Christian meditation and non-duality
‘It is invisible, and no hand can lay hold of it,’ says St Symeon the New Theologian:
‘Intangible, and yet it can be felt everywhere… What is it? O Wonder! What is it not? For it has no name. In my foolishness I tried to grasp it, And I closed my hand, thinking I could hold it fast: But it escaped, I could not retain it in my fingers. Full of sadness, I unclenched my grip. And I saw it once again in the palm of my hand.’ (1)
A deeper connection to God?
The most frequent reason people give for coming to our weekly meditation sessions, is to have a deeper connection with God. We might ask ourselves what a deeper connection could mean. It cannot mean being literally closer to God. God is our being, the ground, the essence of all that we are. You can’t get closer than that. Just as a ray of light cannot be separate from the sun, we cannot be separate from God. When people say that want a deeper connection with God, they often mean a deeper felt connection, that God might appear in a way that our senses or mind can grasp.
In the Gospel of John, the disciple Philip asks Jesus, ‘Show us God, and that will be enough for us’ (John 14:8). It’s a very understandable request. Let us see God, and we’ll be content. Jesus replies with startling directness, ‘I am with you for such a long time, Philip, and you have not known me? Whoever has seen me has seen God. How can you say, ‘Show us God’? Do you not believe that I am in God and that God is in me? (John 14:9).
Philip’s request suggests that he is looking for God with a strongly dualistic mind, that he is imagining God as something separate that can appear as an object, something to be seen alongside other things. Jesus responds in a way that confounds the dualistic mind. He says, in effect, what you are asking for is already being shown. If you have seen me, you have seen God’s presence.
Letting go of the dualistic mind
To meditate, is to commit to letting go of the dualistic mind. Saying our word, following our breath, we commit ourselves to entering the unitive perspective of ‘the mind of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 2:16). Moment by moment, we open ourselves to the life-changing awareness that we are one with God, that God is being shown to us, right now, shining in our life, as our life, shining as the cosmos as the being of all beings. Loving hope, says Gregory of Nyssa, ‘always draws the soul from the beauty which is seen to what is beyond, always kindles the desire for the hidden through what is constantly perceived.’ (2)
When we look at a tree, a bird, a passing cloud or the person next to us, what face, what life do we see? A snapshot’s image of the outer surface? The life presented as if by the lens of a camera? Or the face shining through the colours and textures of form, the life which calls to us silently through the mystery of creation, which artists have pointed towards through canvas and stone, and poets have called ‘a hidden glimmering’? (3)
This deeper seeing is encounter, communion. It is a welcoming, an unfolding of our being beyond the boundaries of our words, into boundless harmony. Opening to the single source of all things, our sense of ‘here’ and ‘there,’ ‘interior’ and ‘exterior,’ collapses. We are carried into the heart of life, to sense in the silence of this communion that we are one with the tree, the bird, the person next to us.
Grace-filled moments of communion
However subtle, however quiet, most, if not all of us have known these grace-filled moments of communion. It might have been in the glow of an unexpected smile; in the sudden copper blaze of leaves illuminated in Autumn sunlight; in the unexpected greeting of little flowering plant, determined to survive in the most inhospitable place. Woven through the fabric of each moment is an invitation to communion, to see more deeply into the life of things and sing with Ephrem the Syrian, ‘Lord, your symbols are everywhere, yet You are hidden from everywhere. Blessed is the Hidden One shining out!’ (4)
If you asked me to explain how this happens, I would have to say ‘I don’t know how. But I know it does’ – and point to Jesus’ invitation, ‘Come, and you will see’ (John 1:39). What will we see? Forget about that. Let go of every thought about what you might or might not see. Let the answer show itself! As one of my teachers at Prinknash Abbey liked to say, ‘Just meditate. Sooner or later, you will notice something wonderful.’
Where we end and God begins
What should we do when our simple practice leaves our senses unable to find anything to grasp onto and our mind tells us we are doing nothing? ‘Continue doing this nothing, and do it for the love of God,’ encourages the author of the Cloud of Unknowing. ‘Don’t be concerned that your senses can’t sense it and you can’t get your head around it. Not being able to reason about it is a sign of its infinite nature and value. Choose what the senses and thinking mind will tell you is nowhere and nothing. What the outer aspect of ourselves calls nothing, the inner aspect of ourselves calls All.’ (5)
As we learn to let go of our search for what was never missing, we are carried beyond the boundaries of thought to be shown what is always showing, and the veil of imagined separateness from God is lifted. We are raised above ourselves, says the fourteenth century spiritual master Jan van Ruusbroec, to ‘a modeless state of blissful enjoyment which overflows whatever fullness we have ever received or could receive,’ until all that is left is, ‘one enjoyment and one beatitude with God without difference.’ (6) Where we end and God begins, where God ends and we begin, we cannot say. And we are happy to be silent and rest there.
‘Come, and you will see’ says Jesus (John 1:39). We are made for contemplation, for the gift of seeing clearly. Its coming, and the means of its coming, are beyond our control. But there are skills we can learn to dispose ourselves to this gift.
We do not come to it by a process of reason or analysis, but by laying ourselves open to it through cultivating open, receptive attention. One way to do this, an ancient way, a simple way, is the practice of meditation. When we look at a tree, a bird, a passing cloud or the person next to us, what face, what life do we see?
‘When did we see you?’ Jesus is asked in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 25: 37-39). In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus answers: ‘I am all: From me all has come forth, and to me all has reached. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.’ (7)
This blog is based on one of the teachings given in a recent online meditation group gathering. You are warmly welcome to join one of our future gatherings.