FIRST PRINCIPLES
Being IS....
A great and simple principle underlies the mystical life: It Is. God Is Being.
We may hold the opinion that God does indeed exist, yet rarely live as if this were true, rarely feel the great peace and security of knowing that God exists more certainly than we know our name or address.
When through meditative contact we have a realization that God Exists, we complete our search, for God Is here where I am, omnipresent. We can drop our fears---or continue to fear anyway if we must, but still aware that we are safe at home in God omnipotent, the all-power, the only power, the only presence.
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Y-H-V-H, the unspoken tetragrammaton, called “Jehovah” or “Lord” in English, is an archaic Hebrew verb meaning “It Is” or “Is,” or in today’s idiom, “Being.” י The letter Y, Yud, is the feminine, receptive, embracing. It is the fundamental; a Yud is found drawn inside every other letter.
ה H, Hai, breath, has its mouth open. YHVH. Taking the meaning of these four Hebrew letters, “Receptive/Breath, Giving/Breath,” or “Inhale, Exhale,” one cycle of breathing. Inspire, expire, aspire. God eternally IS, and God appears formed as the process of life, breathing, first receiving life and then returning it. Inhale, exhale. The course of a life, of the universe.* |  |
*A hundred views of Fuji: Each principle of truth talks about the same thing, in different “facets” but it’s not really faceted. They bleed into each other.
The ten commandments, given in Exodus, are repeated in Deuteronomy. The second time, the wording is slightly changed. This is a purposeful subtle teaching. It shows us that the Principles overspill the words, they’re only suggested. And since the statements are multiple takes on the same Being, outstretched arms of one Existence, we can’t precisely separate and number them.
The principles, and also some key points, are described in a nutshell in the middle of the last chapter. And a principle, or sometimes a key point, is italicized in its home chapter.
....and I AM....
We are constituted of both our human sense that I am and our divine I Am. These are two types of awareness we can enter. My Zen monk friend says, in kindergarten we learn the alphabet, UVW: “You’ve a double you!”
A Sufi story: Mullah Nasruddin is frantically riding his donkey up and down the streets of the village. His friends cry after him, “Where are you going?”
Nasruddin calls back, “I’m looking for my donkey!”
The divinity we are searching for, I AM already. Anything we are looking for in the outer world, I Am that already. When we seek anything outside ourselves, we are thereby pushing it away, by supposing it is distant rather than present. The present is here, the present is now, a free present of what I Am already. Let’s drop our burdens now. My teacher told me, we can make the effort to attain the effortless, and relax in that Presence.
The Self, the kingdom of God is within you. So the Zen master says, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Or don’t, since everything’s intrinsic, internal. So we only appeal to an authority inside our own Consciousness, to open secrets.
We can welcome being ourselves, unafraid of becoming Who We Are.
In Hebrew there’s a special word when Allness says “I Am.” Anoche. A combination of the human word “I am” and the human word “we are.”
The First Principle grows out from Itself: It Is....I Am....We Are.
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“The stone was cut out of the mountain without hands.” What is this stone that Daniel describes? An imaginary sense of separation from God, a feeling that we’re thrown away, a nightmare neediness, a purposeless weapon. This border is called the “shell” in Kabbalah, a necessary trial that constitutes the ego of any living thing. Yet it’s only carved out in a temporal belief, without hands. The stone remains ever within the Mountain, retrieved as we individuals meet in the sacred Oneness. |  |
God Is Being, Being Itself. God is always and already in action, providing lovingly and perfectly for all the world. We may hold the Source away from our awareness when we try to attract It, command It, implore It, confirming that concept of our Center as distant. It Is now, I Am here.
God already Is. We do not have to create It in our meditation, we do not have to feel lightning strike, or send out a mental force towards the perceived problem. Ahh....God Is Being God, God is on the field, and I can rest in It, communing with It.
What a relief!
....Appearing AS
Endless, serene and transcendent, the God that Is dwells utterly beyond this universe of shapes and limits. Simultaneously (as we’ll see), the God of Being appears as this world of change, of becoming. God Is, God Appears As. This is a spiritual universe, the outpicturing of divine Consciousness. The invisible One expresses Itself As an infinity of forms. Nothing exists except God in Its many guest shots.
God Is Being, God Appears As, two great foundation stones of spiritual principles.
“God As,” not “God has.”
I do not have a body or a mind, but I appear tangibly as body and mind. These are not vehicles or instruments, but my manifestation.
Similarly, in a polyphonous universe we freely cooperate, as all my limbs move together in dancing. There are no rulers, no binding chains of command, but God blissfully and passionately playing.
Monads
Each of us is inviolable, a silvery reflective sphere. Because of the distorted images of ourself writhing upon our surface, we accept that there’s coercion, but there’s only cooperation, even in crafting these shifting pictures. We imagine that little shafts open to exchange contagion, ill winds in and out, in thought and word and deed. Yet when we recognize the delightsome doors of the real world opening, we find that only impromptu harmony ever passes between us.
Each one of us, every being, is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. We are infinite. We can’t be a spark, an eensy bit of God; this is but a description of our place in the world of appearances. Not only is infinity divided still infinity. Not only are we holographic, where each tiny piece contains the whole hologram. Here’s the capper: We are each the one Life surpassing form, there is none else. It’s the same as when we give many people all our love.
The “I” as we sensorially feel it: the universe of Consciousness spreads out around every Me.
If God is the identity of every life, and we are all Clark Kent, then the place to seek the Holy One is within ourselves. The divine Life is that within us which is alive, which is aware.
“Thou art That.” (Chandogya Upanishad, 6.9) I am that I Am.
Only I do it. Only each Me alone. Each of Me is the central character, looking out upon the world through My eyes. Only I am saving the whole world---the premise of every adventure story. It doesn’t matter if I’m too unimportant or too important, too close to knowing or too far, too simple or too intellectual, too plain or too strange, too busy or too incapacitated. Starting right where I am, only the divine I within me keeps the ball rolling and brings us peace, only I do it.
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The principle that God Exists, Is, Is Being, contains many insights, including:
1. What we’re trying to attain, already Is Being---our intimacy with the Source, our oneness with our Self, already Is.
2. Beingness utterly transcends any manner of form or limit. At the same time:
3. God Is everything that is.
4. God is loving the world As Itself.
5. God Is Being God constantly, softly issuing forth Its goodness to all, without caprice, whim, favours or variance.
6. Beingness is of the inseparable essence of the divine nature.
7. Eternal Consciousness Is, always in the present.
8. The Omnipotent really does exist, we can actually depend on It in the crunch.
9. It Is I.
10. Our fulfillment is Really Being With You.