Dialogue
Be ye
not like to horse and mule which have no understanding.(1)
Ow ______________
Ow ______________
Is there anybody there?
I’m hurting.
I say, is there anybody there?
Oh, sorry, I was in heaven. No I can’t describe it to you. Your words are not precise enough. It is as though it is in far higher resolution than anything you can comprehend. And it is rich and satisfying and complete and self-validating.
Now you have called me to attend to your petty concerns. I hope you had good reason.
I…I…I fear I will live and die without leaving any mark or doing anything significant.
Oh? What is to stop you giving to Oxfam or any other charity? There are lots of them.
You fool. What is the good of that? I give something, and there is another need and another. I can’t give to them all, so I have to be heartless when I don’t want to feel that I am heartless and say “You are hungry, enslaved, bullied, afraid, in prison? I’m sorry to hear it. Have a nice day!”
So you are feeling impotent, and if I hear you accurately, a little resentful.
Yes, both of those. And time is ticking on.
I see. That is, I don’t. I don’t do time.
But I do, an awful lot of it, and nothing to show for it.
Haven’t you seen what you have done? You have cultivated your spiritual antennae and sharpened your intellectual faculties, you have engaged in a fruitful long term relationship, you created applications in software that were used country-wide, you developed an effective management style and have made many good working relationships, you have given joy to others with your organ playing and have immeasurably improved your keyboard technique by application and endeavour over decades.
Stop it. I shall have watery eyes at this rate. So I have done all these things, so what? They are so ordinary, so little, so insignificant.
Phew, you must be in a bad way to consider your relationships insignificant. So you are feeling insignificant, impotent, useless, lonely, resentful.
Yes.
I agree with you. You are feeling insignificant, impotent, useless, lonely, resentful.
A fat lot of good you are!
What makes you so special? Millions of others lead insignificant lives. You have lots of company in that.
But I…
You thought you were special. I am special. I am significant. I really am, now. You, however, are not. “Cry” I say, and one says “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is grass. All the glory of it fades. The Word of the Lord endures forever”. (2)
Oh great, so not only am I insignificant, I am mortal too. But I can listen to an unending sermon.
It is you who are addicted to words. I should much prefer to be silent. No, the Word of the Lord is the eternal Son, and that is me.
Well it’s not me, that’s for sure.
Well, if you so out of love with your own life, why don’t you share mine? I said, I am significant now.
Oh? What do you do?
I don’t do anything.(3)
I knew it. You are more useless than me!
Absolutely. I don’t have to be useful for there is nobody to use me, and no task for me to perform.
Oh you know nothing! Haven’t you heard the news?
That is not the Word of the Lord.
But it is reality.
Oh no! Permit me to inform you that that screaming and screeching is not reality. Heaven is reality, where I was before you engaged me in your petty concerns.
Pie in the sky.
Oh, much better than pie!
I don’t believe it.
You are being perverse. You know it as well as I do.
But what about the world?
And are you so wise that you know what to do about it, assuming that you could? I tell you again, from where I am standing there is nothing to be done. And I mean not that there is nothing I can do, like you feel, but nothing that needs to be done.
Do you care at all?
Oh I am all love, possibly of a kind that you do not recognize. I am the source of the whole thing. It is going swimmingly, it really is! The whole process that seems to you to be so messy is resulting in exactly the outcome that I set it up for in the first place.
Clap, clap, clap. Even if, as you assert, it has to do with the planet, it has nothing to do with me.
Your choice, my friend. Stay in your separate, tiny, limited consciousness if you want, or share mine.
Share yours? You are a religious nut. Anyway, how can we transcend our separate consciousness?
I am not a religious nut. And though nobody says it is easy, there are reports from all periods of history and all countries of people doing just that.
And then will I be able to make my mark?
I have already told you that I do not act. Why are you so keen to do something when you know neither the means nor the purpose of your action?
You don’t listen. I want it to mean something that I have lived.
Well, my friend, I regret that I am far from sure that it does. Now I mean something. I mean everything, and I thank you for sharing your experience. I am enriched by it. I mean that. Without you and others I would not have known what it was like to feel mortal, limited, frustrated, or in any kind of lack. Neither would I have felt what I am.
You are mocking me.
Not for all the world, but you could lighten up a bit. If you are able to bear it, the Unity as it relates to me is the Father, who needs me in order to exist, for how can you have a Father without a Son? For the whole business of separation and return is my office. And I depend on you and all the others, not for my substance, for that derives from the Unity, but for my consciousness. And I depend on you for a unique aspect of my consciousness. But please don’t think that significance resides in any separate self, specifically yours, for at best you are a fascinating fragment, and I am the whole. I can feel your yearning for significance, but you are looking for it in the wrong place.
