Set Yourself to the Eternal...

...And you cannot go wrong

Much is made of the eternal and unchanging things of life, and much is made of the excitement of change and adventure. But what if the unchanging eternal was the ultimate adventure when married to the changing world?

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Let us set our minds, hearts, souls, and indeed our very being on the Eternal to grasp how intimately we might know and experience the change of the world in the embrace of the unchanging Eternal. For every mirror of the eternal in the temporal world points its way back to a source that existed before and exists always.

For every love won and lost in the world, there is an ungainable and unlosable Love, provided always, that gives rise to the human ability to love in the first place. As we explore this, let us first orient ourselves to a point of discernment: What is meant by the “eternal” and how does one distinguish it from the merely long-lasting and therefore temporary. Let’s do a thought experiment: What will persist long after our sun has burned out, gone supernova, and imploded into a black hole after a few billion years and after our planet has long since died? This will be our litmus test for that which can be considered eternal and that which cannot.

In brief, the the way to discern between eternal and non-eternal is to understand one thing: The eternal is uncreated and endures forever. All created things have a lifespan; they change and eventually end. Nothing in creation can fully comprehend the uncreated as we are all bound by differentiation. We are many. The Uncreated is One. As such, amid our third dimensional blinders it is difficult to see something beyond our lenses of time and space, light and dark. We can sometimes do so if we deeply and meditatively inhabit our hearts, but it is not an altogether common nor easily achieved experience.

Mystics have referred to the ineffable Eternal presence as “uncreated light,” “divine darkness,” and “eternal abyss,” evoking the notion of a divine supernal that lies behind the twilight horizon but whose invisible rays, nonetheless reach us. The Eternal is at once perpetually illuminative, ever mysterious, and ultimately bottomless. It can never be contained in any thought, feeling, or experience.

So let us now compare that which is Eternal to our human reflections of the eternal. As we learn to surrender our pale reflections— our limited images and ideas— we shall become more intimate with that which was never born and that which never dies. To avoid confusion, I will denote these persistent Eternal qualities with a capital letter, and contrast them with our earthly forms denoted with a small letter.

I can find a handful of presences that meet the test of the Eternal/eternal: Love vs. love, Spirit vs. spirit, Beauty vs. beauty, Nature vs. nature, Goodness vs. goodness, Peace vs. peace, Truth vs. truth, and Reality vs. reality. The capital Eternal forms have an unshakeable underlying nature that transcends “endurance” and rests forever in ever-presence. The Eternal does not have to get up in the morning and set its sights on a productive day even when it is feeling cranky! It delights simply to be and to suffuse its nature into the fabric of the universe. It is an all- and ever-generating gift that we can choose to accept or deny at any moment at our own presence and peril.

As we go through this exploration, let us focus on the co-creative collaboration between world and spirit. The spiritual and eternal aspects of our beings emphasized by the capital letter is NOT superior. Is simply is. Comparative ranking is a leftover of the limited, changing, dying, and birthing world. Our best life is found in the deepest, healthiest relationship between the spiritual and temporal as human beings. We are given the thrilling but difficult task of marrying opposites within us and between us, but by spiritual choice, grace, and intelligence, we will find that we can!

Love vs. love

For love and freedom are only found when one enjoys each note as it arises, then allows it to go, so as to be fully receptive to the notes that follow.— Anthony de Mello, p. 114, The Way to Love

When most of us think about love we think in sentimental terms, and some even in possessive terms, i.e. “you are mine.” This is understandable and normal, and these games of love (small “l”) present few problems if we do not merely restrict ourselves to this temporal arena. We have love of family (Greek: storge), romantic and sexual love (Greek: eros), friendship (Greek: philia) and selfless love or charity or unconditional love (Greek: agape), which reflects divine Love through the human mirror and is the closest we get to that Love which has no object or aim but simply exerts itself for the sake of Love.

When we honestly say “I love you,” we are talking from sincere and deep affection in which the barriers of our heart melt, and we become vulnerable and permeable to the other. This is small taste of what higher Love activates. For in Love there is no membrane at all between Lover and Loved, but complete union. We don’t do this as humans, otherwise we could fear ourselves (rightly) of being consumed by others, and this is NOT healthy.

