Non-attachment

"it wasn't her deal,

it was theirs, she thought.

only this time, those weren't just

words to help her detach.

she WAS detached.

it was truth.

and she danced with delight in her

freedom."

~terri st. cloud

The Promise and Perils of the Abrahamic Tradition

When we use these terms, we must always remember that we are not discussing a single human entity, Abraham, but a hylic unit, a pair, Abraham and Sarah combined who are the original great-grand parents of the three Abrahamic traditions. We went to the Middle East together to visit the “graves” and shrine sites of our spiritual ancestors, and most particularly the roots of our spiritual great grandparents—Abraham and Sarah. We went to explore and taste their spirit as it has become manifest in the later streams (or families) that have come from these two very prolific people.

Remember the promise made to Abraham and Sarah, indicating the starry heavens? The divine Presence pointed and said, “Your progeny shall be numbered like these myriad stars.” And so it has become true, a great family tree, with three main branches, Judaism, Christianity and Islam—differently shaped perhaps, but producing similar spiritual fruit (when they are in their “best” season of production).

The spirit of our spiritual great grandparents and ancestors is still quite evident today in that region of the world—and the memory of them, their lives and journeys exist almost everywhere. There is, you might say, an Abrahamic presence, and it is palpable and good. The first overwhelming aspect of that presence has to do with hospitality and generosity. It is clear from the ancient texts that Abraham and Sarah were generous and hospitable people—and that same spirit lives on today everywhere across the Middle East. There is a generosity of spirit that manifests in an almost overwhelming hospitality (when things are peaceful and balanced.

In addition, there are more subtle qualities which also exist, that I believe flow from our spiritual ancestors and affect and influence us now in the Tradition just the way the spirit and values of our own families affect us in some subtle way on a day-to-day basis.

For example, there is the fundamental sense that all of life is a Path, a journey, a pilgrimage, which we all are taking, and on this pathway certain things apply. First, in importance is honor and dignity of spirit, a nobility and integrity that aligns oneself with divine beauty and strength. Second, there is the quality of courage and patience because the journey is long and sometimes tedious. Third, the Abrahamic peoples have a fierce determination to live and move forward in some way that springs not from aggression, but from love. It is a quality where heart and will are combined, for without such a heart we are left with little or nothing.

These are what I would call “Abrahamic Characteristics”—qualities in the Abrahamic traditions and peoples when they are at their best. At their worst these can turn into stubbornness, narrow-minded dogmatism, and war-like violence or aggression. These are perils that also live inside “the family” structure—traits that turn against us when we get off track and wander aimlessly from our God-given Pathway of deep Spirit.

Soul's center

The soul's center is God. When it has reached God with all the
capacity of its being and the strength of its operation and
inclination, it will have attained to its final and deepest center
in God; it will know, love and enjoy God with all its might.
- St. John of the Cross.

Growth

"from her sorrow she found compassion.
from her grief she learned understanding.
and from her journey she became real."

~terri st. cloud

Water: The Movie

This is a very important film which everyone should see...no exceptions!

This fascinating movie spans the globe to reveal recent discoveries about water, the most amazing yet least studied substance in the world. Witness as researchers, scientists, philosophers and theologians try to understand this unique liquid and all its miraculous properties still waiting to be discovered.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8CE285033F506FF2

(Please copy this to your address window to view in high-speed internet connections)

Images Middle East

Traveling in the Middle East provides many opportunities to encounter the unexpected. The landscape, the aromas, the taste of exotic spices and of the sense of movement of the heart. While some of this was expected the actual experience was so different from my imagination. All of it became spiritual nourishment for the pilgrimage in these beautiful lands.

One of the most surprising and intense moments for me was standing at the Mount of Olives, certainly in proximity to where Yeshua stood, and looking upon Jerusalem which seemed more like a vision before me rather than the actual city. It was a moment out of time in connection with all that has passed within this city. Our guide, Jill, read the following passage by Yeshua from Matthew:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you refused. Look! Your house will be deserted, for, I promise, you shall not see me any more until you are saying: Blessed is he who is coming in the name of the Lord.”

And I grieved with Yeshua--Jerusalem still so divided and its potential not yet fulfilled. In that time, I felt the intensity of those passages in Scripture that express a deep longing to return to Jerusalem, the spiritual source of the writers, and I wept. There in the city today Muslims, Jews, Christians and others bump up against one another, some in friendship, and many in friction and conflict. Could it possibly ever be they are like Monks living in very close quarters who a Zen monk observed, “Monks are polished by rubbing against each other.” It is to be hoped that those “polished beings” will someday usher in a new vision for this eternal city.

Perhaps Jerusalem stands as that great metaphor of our individual longing to return to our source, that place of acceptance, and union. This image now shines in my heart as a beacon that calls me to live into its historical promise. In our travels as a group in the Middle East I believe we contributed in many ways to that journey that calls us to--our own Jerusalem. Our encounter with the people who live in the region was a time of mutual acceptance and love expressed with clarity and passion. For now maybe the best we can do is to meet all strangers in the Jerusalem of our hearts with a “Blessing in the Name of the Lord.” It will make a difference.

