Holding our thoughts and words as stories

Stories, you are always living at least one. They aren’t real either!
No matter what thought is running through your mind, it is a story. Knowing whatever I am thinking is a story gives me permission to hold it without a death grip. Nothing needs defending. How many of us encounter someone who says this or that is what is happening? They believe it with their whole heart. Yet, we can see there is another possible “reason” or interpretation on how or why something took place. Nothing becomes so evident and as emotional as we each consider our faith.

Among the wide breadth of “spiritual scriptures” I read, what was read and understood some time ago can have a very different view or understanding when reread later on. Friedrich Bonhoeffer encouraged his German students to read the Bible as if God was talking to them directly. In that personal listening, we integrate what God is guiding us in that moment. Reading that Bible again later with some experiences and different perspectives, we gain further insights, which are authenticated in a deeper knowingness. My reading Ecclesiastes has taken all kinds of different interpretations. Recently I discovered a non-duality dimension that amazed and surprised me completely.

Quantum Physics teaches something similar. Is it a particle or wave? Depends on what is being measured. This can be very daunting for those who have little capacity for seeing and being in paradoxes. Sometimes in our lives we need clear black and white understandings so that our capacity to “hold it together” is met. However, once we have some internal space to ask larger questions or have an openness to different interpretations, we can see a broader spectrum of possibilities, not limited to just one “right” answer.

The Jews have a name for God, Yahweh. It’s a way of referring to God but not defining Him/Her, (or whatever gender you may use.) The point is that there is no point, no concrete or definability to God. As the Taoists say, if you try to define God, you’ve lost him. God is beyond our ability to cognitively conceptualize Him. So, for me to say this is the truth and that isn’t must be met with guardedness. For I have fallen into the trap of story.

This isn’t to say that stories don’t have their usefulness. (Even the concept of usefulness has limitation. Who or what is defining “useful?”) As I think about and pray on Jesus, my mind has a place to go, reference to. It, the mind, has a place to surrender. Often I pray that Jesus would totally absorb me, my ego: thoughts, definitions, feelings. “I” don’t want to be in charge of anything. Instead, I would rather have the Holy Spirit be in charge. (But isn’t the Holy Spirit already in charge, we just don’t know it?) That means I have to let go totally. Now that is tough.

It seems to me that I must continually refer to Christ in full submission. My sense is that Christ is already in charge for there is nothing other than God. I just have my fears, stories, perceptions define a reality that is absent of complete and full submission. If there is no “me” holding on, then the “I” suffers in the illusion of a fabricated relative reality. Heaven is here! We just need to shut up and listen deeply.

I share this with others in hopes that they may investigate what they believe and to hold it lightly as “truth.” By turning to God, undefined, we, our minds can hear the whispers of God. But no matter what we hear or see or feel, it has limitations and God is beyond any limitation. A word, a definition, a picture, a feeling, thought, all of it is an “it.” Some “thing” and it has inherent limitations.

This can bring about true submission for we, our minds, seek complete surrender. You can’t have idolatry in the fullness of the Now.

Kindly, James

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