunk into the one, and the infinite will have subdued our senses, and made itself seen, heard, touched, and contained within our experience. Happiness will cease being a temporary achievement, and will become the flavour of our shared being with people and things. We will have joy woven into every single corner of our life. That’s the possibility we have at hand.

Movement will be seen as the manifold expression of stillness, and silence recognised as the only component of our living symphony. Turmoil will be felt as this last bit of ourself that we have yet to embrace — not something to be afraid of, but an opportunity that we welcome. We have to see this as a possibility.

So this life is the garden of Eden we once extricated ourself from, but have in fact never left otherwise than in our imagination. And love is not an occasional encounter, but the very air we take our breath from. I’m just throwing the possibility in the air.

Now we recognise after all, that the being of God is what we are — the possibility we are in, without there being a God or a ‘we’.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by John Constable (1776-1837)

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Website:
– John Constable (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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The Birth of Personhood

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Flower of Blood’ – Odilon Redon, 1895 – WikiArt

It is consciousness — not body, not thoughts — that gives us the impression that we are a person with a continuity. There is absolutely no chance that a bundle of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, could give us that impression. We borrow our personhood to consciousness, to the fact of being aware — to this light that creates us in the darkness that are otherwise thoughts, feelings, body. Our sense of continuity belongs to consciousness, to presence — that portion of ourself that is empty, unchanging, not objective, but full to the brim with itself. Our thoughts are but isolated events that are changing over the course of time, and so are our feelings and bodily sensations. The content of our mind is like a passing, unpredictable weather. So continuity in that area is absurd. Our essential self is to be found in and as being. What makes us is in that which is unmade. That impersonal part of ourself is what paradoxically gives us the chance of being a person. We are therefore nothing but empty, undivided being playing ‘being a person seemingly characterised by body and thoughts’. We have got it all upside down: Our person is not prior to consciousness. Consciousness is prior to our person, and the sine qua non of our existence or appearance.

Our thoughts are far away from each other, inconsistent, contradictory, confused, hesitant. They are not the voice of our self, are incapable of forming an identity of any kind. Our identity is to be found somewhere else, in something that we cannot get hold of, or limit, or name. The only thing that could link the different events of thoughts, feelings, sufferings, bodily sensations, and perceptions — all that for us constitute our self, a person with a name and form — is the presence of consciousness. We owe the impression that we are something solid, a real person, to emptiness, silence, stillness. So our person is actually non-existent, or rather has its existence in that which stands unseen between the happenings or events that we think make us. So our story, our thoughts, our body, become evanescent, losing their reality, disappearing within the experience of our massive sense of being — its coming to our attention. Being is seen to be the nature of ourself, which we had imagined in passing, isolated, impermanent, objective events and qualities. And believe me, that makes for a beautiful, gorgeous person — the one we have always wanted to be! A person is infinity being born.

The fact that there is a certain coherence in being a body-mind, and that we are able to live a life, is nothing but the expression of a play, a ‘lila’ as the Hindus are saying. We are nothing but a character in the hands of an actor. A body-mind is the little necessary to carry our wider identity to its term. In fact, all that we seemingly are — a person with an apparent life — is just the vehicle for a bigger quest. We are pretending a body-mind, so that we can realise our divine being. We are carrying infinity on our back, on the back of the finite, giving it the seeming, temporary life of an entity progressing in time and space. But this story, this appearance of a life, is but an excuse, something marginal that serves a wider purpose. We are meant to carry God on our shoulders for a while. At first unknowingly. Until we know God knowingly. Until God has acquired enough substance, and has sufficiently widened Its being in our life. Until God can in return carry us on Its own shoulders. And move us. And swallow us. Then, we find the security and courage to surrender ourself in God’s solid being and be like God Itself. We transfer our being in and as God’s being. And die there.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

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Website:
– Odilon Redon (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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