The View from Above

In the Gospel of Mark, we hear Jesus say, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ (Mark 12:31). Jesus does not say, love your neighbour as much as yourself, but ‘as yourself.’

It’s very easy to overlook the deeply radical nature of the teaching here, and what Jesus is revealing about the nature of our being, our life. Jesus is inviting us to the recognition that our neighbour is not separate from our life. To paraphrase St Paul, though we appear as many, we are one body, because we all share in one source of life (1 Corinthians 10:17).

All things are one

The great medieval contemplative Meister Eckhart spoke often about the essential oneness of all things in God. In one of his sermons, he says that he was asked why one blade of grass is so unlike another, and how he replied that it is more marvellous that all blades of grass are so much alike.

He speaks of a teacher who said that the blades of grass are all different owing to the overflowing abundance of God, which God pours into all created things. Eckhart says he replied that it is even more wonderful how much the blades are all alike, explaining that ‘all blades of grass are one in their original pure nature, and there all things are one.’ (1)

Imagine for a moment that you are standing in a forest on a clear, sunny day. As the light comes through the canopy of the trees it appears separated into distinct shafts of light. Now imagine that there is a tower in the middle of the forest. It reaches up above the canopy of the forest and you are standing on a platform at the top of it.

Standing on the forest floor, the light appeared separated into distinct shafts. Now, looking out from above the canopy, the light appears as one. The light hasn’t changed. Our perspective has. Where we are looking from has changed.

All blades of grass are one in their original nature, says Eckhart, and there all things are one. In terms of their relationship with their source, the shafts of light are one.

‘Love your neighbour as yourself…’

What difference might it make to the sometimes challenging practice of loving our neighbour, if we could come to see ourselves as countless beams of light, radiating from a single source, ultimately one?

Loving our neighbour would no longer be simply a moral obligation, something we ought to do because Jesus tells us to. It would become a matter of living from the truth of who we are. This new awareness, this new way of seeing, would inform and shape a new way of being, of relating to each other and the world.

The person we find difficult, the person with whom we disagree, the person whose life seems so different from our own, is not separate from us. Seen from the forest floor, we appear separate. Seen in relation to our source, our life is one. To love our neighbour is therefore not simply to reach across the distance between two separate lives. It is to recognise and live from a communion that is already there.

What difference might this awareness make to our lives, to our communities, to our world?

A contemplative way of seeing

In meditation we look beyond the flow of our moment-to-moment experience and our perspective begins to change. Saying our prayer word, following our breath, we let go of our thoughts and images. We lift our attention above the canopy, and gaze towards the light that is one.

To know this oneness. To root our lives in this oneness. To love as one.