The Infinite Heart
A Journey Into the Teachings of 150 Great
Mystics, Masters, Poets and Saints
WEEK ONE: Tuesday
Sorry I’m late. I was playing guitar and I kind of lost track of time.
You look refreshed and energized. You enjoyed yourself?
Yeah. Sometimes I really get into it. I usually feel pretty alive and peaceful and connected when I play. And then afterwards it usually stays with me for a while. But sooner or later, I always have to deal with life– clean the kitchen or pay bills or whatever– and then I lose it. Lately I’ve been trying the strategy of never cleaning or paying bills, but I don’t think that’s really going to work as a long term plan. I mean, I thought the refrigerator mold was getting tall before my electricity got shut off. Do you know where I could get an indoor lawn mower? The good news is, I’m eating a lot more greens. Anyway, I guess I either need to play guitar all the time or try to figure out how to have that same flow while I’m doing other things.
Let me tell you a story. Once, a demon in the darkest depths of Hell saw a shining angel’s harp slowly falling past him. He was intrigued by it, and began to pluck the strings. As he did, he found himself beginning to rise through the levels of Hell. And as he ascended, he felt the heavy burden of hatred and fear within him begin to diminish. He continued to play, and found himself floating upward towards the planes of Heaven. His arms and fingers became exhausted, but he didn’t dare stop. He kept rising until he finally reached the highest level of Heaven. And there, before him, was the Divine. Overcome with joy and love greater than he had ever imagined, he let go of the harp to embrace the Divine. Of course, the moment he did, he began falling back downward through the planes, until he found himself again in the depths of Hell. The demon realized that if he were to ever embrace the exquisite beauty of the Divine, he would have to ascend to Heaven empty handed. The shining harp floated back down into the depths, and another demon began to play.
So did the demon ever make it back to the Divine?
One day, even Satan will return to the joy and love of the Light, a prodigal son, welcomed and embraced.
That’ll be one hell of a party. It’s a pretty powerful image, the Divine embracing Satan, completely forgiving him.
What is perhaps more powerful is that, from the perspective of the Divine, there is nothing to forgive. Absolutely nothing. But we’ll talk about this another time.
Good, because right now I’m not buying that one. I mean, first of all, you’re telling me the perspective of the Divine. And second, whether you take Satan as real, or as a personification of the evil, the suffering, the cruelty in the world, you’re saying there’s nothing for the Divine to forgive? And you’re minimizing it all to the equivalent of the prodigal son? Isn’t that the kid who ran off and spent his inheritance and then came back to bum off his parents? And you’re saying it’s the same thing? Give me a fricking break!
I didn’t say there is no need for us to forgive. But we’ll talk about this another time.
“Hey, Satan, how was your trip? Your room is just the way you left it. We put the heater on high for you. We’ll have a big dinner tonight in your honor. Deviled ham, deviled eggs, all your favorites. So tell us all about your big adventures. Did you have a nice time being evil?” Look, obviously I’m upset about this. I just want there to be a little accountability. I can handle the Divine, whatever that is, forgiving Satan. But the idea that there was nothing to forgive, like Satan didn’t do anything wrong– that’s what’s getting me pissed off.
I understand. We’ll talk about this another time.
You keep saying that!
You can’t see the view from the heights of a mountain you have barely begun to climb.
Try me. You said yourself it’s up to me what I’m ready to hear.
All right. I’ll just say this for now, even though it’s jumping quite a bit ahead, and you can simply let it float around inside wherever it wishes as we continue. When we talk about forgiving, we usually mean letting someone back into your heart, correct? Generally, to forgive is to let go of a closedness, a contraction, that was pushing someone away from you and your love because of their actions. And it is usually contingent upon their asking for forgiveness. They must repent first. If they’re not sorry for what they’ve done, then they don’t qualify for you letting them back into your heart. They don’t qualify for your love. But if only they would show remorse, and promise to do better, then they would meet your specific conditions, and you would then stop withholding some of your love, even if it was only a tiny bit you were withholding. You would open your contracted heart back up, so that it once more has room for them to be in it.
