Self-knowledge and relationship

We have seen how important a role self-knowledge and true, open relationships play on the spiritual path. “Self-knowledge determines the quality of all relationship…..it shows how the gift of [Jesus’] self-knowledge to his friends was the foundational step in his universal relationship with humanity through the Holy Spirit….his self-knowledge derived from consciousness of union with his Father.” (Jesus the Teacher Within p.243) 

Our self-knowledge too emerges from the silence of contemplative prayer, when we touch the ‘mind of Christ’. That is why we hear St Paul say in Romans: “Adapt yourselves no longer to the pattern of this present world but let your mind be remade and your whole nature thus transformed.” The ensuing insights come therefore when we have let go off the dominance of the ego with its delusion of separateness and its fear of not surviving. Without the prejudices and defensive attitude of the ego we can open ourselves to the Divine, allowing a loving, faithful relationship with the Divine and a genuine trusting relationship with others. 

That this process leads to union with the Divine underlies all of the teaching of meditation: our thoughts, the operations of our mind, our emotions need to be transcended, so that we can experience our true self in the Divine without hindrances. If they are not transcended, we are only deceiving ourselves and are merely floating in the ‘pax perniciosa‘ or ‘pernicious peace’, as John Cassian called it in the 4th century C.E. Then after years of practice, we still find ourselves in the same illusionary mental construct. We have to resist this desire to lose ourselves in a world of dreams. 

A real deep relationship is always a relationship of love. Union with the Divine is experienced as a relationship in love. That is the essence of the Christian vision of God: “Everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God, but the unloving know nothing of God. For God is love.” And Meister Eckhart shows the prime importance of this in his saying: “Whatever God works, the first breaking forth is compassion”. 

Bede Griffiths told the lovely story, how he felt at a loss, when he had not died after his stroke. And then he heard a voice, saying ‘Surrender to the Mother’ and he did. Then he felt held as if in a “sea of love”. People who visited him afterwards said that he became an embodiment of love – the reserved English gentleman was gone. 

When John Main was asked how we should prepare for meditation, he said we should do so by small acts of kindness. Laurence Freeman said that the only yardstick of progress in meditation is: “Is there an increase in love?”- an increase in love for self and for others. As the Desert Father Evagrius said: “If you love yourself, you love all men as yourself.” Having found God in our own depth, we find him everywhere.

This is the goal of the spiritual life. But Evagrius admitted that it was not an easy way: “An elder said, I have spent 20 years fighting to see all as only one.” His advice about the Christian injunction to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’, one of the most difficult things to truly acquire, was “It is not possible to love all brethren to the same degree. But it is possible to associate with all in a manner that is above passion, that is to say, free of resentment and hatred.”