Panentheism

"We want to worship a living God. I have not seen anything but God all my life, nor have you. To see this chair you first see God, and then the chair in and through him. He is everywhere, saying, "I am." The moment you feel "I am," you are conscious of Existence. Where shall we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being?

~Vivekananda

What we should be

"The Bible," we are told sometimes, "Gives us such a beautiful
picture of what we should be." Nonsense! It gives us no picture at
all. It reveals to us a fact: it tells us what we really are; it
says, "This is the form in which God created you, to which He has
restored you; this is the work which the Eternal Son, the God of
Truth and Love, is continually carrying on within you."
- Frederick Denison Maurice

Not Made With Hands

There is mention in the letter to the Hebrews of a Temple that is “not made with hands.” It is described as a celestial Temple after which the earthly Temple in Jerusalem is a mirror or dim reflection. The day we met on the Mount of Olives to begin our tour of Jerusalem, our guide pointed to the gate to the Temple, that is now blocked by a cemetery and cemented wall, that it was through this gate tradition says the Messiah will come. It had been blocked up precisely to prevent such an event—and so Jill mentioned that in a more esoteric understanding, a bridge of light would span the valley from the Mount of Olives to the Temple Mount, and across that light-bridge the Messiah would stride into Jerusalem. It made some sense.

One of the reasons for our journey to the Middle East, in fact one of its keynote themes, was to explore the meaning of temple and temple structure. So we visited magnificent ancient Temple sites like the stunning site of Baalbek high in the Bekaa valley built by both an ancient culture and the later Roman empire. What was clear in all the ancient, medieval and contemporary shrine, Mosque, Church, Temple, and Synagogue sites was that there is an underlying pattern or structure that is represented by all. The proportions are almost identical (the ratios), though the dimensions themselves may change. There is some kind of sacred architecture or geometry that they are all trying to reflect. It was fascinating. We saw it in Churches, Mosques, Temples, and Shrines in each of the four countries we visited. It was replicated on the Temple Mount and all over Jerusalem—but also throughout the Middle East, and in the Kaaba in Mecca as well.

Why is this important? Suppose that this is not only an example of an “as above so below” kind of replication, but also a manifestation in the exterior world of a much deeper and closer interior reality. Suppose that the kardial dimension, the heart is, as all the sacred texts suggest, the “true temple” but to understand its many dimensions we must see and experience them as outer realities before we can understand their inward features. That’s the nub of the issue. That’s the teaching. Rumi, perhaps, said it best:

The place that Solomon made to worship in,
called that Far Mosque, that Temple-Shrine, is not built of earth
or water and stone, but of intention and wisdom
and mystical conversation and compassionate action.

Every part of it is intelligent and responsive
to every other part. The carpet bows to the broom.
The door knocker and the door swing together
like musicians. This heart sanctuary does
exist, but it cannot be described. Why try!

Solomon simply goes there every morning and gives guidance
with words, with musical harmonies, and in actions,
which are the deepest teachings. You see, a prince is just
a conceit until he does something with generosity of heart.

Awe and Intimacy

The effect of awe is the disappearance of self; the self which is in a state of awe, disappears. Levels of awe may be measured by the degree to which the self has disappeared; some people are at a higher level of awe than others. The effect of intimacy, by contrast, is alertness; those who are intimate are alert. A person who is fully intimate could be thrown into a fire, and the intimacy would not be disturbed.

~Qushari, "Risalah"

Grandeur

"Let the mind be enlarged ... to the grandeur of the mysteries,
and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind."
--Sir Francis Bacon, 1561-1626.

It Takes Dying

It takes dying to awaken.
Each heart beat brings us closer
to knowing our True Self.

In Easter morning
there is a reminder that
death
leads to life
and life
to dying

One cannot be without the other.

I wonder, God, how it is that You
decided on this way
of holding on, of letting go.

I sat today watching the birds frolic
The trees adorned in their Easter finest
The wind danced with joy
In this I found your Blessed Presence
But holding tightly to It is impossible.


Diana L. Beardsley 4/4/10

Thanks, Diana for this profound and beautiful poem.

Limestone and Lava

You have to be in a place to really know it—to internalize it. And when you do, you make some amazing discoveries that change the way you perceive everything from that point forward. I had never been to Galilee, the home ground of Yeshua before this trip, so I was looking forward to going there and seeing it for myself.

The first stop was Nazareth, the hometown of the young Yeshua. It is now a major center in Northern Israel, bustling and interesting. Of course there are the requisite churches over historical sites. But most interesting for me were the elevations of the town itself—the sweep and slopes of the mountainous territory of Nazareth and the limestone caves archaeologists had uncovered from Yeshua’s time that held livestock and granaries. There were the hills and valleys that Yeshua walked, and the direction of the nearest Greek town to which he and his father must have walked perhaps on a daily basis to work. I felt it all in my bones—these beautiful green, rocky, limestone hills and valleys of Galilee. And off in the distance, Mount Tabor, that alone rounded mountain where the Transfiguration (the Metamorphosis) had occurred.

