David G. Benner's Blog, page 51

Pondering Presence – 1

Recently I have been thinking a lot about presence.  Current interest in mindfulness bombards us with reminders about the importance of being present.  But presence isn’t something we can turn off and on like a faucet. We are all shadowed by a presence that we may know little about but which enters the room before us and often lingers after we leave.  And then there is the Christian emphasis on the presence of God. Many of us long to live with awareness of Divine Presence. And so I wonder how that relates to my being present, and possibly to my presence.

What can I say about this concept of presence that seems to cover so many dimensions of life – from the comforting presence of a loved one, to the evocative presence of a sacred space, to the distinctive presence of a home or the plethora of presences that confront us on entering an art gallery or walking through a shopping mall?

First, I’d have to say that presence makes life meaningful. The search for meaning is really a search for presence because grand systems of truth or meaning can never satisfy the basic human longing for life to be meaningful.  Without presence, nothing is meaningful. But in the luminous glow of presence, all of life becomes saturated with significance. In part, this is because only in presence is encounter possible. Others may be present to us but we will not notice their presence until we ourselves are present.  But once we are truly present, everything that has being becomes potentially present to us.

I long to live with more presence. And I long to know the presence of God more deeply in my life.  At my present stage of the journey there are few things I value more than encounter.  I long to learn how to make myself more available for them.  And I am convinced that these things are all connected – that somehow my presence is essential to an encounter with the presence of anyone or anything – especially, the presence of the One who is the ground of being and the source, therefore, of presence.

Adapted from a forthcoming book, provisionally entitled Presence and Encounter (Brazos Press) ©Dr. David G. Benner

LIVING ANCIENT WISDOM

Over the course of the last four blogs we have been exploring the consensus of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition on four important matters:  the nature of ultimate reality, the possibilities of human knowing of this ultimate reality, the nature of personhood, and the goal of human existence.  But in case you are tempted to feel that these matters are for philosophers and theologians with little relevance to the rest of us let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.  The Ancient spiritual wisdom we have been exploring has many practical consequences for living for all of us.

The fact that the goal and ultimate end of being human is sharing the divinity of Christ through union with God should make all the difference in the world for living. When identified with our bodies, minds, experience or any lesser thing, we lack full awareness of our spiritual nature and the truth of the ground of our being.  The moral of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition is “Don’t settle for anything less than the truth of your Christ-self.”  The ego-self with which we are all much more familiar is a small cramped place when compared with the spaciousness of our true self-in-Christ. This is the self that is not only one within it’s own self, it is at one with the world and all others who share it as their world.  It is, therefore, one with Ultimate Reality.

Life, therefore, is a constant flow of invitations to awaken to these spiritual realities. Spiritual practices are, at their best, cooperation with life’s inherent tendency toward spiritual awakening and unfolding – a tendency that Christians name as grace.  Awakening is the expression of that grace in which we see through our apparent separation and notice that we are already one with Divine Presence and with all that is. All that is missing is awareness.

Adapted from Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living, an article first appearing in ONEING, a publication of the Center for Action and Contemplation, Spring 2013, Vol 1, No 1.

THE GOAL OF HUMAN EXISTENCE

To be human is, according to the consensus of the world’s wisdom traditions, to be designed to know the source and ground of our existence.  This is the goal and meaning of being human.  Life has a direction.  All of life flows from and returns to Divine Presence.  Our Origin is our Destiny!  So, as the river said to the seeker, “Does one really have to fret about the journey?  No matter which way I turn, I’m homeward bound!”

Once again, words do a very poor job of describing this direction of the flow of human life.  In the Christian tradition we speak of union with the Divine – sometimes daring to adopt the even bolder language of theosis, or divinization.  Take, for example, the words spoken by the priest when mixing the water and the wine in the Roman Catholic mass – “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”  Union with the One who is Ultimate Reality is sharing the divinity of Christ.  It is participating in the Divine Presence.  This is the fulfillment of humanity and the goal of human existence. God is both our source and our fulfillment. We come from God and are returning to God.

But it is not just human life but all of life that both flows from God and is returning to God.  All things we created by God and are being made new in Christ This is the direction in which everything in life is moving (2 Corinthians 5:17; 2 Peter 3:13).  That which emerges from God belongs to God and returns to God. That is the key to the meaning of existence.

Adapted from Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living, an article first appearing in ONEING, a publication of the Center for Action and Contemplation, Spring 2013, Vol 1, No 1.

