On humble desire

First we say, let it be done to me according to your word. And that’s overwhelming, because God’s word is everything, not just some things. God’s word teaches us to pay attention to the quality of impermanence: it’s both “letting go of pleasure” and “steeling yourself for aversion.” Each has their way of conveying God’s real presence. It’s just–we’ll miss it if we fail to learn to let go and steel ourselves. The lesson is held in trust until we learn the skill. [bxA]

Next we say “I want to see.” Only when we realize we’re blind, that we’d miss the messiah standing right in front of us; only then does this come out of the depths. And even then, maybe our eyes, when they open, open only just a little. We end up saying “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” A further touch from Jesus is necessary to see things as they are.

Egos want things to be exclusively pleasant. When we run into our non-self, who is the “Christ within” then he himself provides a way of wanting everything. When his words “if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done”--when these words come from your mouth as if they are your own, then you learn why preference, choice, and judgment can be harmful. As you learn this, ego loosens its grip.

Ego is a muscle of survival, not a muscle of adaptability or thriving. All day you are surrounded by somebodies, saying “here he is” and “there he is.” Do not go off in pursuit. After a while all those somebodies prove shifty, die off. Within and without, things get very quiet. Luckily, amidst your crowd of thoughts, there is one who embodies full acceptance. He is you, but he is not the “you” that’s familiar. He is a nobody, not a somebody, and he’s calling you to become nobody as well.

“The Word/Silence paradox is a person, and he is within you.” This is a hard saying, but true. The blind man, who didn’t know his healer because the latter had escaped into the crowd of thoughts, was asked “do you believe in the son of Man?” and he responded, “Who is he, sir, tell me so that I may believe in him.” The healer said “I am the one who is speaking to you.” The message: when quiet is so deep that it moves inside you and speaks, when absence, gazing back at you, blinks first. Even after everything else is silent, what speaks in that silence is Christ incarnate. And this can be anything. The sound of the wind, the pop of rain on a copper roof: anything you hear with the open ear of selflessness, instead of an ear closed by ego. After silence, what’s left is Christ.

Christ is nobody, silence enfleshed. He does nothing, has nothing to offer. But he takes that and multiplies it: all this means is “becoming nobody is totally safe and healthy.” To him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Blessed are those who take no offense.

Christ has no tantrum but yours

Everyone likes Theresa of Avila's statement that "Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours." It's flowery, beautiful, and fills people with positive feeling. But the fact is, the same is true of things that cause an aversion response: Christ has no disregulated nervous system but yours, no pain receptors but yours, no veins but yours to pop out while angrily flipping tables. Christ has no tear ducts but yours to cry tears of blood later, after embarrassingly losing it--publicly and for good reason. [bxA]

Ekhart Tolle spoke of a pain body. Bessel VanderKolk spoke of the body storing trauma. The internet is full of five minute videos about befriending your nervous system. None of this is false: the whole world is shouting out in the street, that the one who bears your sins, who lives, suffers, dies and rises--your own "non-self"--is within you.

Of the dry bones in need of prophecy, the prophet Ezekiel was told "These bones are the whole house of Israel." Christ has no body but yours in which to fulfill the law, the prophets and the psalms, so in reality the one to whom we speak of relaxed flesh and calm breath is ourselves. As he did with Legion, he waits humbly for you to stop living in the world like it's a tomb, to drop the rocks with which you judge and gash yourself, to sit still, clothed and in your right mind.

I will tell you a mystery: you, me and everything else, we are all the messiah. And it's not a big deal.  The only reason strangers, the hungry, the homeless the imprisoned couldn't be the Christ is because we had expectations about how "the one who is to come" would look and act. Christ came so we'd jettison the ideas that keep our eyes from seeing, in what's right in front of us, the living Word. He overtly said he was the sheep gate, the shepherd, he said he was bread and wine and light and the Way. And he wasn't being metaphorical. The messiah is now the true nature of all that is seen and unseen. The real kicker (and the thing that'll really stretch you) is that he's also dog shit, the one cursed and crucified; he is the dirt and the one who falls three times in it, bearing unmerited weight.

This is so that we'll wake up and realize we expected God to be exclusively pleasant--so we'll arise from sleep and realize how safe it is to be entirely wrong. If God is what is pleasant, then those pleasures are like the flowers of the field. We simply have to learn to let go. If God is what's painful and unpleasant, it's totally safe. We simply have to learn the right situations and times in which to set our faces like flint, to give our backs to those who beat us, to realize that egos don't stop being egos even for the righteous--not just the guilty, but also the innocent can be judged, should a time come when the unjust are granted power. And it's all ok. It'll be wounding, but we'll become mindful of our vulnerabilities, quiet, careful to read the spirit before we speak or act.

So what's to be done with mind, body, nervous system? Be still, and you will know--but not before your life becomes the purgatory intended for all the saints. You will see your survival needs, and the eight manipulations the mind devises to suffice them. (You have heard "gluttony greed sloth sorrow lust wrath vanity, and pride are sinful. Amen I say to you, they are merely distractions--simply shift your attention to the sensations of the body, and you'll be ok.") Even after you have awakened, you will see your frustrated higher aspirations lay bare other compulsive thoughts. (You haven't heard "self-pity, shame blame remorse rationalization resentment self-aggrandizement entitlement"--Amen, I say to you nonetheless--these will emerge even after you've awakened.  Simply shift your attention to the sensations of the body, and they will pass.)

Breathe, Listen and Feel--keep doing it until even thoughts of self go away.  At first, this will feel dissociative--sometimes negative, sometimes neutral, eventually positive enough to be preferred to a life of craving and attachment.  This is awakening is a preparation for the empty mind of Christ.  Let go of action, thought, emotion, sensation, and the judgments you place on energy. You are already deeply alive, but you are not justified in perpetuating an ego story. It is Christ within you living dying and rising. It has been this way the whole time, and you are only just now learning to focus your attention and intention so you can see it.

Emily Dickinson can say "I’m a nobody who are you are you a nobody too" and we call it poetry and immortalize it in anthology for all to read. Christ can say "you are in fact not who you think you are at all. That one is entirely insignificant, more a worm than a person." But, at this, we lose our minds. Of course, losing our minds is the point. And worms, themselves, have a gospel to preach. You see, the worm never dies, just like the divinity whose echoes animate our decaying flesh. We will not all die, but we will be changed along with whatever faith, hope and love remains to us. It is totally safe, totally cool, totally gross and unpleasant.

Christ, you see, didn’t come to only live life‘s prettier bits. He came to be everything. The day is dawning, and the light is breaking for each of us. The silence says it, over and over, if we only learn to listen. Remaining me. Return to your family and friends and tell them all that the Lord in his mercy has done for you. Go and do likewise. Answer for yourself: whose ears were these words meant to open?