An Open GroundWhat is trust?
I’m aware that yesterday’s post perhaps raised more questions that it answered. That’s not a bad thing in itself, perhaps, but it’s not always kind to one’s readers. Richard Rohr reminds us,
Unfortunately, the notion of faith that emerged in the West was much more a rational assent to the truth of certain mental beliefs, rather than a calm and hopeful trust that God is inherent in all things, and that this whole thing is going somewhere good. Predictably, we soon separated intellectual belief (which tends to differentiate and limit) from love and hope (which unite and thus eternalize). As Paul says in his great hymn to love, “There are only three things that last, faith, hope and love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). All else passes. Faith, hope, and love are the very nature of God, and thus the nature of all Being. Such goodness cannot die. (Which is what we mean when we say “heaven.”) … Christ is a good and simple metaphor for absolute wholeness, complete incarnation, and the integrity of creation.
The Universal Christ, p.22
Now I know that using the word “Christ” in this context may bring some readers up short, but bear with me here: there is more to New Testament Christology than often meets the eye. The apostle Paul says of Christ (Colossians 1:16-17 NIV): “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (This of course is the source of the concept of coinherence so beloved of Charles Williams.)
Using the word Christ in this context is far closer to Meister Eckhart’s Istigkeit, Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura, the Original Ground of Dzogchen, or the Ground of Being in Paul Tillich’s writings, than it is to the “Jesus’ surname” usage common to some thoughtless conventional Christian preaching.
One difficulty we often run into on the far side of deconstruction, it seems to me, is finding words adequate to just this deeply experiential aspect of the contemplative life. It is all very well scraping terminology from neuroscience (or astrophysics, or academic philosophy) and often this can serve us well if we are trying to conceptualise spiritual realities. But our practice, and our awakened lives, ask more of us than conceptualising spiritual experience. Perhaps it is worth taking the risk, with Rohr and Williams and Tillich, of using the language of direct contemplative experience within our own culture. The contemplative life is a life of the heart, after all, and much of our practice depends upon casting a cold eye on the chatter of discursive thought! We cannot trust a bare idea as we can the direct faith that all things rest in Christ, in presence, in the open ground of isness itself – waves of the one ocean, if you will – and to that presence they will return.
#awakening #BenedictusSpinoza #CharlesWilliams #contemplative #dzogchen #MeisterEckhart #PaulTillich #practice #RichardRohr #trust
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