Oneness & the Heart of the World - Saturday Talk with Fr. Thomas Keating

well a happy good morning to you all I hope you slept well and dreamt about oneness and so I thought about it some more in between sleep naps and since that's the theme of our dialogue today I thought I would go into certain aspects of oneness hinted at a few of them last night it's one of those mysteries that is so simple that you can't possibly get any grasp of it at all except sort of circulating looking at it something like a diamond that you look at from different facets same diamond but you see it from different aspects and you get different colors and different reflections and so on so so that's the kind of reflection that I'm going to be engaged this morning there's so many wonderful facets to it that it is a little arbitrary to know where to begin but perhaps the best place to begin is with ourselves and maybe more specifically with with you so if I ask the question who are you casually what would you say any volunteers well should tell you I'm not interested in your a name and address as much as I am in in other aspects of you but you are you I suppose your resume and what you make out in a doctor's office about your family diseases in middle medical history and perhaps education or what you make out when you apply for a job so in general of resume is what we usually respond who are you i'm an american i went to CC and why are you spent a year and doing this or that etc this is what we might call the the you that is most upfront that people see first or you tell them about but now if i shift the emphasis just a shade and say well really who are you since i'm not interested in your resume as such it's so superficial then we're talking about your ego ego involves the false self the idealized self imagine this is the persona or the personality that we've come to habitually present as ourselves and who we probably think as ourselves who are you like me isn't that and with these characteristics my temperament my number on the Ania gram my ancestors my dispositions my desires my hopes may be my religion my hopes for the future I plans my destiny my profession all that so these are roles that we identify with or cultural factors that we've interior eyes without evaluating their true importance or value in our lives and but this is the this I guess is is the self that we get to know on the basis of friendliness and then friendship and and it certainly is something you want to know if you wanted to enter into a deep relationship with someone but not getting married or something if you remember in the film Casablanca shown some years ago one of the best films ever you remember that after their intense romance in Paris at World War two and they're trying to escape from the Nazis and their Nazis about to take over Paris they need but the circumstances are such that they agree to say nothing about their past or what they did but as things get more intense and sirens are going off he says to her but who really are you I know so little about you and what were you doing if you remember that this is the person that you you want to know if you really love somebody but from the perspective of oneness this isn't really you this is what isn't youth that is the true self the substitute you the imaginary or a looser looser II you that you come in contact with when you begin a serious reevaluation of your value such as in some kind of a conversion or a change of mind or or serious decision or in the face of death or something it really shakes you up some tragedies so the the real you might be expressed this way who are you under life which is more than who really are you but who ultimately basically are you who is the true self that I'm confronting or talking to here and hence where did you come from where are you going do you really know who this is what would it be if you stop thinking about yourself or if you got thrown out of the things that are supporting your idealized image of self so this you is is the deep self it's the spiritual self it's it's the you that God made us to be and for all practical purposes we haven't met yet unless you're on it fairly well established in the spiritual journey and this is the you that were sometimes afraid of finding out because if we did it might change the course of our lives and and we couldn't live with the other use anymore and I might say this isn't the final you yet which is what oneness is but before we get into that let's shift the focus just a second we're talking about you in the individual now let's talk about you in the plural sometimes known as we so who are we now this is a reflection I don't know whether a collective group of people can do because you'd have to all agree to do it but if you had an intentional community that was looking for you then you might all agree to explore this and this always involves exploring the shadow side that is to say the dark side of the use that we've mentioned which are rooted in our evolutionary process and in our developmental process in our cultural conditioning and now we're understanding as research into psychology continues that there's a there's a collective views that there are influence on us Jung calls it the collective unconscious that also affect our conduct operating out of the unconscious level that the traumas of early life also operate from only of a personal nature when we repress some emotional pain that we don't have the resources to face yet you don't solve any psychological problems as you know by repressing them in fact it's by facing them and acknowledging them that you can let them go and so the false self which begins form probably in the womb in some degree is is that developing or emerging self-consciousness that if has no experience of the divine or of God or of spiritual realities and no reason to ask the right the use of reason here to ask the right questions so it's this little creature so vulnerable that desperately needs