Perspectives vs. Longing

Perhaps a photo of the late monk / swami Fr. Bede Griffiths is not the best way to begin a reflection on the difference between "perspective" and "longing"... but, on the other hand, a photo of someone who lived the spiritual condition of "longing" for most of his adult life, will suffice as a beginning... but along with another photo, one of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement...

​

Dorothy Day wrote: "We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community." (The Long Loneliness, An Autobiography)

Now, moving along to "Perspectives vs. Longing". Recently, I had occasion to listen in on a couple of conversations and comments that got me off on another trek of rumination... First, I reflected on the comments themselves which can be summarized as "mushrooms provide insight" and "there is no G-d". Of course, these are valid opinions -- and I will be so bold as to say that they are also both true... however limited in view... and however "enraptured" with perspective... (Boldly, again, they are at the same time also not true...)

Perspective is important: standing upon a chair or table in one's living room provides a change of perspective, as does putting on your left shoe first if your are habituated to always putting on the right one first. If you never look at itty-bitty things through a good magnifying glass, do so for another insight into perspective. Going deeper, if you always attend a Catholic Mass, go to a Quaker Meeting, a Buddhist meditation, a Jewish Temple, a Hindu Kirtan, or a Muslim Sufi Dance of Universal Peace. Perspective is an electron microscope or the vast view of the Hubble telescope. Perspective is "flat earth" versus an orbiting space station. Perspective is "mushrooms provide insight" and "there is no G-d"...

​Secondly, I turned up the heat on my ruminating: could I bring my reflections to a boil? And then, could I boil my perspective all the way down to an essence of "truth"? As I am writing this, I still don't know, but following the path of "not this, not that": "not G-d, not not G-d" and so on... Neither good nor bad, not better or worse... boiling, boiling... Boiling down to a fine, clear, broth... boiling all the way down to some fine white dust on the bottom of the pan... all the way down to the emptiness of "no thought left"...

What is the emptiness? What is the "void" from which even emptiness arose? What is "that" which existed before the manifestation of existence? My rumination named "that" as "Longing" or "Yearning": "That" original condition as the first stirring of consciousness... in a way, then, "longing" or "yearning" is our true nature, our original self, before the stirrings of ego... In a similar way, all of the "stuff", the "star shine", of the "rising" of existence from non-existence, is "us"! Something of the First Star is in us, for all of the "stuff" of matter "rose" out of non-existence at the very same time (next time someone asks your age, you can rightly say, "Around thirteen and a half billion years old!"). The ancient Chinese philosophers called this Original Condition "Way"... "Dark Moon"... or simply "Mystery"... Nature and "Aspect" are the first revelations: Vulva, the Divine Mother, from Whom all life comes into being... longing and yearning are the rich condition of life...

Way... Dark Moon... Mystery... Vulva, the Divine Mother: all religion rises from this root Source. Longing or Yearning is both our condition and our essential religious practice, regardless of how we might be inclined to dress it up: this is the way of the shaman, again, however we might choose to dress it up... but boiling our religion or perspective down to "essence of truth", here is where we land. Calling "It" G-d, is a distraction, however easy, convenient, and translatable. What is "It"? Longing is the Sacred Desire of Non-Existence to "separate" into the experience of existence... and then to "return" from this "apparent separation" into "remembrance" of our original condition of Oneness, or non-separation: this is what we call religious practice... [Religious practice includes the cultivation of faith, worship and adoration, meditation, alms, the pursuit of justice, equality, and peace, regenerating the planet, and a radical reverence for all life...]

This Longing or Yearning for Oneness is the primary "Aspect" of revelation: love, or better, loving. But not some sort of vapid ego-driven, loving-which-only-defines-separation, but instead, the Yearning that is a limitless hunger for a complete surrender into the very condition of longing! This is the insight / gift of Master Yeshua: "God is Love" and loving "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Whatsoever you do to the least among you, you do the very same to me." This is the insight -- and daily practice -- of saints like Fr. Bede Griffiths and Dorothy Day! Of course, faith is the bridge between perspective and longing...