073114 - The Way of Subtraction

God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul,

but by a process of subtraction. 

~ Meister Eckhart

Well, it was towards the end of 2013 that I first read this quote from Meister Eckhart. (Eckhart von Hochheim O.P. (c. 1260 – c. 1328; a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in the Landgraviate of Thuringia in the Holy Roman Empire.) Little did I know how, across those 700 and more years, he would change and enlarge my Life! 

I followed his "advice"; I began to practice a "spirituality" of a "process of subtraction". [I use the term "spiritual"; but I am not a dualist; I believe that who we are as incarnated/enfleshed beings is a unity.] I decided not to be licensed to officiate as a priest, after having done so in the parish for the previous year in SIlver City. I began to search my mind, my inner life, and to examine all of the concepts, ideas, beliefs. I examined "God", worship, church, liturgy, language, core principles of living, ethics, "religion", and many other things. 

It was, and still is, an exciting and very liberating time.

Obviously I can't deal with all aspects here. But in essence what happened was that I was calmly, gently, catapulted into a profoundly different universe of Being. When the shift happened, I recognized that I had been on this journey for a long time. I also knew where I was .... it was familiar, someplace I recognized. It was a quiet "aha" moment. I remember smiling; I "felt" peace and openness flow around me. To invoke an image attributed to the Christian apostle Paul, it felt as if the "glass darkly" had absorbed light and I was living in a different Reality. Presumptuous as it may sound, it seems to me that I had been seeking unity with all Being and that, once I "subtracted", it was possible to be integrated.

For me, the word "God" is a metaphor. By "metaphor", I mean a pointer towards an Eternal Reality, a profound Mystery, eternally to be entered into. Most mystics of all paths say something like, "Once you have said everything you can say about God, you haven't even begun". Alas, being human, we can only talk about "God" in human terms. It is impossible not to present "God" in some version of our own image ... and in doing so we create God to meet our own needs .... and endow God with our own foibles. My Journey seems to have pushed me on the path towards being freed from this understanding.

Well. Dennis and I had a great 3-week trip around California. We're home, getting rid of things in preparation for moving to Ecuador. Seeing doctors, etc. August 13 we head out for a 7 week trip out to the East coast and back, seeing family and friends. Slowly our house is beginning to look like we are camping out! We've rented our house in Cotacachi. Here it is:

The birds here in NM at Casa Uccello are wonderful ... and they all came back after we had "abandoned" feeding them for a month! Ecuador is one of the premier birding sites in the World (1600 species), and boy am I looking forward to seeing them!

Here's some "wisdom" I want to live by:

Cheers!