Dialogues with Mystery: 3

I am here to tell you that, like the teacher, you are Word made flesh.  Sound and substance mirror each other, and your body is an echo chamber.  Ego has left you addicted to pleasure and wholly unable to accept pain.  You may only see contradiction--selfishness blinds even the sighted--but existence is a paradox: you are the infinite cosmos, learning the curriculum of limitation.  [bxA]  The Teacher was crucified and died, descended and rose and ascended inside you so that you would see--with your own eyes--that you are crucified as well.  The pain of the nails is tolerable if you don't run from it, and an agony if you struggle against it.  You can access neither heaven nor earth: but even if you could have your fill of both, you would be anxious: repeated patterns of desire and fulfillment don't suffice your needs.  You have heard it said: you longed to fill your stomach with what the world feeds the pigs, but no one gave you anything.  The teacher is much simpler.  He simply returned to the Father and said "I thirst."

God is silent so that you will hear your own voice.  Each of your words is an emotion, each emotion comes with physical sensation, and each physical sensation is an energy.  All incarnate beings are seers, speaking flesh to dry bones.  You alone know that you have not heard with the ear of your heart until the silence of things-as-they-are speaks.  Listen: every breath is the name of God, coming from your mouth.

God is mental stillness so that you will see your thoughts move.  Mentally rehearsing interactions with others--whether they be past or potential exchanges--will not give you control of your emotions and it won't force others to do as you wish. I want you to know that I get it.  I get the whole thing and I feel for you.  I have seen tables flipped in holy places because of how difficult it is.  Tears of blood have fallen on me.  I was, I am, and I will be powerless.  So are you.  But powerlessness is an exemption for absolutely no one.  It's a terrible mess--the whole thing--I'd say it's unbearable, but for the fact that we who find it intolerable are still breathing.  Read that again.  We are still.  And breathing.  And, though we are alone in the work of being, we are doing it together.  

From a position of stillness, the desire and grasping for control become apparent.  Let me say from the start: for desire and control, no remedy's to be found in any form of pushing, pulling or manipulating.  Satan cannot cast out Satan.  Those who solve illusion with illusion come to grief, before the end. (That is why you and I suffer.)  It is only the finger of God that cleans house as it's needed, and only by prayer do we learn the whys and the wherefores, and which finger is God's.  Suffice to say--if a tree bears no fruit, don't take issue with the leaves.  For surface-level problems, we've got to dig down to the roots.  Let me speak plainly: sometimes giving up self is the only solution for the self's cravings and attachments.

Next to the teacher, we are all thieves.  But when we find him in ourselves, we share in his last moments.  Every moment of life is also a dying.  Every moment of dying is also a birth.  The one that's inside us, who's bitter and crying--that's you. What did the younger son look like, before the firstborn son came into the world?  

Dialogues with Mystery: 2

Listen...I am saying this to you so that you can become "one without a second."  I am saying this to you so that you'll relax--not "stop being attentive" but instead "stop being willful."  Work, attention, and even the very thoughts that pop into our head--these are all laced with force.  You exhaust yourselves by peddling the primordial lie--that you are your thoughts--as if it were true.  Never, more than now, has it been important to rest.  Past and future, after all, only exist in the mind.

I want to tell you that the universe is alive. [bxA]  I want to tell you that hearing the Father's voice is completely possible.  Most do not hear with their ears, but rather they hear with their egos.  They still think a quiet room sounds like nothing.  You have heard it said "to the pure of heart, all things are pure." And now I say to you: only to the quiet will quiet speak.  Only a routine of prayer, fasting, meditation--medicine to match the illness--will open the ears.  Only a descent from the mind to the heart will cause the right dispositions and words and actions to arise spontaneously.  

From the first, forever and always: word becomes flesh. Of teachers, you have heard it said "apart from him not one thing came into being."  Each moment is made of benevolent, creative tensions.  Your agitation comes from constantly wiggling free of this part, from always dodging that part of it.  Before students become teachers, students die, teachers die and teachings die.  In order to find serenity: mount the cross.  Be suspended on the tension.  Become a student of your own scattered pride.  Strike your chest in contrition and you will find the teacher there: he seeks out your own lostness, so that you can face the parts of yourself hidden in shadow.  From the first, forever and always, he has been you: now become him, and find your Self.

I want to tell you that darkness and absence of God: these are both completely kind.  For lifetimes, the wise have felt it as they watched the pleasure and pain of the world dance in front of them. For lifetimes they've either clung or pushed away.  All sentient beings are connected: If the world seems like a prison it is of your own making, only confining until you sit still at its center.  Freedom from consequences comes only by enduring them: we ascend by descending. Become all people, and you will see through one thousand eyes. Become a thousand eyes, and you will see yourself--in all people as in a mirror.  The darkness and the light are one, and absence that you are present to will smile with your own mouth.

So, what of it?  Work and eat, grieve and rest, laugh and let go.  Everything matters, but more importantly, everything matters to you.  If, just once, you die before you die, you'll see you're not who you think you are.  And then you will take up "what matters" and put it down as one does an axe.  You will not be happy. You will be both happy and sad, because life includes both.  You will be, (no, you are) alive.  Bow deeply to the four directions till it loosens you up.  Breathe!