security affection and some degree of independence some affirmation of its distinctiveness or identity and someone that is is creating a whole world of false ideas about itself largely rooted in the search for happiness that is innate to human nature the search for happiness is really perhaps the greatest proof of God's existence because if what else would cause us to look for it it's the divine presence in us the spirit groaning that we might awaken to the truth of the goodness and gift of God and of our invitation to enter into levels of human experience and development and happiness beauty goodness and truth that we don't normally even imagine so this little self that's developing becomes more and more self reflective as it's rational apparatus develops so that when it's fully developed you have this little brat seven or eight or worse then they get to be twelve or fourteen in someone and this is the only self that we know deeply involved in social relationships status symbols and whatever the cultural presents and in this cultures you know which is so competitive ambition and struggle and competitiveness are part of its chief concern whether this is athletic sore academic or social status so this is this is the self that is the ego or even just the resume as we spoke about in the beginning and it's not in direct relationship to the use of all our colleagues or contemporaries crawling around on the floor or competing in school or on the athletic field in other words we're still fairly limited in our understanding and that means that we we have developed a I am that is to say an ego which is the center around which our thoughts and feelings circulate like planets around the Sun and anything entering into our sphere of gravity so to speak is judged on the basis of whether it can minister to our needs for the emotional programs for happiness becoming demands for other people to respect are more and more outrageous expectations to have unlimited security that everybody love us and to please everybody on earth and you have power over as much as we can this God if you could get away with it which you cannot so we're a bumble of desires that are leakin the leaders into human misery because the desires are so fantastic that there's no chance of their being fulfilled they're just so exaggerated there's a modest value in each of them when they're they need to be moderately fulfilled but a dependence on them for happiness is perhaps the central characteristic of what a false self feels like and it's the only self we know so we're not about to change it unless the motivation is pretty serious so so there is oneness then in human misery and this is perhaps the greatest oneness that we experience in our unevolved state of consciousness where but oddly enough this feeling doesn't produce compassion automatically you'd think if everybody was caught in a swamp that they'd join hands and help each other to climb out not at all the usual response is is to push them into the swamp so that you can then own the real estate or something so so we've changed the earth from a Garden of Eden into an analog of hell really where everybody is out for his or her self as they conceived it under the influence of unquestioned education or societal values so now you have a society of fall cells and they hold corporate ego of complex that we call nations or leased villages or city-states or whatever so this corporate we is is what is coming into an ultimate crisis with globalization and there are enormous advantages of globalization but there are also enormous problems if people are motivated by personal or local or collective in the small sense of the word projects for happiness such as self defense at any cost anybody else so oneness then in our experience is is oneness in in human weakness in the beginning and and this is the oneness that God seems to have addressed in really wanting to become identified with us now the perhaps the most complete view of this identity is presented in in Christian understanding or theology when it reflects the gospel teaching of Jesus with a certain accuracy or presumed accuracy anyway and that that presupposes that we that that God is so compassionate that it's precisely the predicament that the human folks are in that evokes the ultimate sacrifice on God's part if we can so designated in which he gives up the privileges of divinity speaking now and they were teaching the Christian as presented by the qualified Christian teachers God identifies with the human situation exactly where it is by becoming not just taking on a human nature which because of it was free of the false self as a as as the divine possessor of human nature but he is giving up all the dignities of being to find that he could have maintained even as a human being so as Paul puts it he became a slave or the slave of all or treated as a criminal and and identified with every human being precisely in their powerlessness and weakness and the impossibility of their discovering who they really are without the help totally gratuitous that we call grace which is a participation in the divine nature there is a one of the remarkable parables of Jesus which are kind of wisdom saying that it describes this is the one about the great banquet I mention this briefly because it is so central to understand oneness from the perspective of the corporate healing of the weakness and damaged state of human nature we don't have to necessarily today I think think of it as just damaged it may also be just unevolved and this is an interesting contribution from the scientific community if you accept the idea of evolution then this is the way that God is created in which creatures themselves take part or kind of co-create - either by accepting or resisting the forces of their own nature but if they act in this world according to their nature things work out fairly well but not perfectly the greatest mistake that God ever made if I dare to say so is to create anything