Then our bus wound down, down, making our way through mountains and valleys to the shores of the “Sea” of Galilee—a sizeable and beautiful lake nestled low in these mountains. It would have taken hours and perhaps days of walking from Nazareth to get there.

We drove to an excavated site archaeologists have uncovered in old Capernaum (Kafar Nahum—the Village of Nahum) where Yeshua had made his headquarters in that fishing village by the lake during the time of his active ministry. It was there in that village that archaeologist had discovered the “household of Peter.” What you now see is an excavation of a large family compound that is believed to be where Peter and his extended family had lived and where Yeshua perhaps took a room, and from which he taught and worked. And very nearby the foundations of an old synagogue where he prayed.

And most surprising for me (a small detail perhaps) it was all made of black basalt (lava rock) that spills out over the region from the Golan Heights in Syria nearby from an ancient volcanic overflow that becomes the basin for the Lake, and creating the volcanic mountains all around—the same mountains into which he went to pray, and from which he taught his famous Sermon full of revolutionary insights about religion, spirituality, and God.

I just never knew—these black stones held him and the beautiful lake and the dark mountains that spoke to him. He loved it all, giving himself away there, traveling for days walking, teaching, touching people everywhere with such profound power. I was deeply moved.

Soldiers at the Wailing Wall

We came to Israel expecting to touch the roots of our faith tradition—and we did, but in ways that took us all by surprise. I left that land knowing firsthand what life under Roman occupation must have been like, what it must have felt like. The names and uniforms have changed. There are strange role reversals now, but Israel is still occupied territory where fear and suspicion lurk across the population and peoples, and only a tight military hand keeps the lid on this boiling pot. So it was in Yeshua’s day.

“So this is what it felt like then,” I said to myself over and over again. A troubled peace with soldiers on every corner, and yet underneath it all, the hopes and dreams of its people, the religious and spiritual longing, and the displays of a fierce piety from each Abrahamic tradition remain—all concentrated on this one tiny place, magnified and intensified. And so the pressure builds.

The power of these tensions became completely apparent to me at the Wailing Wall. People of every persuasion (Jews in particular) were gathered there, faces pressed against the Wall praying, crying out, suffering. Soldiers and civilians alike, orthodox and secular, Israelis and tourists, Jews and Christians stood faces pressed against the hard surface praying. And just above us, over the top, on the Temple Mount itself, Muslims kneeling with their faces pressed against the same stone, praying.

We were all concentrated there together—the stones literally holding the intent and the vibration of our prayers—some written on torn scraps of paper and crammed into the crevices between the stones of the ancient foundation of the Temple Mount. We, the Abrahamic people, suffer. We wail against the hard barriers of history and our present condition, pleading for release.

The Tomb and Holy Saturday

In the Christian Calendar, today is Holy Saturday when the tradition says that Yeshua rested in the tomb following the horrors of crucifixion and perhaps even the “harrowing of hell” in an underworld beneath the surface of things. It is a day of memorial, and made more vivid this season having just traveled through the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which reveres the sites of death, burial and resurrection all within one huge compound structure at the heart of both modern and ancient Jerusalem.

The day of our visit to this site was intense. Not only was Jerusalem on high alert, but the site swarmed with throngs of pilgrims from around the world—focusing on just this place. It could not have been more poignant in so many ways—but I left with the deep impression that we, Christians, have entombed Jesus in our structures and there, still he lies wounded, bound and buried by a religion that has not transcended its basest egoic level.

We began the morning of the visitation on the Mount of Olives in a beautiful place overlooking the ancient sweep of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and the Dome of the Rock. We descended the valley walking to the Garden of Gethsemane (very impressive), and on down to the valley floor and up into the old City. When we eventually reached the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It could not have been more vivid. The Church space itself is divided up into “warring” Christian zones and jurisdictions—Catholics, Orthodox, Armenians, and Copts… each claiming their “piece of the prize.” Before entering the huge tomb-like structure of the Church, our guide took us to the court outside and pointed to a third story level where there were two windows above a ledge and a ladder planted below one window. She told us how recently a storm had blown the ladder off and someone had replaced it below the “wrong” window and a “religious incident” had broken out among the factions. Mop water often splashes over into another "zone" and creates a stir.

Inside the Church is impressive—up many levels, down many levels… built over the rock where the Romans had crucified criminals outside the “then city walls.” Lower down were caves and tombs, and further down still was a small opening to the base of the rock itself where an earthquake had rent the whole structure in two… down to the reputed place of “Adam’s skull.”

The place was jammed, noisy, competitive, heart-breaking, beautiful, ancient and, I believe, the actual site of the final events—but, as I said, religious sentiment at the level of the ego is in full control there, and you can feel the fierce determination not to let any of it go in favor of something higher. I left with a deep sadness for what we have created, but also an awareness that a Higher Self watches over even this sight of pilgrims still—calling out "people of the heart" to move to a place of resurrected awareness beyond religious convention and competition.

By the way, the only way to “keep the peace” there at the Church to this day is to have a Muslim family keep the keys to the whole structure (which they have for centuries), opening and closing its vast doors each morning and every night. It is interesting how Islam became the “mediator” in this particular instance.