In much of my reading over the last several years an unfamiliar (to me) teacher has often been quoted – Meister Eckhart, who was a medieval German mystic and theologian. So recently, when I was selecting some listening material from Audible, I happened across this title from James Finley, “Meister Eckhart’s Living Wisdom: Indestructible Joy and the Path of Letting Go.” It seemed as good a time as any to start learning more.
I am still working my way through all of it, but was so struck by the powerful illustration that Finley gives in the opening session that I wanted to share it in this week’s post.
Meister Eckhart has written,
“Every image has two properties: the first is that it receives its being immediately from that of which it is an image without the interference of the will. Its outgoing is indeed natural and the thrust itself out of nature like a branch from a tree. When an image is cast on a mirror, our face will be reflected in it whether it likes it or not….”
“An image is not of itself, nor is it for itself. It has its origin in that of which it is the image. To that, it belongs properly with all that it is. It does not belong to what is foreign to this origin, nor does it owe anything to this. An image receives its being immediately from that in which it is an image. It has one being with it; it is the same being.”
To help us understand what Eckhart is driving home, Finley breaks it down this way:
“Imagine that you are looking at yourself in a full-length mirror. And imagine, too, that this image of yourself in the full-length mirror is conscious. It’s a thinking, reflective, conscious image of you. And, imagine that this conscious image of you has been through a lot of therapy. It’s taken a number of self-help workshops. It’s read a lot.
And, it thinks the time has come that it can move on its own, without you.
You try to explain to the image of you that you don’t think things will go well for it without you – because it’s an image of you!
The image will hear nothing of it. ‘You’re just trying to hold me back. I’m branching out on my own.’
And so, to gently prove your point, you step half way off the side of the mirror and half the image disappears.
The image has a panic attack. It has to go back into therapy and says to the therapist, ‘I’m not real, I’m not real. I was trying so hard to be real, and I thought I was.’
Now the image is real, it just isn’t real in the way the image was trying to be real.
And Eckhart says, this is the way it is with us with God. That Infinite Love in an act of love creates us in the image and likeness of Love for Love’s sake alone. Moment by moment, moment by moment, the generosity of God is poured out into our life, such that we ARE the generosity of God. Apart from and other than the infinite generosity of God, we are nothing. We are nothing at all.”
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How often have I tried to leave the mirror to set out on my own, thinking I had all the answers?
How often have I forgotten the Source of every fiber of my being?
The perfectionist part of me could waste hours worrying over my own failings, but the bigger story in this illustration is the hope that we are being offered. As I write this on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, a day my priest reminded me is a turning point towards joy in this penitential season, the better choice is to open my eyes to the miracle that takes place within us all the time.
This miracle is that God is generously pouring into us each moment, and our invitation is to NOTICE and then reflect this Source of Life back into the world as much as we can.
So may it be for you. So may it be for me.
A Pilgrim in the World 