because as soon as he does that's the end of perfection because these things can't be God and anything that isn't God has limitations or is imperfect so once you start to create especially when you evolve a certain degree of freedom anything is possible why be surprised God is infinite possibilities and so if he decides to create anything can happen and that means the worst things will sometimes happen why because it's possible that's the way it is now if you don't like that situation try another universe this is the one we happen to be in and in accepting this extraordinary view of the human adventure which God not us has invented we begin to have a light on who we are and that he doesn't expect us to be perfect the only perfection anyway is not a behavioral pattern it's about love the only thing that's perfect is long and so anybody can do this if they address their false self and cultivate the true self which is God's presence in them God communicates his own love and so to bring this to another threshold there are two processes in the evolutionary scheme of things not all of these are scientifically agreed upon but one of them is the idea of involution which is the emptying of God so to speak of himself in such a way that he creates matter which is about this opposite of God as anything can be since God is pure spirit so it's as if God threw himself away into creation a way of expressing his desire not to be God or his detachment from all the divine prerogatives remember there's no possessive attitude in God everything is your gift so involution then is the movement out of God - what is father's dawei from the divine essence which probably would be Andy and the extraordinary project is to bring everything that has been created back to the bosom of the Father and giving it a share in the divine life each according to its nature's so that everything now not just God can be divine insofar as that's possible for the limitations of each creature so evolution then is this immense attractive force bringing all of creation including matter so that's why a tired DeShannon and one of his famous sayings said that the Spirit is present in all of matter groaning or moving it towards its final or impatient to see it reach its final culmination in which everything glorified and participate in the divine nature insofar as it can so if God has has taken delight in seeing what it's like to be not God by creating and if in our case we have a certain amount of freedom and death the only way God can die has become a human being so so the identification that that this view of the divine nature supposes is that God wanted to be identified and at one with the human condition at every level in order to manifest his the full extent of his love which at the same time is infinitely humble perhaps this is the chief characteristic of God the willingness not to be God this is the invitation to us to let go or to reevaluate any status if God could give up being God maybe we can give up being some dying bigshot of some kind of rather humility is the name of this game of the human adventure and so suppose now that you you know evolutionary movement back into the into the bosom of the Father is underway as it seems to have been from the Big Bang now maybe there are other big bang's we don't know about but this one is big enough for most people and it's the only one we know so so now you have this evolutionary process of the matter becoming a universe with galaxies and all kinds of interesting materials that clash together in enormous fireworks of one kind or another creating new elements until you finally get the elements necessary for life protein and so on and then someplace life begins in one celled animals so all life is said by the scientists to be had the same structure so there's a oneness in in the very basics of life itself and then you have this enormous diversity and somehow life led to the veggies now it's important to realize that we are bearing within ourselves the vegetative consciousness of plants if you're a lover of plants you know that they have some consciousness they respond to music and your conversation in some way not quite known to us but they like the Sun and they they like attention apparently but the three things that that vegetables can do that the philosophical psychologists have pointed out is you grow you can nourish yourself and you can reproduce and these are all essential to preserving each species in its kind of life and to enable it to grow now we know a lot about the the way genes transform themselves into into different manifestations and at some point the mainly in life occurred which is involves at least some of the senses as we know then and higher mammals and and so the instinctual needs that I've spoken of earlier are present in the animal kingdom as instincts they want to survive they want to reproduce and they want to have something to eat so at some point then freedom emerges maybe through God's creative gift it's hard to establish any scientific proof for that as yet but it does mean that we have a measure of freedom now when that happens a whole new element enters into the evolutionary process it's not just a question of God's design it's a question of people who can do something else thank God oppose it and so just how much freedom we have is is the question that psychology has been addressing and one thing is certain that the influences of our of the lower levels of consciousness that we have passed through is still present in us and has all the apparatus in the brain and nervous system so supported otherwise we couldn't continue in this life so no one can know another person's conscience or or their full motivation so all of the world's spiritual traditions have the insight that we do not know the influences that occurred in the formation of the various use of other people and hence to judge anyone else often to judge ourselves it's not appropriate now as as human nature evolves into