But Pure Essence, Pure Being, Pure Love is absolutely Infinite. Absolutely Boundaryless. Its heart has room for ALL that is. Even for those who have turned away from it. The third century mystic and philosopher, Plotinus, wrote “You do not really go away from It, for It is there; you do not ‘go’ anywhere, but remain present to It yet turn your back on It.” You can never be outside of an Infinite Heart! The Divine is Pure Love. It would never close its heart to anyone or anything. Pure Being is absolute Open Heartedness!
To close its heart even slightly, to hold the smallest grudge, to withhold the smallest bit of love, the tiniest bit of the Purest Sunshine from anyone– to push anyone away until the slightest condition is met– that is a conditional heart. That is conditional love. A love that has its limits, its boundaries, its requirements, its price. Pure Love cannot be that kind of love, for that kind of love is not Pure. The Divine cannot have that kind of heart, for that kind of heart is not Divine. Arms that would close to anyone, even for a moment, are not Divine arms. My friend, the Divine never forgives. It only GIVES. Endlessly. Infinitely. And unconditionally.
Julian of Norwich wrote “Our soul is one to God… and therefore between God and our soul there is neither wrath nor forgiveness because there is no between.”
Oh, my friend, this Infinite Heart of the Divine, in which all worlds rest, it is my Beloved. I give it my life. I give it my death. I give it all that I have. All that I am. The fifteenth century mystic, Saint Catherine of Genoa, said “I wish not for anything that comes forth from Thee, but only for Thee, oh sweetest Love!” And a writer who called himself Dionysius the Areopagite wrote, in the sixth century, “Divine Love draws those whom it seizes beyond themselves, and this so greatly that they belong no longer to themselves but wholly to the Object loved.” Do you see? Wholly to the Object loved! Until you have nothing left! Nothing! Not even separation!
Listen to Kabir: “When I was conscious of individual existence, the love of the Master filled my heart; When the love of the Master filled my heart, my sense of selfhood was dissolved. Oh Kabir, this path is too narrow for two to travel!” And Emily Dickinson: “A death blow is a life blow to some, who till they died, did not alive become. Who had they lived, had died but when, they died vitality begun.”
Oh sweetest Love, my life is yours! Do with it as you wish! I ask for nothing! And yet, You pour such endless Grace through this vessel, it melts away the boundaries of my heart! It burns away every leaf, the moment I let it fall! And so, every breath is the coming of Spring! Every heartbeat, a new birth of the Ancient Pulse!
Oh, what Grace to die before death comes! For when you melt into the Sun, you fear no fire! You fear no flame! Your True Life born in the ash of your name!
Um, so remember how you were saying that maybe it was a little too early to get into all this? Well, um, I apologize for not believing you. So do you think maybe you could come back down the mountain a ways and we could pick up where we left off? I mean, I don’t want to interrupt your uh, whatever it is you’re in the middle of. And it’s absolutely none of my business what you smoked before I got here. But maybe we could get back to things I might actually have a chance of understanding. Unless we’ve already pretty much exhausted those.
Sometimes I just can’t help myself. When you were a boy, did you ever go exploring and discover some wonderful treasure– maybe a cave or some bones or some big animal tracks or the like– and you couldn’t wait to show someone else? You just want to hurry and take them to the treasure. Nothing else matters. But maybe the way you want to go is too steep for them, they aren’t as used to the terrain. So you have to go the slow way. And while it is beautiful to be there, walking with them, your heart is completely focused on what it is that you have found. You can’t wait for them to see your treasure. And then, before you know it, they call out to you to slow down, and you realize you have left them far behind.
But aren’t you supposed to always be fully in the present or something?
It isn’t a question of “supposed to be”. Every “supposed to” is an attempt to change this moment. Every “should” is a pressure that suppresses the pure, Living Flow of what is.
So we’re not supposed to have any shoulds. I should remember that.
Of course, trying not to have any shoulds is just adding another one on top of all the others.
