Dialogues with Mystery 13

Rabbouni was awake in a different way than all other teachers on the earth. His awakeness wasn't, in the first place, a freedom from desire, but an inhabiting of it--it was an acknowledgement that revelation, desire and ego take a toll.  It took  a toll on him.  And it is taking a toll on you, now, who are reading this.  Because you are the only person for which all of history could have been written.  And now is the only moment when the cost or the benefits of that teaching could possibly play out.  Night is coming, when no one can work, but to you, who are beginning to awaken: while it is day, sit down and look at this squarely. [bxA]

The hard part is that revelation is a task. It's true of God and it's true of you.  The minute "this" reveals itself, so does "that."  The minute "I" reveal myself, so do "you."  It's all done out of deep, passionate love...but that lays bare a system of obligations that will leave you tired, and needing rest, most of the time.  Don't blame others for this, it's just how dualism works.  But what the prophet said is true: "This is rest: give rest to the weary."  He said "this is repose" in the midst of burden-bearing and work.  Learning the interbeing of opposites is a deep cosmic purpose: it's part of how dualism's separateness begins to collapse.  "The time for every purpose under heaven" is always now--and it's your job to learn the lesson.   Rest happens amidst work, and work happens in rest.  If any of us shirk the heavy lifting or dodge the curriculum, who knows how long this game of chronological time will have to continue?

Everyone on earth likes to say "I am not that" to a huge swath of the human experience.  But HaShem asks this of you: who else could it be?  There are no others.  Upon finding yourself in a human experience, you can't ask to be given just the good parts of it.  God called you "good" and will be with you as you experience the shadow side of that--while you discover the cost of being "bad" as well. You can't leave the crumbs of the children's food for the dogs.  You are the child and the dog, you are the Master whose table it is and you are the even the crumbs from the feast.  None who wish to be good and righteous are allowed to duck the lessons of what's evil and cursed.  You are here to learn Jesus' lessons, and Satan's.  You are here to learn the lessons of good kings and wicked thieves.  You are here to eat cake. You are also here to die from glutting yourself on sickly low-flying quail in the wilderness.  And the God who has revealed himself as I AM will stick with you for as long as it takes.    

To the indulgence of every desire, there is a cost--incarnation is the medium in which that cost is paid.  When the serpent, said "Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God," he was telling the truth. The unfortunate piece is that God's presence is a burden and sharing his being is a Cross to carry--neither of our first parents were ready for what relating to a revealed God, let alone becoming divinized, would cost them.  Whatever eating the fruit cost Adam and Eve, the Serpent knew that experience was the hidden benefit.  He was quiet about it out of respect for hardship.  Appropriating experience involves the transformation of suffering, and the serpent knew he could not do that on Adam and Eve's behalf.

What incarnating costs is precisely "everything."  Elizabeth said to Mary "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord." That blessing is heavier than it is pleasant. It was spoken when Mary was pregnant. Even in the spiritual realm, you can have what you want. The downside to desire is, there's no one to pay the cost but you. If Mary wanted spiritual promises to be fulfilled, they could have been fulfilled in no one but her.  Be here, now.  But know that all of the promises of human history can be fulfilled (and all of the costs can be exacted) nowhere but here, from no one but you.

The rough bit is that relationship requires separateness--union individuates, and then "being together" takes work. You will love the connectedness. You will say "The father and I are one," as quickly as you will say "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine." But you will struggle with abandonment as well. You will think that others exist to share in your work and suffice your needs--you might even find that limitedly true.  But you don't get to decide how they do that, or when, or to what extent, and the loss of control will be an absolute crucifixion.  The words we say aren't free--the emotional cost of saying "why have you forsaken me" can come from no one but you.  Wiggling out of any of this will meet with no success.

Who are you to abandon self? If the Teacher wills that selfishness tarry till he returns within you, what is that to you? You were climbing the hidden ladder to God long before you knew it had a name--but that wasn't unique or special. It was what you were supposed to do anyway.  You only want to know you're doing the work because you long for control, because you long for the credential you can flash around to others.  There's no shame in wanting that.  But be grateful if those longings go unfulfilled.  They would cause immense suffering if it were otherwise.

Who are you to hope that humility be pleasant? If it were God's will that life feel like imprisonment and humility feel like exhaustion and imposition, could you use what you learn to be compassionate to others?  Take a lesson from Siddhartha: in this life or the next, if you find yourself in a hell realm, note your misery and be kind to others who suffer with you.  Make no mistake, becoming Christ is not a way to claim your own excellence.  It is a way to shoulder burdens and empathize.  Becoming God is not a way to being adored by the masses.  It is a way to care for all creation.  Not even the mystery of the Trinity, into which we might be folded after death, provides bliss.  At most it provides serenity and equanimity of the unmanifest divine consciousness.  Longing for spiritual pleasantness is no better than longing to win at children's games.

Don't let statements like "there are no others" make you think there's not a lesson in asking the people around you for help.  I am suggesting that you do that.  But from people with egos, need and dependence will outweigh willingness to help.  Insofar as you act with your ego, you will feel needy and dependent and your generosity will be sluggish if it's there at all.  Just know that ego is a limited tool with which to transact the business of life, and don't be surprised when those limits manifest themselves. 

I want to say this with gentleness and kindness: fairness is an egoic category--it has nothing to do with how life works.  Life doesn't even guarantee the sufficing of needs (you have spent as many lifetimes starving as you have ignoring the needy) so you are certainly not here to get everything you want.  All the same, if you can get what you want, do that for as long as you need to.  Just don't be surprised when that ceases to satisfy you.  And don't be surprised by sudden scarcity.  The prodigal son spent all he had, and only then began to be in need.  The Teacher had the right idea.  Fulfill desires rarely, make it a celebration in which you find all the others who have discovered the blessing of poverty.  Don't even desire gratitude.  Just know that poverty is the downside of gratitude.

I am not saying "Don't give up self" or "don't appreciate the pleasant bits of humility."  I am not saying "don't need others."  I am saying that the muscles you use for that should come from the Spirit, not the ego. If you've ever sat in silence long enough for the absence of noise to become worth listening to, that is the beginning of conversion.  There is more--but like the serpent did with Eve, I will not tell you.  When you experience it, all of the right teaching will come from your own mouth.

To the Father, the Teacher said "While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me.  I guarded them, and not one was lost except the one destined to be lost."  A name was spoken--and if the one who became sin declared his own name vanity, what would that name be?  There was one destined to be lost--and if the betrayed one says "there are no others," who is destined to be  lost?  When you know these things, you will come to yourself, thinking it's hired hands that the Father needs.  You will be wrong, of course.  But as in the beginning, so in the end: realizing exile is the first step in return.