What joy we experience at the birth of something new!
When we see a new home or a new car, when
we make a new friend, when we hear a new piece of music that touches us, or when we realize and understand something for the very first time; perhaps something that clarifies some confusion - a new insight. Think of all the ways we can realize something new!
When we see a new home or a new car, when
Arthur Zajonc is a physicist, author of several books related to science, mind, and spirit and a
Buddhist friend of the Dalai Lama. He is also a
professor at Amherst College and president of Mind and
Life Institute. He explained the process of coming to a new idea like this:
Sitting quietly we hold our existing knowledge and its implications. We have thought about the way these puzzle pieces fit together. We focus our attention on the point at which we can think it through no further, the very edge of our understanding or the place we meet the resistance of the unknown. Hold that. Look thoroughly at it in your minds eye and then let it go. Let it go so completely that it doesn't even seem to exist any longer, like turning your back on a wall. Be still. Be empty. Release resistance...completely. Wait. ...And a new way of thinking, a new way of perceiving, a new birth will take place.
Of course, this is the essence of any silent meditation practice and it explains why meditation can allow us to deepen our awareness.
This practice, Zajonc says, is the way Einstein came to his theory of relativity. In almost a sleeping consciousness, his variables came together in a new way..an epiphany or a revelation. Perhaps this is why Einstein says, "“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” He also said, ""A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. That means it is not reached by conscious logical conclusions."
There is a lot more that can be said about this process of CHANGE....of new awareness, of becoming.
(Hegel) thesis plus antithesis = synthesis or
(Gurdjieff) affirming plus denying = reconciling or
(Whitehead) process of occasions with entities plus prehension of subjective aim = new entity
These scholars describe how change takes place: whether changing the mind or changing the social milieu or creating a new being. New "beings," be they thoughts or people are created by a surplus of directed energy meeting resistance and overcoming it by letting go. What is known reality drives against what is unknown reality and, in the void of unknowing, new reality is born.
Sitting quietly we hold our existing knowledge and its implications. We have thought about the way these puzzle pieces fit together. We focus our attention on the point at which we can think it through no further, the very edge of our understanding or the place we meet the resistance of the unknown. Hold that. Look thoroughly at it in your minds eye and then let it go. Let it go so completely that it doesn't even seem to exist any longer, like turning your back on a wall. Be still. Be empty. Release resistance...completely. Wait. ...And a new way of thinking, a new way of perceiving, a new birth will take place.
Of course, this is the essence of any silent meditation practice and it explains why meditation can allow us to deepen our awareness.
This practice, Zajonc says, is the way Einstein came to his theory of relativity. In almost a sleeping consciousness, his variables came together in a new way..an epiphany or a revelation. Perhaps this is why Einstein says, "“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” He also said, ""A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. That means it is not reached by conscious logical conclusions."
There is a lot more that can be said about this process of CHANGE....of new awareness, of becoming.
(Hegel) thesis plus antithesis = synthesis or
(Gurdjieff) affirming plus denying = reconciling or
(Whitehead) process of occasions with entities plus prehension of subjective aim = new entity
These scholars describe how change takes place: whether changing the mind or changing the social milieu or creating a new being. New "beings," be they thoughts or people are created by a surplus of directed energy meeting resistance and overcoming it by letting go. What is known reality drives against what is unknown reality and, in the void of unknowing, new reality is born.
And so, from an Advent perspective, we wait in darkness. We embrace quiet. We LOVE by opening ourselves to this process of change. We HOPE, with a certainty that is more like Trust in the unknowing, the darkness. We realize JOY can be found through the process of awareness, the birth of the new coming through these postures: Waiting in LOVE, with HOPE...WAITING for light to break through the limits of darkness.
“Where is he who has been born as king of the Jews?” MT 2:2
“Pay attention now to where the birth of Jesus has taken place. This eternal birth takes place in the soul totally in the way it takes place in eternity, neither less nor more. For it is only one birth and this birth takes place in the being and foundation of the soul....
God is present, effective and powerful in all things. He is only generative, however, in the soul. For all creatures are a footprint of God, but the soul is formed like God, according to its nature. Whatever perfection is to enter the soul, be it divine, unique light or grace or happiness, all of it must come into the soul of a necessity through this birth of divine awareness and in no other way. Wait only for the birth of Christ within yourself, And you will discover all blessing and all consolation, all bliss, all being, and all truth.”
~ Meister Eckhart 1260 – c. 1327 German theologian, philosopher and mystic.
“Pay attention now to where the birth of Jesus has taken place. This eternal birth takes place in the soul totally in the way it takes place in eternity, neither less nor more. For it is only one birth and this birth takes place in the being and foundation of the soul....
God is present, effective and powerful in all things. He is only generative, however, in the soul. For all creatures are a footprint of God, but the soul is formed like God, according to its nature. Whatever perfection is to enter the soul, be it divine, unique light or grace or happiness, all of it must come into the soul of a necessity through this birth of divine awareness and in no other way. Wait only for the birth of Christ within yourself, And you will discover all blessing and all consolation, all bliss, all being, and all truth.”
~ Meister Eckhart 1260 – c. 1327 German theologian, philosopher and mystic.
JOY IS TO BEHOLD GOD IN EVERYTHING!
~ Julian of Norwich, 1342 – 1416 English Anchoress
~ Julian of Norwich, 1342 – 1416 English Anchoress
May you be blessed to hold this holy process in your silent, waiting heart, as the baby is created in all the splendor of God's perfect New....may the JOY of Love and Hope be yours!
_/\_Peggy
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