And then you just keep shoulding on yourself.
Exactly. But when you let yourself fully be with what is, even if it isn’t what you think is supposed to be, you happen to find yourself in an ever deepening Living Present. And sometimes, what is in this Pure Present is excitement and eagerness and an uncontainable flow within the heart. Like a child, eagerly carrying a kite into a field, suddenly unable to wait any longer. But I’ll try to take it a bit slower. So, let’s move on.
* * * * * *
Yesterday, you were trying to understand why Pure Being created reality. You considered the possibility that it might have felt loneliness or boredom.
Yeah, but I was thinking about this last night, and that’s really just putting human emotions onto the Creator of Existence. Which I guess is anthropologicalism at its finest.
Anthropomorphism?
That too. I mean, it seems like any reasons we could come up with are based on our particular experience of reality, not the Source’s.
It’s true that we can’t figure out any correct answers about this with our intellects. But there are other ways of knowing. Many who have directly experienced the Source have also experienced moments of profound insight into the dynamics involved in the creation of form. These insights do not easily translate into the language of the intellect, but it’s possible to obtain a rudimentary and imperfect conceptual understanding of them.
Lao-tzu said “The Tao is called the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds.” Empty, yet inexhaustible. It is emptiness. The Void. The Abyss. Yet it is superabundant and overflowing. This is a great paradox. And yet, it has often been described this way, in both Eastern and Western traditions.
The Source is inexhaustible. It’s overflowing with infinite superabundance. So, in regard to the creation of manifest reality, it was not that Pure Being was not enough by itself, or that it didn’t have enough. It was that the Source was too much and had too much. Too much to contain within itself as itself. The intensity of this pure, empty Light is impossible for our minds to grasp. Within that Light is infinite Joy, infinite Awareness, and infinite Creative Ability. I think of these words beginning with capital letters, because there is an ungraspable difference in order of magnitude between these qualities as they describe ourselves and these qualities of Pure Being.
Hold on. You’ve described the Essence as being pre-prism, before duality and opposites. But you’re also saying it has infinite joy. Isn’t joy half of an opposite?
Joy, as a quality of Essence, is not half of a dichotomy. Joy is a natural, ever-present quality. Within Sol, there is Oneness. There is infinite Awareness, infinite Energy, infinite Aliveness, infinite Beingness and infinite Love. How could Joy not be present?
I’m not sure if I can get this out, but it seems like opposites are like a wave pattern. I mean, if you take away all opposites, it’s like a straight line. A base line. Then if you add joy as a wave lifting off the line, you have to add its opposite, maybe sorrow or despair, as an equal wave that dips down. There can’t be the potential for one without the potential for the other. But you’re saying that there is.
I know it’s difficult to see beyond our dualistic level of reality. I’m saying that the baseline of Essence has the quality of Joy. We tend to think that both joy and despair are extremes, so the base line must be in the middle. But I would call that baseline deadness. Perhaps in our experiences joy is an unusual thing, but this is more a reflection of how lost we are than a reflection of the baseline of Essence. My friend, it is Joy, not deadness, that is the natural state of existence!
So before the creation of the different levels of reality there was all this joy, awareness, and creativity within the Essence.
Infinite Joy. Infinite Awareness. And not only infinite Creativity, but infinite Creative Ability as well. The potential to manifest anything into form.
And it was too much to contain, too much to hold in.
Yes. Sometimes we’re bursting with excitement. Sometimes we cannot contain ourselves. Sometimes we have an overwhelming desire to create.
Or procreate, as the case may be.
And sometimes we’re overflowing with joy. Imagine having all of these dynamics constantly, with a limitless ability to create from such a space. Then you can begin to glimpse a fraction of the creative impulse and power of Ultimate Reality. The artist’s passion to express, the exuberant determination of an acorn to become an oak tree, the fertilization, incubation, and birth of new life, the tendency of any body of water to at times break free from that which contains it, all of this hints towards the dynamics involved in the manifestation of the many levels of reality. That process was as natural as childbirth. There was, within the Source, a superabundance. An uncontainable impulse to burst forth.
