Mysticism: Week 1
Meister Eckhart, Part II
Friday, September 29, 2017
What is life? God’s being is my life. —Meister Eckhart [1]
Meister Eckhart illustrates the height of western non-dualism. This is why he is largely impossible to understand with our usual dualistic mind. When Eckhart says, “Let us pray to God that we may be free of God,” [2] our logical mind would see this as nonsense! It takes unitive consciousness to discover what Eckhart means. There is no concept of God that can contain God. Your present notion of God is never God. As Augustine said, “If you comprehend it, it is not God.” [3] We can only come to know God as we let go of our ideas about God, and what is not God, is slowly stripped away.
Before transformation, you pray to God. After transformation you pray through God, as official Christian prayers say: “Through Christ our Lord. Amen!” Before radical conversion, you pray to God as if God were over there, an object like all other objects. After conversion (con-vertere, to turn around or to turn with), you look out from God with eyes other than your own. As Meister Eckhart stated it in one of his sermons, “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love.” [4] All we humans are doing is allowing God to “complete the circuit” within us—until we see from the same perspective. This is the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), which will be experienced as a “spiritual revolution” in thinking (Ephesians 4:22).
Michael Demkovich, a Dominican priest and scholar, explains: “It is through our coming to know the truest self that we are transformed into something divine. Eckhart’s notion of deiformity, a person’s conformity to this underlying reality of Godliness, is critical in his understanding . . . of the soul.” [5] Eckhart did not see the soul as dualistically opposed to the body, but as a guide to the body’s experience. Because God took on a human body in Christ and is present within humanity, the body is sacred. In his preaching, Eckhart uses a verbal illustration, exemplum, of eating to illustrate the body-soul relationship: “The food that I eat is united with my body just as my body is with my soul. My body and my soul are united in one being . . . and this typifies that great union we are destined to have with God, in one being.” [6]
You can see why much of the dualistic church was just not ready for dear Meister Eckhart, and thus he was never canonized a saint. But he is still a “Meister”! When copying one of Eckhart’s most famous sermons, an anonymous scribe praised him as “one from whom God hid nothing.” [7]
Gateway to Silence:
Practice being present.
__________________________________________________
Oswald Chambers
The Awareness of the Call
for necessity is laid upon me; yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel! —1 Corinthians 9:16
We are inclined to forget the deeply spiritual and supernatural touch of God. If you are able to tell exactly where you were when you received the call of God and can explain all about it, I question whether you have truly been called. The call of God does not come like that; it is much more supernatural. The realization of the call in a person’s life may come like a clap of thunder or it may dawn gradually. But however quickly or slowly this awareness comes, it is always accompanied with an undercurrent of the supernatural— something that is inexpressible and produces a “glow.” At any moment the sudden awareness of this incalculable, supernatural, surprising call that has taken hold of your life may break through— “I chose you…” (John 15:16). The call of God has nothing to do with salvation and sanctification. You are not called to preach the gospel because you are sanctified; the call to preach the gospel is infinitely different. Paul describes it as a compulsion that was placed upon him.
If you have ignored, and thereby removed, the great supernatural call of God in your life, take a review of your circumstances. See where you have put your own ideas of service or your particular abilities ahead of the call of God. Paul said, “…woe is me if I do not preach the gospel!” He had become aware of the call of God, and his compulsion to “preach the gospel” was so strong that nothing else was any longer even a competitor for his strength.
If a man or woman is called of God, it doesn’t matter how difficult the circumstances may be. God orchestrates every force at work for His purpose in the end. If you will agree with God’s purpose, He will bring not only your conscious level but also all the deeper levels of your life, which you yourself cannot reach, into perfect harmony for necessity is laid upon me; yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel! —1 Corinthians 9:16
Click Image for John White's Original Vision For CO2's
