Midweek Faith Lift
Unity, the Mystics & Quantum Leaps
Sept. 13, 2023
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Reflection
September 1, 2023
“The Pope’s intention was to encourage young people to preserve all that is positive in the Russian culture.” A statement by the Vatican after Ukrainian officials criticized Pope Francis' recent speech to Russian youth as "imperialist propaganda." The Pontiff had encouraged Russian youth, saying, “You are the descendants of a great Russian culture. Never give up on this heritage.”
“An airplane, which spends 90 percent of its time off course, reaches its destination through course correction. No matter how much we stumble off the path, we can still reach the destination of eternal love so long as we keep striving to return.” – A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love
Affirmative prayer: Infinite Presence, I give thanks for the opportunity to make course corrections, to set things right. To allow my pure heart and genuine intentions to be seen rightly. And, when I’m tempted to take offense, I see others as part of Spirit’s great heritage. We are all infinitely redeemable. Thank you, God, forever. Amen.
What a wonderful opening story about our need to anchor to a North Star and then embrace the constant course corrections we make throughout our daily lives! Some days I feel like that airplane- 90% off course and not sure which way to turn or go! It is in the North Star of my connections to Spirit that I keep making all the tiny, daily course corrections that keep me oriented to a consciousness of love and sense of oneness with all of creation, including all that I would want to reject. It is in that spirit that we engage the mystics who are a significant part of the history of Christianity even as they are not the most vocal or visible part of the story. Perhaps they are truly the most important part and the world is finally ready for what the mystical path offers.
The first question we encounter in this journey is to ponder how it is that we approach God, how do we think about God? The reality of our human experience is that we each approach God, or the idea of God in our own unique way. As Rev. Paul Roach notes on. P. 17 of Unity and World Religions, “There are however, two overarching approaches that can be found in all the world’s religions. They are the way of fullness and the way of emptiness.” Matthew Fox calls them the via positiva and the via negativa. The via positiva, or cataphatic way describes all the positive attributes of God, or the fullness of God. This includes the statements that “God is love, God is all goodness, God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.” It is the way of completeness or fullness and it is generally the way the Unity tends to go, especially if focusing on abundance, unlimited goodness, wholeness and the good.
The other path, the via negativa or apophatic way is different in that we apprehend God by way of subtraction, of saying what God is not. God is beyond any attributes, which our human mind can imagine. On this path, God is neither present nor absent, neither light nor darkness. On this path, we are stepping into the unknown, into our true inability to define or know God. It is more akin to Buddhism’s understanding of emptiness. The perfect illustration is to think of a clay vessel that is designed to hold water. What actually makes it a vessel, the walls of the pot or the emptiness inside? It is only when we contemplate the emptiness that we can understand the fullness. That is the apohpatic path or the via negativa. This way encounters the mystery without trying to define or describe it, just experience it.
Which path is better? That is not a question we can truly answer, the paths are just different. The hazards of the via positiva is that rather than encountering God as God is, we endeavor to make God in our own image and likeness projecting our limited human understanding onto the Allness of God that is greater than we are. However, the other path, the via negativa, of nothingness can feel strange, disorienting while also spacious as it allows freedom to experience the energy of God without attachments or expectations. In our Unity journey, this is our cultivation of the observer or detached self that can notice how we show up in life’s challenges.
My observation is that on our spiritual journey, we most likely experience both. We approach God as loving energy, as mother/father God. Jesus spoke of God in terms of relationship, saying “Abba” or father in reference to God love. Jesus also experienced the emptying out of self, or what in Christian theology is called kenosis, so that all of God energy is poured in which is the resurrection process. It reminds me of step 1 of the 12-step process of surrendering one’s will to that which is greater than oneself, the first step in healing from addiction. My lived experience is that we engage the Divine in both the via positiva and the via negativa, depending on what we truly need and where we are on our divine/human journey. Ultimately the truth is that fullness and emptiness are indeed one!
When we are off course, needing course correction, we encounter our own emptiness and need that fullness that comes with letting go. When we are ready to engage with life and we are on course, we embrace that zeal, power, strength and wisdom that are also part of the Divine and our spiritual powers. In essence, we engage both the allness and the emptiness in our quest to allow our pure heart to “see things rightly” and then set them right! The mystics have embraced this emptying and pouring in of spirit process of experiencing the Divine for millennia.
We have studied some of the writings of the Desert Mothers and Fathers in the gospel of Thomas from the Nag Hammadi Library. Other mystics from earliest Christianity are Hildegard of Bingen, a nun and abbess from the 12th century. Her writings focus on the Word of God as “living, being spirit, all verdant, greening, all creativity. The Word manifests itself in every creature.” This is a great illustration of the direct experience of God that is characterized the mystical tradition and experience. It is very much like the writings of St. Francis of Assisi and Meister Eckhart who also lived in the 12th century.
Historians called this time the Dark Ages, but there were many mystics, both men and women, whose energy and light shone through for us to see in the present day. St. Francis and St. Clare are beloved figures from that time and their writings continue to inspire us. Every Sunday, we follow the message of Meister Eckhart when we say “thank you, God” three times for the offering blessings that flow to and through each of us. Meister Eckhart also had a deep understanding of oneness with God when he said, “The eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me.” It is interesting to note that while Eckhart, a Dominican friar, was condemned by the Catholic Church after his death, his writings have survived to this day. Spiritual Truth will be heard!
What is evident in the mystical path is that it flows from a direct experience of the Oneness or Allness of God that shares all the love that God is. There is another book by an anonymous author, The Cloud of Unknowing written in the late 14th century that embraces kenosis, letting go of God so that all of God can be known by us. In that book we read: “The nature of love is that it shares everything. Love Jesus, and everything he has is yours.” That sounds remarkably like some of our Unity understanding of what Jesus teaches.
While the rest of Christianity was engaged in wars, crusades and bids for power and wealth during the Middle Ages and in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, our friends the mystics from the 1100’s to the 1500’s were devoted to a quiet embrace of the energy of God. Another mystic from that era is St. Theresa of Avila and I share a prayer, which Rev. Paul included in his chapters about the mystics:
St. Theresa prays:
Let nothing perturb you
Nothing frighten you
All things pass
God does not change
Patience achieves everything
Whoever has God lacks nothing
God alone suffices.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours
No hands but yours
No feet but yours
You are the eyes through which to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world.
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about
doing good.
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless
man now.
That prayer sounds remarkably like Unity teachings to me. It empowers us each to be the full expression of the energy of Spirit in this world. Even when we go off course, we are not lost or forsaken. In his book, The Quantum Leap Strategy, Price Pritchett has a chapter he calls, “Seek Failure.” Amen to that! Mistakes are good for us because that is how we learn what not to do and what doesn’t work. That is the most powerful kind of learning, and in this spiritual quest of our life, we seek to wake up, learn and stay awake. Pritchett says this on p. 25:
Here’s the other important reason to seek failure: Unless you are willing to stretch yourself beyond the point where you know you can perform basically error free, you’ll never know how good you really are. If you’re unwilling to taste failure, there’s no way on earth you can taste the sweet fruits of your full potential.
When we fail in our human efforts, we make room for God, for the whole Spirit of God to fill us and lift us up to our full potential in every way. We are course corrected to express the whole Spirit of God! And we reach the destination of the continual expression of eternal love.
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb