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Holiness is revealed in our capacity for positive connection. The more we can connect, and the more we can connect with, the “holier” we are. God is precisely the One who connects all things one to another. Before enlightenment you just rank things up or down, afterwards you connect things horizontally—almost automatically!
Many have said that most of our problems today tend to be psychological, but the solution is always spiritual. Only healthy, great religion is prepared to realign, re-heal, and reconnect all things, and reposition us inside the whole universe of things. Thomas Merton said the True Self should not be thought of as anything different than life itself—not my little life, but the Big Life.
I’m not going to call the True Self “life” or “being.” More basically, I’m going to call it “Love.” Love is what we were made for, and love is who we are. There is increasing evidence that love is the very physical structure of the universe, as revealed in all things existing in orbital, contextual, magnetic, and sexual ways. The Song of Songs (8:6) says that love is stronger than death, and the flash of love is like a flash of fire, a flame of Yahweh. Everything can be seen as a little experience of the Big Flame. We are just a little tiny flicker of a much larger flame that is Life itself, Consciousness itself, Being itself, Love itself, God’s very self. Once we say it, it seems obvious. What else would it be?
Adapted from
True Self/False Self, disc 2, (CD);
and Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation, disc 7, (CD)
Gateway to Silence:
Wholeness holds you.
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