Dialogue 4: Surrendering to the Ground

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

We believe that CAC's programs, including this podcast, should be open and accessible to all sincere seekers around the world. My name is Ben Kesey, and I lead the development and fundraising efforts at CAC. I'm here to thank all of our generous donors who give freely and cheerfully to make this work possible.

If you have been impacted by these podcast conversations and are inspired to introduce more people to the wisdom and practices of the Christian contemplative traditions, twice per year, we invite your financial support. To contribute, go to cac.org/donate to make a gift. Thank you.

SPEAKER_2 (0:38)

You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more, visit cac.org.

James Finley (0:46)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:49)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:51)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (1:01)

Welcome, everyone, to season seven of Turning to the Mystics, where we're turning to Meister Eckhart, the German mystic.

And I'm here with Jim to unpack his beautiful session from last week. And welcome, Jim.

James Finley (1:18)

Thank you. Glad to be with you again.

Kirsten Oates (1:21)

So there's a lot to unpack from the last session. And what I heard in the session was you describing that if we follow this path of detachment that Meister Eckhart outlines, in this last session, you went through these states of consciousness that we might find ourselves kind of being brought into. And these are states of experiencing ourselves in God, experiencing reality as it really is.

And I thought perhaps what might be helpful today is to go through the states of consciousness and describe them a little. And just tell me, Jim, if these are the four, if I'm headed in the right direction. So we start with dissimilarity.

James Finley (2:12)

Yes.

Kirsten Oates (2:13)

Next, we move into similarity. Then identity.

James Finley (2:18)

Yes.

Kirsten Oates (2:20)

And then break through into the Godhead.

James Finley (2:22)

That's correct.

Kirsten Oates (2:22)

Okay, great. So we'll go through those today. But it seems to make no sense to start going through the path of detachment in these stages of consciousness without grounding ourselves in Eckhart's worldview. Right. The core foundation of this path.

So perhaps we might just do a little reminder of that.

James Finley (2:44)

That'd be a good place to start. And I want to share also that those four stages, one of the key sources that have been so helpful for me is Reiner Sherman's book, Meister Eckhart, Wondering Joy. And they'll be able to see it in the resources. We'll list it there. Because different in-depth commentators lay it out a little differently. You know, it's a certain way to kind of schematize his sermons, which are more kind of holographic. That is, each one kind of contains it in a way. So it lays it out in a certain structure where you can see a grace progression. And also, again, to say that I realized, I said at the beginning, that I'm aware this is way too much for one talk. But it allows for closure, where you can see the arc. And the listeners on their own, if they're so inclined, can slow it down and go back and so on. So let's start first with his vision, like where he starts from.

Where he starts from is that if we try to understand what it means to be real in the fullest possible sense, in the fullest possible sense, to be real means to be oneself, the infinite actuality of reality itself.

And if we define being real in that sense, then only God is real.

And likewise, by understanding reality in that sense, we, in contrast, are not real.

We are not real because we are not the infinity of reality itself. The next point he says is that then God, in an ongoing self-donating act, gives the infinite presence of God away, glasenheit, this letting go. God gives the infinite presence away in and as the intimate immediacy of the gift and the miracle of our very presence in our nothingness without God, the presence of others and the presence of all things. So it's very paradoxical that in one sense, we are nothing without God, that if God would cease loving us into the present moment, he says everything would vanish. But precisely because we are nothing without God, our very presence is the presence of God in our nothingness without God. And he is going to start saying that if we start to see reality in this way, we need to understand, except the fact that we tend not to realize this.

And therefore, how can we be healed from what hinders us from realizing it, which kind of sets Eckhart off on his path. That's his poetic beginning of the divine nature of our situation. In our nothingness, yeah.