It is no void after all

Coming home after a spiritual retreat

Another work week begins. But how? What remains from the contact I made last week, amidst all those hard-won conditions of our time together?

Have I not also paid to arrive where I am even now? Have not countless others paid to produce this room, this chair, this cup of coffee next to me? I stand on the backs of numberless beings. Together we undertook an adventure, in truth, a cooperation, a collective surrender to a greater unity. Together we formed a mutually reinforcing cohesion, with all kinds of results...

So again, what remains now, back at home, a new work week, but in real life? An impulse, an energy, a signature—a mirror that would not be uninstalled, a real possibility. Something always, already there. Something newly nourished, strengthened, reinforced, plated. What will come of that?

So I stop, collect, and calm down. I decontract the mind and release the pressure of those fanged thoughts. I remember that I have this body and that he has me. I return to a moment last week which spoke to me from beyond the usual push and pull. Suddenly that moment expands and includes me in it, even now. Not so much a deposit made that I draw on today, but the simple allowing of that present moment into this one, the joining of these two nows into a single experiential reality. And from this ‘there-here,’ again, a possibility. Without the habitual thought machine making resolutions and plans, what spontaneously emerges? The horse slows and the carriage comes to a rest after its mad gallop. Where am I?

Here, now, I accept the new conditions that everything before has led me to. I accept without resorting to regret or shame. I accept without recourse to analysis and commentary. I accept without tension, without numbing. And if I really do this, look into the present moment, it can appear as something of a void. I sense something hysterical rising up, seeking to use me for its drama in the face of this void. But I stand fast. I remain. An old mystic phrase “luminous darkness” begins to make a little more sense. I see it is no void after all, but a womb, not terrifying or unknown, but only mistakenly so. For this, this is the unmediated intimacy of origin. And I am safe here and now.

From here, the question of obedience gives way to the unquestioned flow of being knit together and aligned. From here I can live and move and have my being. From here, I is we, and it is effortless to make the effort of standing stably up to do the next right thing. Here the Force of Everything proceeds through this limb, an organic, moving extension of the Whole will.

Gospel of Thomas, Logion 50:

Jesus said:

If they ask you where you come from, say:

We were born of the Light, there where Light is born of Light.

It holds true and is revealed within our image.

If they ask you who you are, say:

We are its children, the beloved of the Father, the Living One.

If they ask for proof that the Father is in you say:

It is a movement

And a rest.