into the rational kind of consciousness this is the this is a triumph of evolution in which matter itself has finally become or the universe is one of the great anthropologist said is now conscious of itself so this is enormous leap in evolution and there's no limit of what that self-consciousness can can lead to and it's this this is the place that we find ourselves as the species but this is the point seems to me important for us to consider with the new insights of science and psychology and that is how how can we possibly deal with a transition period when we're coming from a vegetative animal levels of consciousness that are you responsible into a new level of consciousness that is accountable that can reflect and that is free to make choices at least within some window of opportunity how can we live in attention in other words in which we haven't integrated adequately yet these instinctual functions into this specifically human way of responding to life and especially to difficulties or conflict in other words we're constantly challenged from within to return to the irresponsibility animal life if we could possibly get away with it and we can't thrust ourselves into higher levels of consciousness that could provide this integration such as intuitive and unity stages of consciousness so what we're looking at here is is is the meaning of life or consciousness at this point and it's telling us that we are rejected by the earth and by heaven so that the cross is a lively symbol of human evolution at this point where you can't go back and we can't go forward under our own strength so we're kind of feel alienated from the identification with the species that our fellow animals had and our rational life is not fully integrated yet and we quite a distance from participating in the full spiritual life such as angels allegedly enjoy and so how do you live life with an infinite desire for happiness and almost infinite incapacity to realize this is a terrible situation to be why wouldn't God if his compassion tried to do something to allay that I even wonder if if the Incarnation or the offering of grace isn't actually God's Way of asking pardon for putting us in this situation it could not be worse animals have a certain peace because they don't reflect and angels seem to be doing all right they don't have this body to deal with so God's hand apparently was to identify completely with the human condition precisely where it is that is in desperate need of help desperate and so the false self responds to this by pretending that it isn't desperate that you're gonna live forever that diseases can be cured by science everybody will eventually love me and don't let estimate it isn't gonna happen that way but something infinitely better will happen because God instead of taking away our difficulties since he allowed it to happen by the natural evolutionary process doesn't heal us by taking away difficulties most of the time sometimes he does miraculously but it's not the normal procedure what is more extraordinary and more dignifying and more marvelous is that he loves us enough to join us in this human misery and that's the what the Incarnation really means the christ taking the lowest place in such a way that no one can ever take it away from him and so it's not our virtues so much as our human powerlessness that attracts God why because God is infinitely humble like this is the way he is it's not a perhaps a question of preference but it it's the divine nature to be infinite compassion and love tenderness forgiving motherly considerate and all the things that have been said of God that could frighten you and there plenty of them yet just projections of our limited human consciousness projecting unto God now see our fears that come from our lack of security lack of having everybody esteem us lack of having a certain control so so this is called in the Christian tradition the consequences of original sin and three of them just to give you that ancient theology that is still an honor and that is that there are three consequences and one is the illusion that we don't know where true happiness is to be found that's the way we're born and that's what original sin was designed to explain how is it that we come into the world in this impoverished without knowing God which is the only criteria for where true happiness is to be found so the developmental process following evolution suggests that that God seems to have accepted the fact that this is the best way to proceed Adam and Eve were created in perfection but they didn't do too well God isn't gonna make that mistake again so to allow us to pass through this transitional period it's the safest and most secure way to attain the objective of the transformation of the human family into the divine life itself and and so the oneness in powerlessness becomes gradually through the spiritual journey oneness in union with God and this oneness is is incomparable and here just to conclude on this note is the parable of the of the great banquet in in Palestinian societies there was only two social statuses the very rich and everybody else who were very poor there see a roof over their head who were serfs or slaves and lead has sustained their status by having great banquets with the more or less understanding that everybody would come and support each other in their state of life so in this parable as Jesus presents that a householder of this character decided to throw a bash and he invited his peers and one by one they had something else to do one had some cattle they wanted to check out that he bought another bought some property and one had gotten married well maybe we could say that was a significant excuse not to come back they were all lame excuses and so they so the net result is that this man who's identified himself as part of the elite is utterly rejected by his peers three in Scripture is one of those numbers that indicates completeness so he's completely rejected by