You are quite wrong about my mortality and I will prove it to you. I know of four incarnations, this present one, the old monk, the little boy in the field and the slave girl. So I am immortal.
So you as soul outlast you as body. How many Gods are there?
One of course.
So if you are somebody else, how can you be immortal?
Well, I thought I would reside within God.
As separate.
Yes, of course.
What does love require bearing in mind that I have all eternity at my disposal? Here you are locked in a partial experience which on your own showing you find frustrating, and I long to share the fullness with you, but you will not. The monk you were shut himself away in his tiny world much as you are doing now. Should I strip away your separateness, which to you would seem like ripping your selfhood away, or should I leave you to it, sending endless calls to you to come home meanwhile?
Dissolved in the Absolute. In tune with the Infinite. I’ll have you know I am a person. I am somebody.
I am everybody, including the fiction that you regard as your separate self. And look, I am not somebody else, I am your own greater self. I am already there. I am your greater identity. Good News, I think.
No. I will try harder, give money, suffer more. Surely that must be significant.
Well, I said that I desire not the death of a sinner, but rather that he would turn from his wickedness and live. (4) In your language, I would not have you live in the limitation of separateness, however useful it was for a time, but that you would return from it to the life of fullness. For a brief moment I forsook you, as you thought, but with great compassion I will gather you. (5) I see the end from the beginning.
1. Psalm 32:10
2. Isiah 40:6 ff, précis.
3. The Tao Te Ching is particularly good on this.
“Now as we have seen, the Tao is not an individual of any kind and is not within the realm of the changeable; therefore the Tao cannot be said, even metaphorically, to act. Hence is arrived at a further key doctrine of Taoism, namely that the way of the Tao is wu-wei, non-action: it ‘acts without action, does without doing’ (Chapter 63), or again:
Tao never does;
Yet through it all things are done. (Chapter 37)”
From the introduction by Robert Wilkinson to the Wordsworth Classics edition.
See also Julian of Norwich: “The Godhead rules and governs without any instrument or business”. Showings chapter 68.
Also “He seems to work and not to be; but in truth he works not, and he is.” Maitri Upanishad 2:7.
Ow ______________
Ow ______________
Is there anybody there?
I’m hurting.
I say, is there anybody there?
Oh, sorry, I was in heaven. No I can’t describe it to you. Your words are not precise enough. It is as though it is in far higher resolution than anything you can comprehend. And it is rich and satisfying and complete and self-validating.
Now you have called me to attend to your petty concerns. I hope you had good reason.
I…I…I fear I will live and die without leaving any mark or doing anything significant.
Oh? What is to stop you giving to Oxfam or any other charity? There are lots of them.
You fool. What is the good of that? I give something, and there is another need and another. I can’t give to them all, so I have to be heartless when I don’t want to feel that I am heartless and say “You are hungry, enslaved, bullied, afraid, in prison? I’m sorry to hear it. Have a nice day!”
So you are feeling impotent, and if I hear you accurately, a little resentful.
Yes, both of those. And time is ticking on.
I see. That is, I don’t. I don’t do time.
But I do, an awful lot of it, and nothing to show for it.
Haven’t you seen what you have done? You have cultivated your spiritual antennae and sharpened your intellectual faculties, you have engaged in a fruitful long term relationship, you created applications in software that were used country-wide, you developed an effective management style and have made many good working relationships, you have given joy to others with your organ playing and have immeasurably improved your keyboard technique by application and endeavour over decades.
Stop it. I shall have watery eyes at this rate. So I have done all these things, so what? They are so ordinary, so little, so insignificant.
Phew, you must be in a bad way to consider your relationships insignificant. So you are feeling insignificant, impotent, useless, lonely, resentful.
Yes.
I agree with you. You are feeling insignificant, impotent, useless, lonely, resentful.
A fat lot of good you are!
What makes you so special? Millions of others lead insignificant lives. You have lots of company in that.
But I…
You thought you were special. I am special. I am significant. I really am, now. You, however, are not. “Cry” I say, and one says “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is grass. All the glory of it fades. The Word of the Lord endures forever”. (2)
Oh great, so not only am I insignificant, I am mortal too. But I can listen to an unending sermon.
It is you who are addicted to words. I should much prefer to be silent. No, the Word of the Lord is the eternal Son, and that is me.
Well it’s not me, that’s for sure.