THE MYSTERY OF PERSONHOOD

The third matter that the wisdom traditions of the world all address is the mystery of human personhood.  In the previous blog I stated that the major religious and spiritual traditions all agree on the possibility of human knowing of the Ultimate Reality that is God.  The reason this is possible lies in the fact that humans are a reflection of this reality – a reflection that is remarkably similar to its source. All personal knowing is based in likeness. We can only truly know that which we already resemble in some important way. This possibility lies in the human soul where we retain traces of our origin. In other words, the ground of our being is the Ground of Being.

This brings us right to the core of the mystery of human personhood.  Humans are especially connected to Ultimate Reality because, in some mysterious way, the human soul contains something similar to, possibly even identical with, the Ultimate Reality we name as God.  Humans are a unique expression of this reality.  The depths of the human soul mirror the depths of Spirit.  There is a place in the depths of our soul in which Ultimate Reality alone can dwell and in which we dwell in Ultimate Reality.  Meister Eckhart says that “the nameless depth in me cries out to the nameless depth in God” – our profound human mystery crying out to the divine mystery beyond names, forms and distinctions that is our source and ground.

To be – as described in the Christian tradition – made in the image of Ultimate Mystery, means that humans will inevitably be a fundamental mystery to themselves.  Human mystery is an echo of Ultimate Reality.  The key to knowing human mystery is knowing Ultimate Reality.  And the key to knowing the mystery of Ultimate Reality is meeting that Reality in the depths of the human soul.

Adapted from Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living, an article first appearing in ONEING, a publication of the Center for Action and Contemplation, Spring 2013, Vol 1, No 1.

ULTIMATE KNOWING

The second thing that the world’s wisdom traditions all address is the possibility of ultimate knowing.  If what I shared in the previous blog about the nature of Ultimate Reality is to have any meaning for us, it must be knowable by us in some way.  The mystics of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition assert that direct, immediate knowing of the One we call God is possible.  They tell us that such knowing is not based on reason nor deduction but on communion.  We only truly know that which we become one with.  Communion is a knowing through union.  Knowledge of God, then, means union with God – something that the mystics have always proclaimed to be not just possible but the goal and fulfillment of humanity.

Knowing is, therefore, becoming one with that which we seek to know.  We see this in the Hebrew Bible’s use of the language of knowing to describe sexual intercourse (as in “Adam knew Eve”).  Knowing is intimate and this intimacy is transformational.  We come to resemble that which we know.  The more we resemble that which we seek to know, the more we truly know it, and the more truly we know it the more we are one with it.

Union is not sameness but likeness.  However, in union, the dualism that initially separates subsequently dissolves and we experience the unity that holds us both.  This is, of course, a profound mystery – a mystery that lies beyond understanding but not beyond experiential knowing.

Adapted from Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living, an article first appearing in ONEING, a publication of the Center for Action and Contemplation, Spring 2013, Vol 1, No 1.

ULTIMATE REALITY

The Perennial Wisdom Tradition is organized around four important matters:  the nature of ultimate reality, the possibilities of human knowing of this ultimate reality, the nature of personhood, and the goal of human existence.  We will look at each of these over the course of upcoming blogs, beginning today with the first – the nature of ultimate reality.

However named, God is Ultimate Reality.  Language does not serve well to describe this Ultimate Reality since it is so profoundly supra-human and trans-personal.  Yet, humans need to name things and so across time and the various wisdom traditions we have adopted such linguistic handles as Spirit, Divine Presence, The Wholly Other, The One, or The Ground of Being.  All names for this foundation of existence point to the same reality – a reality that, at the same time, is both transcendent and immanent, not set apart from the world of humans and things but deeply connected to everything that is.

All names fail miserably in the task of capturing Ultimate Reality.  How easily we forget that language does not hold reality; at its best it merely points toward it.  Our problem, however, is that we confuse our puny concepts with the reality to which they, at their best, point.  The Jesuit priest, Anthony de Mello, tells a very short story from the Perennial Wisdom Tradition that nicely illustrates this.

The master encouraged his followers to look at the moon by pointing toward it but noticed that his followers inevitably looked at his finger, not the moon.

The story tells us that Ultimate Reality will always lie beyond all the fingers of our images and concepts that we use to point toward it.  We must, therefore, be ever vigilant in realizing the danger of getting stuck in our words and concepts rather than getting in touch with the reality behind them.  This is true in all of life, but nowhere truer than when we use words to attempt to point toward the Wholly Other that is Ultimate Reality.

Ultimate Reality is the source, substance and sustenance of all that is.  Nothing exists without it.  To be removed from this vital connection would be to instantly cease to exist. We exist because we are in relation to Ultimate Reality, or more precisely, because we exist within it.

Adapted from Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living, an article first appearing in ONEING, a publication of the Center for Action and Contemplation, Spring 2013, Vol 1, No 1.

