Be Still and Know that I am God, from The Experience of Being, Meditatio Talks 2018 C, Medio Media
The verse ‘Be still and know that I am God’ is not an escape from the problems of the world but it is the answer to the problems of the world, because this stillness and knowledge of God is the most powerful central reality. It is the city, it cannot be moved. It is the 20 most central reality of the world. And the fact that the world is in turmoil with terrorism, with craziness, with hate, with self-centred militaristic politics, despite all those horrific aspects of the world, the stillness and the knowledge of God are central. And this stillness and knowledge is greater than the turmoil, greater than the violence, greater than the hatred. And nothing describes more directly the connection between our meditation and the needs of the world.
If we are doing this work of stillness, this work of silence, it is not just for ourselves. It would be very one-sided if we ignored the larger ambient consciousness, the needs of the world around us. The more deeply we go into this work and the work works on us, the more we realise that we are part of this great work of God, which is raising the stillness and knowledge at the heart of human society and of human history, that we are part of this work. We are doing the work, but we are also part of it. We are doing it for ourselves, but we are also doing it for everyone else.
It’s a universal work and it’s the most personal work we could possibly do. But no one can do it for us. It’s a universal and a personal work. It connects us to the universe, to the natural world, and to other human beings. Firstly to ourselves of course, because if we are not connected to ourselves, we are not at home with ourselves, then we are disconnected from everything else around us. And of course it connects us to God, the ground of being, to God who is the great spider who spins the web of reality that we belong to. And nothing that exists, exists without coming into being in that web of reality.
I think human beings feel deeply uneasy, unhappy, and frightened when we lose that sense of connectivity, that sense of connection. Some little glimmer of that might be our need to be online, to be connected, and we might feel anxious with good reason if we come offline, we can’t get online, can’t connect. But that is nothing compared with the existential dread and fear of sensing that we are not in the web of reality, or off the radar, off God’s radar of the web of being. So there is deep in the human being a longing to belong, the fear embedded in this web of reality. As John Main said ‘find our insertion point in the universe’, that little hole that we plug into, and it’s only if we fit into it. Only my particular shape, my particular mind, my particular identity fits into that hole.
Eternal birth, from Meister Eckhart: A modern translation by Raymond Bernard Blakney, 1941, Internet Archive
ET CUM FACTUS ESSET JESUS ANNORUM DUODECIM, ETC.(Luke 2.141)
We read in the gospel that when our Lord was twelve years old he went to the temple at Jerusalem with Mary and Joseph and that, when they left, Jesus stayed behind in the temple without their knowledge. When they got home and missed him, they looked for him among acquaintances and strangers and relatives. They looked for him in the crowds and still they could not find him. Further more, they had lost him among the [temple] crowds and had to go back to where they came from. When they got back to their starting point, they found him.
Thus it is true that, if you are to experience this noble birth, you must depart from all crowds and go back to the starting point, the core [of the soul] out of which you came. The crowds are the agents of the soul and their activities : memory, understanding, and will, in all their diversifications. You must leave them all: sense perception, imagination, and all that you discover in self or intend to do. After that, you may experience this birth — but otherwise not — believe me! He was not found among friends, nor relatives, nor among acquaintances. No. He is lost among these altogether.
Thence we have a question to ask: Is it possible for man to experience this birth through certain things which, although they are divine, yet they come into the man through the senses from without? I refer to certain ideas of God, such as, for example, that God is good, wise, merciful, or whatever — ideas that are creatures of the reason, and yet divine. Can a man have the experience [of the divine birth] by means of these? No! Truly no. Even though [these ideas] are all good and divine, still he gets them all through his senses from without. If the divine birth is to shine with reality and purity, it must come flooding up and out of man from God within him, while all man’s own efforts are suspended and all the soul’s agents are at God’s disposal.
