Virgil speaks to "Dante the pilgrim" at the entrance to the Earthly Paradise. Virgil says:
Here we catch a glimpse of the goal. ----> Goal – God – the Good – the Whole – the Great MysteryNo word from me, no further sign expect
FREE, UPRIGHT and WHOLE [is your WILL].
Henceforth your WILL gives guidance that
it would be an error to neglect.Whence over yourself, I crown and mitre you.
One caution:
The mystics would understand if we said that the goal for each human is to become God -- to grow into the measure of the God-image within them. To become the unique, unrepeatable manifestation of the Whole that they are. However, this is attractive only if one has a very big notion of God.
Sullivan’s "Law:" Whatever God is, God must be greater than the best human that has ever been. If your God is smaller than that, it is an idol. Then you have two choices: Become an atheist or get a bigger God.
Enslaved
FREE
from being Askew / off center
to being
UPRIGHT
Incomplete or partial
WHOLE
Enslaved to old habits
we seek to be
FREE
to old stories
to old emotional reactions
Off center and not directionally "true" we seek to be UPRIGHT
Incomplete or Partial we seek to be WHOLE
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1) White Stone Step -- mirror-like -- to see
with two-fold consciousness what I am in my false center
& what I am in my possibility of being Free, Upright and Whole
Confess the double vision --
HAIL -- Heart aware, insight into love
I am not here what I am at core.
I am not now what comes to meet me.
Here a sense -- one eye on the undisciplined appetites (the nafs-al-amaran
of the Sufis),
the other on the One -- Dante sees this image of Oneness, Wholeness in
the Great Heavens
in the whell of the zodiac.
2) Black Stone Step -- rough-hewn, cracked
in sign of cross --- to go into the
darkness, into unknowing
to surrender, to allow heart to break
Enter the darkness
Sorrowing, surrendering, contrite of heart
Let heart be touched, broken, bereft of borders.
3) Red Stone Step -- to move into action -- love and self-sacrifice
Give love for love is born to be given away, given "a way."
Repair and heal, amend and be whole.
James Mark Baldwin: Every genuine act of self-sacrifice
is also an act of self-enhancement -- and,
I would add, the self that is sacrificed is not the self that is enhanced.
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Think of it this way -- think of a cone with a flat piece of paper over
it -- in the cone a golden ball, thedeep center;
on the surface a dot on the two-dimensional paper -- not in alignment with
the true center.
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As for the three steps, we can map them onto a circle
in a way similar to the way Budhism see practice --
as having an insight-resolve phase, a meditative phase and an action phase.
In the image below, think of these three phases around
a circle; The White Step is at the top of the circle.
The movement is clockwise -- downward and inward as in autumn to winter
-- the Black Step.
upward and outward as in sparing to summer -- the Red Step.
White Step
Insight into doubleness
Confess - see and say
Red Step
Black Step
Action
Meditation
Satis-facere
Contrite --
Doing -enough
heart broken
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Instead of PRIDE, let us speak of being in a False Center
Rx: Humility or coming to appreciate our true size
I can lose my true size by falsely seeing myself as
ABOVE others
*
*
*
I can lose my true
size by
*
I can lose my true size by
falsely caring
for my false self
***********************
falsely "caring" for others
I can lose my true
size by
*
I can lose my true size by
falsely seeing myself
OPPOSED to others
*
falsely seeing others OPPOSED to me
*
*
I can lose my true size be falsely seeing myself as
BELOW others
************************************************************************************************************************
Placing myself above others is PRIDE in the negative sense --
also called vainglory
Dante mentions pride of birth, pride of talent, pride of power.
Rx: HUMILITY -- humus, humor -- returning to my place in the web of earth life.
Placing myself below others engenders ENVY -- we see life as a
see-saw --
if you are going up, I must be going down.
Rx: GENEROSITY -- able to celebrate the good things that come to others
Placing myself opposed to others engenders ANGER.
Rx: BEING PEACE -- making peace with justice -- creating the conditions
for harmonious living.
Here is a beautifulexplanation of what the word
"Namaste" means
***********************************************************************************************In India, when we meet, we often say Namaste,
which means, I honor the place in you where the
entire universe lives. I honor the place in you of
love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place
in you, where, if you are in that place in you, and
I am in athat place in me, there is only one of us.
consider the three steps to be taken over and over and over:
White Stone Step:
Confession -- Insight/Resolution -- mirror-like
to see with two-fold consciousness what I am in my false center
& what I am in my possibility of being Free, Upright and Whole
Black Stone Step:
Contrition -- the Descent into Darkness, Stillness, Surrender
-- rough-hewn, cracked in sign of cross --- to go into the darkness,
into unknowing, to surrender, to allow heart to break
Red Stone Step:
Satisfaction -- the Ascent into Service
-- to move into action -- love and self-sacrifice
Repair and heal, amend and be whole.
In this way, Purgatory -- seen as daily practice in this life -- becomes the work of our deepening.
To reverse false separateness and all its manifestations: above,
below, oppose
(and recovering a sense of our true size and deep beauty in interconnection
with
all our brothers and sisters)
To reverse our tendency to escape form the work (and recovering enthusiasm)
To reverse the substitutions for the work (and finding right relationship
to
success, consumption and sexual energy)
*********************************************************************************************
copyright October 2001, John G. Sullivan
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