This is the fifth in a series of meditations from ‘Meister Eckhart and the Love of God’, a retreat I led at the Mandali centre last September in Northern Italy. In this reflection, we begin the journey to the silent heart of the soul.
It is a yielding into stillness, in which the light of knowing gradually gathers from the periphery of thought, feeling and perception, and comes to rest in its undivided source. Before all experience arises, there shines the simple, luminous fact of being. What is the nature of that being, prior to all attributes, untouched by the drama of life?
In the company of Meister Eckhart, we follow the thread of pure being to its groundless ground, where the soul recognises herself as God’s being, your knowledge of yourself becomes God’s knowledge of Himself, and the ‘I am’ that shines quietly within you is revealed as the divine name – eternal, indivisible, whole.
Simply Being
See that simply being is your most intimate and innermost experience. There is nothing in your experience prior to the experience of just being. All other experiences – thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions – are added to the simple experience of being.
What, then, is the nature of your being before experience is added to it, before it is mixed with the content of experience?
When your being is mixed with the content of experience, it appears to acquire the qualities of that experience and seems, as a result, to become a temporary finite being.
But in its natural condition – naked being before it is clothed in experience – it has no limitations. It does not share the qualities of your personal experience, and thus it is unlimited, impersonal and yet utterly intimate.
