Meister Eckhart: Listener Questions (Part 3)

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:49)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:52)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:54)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (1:04)

Welcome, everyone, to the final episode of season seven of Turning to the Mystics, where we've been turning to the German mystic, Meister Eckhart.

And this session is part three of our question and response sessions, where we've had a wonderful set of listener questions come in and we've been addressing them over the past few episodes. So welcome, Jim, to this final session.

James Finley (1:32)

Yes, yes, welcome, good, yeah, been a great session, great season.

Kirsten Oates (1:36)

And you had some opening thoughts about the questions we've been getting.

James Finley (1:40)

Yes, I wanted to make a clarification about a statement that I made last time. I'd like to clarify, because it could be misunderstood. I made the observation that there's all these questions, but just to know that if we get an answer to all our possible questions, it doesn't necessarily mean we have found our way to what Eckhart's inviting us to discover. And that's true.

And I said, but we have to do it. I did a lot of it. See, how do I clarify this and how do I clarify? Because it's in the consistency of clarifications that we get a broader base, that's really true. But what I like to add is there's something more here, I think, in the very quality of these questions. It isn't that you're asking for information, like an answer to a question, but rather in the asking of the question and in listening to the response, you're kind of interiorly quickened.

With the joy of this, with the mystery of this, with the nearness of this, Eckhart would say with the birthing of the word, like being birthed out of this engagement in the question. I think that's important, you know, to know where questions have that, you know, how do I love thee, let me count the ways, you know. It's like that. Anyway, I wanted to share that.

Kirsten Oates (3:00)

Do you feel, Jim, I mean, it's just such a gift to read the questions. There's that resonance as you read the questions that just touch that place inside of you.

James Finley (3:09)

Because the sincerity of the questions embodies the presence of the person asking it.

They're not asking in some cavalier way or in a different way. It's so sincere and personal. It gives substance to the, brings us right to the heart of what Eckhart would have us be present to.

Kirsten Oates (3:28)

Yeah, wonderful.

Okay, well, let's turn to our first question. These questions, the theme is practice and embodiment. And so the first question is from Sharon. I find Eckhart's language to be particularly meaningful to me at this time. Jim has been mentioning the idea of our nothingness without God since the beginning, and now I finally seem to catch a glimpse of what that means. I'm able to find meaning in the sense of seeing the divinity of all things, of experiencing life that way unhindered as a goal. But when Jim talks about God's love, of sensing this divine presence as love, something stops for me.

For a moment, I was able, in a sitting session, to imagine that sense of falling into a boundless love, and it is inviting and seductive even, but for some reason I can't embrace it as part of my sense of the divine. The awe, yes. The mystery, yes. The taking on the suffering of humanity in Christ. Perhaps that's where the love comes in.

James Finley (4:31)

I think this is my sense of, this is what the path is like, really, is that we listen to Eckhart's teachings, and then there are moments where grace, with taste of the fullness of which he speaks, like this. But then we discover that we're not yet completely ready or willing to completely surrender to it.

Either we don't know how to, or even what that would mean, and so on. And so that's my sense of it, is because you see, in the complete surrender to this, there's no control. There's no control. But to know that when there's no control on our part, we're being handed over to God in whose presence we're infinitely safe and fulfilled. But because we're just a human being, and we're not to try to push our way through, we should be a form of attachment, like an attachment for unit of realization. So we sit at the cusp of the intention of more complete surrender to what we fleetingly tasted.