Co-dependence is not love (even with a small “l”) for a reason. We need to have a strong and healthy self preferably to truly love another, and the other person deep down knows this. Anyone who has been in a relationship with an insecure person has experienced the cloying lack of responsibility of “giving yourself completely” over to another person, and then expecting to be rewarded in specific and demanding ways for that so-called sacrifice. That’s not giving, and that’s not love. That is manipulation. Real love wants the best of, from, and for another person from the best in yourself.

Spirit vs. spirit

There are many ways to use the word spirit. We talk about the human spirit as a transcendent ability to find joy among ruin and endure in great trial. We talk about showing spirit, as a synonym for enthusiasm, at a pep rally for a high school sports team. Someone who is precocious or even a little bratty is sometimes referred to as a “spirited child” much like a spirited horse who is unruly, talented, and not easily broken. Each of these small “s” spirits has an element of Spirit. Spirit with a capital “S” is the fertile ground or flame of expression of the spirit. We are conferred conscious life by the intelligence of Spirit, which we inherit and translate into the much more limited forms we choose to exercise on this plane of existence.

In this sense Spirit is pure creative possibility and desire without boundary. It is pure and inexhaustible power. It cannot be controlled but only opened to and received. Because of this, the personal ego may feel that availing the spirit is cheating and robs one of singular, “on my own” accomplishment. That is true. Spirit is co-creative, not simply individual, but it empowers and deepens the person far beyond the ego’s formulaic, pre-programmed notions of “success” and performance.

I am in the midst of editing my third book, Spirit Athlete, and spiritual co-creativity is the main active principle that drives this different kind of athlete. When spiritual energy is received as intelligent and infinite, the resistance one feels in an athletic challenge melts away. The new human project “calls to” and draws the Spirit through one’s being within an arena of separation, competition, and resistance, in order to create a fusion of spirit and world. This process is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for the belligerent of ego. In this process, none of this spiritual energy made available to you is yours to possess. It must be lovingly asked for and availed from a depthless depth, and it is yours only to share.

Beauty vs. beauty

Now think of yourself when you are called good or attractive or beautiful by someone. Either you hardened yourself because you really thought you were ugly… Or you opened yourself to the words of that person… and you allowed yourself to be thrilled at the compliment. In both cases you were wrong, because you are neither beautiful nor ugly. You are you. If you get caught up in the judgments of the people around you, you are eating the fruits of tension and insecurity and anxiety, because today they call you beautiful and you are elated, tomorrow they call you ugly, and you are depressed.— Anthony de Mello, p. 123, The Way to Love

This quote by mystic Anthony de Mello captures perfectly the difference between Beauty as a deep, universal, and eternal expressive reality and beauty as a skin-deep attribute. Life is Beautiful, not because we perceive it, judge it, or say it is, but because its order exceeds us. Therefore, a properly Beautiful person is one radiating the inner light of deep consciousness and love. His or her beauty does not emanate from surface impressions that attract the eye, but from deep expressions which inspire the heart. Many of these people are not conventionally attractive, but their attitudes and presence communicates joy and confidence in life. They inspire us to feel a deep-down good and our own Beauty. What could be a greater gift?

Nature vs. nature

There is no beauty like the beauty of Nature. She (with a capital “S”) births us, sustains us, and lades us with the riches of her bounty— the golden ratio, the mathematically perfect rose, whose scent and sight exceed us, and whose thorns create a poignant contrast to the softness of its petals. Nature is life in contrast. Nature is Beauty and Life in perfect synchronicity. Nature has always been our Mother, even as we rebel and disregard Her. She is patient in her love for all creation. We may dent her with our indignities and violences, but she heals anew as she cracks the concrete of our abandoned factories and thrusts new shoots and new plants through the vanity of our artificially manufactured world.

We are told that our own human nature is mean, nasty, selfish, and warlike. People even try to drag Mother Nature into the conversation, using slo-mo video montages of leopards chasing and killing antelope to reinforce the dog-eat-dog nature of the world. And yet we see those same predators (who must eat to survive) learning to develop very affectionate and lasting bonds with humans and other animals when they are rescued and raised with respect, love, and responsibility.

