suffering on the path

A friend sent me The Three Books of the Absolute by Richard Rose: a 7 page rumination on our existential situation as those who would suffer the death of our egos, looking for ulimate transcendence. A number of sections of it really struck me, so I've pasted them below followed by the letter I wrote him in return.
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I sought Thee, O Eternal Essence, in the grottoes and in the tabernacles. I called out thy name to the stone ears of statues. And thou answered not.
I sought Thee in the voice of nature. I looked for Thee in the footprints of animals, in the habits of birds. I listened for a revelation in the murmuring of waters and in the soft moaning of the forests. I laid my ear against the roaring cataracts and bared my head to the tempests. But Thou answered not.
I have sought Thee, O Eternal Essence, within my self. I have sought Thee in my mind until I was cursed with confusion. And I saw Thee not.
Then, O Eternal Essence, I sought Thee whence I came. I sought Thee in my womb. As the wild beast flees from the elements into his cavern where his wild dam littered him, so I fled the darkness of my clay. And naught did I find but the turbulence of my imagination. There in chaotic pattern did I find the seeds of all confusion that pretended to be wisdom. Where man was born was also born his gods. Where man was born was also born his demons. . . .

I, O Eternal Essence, beseech Thee,--where within Thee have I dissolved myself?
Where are prisoned those who follow love? Where have I left my I-ness, and now having left it, who is it that cries out to Thee? Where is the dirge of sorrow that is all that remains of me? Who feels this pain that burns and consumes, yet is felt not by I-who-am-no-more? Who is it that looks from the windows of my mansion like a strange prowler? Who is it that hears and hears
not, that yearns for life and lives not, that seeks out death and dies not....?
O Ever-Allness, what is Thy pleasure in my sorrow? Thou hast damned me to thoughtlessness, and yet I cannot leave off thinking, and still my thoughts are not words. Thou hast robbed me of my soul and mind, and my body laments for all ages, for my body dies not nor yet walks among men. Thou hast delivered me from my Ego, and what is there that remains? O Ever-Allness,
forever insensate, pitiless to entreaty, speechless to my prayers,--weep Thou with me for I am of Thee....and all that remains of me is Thee. . . .

Relax ye and die and live the darkness, and enter the impassive pool of the Unknowing....
Who shall extol the memory of man that leaves him often before his life....Who remembers after life? If man forgets his infancy before his manhood is upon him,--what shall he remember hence....shall he remember nothingness? Desist and enter the pool of the Unknowing....
What is time, O mind....? Is it the number of steps in a day,--the number of thoughts in a step....? Then of the thoughts in a day, how many years of days would it take to know all that is know, and then how long,--to know the magnitude of the Unknowing....and how many steps will take thee from here to there? Who shall anoint thy limbs?
Though he who forgets more seems greater than he who strived not and died in ignorance....who shall know....who shall know? Mourn ye for the hour when the cloud of the Unknowing passes and the falseness of light dazzles the eye. For the light is a liar unto the Light, and the light is the darkness of the mind. Yet who shall know....?

And soon I see, looking ahead, that all my joys are not, that all my love is not, that all my being is not. And I see that all Knowing is not. And the eminent I-ness melts into the embraces of oblivion. It melts into the embraces of oblivion like a charmed lover, fighting the
spell and languishing into it. And now I breathe Space and walk in Emptiness. My soul freezes in the void and my thoughts melt into an indestructible blackness. My consciousness struggles voiceless to articulate and it screams into the abysses of itself. Yet there is no echo. All that remains is All. My spark of life falls through the canyons of the universe, and my soul cannot weep for its loss....for lamentation and sorrow are things apart. All that remains is All.

