SOTERIA (2)

The ego is, precisely, the impossibility of surrender. Only Reality in us can surrender to Itself.  This is already the centre of our being – pure being – for which there is no “nothing else.”

~ Lewis Thompson (1909-1949), Journals.

The Lord said to Moses, “thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me and live.” That sounds about right to me. After all, our response to the beatific vision is not to ask what’s next? It is not a vision from which one walks away; it is the fulfillment of all seeing. There is also the practical consideration that God doesn’t have a face, as in a body part, and so when Moses said: “I beseech thee, show me thy glory,” he was asking for something infinitely deeper. According to Philo, “the soul that loves God seeks to know what the one living God is according to his essence.” He says that Moses “entreated God to become the exhibitor and expounder of his own nature to him.” (De Posteritate Caini) To ‘see’ on this level is perfect freedom and the letting go of all that is false, desperate, contrived, and unreal. It is the end of what we thought we were and the realization of what we have never not been.

I suppose, in light of what I’ve just written, I’m also reminded why Jesus told us not to rehearse what we’re going to say when persecutors haul us away for trial. This has always struck me as a tall order, and yet all three synoptic gospels have him saying it. I don’t know about you but if I knew I was about to be interrogated I’d have a hard time thinking about anything else. I’d be tempted to play through in my head responses to all possible questions, and then re-play them over and over until I had them exactly right and was off-book; ready to perform when the time came. Then again, Jesus also told us not to live as if we are actors putting on a performance to be judged by others. Our task isn’t to reinforce and make real any character we have invented. It is not about somehow solidifying the way we imagine ourselves. It is a matter of knowing our essential nature. It is about passing from the unreal to the real, out of the shadows and into the truth.