The great Sneeze of Creation. I know. Snot funny.
The great Song of Creation. We are the song of Sol.
Many waves, one Ocean Many movements, one Motion
Many candles, one Burning Many tears, one Yearning
The Living Silence sings this world into form
Many voices, many voices, one Song.
Did you write that?
It’s just another beautifully inadequate way to express the inexpressible. To speak the unspeakable. Sometimes simple poems flow. But the real poetry is in the space between the words.
Remember back, not too long ago, when I kind of knew what you were talking about? Oh wait, that wasn’t me. So here’s an easy little question for you. Where did this Source come from? I mean, if it was the creator of reality, what created it? It’s the old question: If God made us, who made God? Or as some kid put it, who does God pray to?
Sol as in Absolute. It’s the Uncreated. When one deeply experiences Pure Being, it becomes clear that there is nothing truly separate from it. Nothing other than it. There is nothing else. It’s all encompassing. There is no other that could have created it. Shankara wrote “Though One, Brahman is the cause of the many. There is no other cause. And yet, Brahman is independent of the law of causation.” And the Buddha said “When you see the unborn, uncreated, unconditioned, you are liberated from everything born, created and conditioned.” And Jesus said, in the Gospel of Thomas, “I am he who exists from the Undivided”. This Undivided, this Uncreated, this Formless First Cause, it’s the Ground of all being. It is the Source, the Prime Mover, the True Center, the Origin, the One, the Infinite, the Supreme.
The Head Honcho, the Big Boss, the Big Cheese. The God Father. The Kingpin. Mr. Big. The Founder and President of Existence.
Now then,–
–The Queen Bee. The Big Mama. Mama Mia. The Prima Vera. The Big Linguini.
Let me know when you’re done.
The Big Enchilada. The Big Burrito. The Big Chimichanga. The Big Chijuaja. The Big, that thing where they put pieces of sizzling beef and veggies in a tortilla. Man, right about now I could really go for some good, fresh, spicy, authentic, homemade Chinese food. Anyway, speaking of changing the subject, what’s with the Gospel of Thomas? It’s not in the Bible, is it? I mean, it might have been a runner up or something, but I don’t think it made the final four.
It’s one of many writings from around the time of Jesus that weren’t selected by the church council to be included in the traditional Bible.
So you mean there were a bunch of different writings floating around, and some priests got together to decide which ones to declare holy?
Basically.
Well, not that I’m skeptical about humans making divine decisions, but that sounds pretty hit and miss. And it sounds like Thomas missed. Maybe he should have had a better agent. I’m sure complimentary wine for the council would’ve done the trick. Or maybe little fish key chains.
His account of the words of Jesus is considered by many scholars to be at least as reliable as the “final four” gospels. You might find it interesting to read some of these alternative scriptures sometime.
Yeah, right. I mean, I haven’t even gotten around to reading the council-approved Bible yet. I used to always doze off after “In the beginning”. Once, I got all the way to the part where everyone was begetting everyone else, but that begot pretty boring.
So, moving on, it’s ungraspable to the intellect that Pure Being was not created. How can something exist that was not brought into existence? This makes no sense. Our abilities to reason were developed in response to this level of reality. And, as you’ve suggested, we tend to believe that all of reality must be set up the same way. It’s like a baby in the womb assuming that everything in existence must be womb-like. This is understandable. That is all it has experienced. And so with us.
There’s a joke about that. These twins are hanging out in the womb. And one asks the other, “Do you believe in life after birth?”
Yes, exactly. It’s so difficult to see beyond the perspective in which you have been embedded. The thirteenth century Sufi poet, Rumi, said “When you finally see through the veils to how things really are, you will keep saying again and again, ‘This is certainly not the way we thought it was!’”
If your entire existence has been on the bottom of an ocean, you won’t easily understand such concepts as waves, deserts, clouds, light, gravity, the sun or galaxies. It would be challenging enough for you to grasp that not all of reality is in water. How could there possibly be reality beyond water? For instance, there are levels of reality beyond time, in which time is known as an illusion. To our intellects, this is most troublesome.
