The sin of Lucifer was called pride but in reality it was a simple error, a common mistake of thought to which we are all of us beholden: the psychological premise that what we are in truth is separate from what God is and that what God is is given unequally and that we are thus called to respond, react – to somehow rectify – the injustice.
But nothing is that isn’t God. Even a dream in the mind of God’s creation retains a trace of the Source from whence it has devolved. Even in dreams the Voice for God speaks, and where that Voice goes, knowledge of God goes as well. We are not bereft; we are not separate, even here. Even now.
It is critical to see this fact plainly and to question our inevitable doubt and skepticism with respect to it. The mind that questions God will answer itself, and the answer will be God, and it will also be nameless. We are moving beyond even the duality inherent in “oneness.” That is to say, moving beyond considering God as “not this but that” or as a unitary continent for many separate things.
Thus, we even have to question our acceptance. When we pass through doubt, when we pass through grief, and “get it” – realize we are there, It, one with the Godhead – we have to question that as well. We have to keep going. Questioning begets an energetic awareness that is never not revelatory. Properly understood, that which stops or ceases, that which can be defined and set aside and picked up later, is not the altar before which we will mutually witness the dissolution of self, other and altar altogether.
Over and over I fall (leap?) into the trap of believing that what is external will save me: some concatenation of circumstance, some lover’s lingering kiss, some ripe sum of money, some supernatural mystical event. So what? That is the nature of thought’s specificity. A rock dropped in a lake will elicit ripples, each ripple a natural extension of the cause by which it was made. I don’t cry out to Jesus over that; why approach thought any different?
In all things, give attention only to that which is present in all things. For example, if it is present during my morning walk but not while settling disputes about what’s for dinner, then it is not God. It is not there. If it is present while making love but not while grading papers, then it is not God. It is not there. And so forth.
Lucifer did not fall, nor was he pushed. He leaped. And leaping, believed that he landed, and believing he had discovered some space other than Heaven, rendered it a rude Kingdom over which to rule in grief. Moment by moment we do the same: we leap, we tell ourselves a lie, we believe it, and we defend our belief unto seeming death.
But it is given to us to stop leaping, to see a lie for the untruth it is, and to believe instead what is true. This is not a story though it often takes the shape of one, nor is it a poem, though poetry is a welcome home to it.
It is more in the nature of a love letter, one which writes itself as we read it and into which we willingly – even ecstatically – melt, to better become its wordiness, its inkiness, and its emptiness.
How vast and happy we are allowed to be, amid so many flowers blossoming, so many birds giving song . . .