his peers which is the only real value in those Palestinian society so he goes has the usual response of anger a subhuman response or at least a response provided by his animal brain and apparatus that saw this as a disaster so he said to his servants they didn't want to come go out and bring in the poor and the sick and the afflicted in some way because my house has to be filled and they've prepared the fatted calves and all that stuff so they this would not surprise the hearers because we know that the Hebrew prophets more and more saw the God as having a special option for the poor and the afflicted and the poor person whether not just a materially poor but poor as a result of human conditions or spiritual poverty were his favorite his special concern the needy of what God is attracted to because of compassion which is the tendency to reach out to what is most in the spontaneous irresistible movement of of one who loves and so so so the hearers were surprised that they were invited they knew God like these people and so they staggered ended sat down at the wedding feast but it wasn't full so the householder still under the influence of his frustration and anger said to his well go out now and and comb the streets and the byways and the bushes and bring in everybody you can find bring in the public sinners and the prostitutes and the white-collar frauds of their day bringing in the mentally ill and the people nobody wants the marginalized and if they don't want to come in drag them in so they all paraded in staggered in drooling at the mouth smelling to high heaven homeless the people who lived under bridges people nobody wants or who we would never think of inviting to any significant event so now apparently the house was filled because humanity chiefly consists of such peoples namely us and so now the householder has a double-minded he's lost his status with his peers if he goes in and sits down with these people he'll be identifying with their value systems their concerns and their problems which means he would throw away the last shred of his honor by becoming the equivalent of another prostitute white-collar fraud homeless person or a jailbird of whatever what did he do well just to emphasize the Mac culture eating a meal with someone was identifying with them that's why the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist were so outraged when Jesus sat down and ate with public sinners meaning he was identifying with these people which is what as I saying the Incarnation is all about taking the lowest place God taking the lowest place in the most humble and least intelligent race that we know of in the universe so what does he do he goes in and sits down with these disreputable folks this is the meaning of the Incarnation as understood in the Christian religion God has become us exactly where we are with our whole history of failure weakness or success that we attributed to ourselves which is worse than sin in any case it's a whole revolution in understanding of the goodness of God and the extent to which God is prepared to be close to us to remain with us so it's not some prize packages that he went in to sit down with nor father when he came into this world but as he said I've come to save sinners as one of Jesus public sinners totally gone hopeless nobody wants to nobody these are the people and so oneness there has this underbelly of darkness as well as light then that God has taken this darkness into himself and changed it into light through the power of divine light which there's nothing this is this is why it makes no sense to be afraid of there's no basis except a little nervous about meeting a new person baby if you don't know it but suppose you'd hang out with God regularly then that will be dissipated as acquaintanceship becomes more at ease and you can with friends you could put your feet on the table it's focusing our I don't like it's only acquaintances afraid of their what the reaction might be no danger of what God's reaction to us will be the more and me we are the moral man becomes to us so what we're talking about not a success story or a magic carpet to bliss but in the consent to reality the reality of ourselves as amoeba has battered and beaten up today after there by our emotions that are still animal or vegetables and I shouldn't say it seemed to have some consciousness of it so so here is the great art of disappointment to accept ourselves as we are to forgive ourselves but not being the Big Shot that we wanted to be or the saint or the enlightenment it's not being a saint or light that's too low objective that is the great if you try to say the fall itself you will bring yourself to ruin it's looking for happiness in the wrong it's not accepting our weakness and turning ourselves over completely anyone that said Jesus wisdom say those - who brings himself/herself no object no over-identification find out who they are so who are you it's the triumph of the spiritual journey enough the truth without it bothering you the least bit it's our resistance just to be who we are it's causing misery even our identity that God and then the final or fourth you finally appears the real you is God in you Christ which is the Christian name for God is living in you and as Paul puts it I live now not i but Christ lives in me lives in me at the deepest level but in the spirit of perfect oneness it's more than that Christ gives you and that's why we have to see our neighbor as ourselves relate to God in them so charity is God in us serving God and receive others by their service of God in us and this says God you know and he everything policy is one in the mercy

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Keywords: Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Fr. Thomas Keating, contemplative prayer, mysticism, Sufism, oneness, unity, interconnectedness, Christianity

Id: PYebw4rZ3Ts

Length: 53min 19sec (3199 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 17 2016