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and I answered my friend from the bottom of my heart:

thank you!!! :) :) :)

I resonated in many places with the solitariness, the utter futility of any human action, thought, perception . . . but then I diverged strongly from where he went with it . . . because I cannot and will not imagine my ability to perceive, to be, to experience as anywhere approaching our creator's. For I believe we are created, I believe it is the only sensible belief. I cannot get caught in the solipsism, even narcissism of the endless return on myself, always questioning, always pushing beyond my last construct - for I know I will never clear the constructs - of that I am now sure. Oh, I will again and again break free from them, but again and again my ability to identify myself, to see myself in contrast or with others, this basic dualistic perception of creator and created will return. I love the I AM, I love the total identification with the God-head that being his child suggests - but I also know that I am limited to partiality until one day I know as I am known, and this is perfectly okay with me.

I remembered today a development in my realization I may not have shared with you from my time "on retreat:" First I found myself singing a little ditty that had manufactured itself in my consciousness "Out on a limb, out on a limb, out on a limb for the Lord" some days or weeks later I noticed it had changed to "dancing on a limb, dancing on a limb, dancing on a limb for the Lord." Finally as my dance became more and more abandonned, I found myself singing "drifting on the wind, drifting on the wind, drifting on the breath/spirit of the Lord." and so I've drifted ever since, occasionally getting hung up on this or that worldly identification, this or that preference for self-identification, but then again waking up to it, letting go and starting to drift again.

I don't know how this painful part of my drifting is going to go - I think I must be resisting now - not wanting to let go of what I've already lost, wanting to retain some vestige of my former life (family, money, career, prestige - yes - to be honest I can see myself yearining sometimes for these things) and so I burn as I cannot grasp, but try to grasp, cannot let go, but it's being torn away from me - is already gone from my failing fingers. Yes I am physically weaker now . . . I am sagging in some extistential way . . . it hurts a lot, I often find myself weeping easily . . . but my friend - I do know that despite my suffering that I'm held, that I'm going through a painful patch of somehow resisting letting go - I don't know if this is my ego's final battle - I'm wearily afraid that's it's just another of an endless set of rounds I will do in the ring, until finally I am released to BE all that I AM.

I very much appreciate you stimulating this in me - I am grateful to our God for inspiring you to break through my walls of passivity and lethargy, prompting me to write again about my experience, and in writing to make progress, to get closer to that inevitable breakthrough - that liberation I can almost see if I stand on tip-toe! :) heh heh - of course it is not by any effort of mine that it's going to come but only from God-incidences like a good friend whacking me over the head with such an evocative piece or writing! You are such a good friend! Thank you!

And so dear reader, I close. If you made it this far, perhaps you also know something of this painful journey, this determination to be free from illusion, free from the world (prestige, possessions, etc.), free from self-centred concern, free to BE, free to BE love, free to BE with whomever we're given, free to go where the Spirit leads us. If so, well met, and God's blessing continue to rest on you, flow through you, and grace you in every way!

suffering and joy

Many voices of the wisdom of the ages tell us that we run from our pain, that we distract ourselves in any way possible from the pain, loneliness, emptiness and essential deficiency of our existence. And so we experience transitory joy when we have fulfilled a desire, experienced great pleasure, achieved success, won a game, won a lottery, fallen in love, given birth to a child, etc. At such times we feel really good about ourselves, we are happy with who we are. As good as any one of these experiences is, and as joyful as we feel, they are all transitory, and our lives are consumed with the quest for or maintenance of these personal satisfactions, which often are reliant on what other people think, the approval we feel from them in our socially constructed roles of parent, employer/employee, coach, performer, consumer, christian/hindu/moslem/buddhist/sikh/you name it. And so many of us live out our lives achieving enough of a balance between the good and bad experiences, that on the whole we are happy enough with our lives, content with our socially acceptable identities. We are good enough people, liked enough by enough people, own enough of the right stuff that we are comfortable enough in our own skins.



I have left all this behind me: like a Buddhist or Hindu monk I am in a process of dropping all attachments but I am doing so as a follower or disciple of Jesus. This process leads me directly into suffering, but this suffering is the suffering of not having the crutches we all need to feel good about ourselves, and so I'm faced with my own personal deficiency, loneliness as I increasingly refuse to make it better in the ways we all learned. Perhaps the story of Job can help as a way to illustrate my point.



