the 'ness', the inner, the me

"Western culture has tended to be an extroverted culture and a 'can-do' culture. Prayer too easily became an attempt to change God and aggrandize ourselves instead of what it was meant to be- an interior practice to change the one who is praying, which will always happen if we stand calmly before this uncanny and utterly safe Presence, allowing the Divine Gaze to invade and heal our unconscious, the place where 95 percent of our motivations and reactions come from. All we can really do is return the gaze. Then, as Meister Eckhart so perfectly said, "The eye with which we look back at God will be the same eye that first looked at us." We just complete the circuit!"" (Richard Rohr The Naked Now)

There is something inside of me- my soul, inner life, unconscious or subconscious, or whatever words you want to use for the 'ness' of me- that holds profundity and beauty. That is where truth often is- not that everything that comes out of that space will be truth, but I find that in that space, I find more truth- like the deep, talking to my soul, life changing truth- than I do by thinking logically or praying with words or reading the bible. Not that any of those things cannot lead to truth, but at this point, I cannot do them in a way that comes from the 'ness' of me- it often is an act of ego, or will, or morality,or intellect or a desperate grasp of control or search for answers in a life where control and answers stifle the beauty of the paradoxes of life. I think because for the first 25 years of my life, I paid little to no attention to the 'ness' of me, that now, I have to almost abandon all the other parts to finally give it a chance to exist inside of me. I don't think this is a balanced, long term state that I should strive to stay in, but until I learn to acknowledge, care for, cherish and love that piece of me and coax it to work strongly alongside my ego, will and intellect, I need to trust my "inner teacher". And I think that inner teacher is God- maybe an experience of God in that he created me with those pieces and abilities and I get to explore and learn from the depths of me, or it is an actual presence of God that the most 'ness' of me is God. Either way, it isn't about me working hard to get to know me. It is more like I have to get out of the way because 'I' focus on things other than the 'ness' of me.

Maybe that is why talking about theology makes me tense up because it played too big of a role and stifled my 'ness' in the past. I was always proud when I could use the bible and my intelligence to defend, counter or convince someone of something. For me, talking about theology calls up my intellect and ego and will because I need to think and defend and parse and understand and decide and know. And that just ties me in knots inside. Come to think of it, maybe that is why I get uncomfortable in defending a lot of what I think and believe and feel right now because it comes out of this place of me, this me-ness, that is insecure and scared and unsure because it hasn't worked alongside the pieces of me that I need to use to explain, defend or convince people that what I believe holds beauty, merit and truth. Maybe that is why I feel alone in the surrounded by some of the people I love because I can't communicate those things without having to explain what they mean when what they are is something deeper than words and something that I can't really communicate. Maybe that is why I feel at home in my church now because I don't have to explain anything. There is a call to be and to love and to seek and to find that coaxes out my soul and makes me feel at home.

And when people, particularly the ones I love most, try and 'get it'- it is hard for me because I can't explain it. I want to, but I can't. It is like trying to put words to what the colors, textures, and shapes that my pastel drawings portray. Sometimes, I don't even know for myself what they mean! And when I do know myself, any words that I use are like the shallowest way to convey what I feel. It is like the words that I use don't mean hardly anything because using them is like trying to say the sunset is red- it doesn't convey it at all! But when you are trying to explain that to someone, and they ask "well, what is red?" or "what do you mean by 'red'?" or other questions- it gets all muddled because the point isn't that the sunset is red. The point is that it is a sunset- a phenomenon that holds beauty on so many levels- it speaks of creativity, beauty, rhythm, order, balance, systems larger than the world, agelessness, and so much more. But, sometimes when I try and talk about what it is like, all I can say is 'red' and hope that somehow people who I am communicating with will know- they will know that I don't just mean red like the color of the crayola crayon- I mean red- like the sunset red.