Well, if you so out of love with your own life, why don’t you share mine? I said, I am significant now.
Oh? What do you do?
I don’t do anything.(3)
I knew it. You are more useless than me!
Absolutely. I don’t have to be useful for there is nobody to use me, and no task for me to perform.
Oh you know nothing! Haven’t you heard the news?
That is not the Word of the Lord.
But it is reality.
Oh no! Permit me to inform you that that screaming and screeching is not reality. Heaven is reality, where I was before you engaged me in your petty concerns.
Pie in the sky.
Oh, much better than pie!
I don’t believe it.
You are being perverse. You know it as well as I do.
But what about the world?
And are you so wise that you know what to do about it, assuming that you could? I tell you again, from where I am standing there is nothing to be done. And I mean not that there is nothing I can do, like you feel, but nothing that needs to be done.
Do you care at all?
Oh I am all love, possibly of a kind that you do not recognize. I am the source of the whole thing. It is going swimmingly, it really is! The whole process that seems to you to be so messy is resulting in exactly the outcome that I set it up for in the first place.
Clap, clap, clap. Even if, as you assert, it has to do with the planet, it has nothing to do with me.
Your choice, my friend. Stay in your separate, tiny, limited consciousness if you want, or share mine.
Share yours? You are a religious nut. Anyway, how can we transcend our separate consciousness?
I am not a religious nut. And though nobody says it is easy, there are reports from all periods of history and all countries of people doing just that.
And then will I be able to make my mark?
I have already told you that I do not act. Why are you so keen to do something when you know neither the means nor the purpose of your action?
You don’t listen. I want it to mean something that I have lived.
Well, my friend, I regret that I am far from sure that it does. Now I mean something. I mean everything, and I thank you for sharing your experience. I am enriched by it. I mean that. Without you and others I would not have known what it was like to feel mortal, limited, frustrated, or in any kind of lack. Neither would I have felt what I am.
You are mocking me.
Not for all the world, but you could lighten up a bit. If you are able to bear it, the Unity as it relates to me is the Father, who needs me in order to exist, for how can you have a Father without a Son? For the whole business of separation and return is my office. And I depend on you and all the others, not for my substance, for that derives from the Unity, but for my consciousness. And I depend on you for a unique aspect of my consciousness. But please don’t think that significance resides in any separate self, specifically yours, for at best you are a fascinating fragment, and I am the whole. I can feel your yearning for significance, but you are looking for it in the wrong place.
You are quite wrong about my mortality and I will prove it to you. I know of four incarnations, this present one, the old monk, the little boy in the field and the slave girl. So I am immortal.
So you as soul outlast you as body. How many Gods are there?
One of course.
So if you are somebody else, how can you be immortal?
Well, I thought I would reside within God.
As separate.
Yes, of course.
What does love require bearing in mind that I have all eternity at my disposal? Here you are locked in a partial experience which on your own showing you find frustrating, and I long to share the fullness with you, but you will not. The monk you were shut himself away in his tiny world much as you are doing now. Should I strip away your separateness, which to you would seem like ripping your selfhood away, or should I leave you to it, sending endless calls to you to come home meanwhile?
Dissolved in the Absolute. In tune with the Infinite. I’ll have you know I am a person. I am somebody.
I am everybody, including the fiction that you regard as your separate self. And look, I am not somebody else, I am your own greater self. I am already there. I am your greater identity. Good News, I think.
No. I will try harder, give money, suffer more. Surely that must be significant.
Well, I said that I desire not the death of a sinner, but rather that he would turn from his wickedness and live. (4) In your language, I would not have you live in the limitation of separateness, however useful it was for a time, but that you would return from it to the life of fullness. For a brief moment I forsook you, as you thought, but with great compassion I will gather you. (5) I see the end from the beginning.
1. Psalm 32:10
2. Isiah 40:6 ff, précis.
3. The Tao Te Ching is particularly good on this.
“Now as we have seen, the Tao is not an individual of any kind and is not within the realm of the changeable; therefore the Tao cannot be said, even metaphorically, to act. Hence is arrived at a further key doctrine of Taoism, namely that the way of the Tao is wu-wei, non-action: it ‘acts without action, does without doing’ (Chapter 63), or again:
Tao never does;
Yet through it all things are done. (Chapter 37)”
From the introduction by Robert Wilkinson to the Wordsworth Classics edition.
See also Julian of Norwich: “The Godhead rules and governs without any instrument or business”. Showings chapter 68.
Also “He seems to work and not to be; but in truth he works not, and he is.” Maitri Upanishad 2:7.