The Prayer of the Devotee

Posted on by Alain Joly

‘The Angelus’ – Jean-François Millet, 1857 – Wikimedia

Nowadays, we never think too much of the bells ringing from a distant church. Yet they were once set for a reason. They are the reminder of a practice of prayer called the ‘Angelus’. And it was precisely named so, after the moment when ‘The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, and she conceived of the Holy Spirit’: “Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ”. So it is a message from a messenger of grace, lifting our spirit from the body, taking our experience at the level of what it truly is. It wasn’t just the recitation of a prayer. It was for our recalling. It was for being — for being held for a while in God’s bosom. It was for being reminded of our true nature, of our being the children of a deeper, forgotten presence which we are the incarnation of. It was an opportunity to remember. An invocation. A call from within.

This is a unique prayer, that some have named the ‘prayer of the devotee’. It was a prayer meant to be pronounced three times a day: in the morning, at noon and in the evening, accompanied by the ringing bells of the Angelus. A prayer inside which a few words strike with a special resonance. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us“. It was a testament to the sacrifice whereby God has made sure to leave in us a part of himself — his Son. A part of himself within ourself, which is more than our body and our qualifications, more than our mind and our many thoughts, beliefs, and identifications. It is that naked being or consciousness that is hidden in the maze of our many experiences, but is in fact our own, still, peaceful, never born identity.

So Mary has procreated while staying virgin, for the object of her nativity was herself, her true being which she has shown to the world to be the being of every other being. Jesus was a man, but Christ was that part of the man, and of us all, that didn’t need to be given a birth. It is the infinite, naked, ever-present being that is at the source of our sentiment of existing, of that very unique sense which is meant every time we say simply ‘I Am’, — I am, being, throbbing, living, never departing of that pure, godly, unqualified, indestructible essence, where infinity and eternity are like our most fitting attire. Nothing grandiose in these two words. They simply mean that I am not bound by time and place, by birth and death, by now and then, by here and there.

So three times a day, be it in the field as we were gleaning the wheat, or on the fishing boat in the middle of a river, we were called to stop and become a devotee for a timeless moment. Time and place were suspended, and our being recollected. It wasn’t anymore about harvesting the grain, or lifting the fish on the boat. It was for recognising in ourself the true nature of our being, and that special grace contained in being human — the child of a presence that abides in our very sense of being aware. For this apparently fleeting consciousness that is ourself is in fact the solid presence of God’s being, that is both sheltering and giving form to our body-mind-world. In this presence lives the peace that we are seeking everywhere, and that was placed here where it could never be missed, if only we are willing to listen to our inner call.

As very often in the religious world, there is the meaning intended, hidden, and the actual practice. The teaching, the message, and the poor understanding. The lifting grace, and the descent into belief and imagination. Here, the meaning intended, the teaching is: “Just be”. It is a prophetic, loving injunction for our sake, for our knowing, for our recognising. It is saying: notice that there is here and now, in and as yourself, a quality of being in which is contained life itself. It is saying: ‘God is with us’, which by the way is the meaning of one of the names given to Jesus, ‘Emmanuel’. So every time you hear the sound of a bell from a distant church, or the softer chime of your heart aching for peace, treat yourself with an Angelus, be like a devotee of your own being. Pause and go within, where you are forever being given a new birth, kneeling and offering your illusory identity in front of your one and true reality as being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Jean-François Millet (1814-1875)

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Website:
– Jean-François Millet (Wikipedia)

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

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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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Cleansing the Temple

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple’ – Giovanni Paolo Pannini, 1724 – Wikimedia

Maybe this is where peace in fact resides. In the fact that peace or happiness can never be found, never be reached. It will be nowhere where you expect it, not in any objective appearance or event, not in any wish granted, not in any kind of alignment between what you want and what you have. You will never obtain what you want. Truth is not there, in what you wish. It doesn’t care for your egoistic projections, for your own private self-interest. Truth is not a mere good to be bargained for, or hoped for, or waited for, which, if not granted will disappoint you, and make you like a rejected lover, or a bruised self. Truth is not any kind of crude object. Remember Jesus who cast out the merchants in the temple. Were you really thinking that there was a physical Jesus actually chasing the merchants from the temple, on the ground of some kind of moral rule?

