“In this organism I begin, and in it I end. This body-mind, with its thoughts, feelings, and organs—this is who I am.” So goes the “self” superstition I live by.
But then a bird warbles in the branches overhead, and my heart leaps to dance. This joy then is my own, part of my self, but the birdsong that called it forth is not?
Or I open a book, whose beauty consumes me, whose depth and power reshape me. When I close the book, has it not nested within me? Does it not live through my actions and speak through my words?
I am lost in the ecstasy of my lover’s embrace, the smell of her skin, and the call in her eyes. Her body is my body, and my mind is a nameless passion; who or where am I then?
This self—or body-mind—isn’t it made of birdsong, poetry, and lovemaking just as much as of thoughts, feelings, and organs? Isn’t it life itself that speaks when I say “I am”?
It is thinking that fractures life into inner and outer, into self and other. But even thought, in its violence, is nothing other than life at play, life blooming, life exploring its abundance from endless angles, sinking in ever-deepening enchantment at its own mystery. And you and I are that!
May we rest as the mystery,
Simeon
“Where I look, everything is God.”
— Angelus Silesius, The Cherubinic Wanderer
Suggested Reading
The Interior Castle by Teresa of Ávila
In this classic of Christian mysticism, Teresa of Ávila describes the soul as a castle whose innermost chamber reveals a profound union with the divine. The journey inward becomes a discovery that the deepest center of the self is not separate from God. A luminous account of the unity underlying all experience.
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