We are no different. Our Nature is of the eternal— Love, Goodness, Beauty— and our nature (small “n”) is what we make of ourselves, when confronted with the challenges and limitations of the world. Will we turn to our eternal Nature or find that inconvenient and turn toward the baser and lower in us— survival, pettiness, power games, oppression, sadism. If we were not of spiritual Nature, we could not decide between these options. We would be compelled to the latter. But for every grievous example of harm, there is heroic act of self-sacrifice (which is ultimately no sacrifice at all, but someone simply acting upon a higher Nature). That choice is always available to us.

The child, like the innocent animal, surrenders to its nature to be and become quite simply what it is. Adults who have preserved their innocence also surrender like the child to the impulse of Nature or Destiny without a thought to become somebody or to impress others; but, unlike the child, they rely, not on instinct, but on ceaseless awareness of everything in them and around them; that awareness shields them from evil and brings about growth that was intended for them by Nature, not designed by their ambitious egos— Anthony de Mello, p. 100, The Way to Love

Goodness vs. goodness

As de Mello’s above quote indicates, Goodness is not something acquired or labeled, it embodies the very fabric of Being and of Life. That we can love at all, live at all, grow at all, happens because the world was created as good. In the early chapters in Genesis in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, God created the world as “good” and humans in particular as “very good.” This is what theologian Matthew Fox called the “original blessing.” Later, once Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they became both aware and ashamed of their nakedness. All conscious beings born into the world acquire this awareness of the contradictions between Spirit and world. This has been called “original sin.” But knowing is not a sin. Acting against our deeper knowing and our deeper spiritual Nature is the sin.

We have learned inappropriately to deal with this contradiction between Spirit and world and the accompanying trauma ignorantly by simply judging and labeling things around us as “good” and “evil”. Good (small “g”) is what supports and reinforces us and what we already believe, and bad is what challenges us and pierces our notions. Goodness with a capital “G” does the opposite: it challenges and pierces our notions NOT to bring us down, but to lift us up beyond our limitations and insecurities. The biblical Jesus, if one studies his words carefully, counsels compassion and non-judgment, but he never counsels to do so in ignorance. In the Sermon on the Mount, what is deemed Good is not what reinforces the world, but that which challenges it with a higher Truth.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. (Matthew 5: 9, NIV)

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5: 20, NIV)

It is clear from these passages that no amount of piety, high praise, official authority, or lofty position as a scribe and priest, will help one acquire the Good called righteousness. It is found not in outward projections of virtue but in inward sanctity that comes out in acts of genuine love. The Good is not determined by pronouncement but by provision and service to “the least of these,” the poorest and most oppressed, rather than those already favored by the world.

Peace vs. peace

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matthew 5: 9, NIV)

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5: 43-44, NIV)

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5: 23-24)

One can see from these passages, which also come from the Sermon on the Mount, that Peace with a capital “P” is not the mere avoidance of war, but rather the compassionate embrace of the reality of disagreement or conflict with a heart to reconcile and heal. One does not achieve Peace with mere offerings at an altar while bad blood flows from an open wound outside the temple.

Capital-P Peace is not constructed by detentes or treaties, which temporarily avoid war nor by appealing to mutual self-interest or “mutual assured destruction.” Prodding and cajoling produce small-p “peace”. To establish Peace, one is transformed by radical non-violent love to dissolve the root of enmity altogether, not just its outward effects, by a fundamental recognition of spiritual solidarity among all living souls.

This takes humility, soft-heartedness, forgiveness, and a willingness to see in oneself the grief, hurt, and even capacity for violence and evil that one projects upon one’s so-called enemies. This is not to make excuses for those who abuse others or who exhibit hatred to neighbors and enemies alike. True Peace requires fortitude and courage, as demonstrated by those who non-violently stood up to attack dogs and firehoses in the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s in America.

Truth vs. truth

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.— Bishop Desmond Tutu

Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions. (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness)

In an era of “truthiness”, it is far too easy to fall prey to a convenient and subjective form of false truth— “what I believe is true for me, and what you believe is true for you.” That may well be, but that does not make it True with a capital T. Capital-T Truth goes beyond individual subjectivity and moral relativism. There are larger truths that bind us all that are not subject to our games of money, power, and propaganda. Current political and economic situations have strained contradiction between capital-T Truth and small-t truth beyond the breaking point.