The merchants in the temple, it is you. It is all of us when we have decided to argue with reality, to buy our happiness with some kind of object obtained, to bargain or negotiate with some invented superior entity the responsibility of what is happening to us, to come to god with pockets full of expectations and desires, making peace a simple object to be bought in the market place of our likes and dislikes. “Wouldst thou be free from any taint of trade?” did Meister Eckhart ask. Imagine the relief that it is: to know or realise that you will not have what you want, that ‘what is’ is all there is, all that you will ever have. What a relief! What a load finally put down, and got rid of! All that you want, desire, expect, all that, will never ever be granted to you. You can forget it all. ‘What is’ is the deal. The grandiose enlightenment you were waiting for lies there, in what simply is! It will never get better than that! You have it all here, in front of you. That is the gift that was specially designed for you. Happiness resides in what you have, in what you are, here and now. This is the secret that Krishnamurti meant when he said: “I don’t mind what happens.”

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On how truth is not an object to be bought in the marketplace… (READ MORE…)

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The Beatitudes

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Still Life with grapes’ – Giovanni Segantini, 1899 – Wikimedia

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The Beatitudes is the name given to eight blessings that Jesus pronounced at the beginning of his ‘Sermon to the Mount’ in the Gospel of Matthew (5:3-10). Each of these blessings begins with the Latin word ‘beātī’ (from ‘beātus’ meaning ‘happy’, ‘wealthy’), translated here as ‘blessed’. They are short and bold little sayings that I have come across lately, eight ways to be blessed, eight blessings on the path to our true being, each the recipient of some profound meaning which I have endeavoured to develop here. I hope you enjoy the reading…

“Seeing the multitudes, he went up onto the mountain. When he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and taught them, saying,”
~ Matthew, 5:1-2 (World English Bible)

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“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
~ Matthew, 5:3

You’ve got to be empty. Not to indulge in your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, making them the owners of your kingdom. You’ve got to be empty. To not be seduced by every passing colours. To stop being a possessor, forever looking for what could enrich you. You’ve got to be empty. To not be involved, endlessly busying yourself with everything you have gathered to exist, looking in them for an identity. You’ve got to be empty, to stay away, to keep alone. To be the one disinterested, self-sufficient, which means finding peace in the essential of what you are. That essential is ‘being’. Simply being, devoid of anything that this being could be, or have, or think, or feel. Then this being will enrich you in its austerity, it will clothe you in nakedness, it will fill you in emptiness. Being is all you will ever own, for the simple reason that it is all you are. Nothing else is but being. This is the only asceticism worth living. Be blessed with that inner poverty.

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My reading on Jesus’ eight blessings from the Beatitudes… (READ MORE…)

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The Gospel According to St. Matthew

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’ – by Pier Paolo Pasolini – (With Enrique Irazoqui)

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“The motivation that unites all of my films
is to give back to reality
its original sacred significance.”
~ Pier Paolo Pasolini

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The famous Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini made this beautiful statement about his art: “When I make a film, I shift into a state of fascination with an object, a thing, a fact, a look, a landscape, as though it were an engine where the holy is about to explode.” This can be immediately felt as we stroll amongst the first scenes of his 1964 movie ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’. We are met with an angelic Mary looking at a bewildered Joseph leaving home after the discovery of her pregnancy. Silence prevails and only a concert of bird’s songs can be heard. Joseph wanders in solitude in a landscape that is desolate yet teeming with presence and energy. He comes to the edge of a town and kneels against a nearby stretch of land where a bunch of children are playing, giving like a lullaby of innocence to Joseph who closes his eyes and abandons himself to the moment. This is the chosen time when an androgynous angel appears and gives him the revelation of the divine nature of Mary’s pregnancy.

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Discover the magnificent film by Pasolini on the Gospel of Matthew… (READ MORE…)

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