Right now, there’s probably some bottom dweller mystic saying, “Don’t you get it? There are many levels of reality in which water doesn’t even exist!” Then he’d recount some story about the Great and Holy Worm that lifted him up into the indescribable heavens and then allowed him to return, to tell others about his out of water experience.
Now what bottom dweller in their right mind would believe such a tale?
Makes you wonder, though. What if there’s something out there fishing for us, and mystics are just the ones that got away?… I think I’m going to have weird dreams tonight. So how can there be levels of reality beyond time?
Let’s go about it this way. When we sit in a movie theater, we watch a story unfold. We experience the movement of time. We might watch Forrest Gump, for instance, grow up from a young boy into a man. Now, we don’t need to sit there for thirty years to have that experience.
As I recall, we had to sit there a hell of a long time though.
The point I’m trying to make is that when we watch a movie, we agree to suspend our knowledge of what is really going on. We choose to enter into the story, to buy into the illusion, even though we always know deep down that it isn’t real in the same way we are real. And fifty feet away, in another theater, other people are having a completely different experience, buying into a different time period, experiencing a different amount of time passing in the same two hours. Now,–
I think it was Forrest Gump who said, or maybe it was me, time is like a box of chocolates. If you have too much of it, it can give you a wait problem. Get it? A wait problem? See, that was kind of like a joke. But without the humor.
To continue, the person who runs the projector has a very different perspective than the audience. They haven’t entered into the illusion. So, what the audience perceives as unfolding over the course of two hours, they can see all at once when they look at the film reel. They could easily hold the entire film reel in their hands. Now, how much time goes by in the story while they are holding the film reel in their hands? At what specific moment within the story are they holding the film? These questions make no sense. Time has neither stopped nor continued in the story. None of the normal words to describe time apply to the story from the perspective of one who is outside of it, holding the film in their hands. The whole story is always right there. Every moment of it. If they wanted, they could look at any one frame, any moment of the story, and it would be frozen. So, although past, present, and future have meaning within the story, they have no meaning in relation to the story for the one who is holding the reel in their hands. Are you following me?
I’m trying.
Sometimes very. Now, we can take this metaphor a bit further, and imagine browsing in a film library. We’re not confined to any of those stories, but we could choose to experience any of them. We don’t need to start with the oldest time period depicted and work our way forward. Every moment of every story is available to us. It is all right there. We’re not bound by the progression of time as it is experienced within each story. We’re not affected by it. This is the true meaning of “eternity”. It’s not spanning through out all of time, lasting forever. It’s that which is beyond the illusion of time, completely unaffected by it.
The thirteenth century Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, said “The now in which God created the first human being, and the now that we are experiencing at this moment, and the now in which the last human being will disappear are all the same now, for there is only one now.” From within the perspective of time, this is preposterous. But he realized this truth from the vantage of the cosmic film library, as it were. He was looking at the time stories of Earth from outside of them.
That actually makes some sense. But if eternity is outside of time, what’s it like? If there’s no time there, is everything just frozen, like one moment or frame of the movie? I mean, how can there be movement, fluidity, without time? And I guess the bottom dwellers ask, “How can you swim without water?” I just can’t picture what it would be like.
For two hours you sit in the theater, buying into the time illusion that is presented. It’s captivating enough that you let yourself forget the rest of your life for a while, and immerse yourself into the illusion. But when the movie is over, the possible experiences available to you are not reduced. They are greatly expanded. You don’t walk into the projection booth and just stare at the film reel. You remember more of your larger life, which you had temporarily allowed to recede into the back of your awareness, and you go on about your way. Reality is so much bigger outside of the time/space theater than it is within. Our intellect asks “But what else is there?” Yes, and so does the baby in the womb, as it ponders whether or not there could possibly be life after birth. Tomorrow then.
I’m definitely going to have weird dreams tonight.
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