Sunday, December 8, 2013

Thoughts After First Advent

"Belief" or "unbelief / disbelief" in "God" remains for me a superfluous curiosity.  Superfluous because it has more than anything else to do with, not God, but "God" – that is, someone else’s conception of God which you don’t want to buy into – or which you do.  Curious is, why so much energy is expended in a) wanting others to believe in your God, b) cajoling, even forcing others to believe in your God, c) rejecting / denying God at all and copping an Attitude over this, d) worrying about God, or e) spreading death and destruction on account of your God.

This believing or not believing in God is as superfluous to – well, God – as we would naturally see any notion of belief or unbelief / disbelief/ nonbelief in our own Body, our own organs, our own circulation, our own respiration and respiratory system.  This body functions;  as this body is so, God is so.  As these organs, this circulation, this respiration are so, God is so.  Try this:  stop believing that your heart pumps blood through the arteries which carry nourishment throughout the body and the lungs, which blood returns for nourishment and reinforcement of oxygen through the lung passages – all of this functioning, entirely indifferent to your knowing or believing or denying it.  So stop believing in that going on without let-up, and stop believing that those lungs draw in all that life-reinforced fresh air into themselves, to go through the conversions and transferences which make your Body a rich tapestry of perfectly orchestrated harmony and wholeness, well-Being, with or without your being consulted; that your brain is in constant coordination with all functions, that your glands and your tracts, from growth and development to consuming, digesting and expelling, from over all defense to activity and rest and the in-joyment of both.  All this is there.


Now, here’s a catch:  believing, you give attention to, offer your attention to, perhaps even your concentration and even devotion to, that which is being consciously contemplated – that’s contemplated, folks, not complicated – by doing this with your Body you become no longer the indifferently passive non-participant, you become the active, creative participator, you are now with your Body, and in it by being conscious of it.  Does it mean becoming a "Vegan" from another planet?  Or hitting the fitness center like a fanatic, or jogging your guts out?  Or preaching granola?  None of this, it means just being with yourself, with your body, loving this Body merely by knowing it and validating it and being in it.  This kind of attention already wards off illness, this kind of attention is entirely oriented toward your health because it addresses the wholeness.  When you are bending, talk with your back, through your breath, ask it if it’s alright with what you’re doing, let it suggest something better.  If you are eating, does your stomach have a vote?  Every single part of you is indispensable, and part of every other part of you.

Be clear in your Mind that you are not about illness, that you don’t need sick leave to feel whole about yourself. And as this makes the question of belief, for me, so superfluous - because Body is so - likewise and even more does this apply toward God - because God is so.  When you love you have every reason and power to believe, and as this belief develops into faith and into devotion and into Knowledge, then you become the active, creative participator of that inner life which expresses outward in all directions.  Kabir, as rendered by Robt. Bly, tells us:  "What is God: he is the breath inside the breath."


Making that subtle, you become subtle.  Becoming subtle in that, you meet with the subtle.  Meeting with that, you come into contact with That, about which we bandy about words like "belief" in the first place – which then makes the latter superfluous.

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