Job was a very rich, successful and righteous person: he always did everything right and so had a great reputation on heaven and on earth. But his happiness or security was vested in all the signs of his success - he knew he was blessed of God because of his great success. Yet he lived in fear. He was afraid his children would offend God so he did sacrifices on their behalf, and when everything was taken from him including his health, he said, "I was always afraid this would happen." Having everything stripped away from him left him confronting his own misery not only from the loss of his children and health, but also his reputation and social standing because by the calamities that had befallen him he was now marked in that society as a sinner and cursed by God. It was only when after having everything stripped away from him, and nakedly confronting his creator that he finally MET God, and after that, nothing could ever make him afraid again - for now, he knew who God was and who he was, and everything else was secondary.



Like many before me who have chosen to leave the world (prestige, possessions, etc.) behind, I have given away or sold my possessions, and as I recognize attachments or ways of constructing an identity on which I like to rely, I drop them as well. In so doing I am responding to Jesus' invitation to follow him, but in order to do so leaving everything else behind. For I too have met our creator, whom Jesus revealed to us as Abba (literally Dadda in Aramaic), I know who I AM, and am content to more and more walk in His presence.



Yesterday I was again moved to tears listening to the story of Jesus suffering and sacrifice, after having already been confronted by the pain of the Tamil people demonstrating at Parliament Hill demanding that the Canadian government do something about the attrocities being committed against them by the Sri Lankan government (chemical warfare, bombing hospitals, churches and schools, etc.) through whom I walked on my way to Church. From the God's eye point of view, there is so much suffering in this world, and yet I know that S/He is surrounding us, holding us, waiting for us to awake from the illusions of our social "realities," our immersion in all of the constructs that imprison us from seeing the truth, that keep us compliant as good little consumers, happy in our nests, trading "Good days" with our friends and colleagues, chattering about weather, sports, or what the neighbours are doing, oblivious to the suffering we have insulated ourselves against, inside and out. But Jesus calls us to leave these comfortable illusions and distractions behind and to follow him on the path of suffering and joy.

It is interesting to note that Jesus described himself as coming for the "sick" (oppressed, poor, sick, imprisoned, rejected, etc.) and not for the well. Those caught up in the illusions of their goodness, of the good-enough quality of their life do not respond well to a radical like Jesus who said to the rich young ruler, one more thing you need to do beyond being a good person and loving God, and that is give away all your possessions and follow me. The young guy left saddened because he was to attached to his possessions and position to give it all up in order to follow Jesus. Oftentimes it's only those who've already been knocked out of the mainstream by society's cruelty, by illness, by their own misdeeds, it's only the marginalized who can truly respond to Jesus' call to leave the world behind. If you find yourself resonating with this post, then it is likely because you too are marginalized in some significant way, and, realize the value inherent in dropping all the superficial stuff and going all out for transformation and liberation . . . but that is material for another post.

So have a blessed Easter all; whether it is one in which your own personal suffering is deepening as you drop your attachments and leave the world more and more behind, or whether you are feeling the joy of the resurrection, the joy of liberation, the joy of new life. The two go hand in hand!

take up your cross and follow me

I find myself resonating more and more with Jesus' command to his disciples. For those who have answered the call, who have realized they've been chosen, this is the straight and narrow path that almost everything in our nature rebels against; I say "almost everything" because the depth of filial love and devotion can in fact cause us to lay down our life if need be.

Inspiring me this week on this path have been the reflections of a Sufi devotee going through his early awakening back in the early 1970's, a devotee who has since gone to become a teacher of many. I have been offered many things to read, but rarely pick one up. In this case though when I had read the first paragraph I knew I would be working with this for a while.

