A Coaching Session on Eckhart's Path

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:07)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to season seven of Turning to the Mystics, where we're turning to the German mystic, Meister Eckhart. In this special coaching session, Jim will present a summary overview of all we've learned this season.

He's going to do this by inviting you to draw a diagram and journal as he teaches. So before we get started, you might want to get pencil and paper ready to draw along with Jim. In the show notes, you'll find a diagram that we put together along with some of Jim's handwritten notes. And those might also be helpful to have with you as you listen.

Welcome Jim. It's lovely to be with you again.

James Finley (1:04)

Yes, glad to be together again, gathering around Eckhart's teaching.

Kirsten Oates (1:10)

Yes, I'm really looking forward to this coaching session. So Jim, why don't you get us started?

James Finley (1:16)

Yes, thanks, Christian. You know, I think with each of these mystics, and with Meister Eckhart, what we're trying to do is to kind of slowly internalize the teachings, and as they illumine our own path and our own search for God. And what I want to do here is share with you a way that helps me to do that. So you can, I'll share with you this way to do that that helps me, and you can consider doing it also. It's kind of a meditation practice. But if not, just to your own self, it helps me to just listen and take it in, this kind of poetic overview.

And how this works here is, I'm inviting you to take a sheet of paper. This is going to be like the cover sheet. And on this sheet of paper, right in the middle of the page, draw a little circle, maybe about the size of a dime. Slightly on the right side of the center of the page, halfway up, right in the middle of the paper, about halfway, and right over that circle, right God's ground.

Then right next to it, draw another circle about the size of a dime, just to the left of it, and write my ground. And imagine, you know the sign for infinity, the number eight sideways? Draw that infinity so that one of the circles is in one circle of the circle, and the other side of the eight is in the other side, so they're kind together in infinity, like this. And imagine that that ground, that oneness in the ground, now is like the center of that face of a clock. And we're gonna go around the clock, starting at 12 o'clock midnight.

And with each point on the clock, I wanna give it a name, give it a name, just like a short phrase or a name. It corresponds to the name we gave it in the Eckhart, on the talks on Eckhart. Then off to the side, take another sheet of paper and title that sheet of paper Midnight. So that's gonna be my reflections on Eckhart. And you can go back and listen to the other reflections on the ground at midnight and add those. And then if you care to, you can get like a three ring binder and add your own insides like a journal, like an Eckhart Prayer Journal. And so we'll go around the clock this way. It's starting with midnight. And so midnight is God's ground. So then off to the side of how I take a separate sheet of paper and title that paper Midnight. So these are the reflections in on the ground.

The ground of God, Eckhart says, is like a silent desert.

And it's really the infinity of God beyond all distinctions. So this is prior to and beyond the Trinity. This is like an infinite simplicity, an infinite silent hiddenness, like the abyss like ground of God.

We might think of it as the lofty depths of God.

So just on the sheet of paper, you would write the ground of God, then off on the side, you would write out this depth, this silent desert, this utter boundaryless stillness. Then starting to move around the clock. One o'clock is in the Trinity.

And so you get a sheet of paper entitled that paper, the Trinity. So the Trinity is that this eternal stillness of God in the Godhead is eternally in motion, a poetic motion, which he calls balazio, like a boiling, and it's the Trinity.

So the Trinity is divine relations of knowledge and love, such that intimacy is the first manifestation of the unmanifested mystery of the ground, as God is the Trinity. That in the Trinity, God the Father, God is origin. God is origin of God. So through all of eternity, God the Father is eternally expressing the infinity of himself, the infinity of God, the infinity of herself, as the Word.