ANCIENT SPIRITUAL WISDOM

I have always been drawn to the big-picture view of things.  This, to me, has always been the attraction of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition – the ancient but ongoing attempt to identify the common core of universal truth that lies at heart of the world’s major religions. Identifying this common core does not mean that the distinctives of the religious traditions it draws on are unimportant.  Christianity is not the same as Sufism, Islam the same as Baha’ism, or Taoism the same as Hinduism.  The distinctives allow each separate tradition to speak with its own voice and tell its own story, but the common core allows us to hear that story in broader and deeper terms than are possible when we only listen to the voices within our own tradition.

Christian theologians have often appreciatively dipped into the Perennial Wisdom Tradition, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas additionally playing an important role in its development. St. Augustine argued that “the very thing that is now called the Christian religion was not wanting among the ancients from the beginning of the human race.”  Even the apostle Paul showed willingness to use the insights of the world’s wisdom traditions to help unpack Christian thought when he drew on the insights of the sixth-century BCE Greek philosopher and poet Epimenides to help unpack Christian thought – quoting Epimenides as saying that “it is in God that we all live and move and exist, for we are all God’s children” (Acts 17:28).

As a Christian, I find it encouraging that there is such a significant shared core to these various wisdom traditions. I find it helps me understand my own tradition when I encounter it in the light of the spiritual wisdom that is quite easily found if one considers even the contours of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition.  And that is what I propose to do over the next few weeks – simply look at the contours of this common core of wisdom.  For even those, I think we will see, are enough to help us ground ourselves in, and align ourselves with, a reality that is vastly grander than what we usually realize.

Adapted from Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary Living, an article first appearing in ONEING, a publication of the Center for Action and Contemplation, Spring 2013, Vol 1, No 1.

Action and Contemplation – 2

If, as Thomas Merton suggests, contemplation is the spring and action should be the stream that flows from it, contemplation should be the source of all our living and all our doing.  Action and contemplation are two faces of the same coin.  Contemplation without action is escapist. But action that is not grounded in contemplation is dangerous because the result will always be raw reaction rather than truly free action.

Sometimes spiritual writers put too much distance between being and doing.  Contemplation grounds us in our being. It allows us to return to an identity based on “I AM” rather than “I have” or “I do.” It is a place of stillness that can uniquely prepare us for action.  We should be able to live with more fierceness and passion when we emerge from it. And we should then be able to carry that inner stillness into the midst of the action that flows from it.

Being without doing is meaningless. We find ourselves in our living of life, not in our reflection on it. It is in the stream of life that we most deeply encounter God in us, flowing up from the depths of our soul and out into the world. And it is in the stream of life that we notice God, active in the world, and are able to join God in the divine transformational agenda of making all things new in Christ.

Action and Contemplation – 1

Notice the first image that comes to mind when you think of the word contemplation.  Possibly it is a monk fingering prayer beads and slowly walking the cloisters of a monastery.  Or maybe it is someone sitting in the lotus position with hands extended and palms facing up. But chances are good it isn’t someone busily engaged in office work, domestic chores, or other activities of daily life.

One of the great problems with contemplation is that too often it is divorced from life.  Often the path to this divorce starts with the mistaken assumption that contemplation is only for introverts or those who are trying to escape the demands of regular life.  But even if it doesn’t start here, usually contemplation is approached simply as a practice, not a way of life.  It’s something you do in private because of personal interests or disposition, not a way of grounding all your doing in being.

Thomas Merton offers us a wonderful image for thinking about the relationship of contemplation and action. He suggests that contemplation is the spring and action the stream that should flow from it.  Contemplation should be the source of all our action.  It provides the stillness before self and God where desires and motivations can be purified so that we can move out into life with action, not simply reaction.  In contemplation we open ourselves to allow love to spring up inexhaustibly from the Ground of the Soul and then move out through us to touch the world. Love springing up but then not flowing down the stream of action means that love has not really been received. For love is received in the measure it is given away.

 

Peter’s Transformational Knowing – 5

What have you learned about yourself as a result of your experience with God? And what do you know about God as a result of genuine encounter with your self?

The first thing some Christians would say they know about themselves as a result of their relationship with God is their sinfulness. And quite possibly the first thing they would say they learned about God from this was God’s forgiveness and love. These are important things to know. But what else do you know about yourself and God that has arisen from your encounter with the Divine?

While many of us have followed Jesus for much longer than the three years we have tracked in Peter’s journey, too often we have not allowed the initial introduction to deepen into a deep, intimate knowing. Though we glibly talk about a personal relationship with God, many of us know God less well than we know our casual acquaintances. Too easily we have settled for knowing about God. Too easily our actual relationship with God is remarkably superficial. Is it any surprise, then, that we haven’t learned very much about our self as a result of this encounter?

Adapted from:  The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self Discovery