He traces in his own experience themes found in many mystical paths, that of accepting even embracing the wounded heart we all carry: the loneliness, the emptiness, the self-rejection; this pain we all flee from by way of distractions such as work, food, alcohol, drugs, sex, entertainment, sports, etc. He does so by accepting his teacher's instruction to not allow himself to follow any of these ways of constructing an ego, a sense of self based on partial identifications. Rather than becoming the doer, the person who strives for this or that pleasure, who pursues fulfillment in these ways, and becomes self-identified as a person who does this or that, as a Sufi he only focused on God and on being aware of this emptiness, not trying to fill it at all. This he found extraordinarily difficult as he was at that time both in love with a woman for the first time as well as devoted to his teacher; but he would not permit himself to ask them for anything, to need anything from them and so found himself in agony.

Eventually after suffering for many weeks some experiences of love and bliss began to break through here and there. As he described his transport of delight at a loving glance from a friend, or a sublime moment in nature, I remembered fondly my own sweet tendency to ecstacy a year ago, how easily I slid into an exalted state of love, joy and bliss. I realized that the metaphor so often used for transformational work and the spiritual path, that of peeling the layers of the onion, was quite apropro here for me. I have been through a number of successive layers of denying a certain ego gratification, of dropping a certain attachment to identity, and am currently going through one again.

The one that is now being dropped is my attachment to being the advisor, the wise friend, the one with the answers: oh how I loved this ego identity! Letting go of it is really quite depressing, both because I've kicked another crutch out from under my faltering sense of identity, as well as tarnished the memory of many pleasurable encounters where I was the man with the right word at the right time. Not that God doesn't work through us when we're "happy doing what we're doing" so to speak, for of course S/He does; but seeing my need to be needed outlined in such bold relief turns yet another worldly or self-centred fulfillment into ashes in my mouth.

At the same time I'm feeling more and more urgent about getting business going again; believing perhaps that it's finally time to make some money, to repay some debts, to get myself back over to Africa, etc. I have my brother continuing to say to me that he believes that my gifts are in the business world, not just on the path, so to speak. I don't know, but perhaps I've spent enough time in this desert of the ego, enough time dropping attachments, etc., that perhaps I'm ready to truly be "in the world but not of the world."

Let's face it folks, there is a certain something suicidal about the willingness to "take up my cross" and follow Jesus; to emulate him in every way. The willingness to take the via dolorosa, to be tortured, to fall under the weight of the cross, to be crushed, broken and pierced is yet finally the path of liberation.

We cannot have two masters, either we care more about what everyone thinks, we care more about our creaturely comforts, about our stuff, or we are in fact sold out, surrendered and living only for God. It's not that our Creator doesn't love all the children S/He has created, or that those who are merely good in a worldly or religious manner are not loved and accepted; it's simply that to be like Jesus is to NOT be of this world.

It is so confusing for Christians who believe they are following Jesus when in fact they are part of a religious club that has Jesus as its hero. Picking up your cross and following Jesus is not simply another way of saying that suffering is part of life, just accept it and know that Gop still loves you: No, it's far more radical than that.

Jesus didn't call Christians, he called disciples saying only those who were willing to leave everything behind to follow him were worthy to be chosen. When he said go and make disciples of all nations, he did not have in mind building churches in every country, nor was he trying to create a religion. He was saying to people one at a time, come and follow me, become like a little child with Abba (literally Dadda in Armaic) our Creator like me, be filled with the Spirit like me, leave the world behind like me and be my disciple. At his ascension his disciples graduated into teachers and were told to go and make more disciples in the same way: one at a time, person to person, heart to heart, so that those who could hear the call, who would one day realize they too had been chosen, would follow them, would follow Jesus, whatever country, language or religion they came from.

We are a light in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it, nor can it. Those of us who see the light, through whom the light shines, are also not at home in this world anymore. I was realizing just the other day how much I missed "being at home." I've been such a married family guy in my life but have been on my own now for a few years; more recently I woke up while on my long reteat and realized I was called to walk with whomever I'm given to walk with, and have since given away or sold most of my possessions so that I'm free to go wherever the Spirit leads. I now find myself being like Jesus, not having a place to lay my head, a place to call home. This then is part of what it means for me to pick up my cross and follow him: I seek no worldly comfort, no place to call home, but instead walk as I'm led, with whomever I'm given. So be it!