No sane individual that has regard for “evidence, logic, intellectual examination and facts” to say nothing of moral concern, compassion, and spiritual integrity can deny that there is an overt and intentional genocide occurring in Gaza as this article is being written and published. The recent United Nations International Court of Justice, confirmed just recently that genocide by Israel against Palestine was “plausible” and ordered a cessation of sieges and other actions designed to destroy Palestinians lives and livelihood.

But you would not know this looking at mainstream news or the decision-making of various Western politicians, lobbyists, corporate heads, technocrats, bureaucrats, and ideologues that seem to be pursuing a compassionate-rhetoric, brutal-action fascism as a way to support an unashamedly apartheid ally who has gone off the rails. Young people en masse, including Jews of conscience, have taken to the streets to confront this travesty. It should be evident: You don’t kill children, the suffering, and the oppressed and pretend it is somehow righteous and “democratic.” Capital-T truth says “ceasefire now” and small-t “truthiness” tries to protect Israel from accountability for its own desperate moral decay.

Like out-of-control hellions, Western officials have committed themselves to human-created gods (ideologies, power, money, beliefs) in place of a higher, binding (and obvious) Truth. You see this in the invocation of Old Testament scriptures (written by people) to justify the extermination of children. This again confuses small-t convenient truth with the capital-T actual wider and deeper truth. Scriptures are written by fallible humans and they cannot and never will be able to capture the Truth and the ineffable, uncreated power of God. Humility is therefore called for to explore and assert truth, as well as discernment.

Reality vs. reality

Mysticism is the art of union with Reality— Evelyn Underhill, Christian mystic

If you wish to get in touch with the reality of a thing, the first thing you must understand is that every idea distorts reality and is a barrier to seeing reality. The idea is not the reality, the idea “wine” is not wine, the idea “woman” is not this woman. If I really want to get in touch with the reality of this woman I must put aside my idea of womanness or Indianness and experience her is her thisness, her concreteness, her uniqueness. — Anthony de Mello, p. 123, The Way to Love

This same spiritual truth applies to our “ideas” of God. No text, no profession, no ritual, no declaration can substitute for the direct intimate experience of the divine, and no alleged blasphemy, idolatry, heresy, or apostasy that departs truly and sincerely from orthodox ideas in favor of the direct and divine experience can be labeled “false”. For this experience is critical to spiritual realness. Without it there is no Reality with a capital “R” but only representation, proxies, substitute “ideas” which are imposed small-r realities.

The same is true with the current obsession with identity politics. Ideas built into identities have been imposed on the rich and diverse Reality of the individual human being. What was once labeled as a perversion for stepping outside the orthodox box (i.e. homosexuality or transgenderism) has now become a requirement in some circles, with a new “you-have-to-honor-and-promote-me.” A new dystopian inversion that once sought to oppress women now seeks uses the same methods to privilege “women-identified men” in women’s sports for example.

You have to admire patriarchy for its cleverness. First it denigrated and imposed itself over and above the denoted inferiority of women, removing her from the “good-ole-boys club”, and then, when she started coming up in the world and exerting her power, sought to steal that power again by claiming to be women, in fact more “woman” then women themselves!

Of course this is delusion. No one can truly “impose” reality. Only falsehood has to be imposed. Reality needs merely to be evoked, because it already is the underlying essence or substrate of our existence. We ought not, therefore, to argue over alleged spiritual truths or divine reality, but instead experiment deeply with its ways to draw out its existence and movement in our lives. When we break down crying in a film in which the underdog finally triumphs, THAT is a spiritually real experience. Why? Even though it may be emotional and perhaps sentimental, it embodies a spiritual truth— LIBERATION from that which keeps us enthralled, oppressed, or in fear and AFFIRMATION to create and love.

May we raise a glass and celebrate with a loud cheer the flourishing of Love, Spirit, Beauty, Nature, Goodness, Peace, Truth, and Reality and may they always be vivid and present in our lives as they already are and ever will be in Eternity.