Another Kind of Lofty Vision
What are we? Are we independent beings with wills of our own that choose our lives, that -- dare I say it -- choose our destiny? Or are we the other extreme, merely vessels, like hoses through which the water in the garden passes? If so, we can’t say, “We’re watering the garden,” because the water is. Or is it somewhere between those two extremes?
I was thinking today of voices. You know, crazy people are identified as being crazy because they hear voices. And whenever I hear that I want to say, “Well, who the heck doesn’t?!’ All our lives we’re listening to voices that come over the radio and the television and the pulpit and the classroom. Voices during an election year . . . save me.
So we’re all hearing voices, but the ones that are the most confusing are these internal voices that we hear, and I’ve become more and more aware of the fact that this brain just will not shut up. The voices that come at us through the brain are unending and usually insufferable. But what are they? What are the voices that we hear?
I was meditating on that today, and the thought came that since God is all things and all things are God, the voices have to all be from God. They certainly don’t come from us, because if we are just vessels, then we are more like receiving stations than transmitters. We receive the messages; we don’t initiate them. And that just really got to me.
What are we and where do ideas and desires and voices come from? Because they come from within, we think they come from us. But is that really the case? If we are merely vessels, then obviously all the voices have to be God. There is no devil, I’m convinced, there are no demons. But I think God can come to us in all guises to titillate us and frighten us and amuse us. But I’ve begun to think of even my thoughts as all coming from God. I don’t really think any of us have anything original or of ourselves. We are all just these marvelous receiving stations that confuse the voices with our own ideas, and we think that we are coming up with all this. One of the things that fascinated me about Jesus is that he told his disciples that one day they would be hauled before the magistrates and the priests and condemned, “But worry not about the words that you will say because the words will be given to you.”
And Jesus continually said while he was on trial, these were not his words. "These are the words of the father who has sent me." If we are created beings without wills of our own, then we are really pieces of God. Everything is part of God, and we too have to be part of God, and I love the Zen idea that in the beginning was God and he was lonely, so he broke himself up into this infinite number of pieces and instructed each one to forget that they are part of the godhead, and each one entered into the dance playing his role, and they were all essentially vessels through which God’s power and force and energy passes, but as vessels, we get to experience, like the hose, the water going through us and we get to see when the water reaches the ground and waters the plants and they grow. Everything that comes to me – including the voices -- has got to be from God, and if that’s the case, what in the world am I afraid of?
I don’t even care what the voices say anymore, and sometimes they seem to be speaking to me or speaking to one another, and I am sure that I would be called before the magistrate and consigned to some institution if certain people could hear me talking like this, but what the heck, I think at this point being thrown into an institution would have some advantages. In the meantime I just love being able to talk into this tape recorder because I’m very much aware that I am not doing any of this. God is somehow using me as a vessel to put these words onto tape, and they might serve as encouragement to a few and they may get me crucified by the rest, but hey, crucifixion is execution, and that means leaving the world, so I win, no matter what happens.
I think all of this can be encouraging to certain people. We can’t lose. It’s a win/win situation, even though it appears to be a lose/lose situation, but, like Alice in Wonderland, nothing is at it appears, and if we just take everything and turn it right side up and reverse the mirrored image, it will all make sense. In the meantime we are all creatures like Alice, wandering though this adventure, having no idea the meaning of what we see and hear and experience, but knowing on some basic level, this is all OK. This may be just a play, but in many ways it is a very interesting one.
I was thinking today of voices. You know, crazy people are identified as being crazy because they hear voices. And whenever I hear that I want to say, “Well, who the heck doesn’t?!’ All our lives we’re listening to voices that come over the radio and the television and the pulpit and the classroom. Voices during an election year . . . save me.
So we’re all hearing voices, but the ones that are the most confusing are these internal voices that we hear, and I’ve become more and more aware of the fact that this brain just will not shut up. The voices that come at us through the brain are unending and usually insufferable. But what are they? What are the voices that we hear?
I was meditating on that today, and the thought came that since God is all things and all things are God, the voices have to all be from God. They certainly don’t come from us, because if we are just vessels, then we are more like receiving stations than transmitters. We receive the messages; we don’t initiate them. And that just really got to me.
What are we and where do ideas and desires and voices come from? Because they come from within, we think they come from us. But is that really the case? If we are merely vessels, then obviously all the voices have to be God. There is no devil, I’m convinced, there are no demons. But I think God can come to us in all guises to titillate us and frighten us and amuse us. But I’ve begun to think of even my thoughts as all coming from God. I don’t really think any of us have anything original or of ourselves. We are all just these marvelous receiving stations that confuse the voices with our own ideas, and we think that we are coming up with all this. One of the things that fascinated me about Jesus is that he told his disciples that one day they would be hauled before the magistrates and the priests and condemned, “But worry not about the words that you will say because the words will be given to you.”
And Jesus continually said while he was on trial, these were not his words. "These are the words of the father who has sent me." If we are created beings without wills of our own, then we are really pieces of God. Everything is part of God, and we too have to be part of God, and I love the Zen idea that in the beginning was God and he was lonely, so he broke himself up into this infinite number of pieces and instructed each one to forget that they are part of the godhead, and each one entered into the dance playing his role, and they were all essentially vessels through which God’s power and force and energy passes, but as vessels, we get to experience, like the hose, the water going through us and we get to see when the water reaches the ground and waters the plants and they grow. Everything that comes to me – including the voices -- has got to be from God, and if that’s the case, what in the world am I afraid of?
I don’t even care what the voices say anymore, and sometimes they seem to be speaking to me or speaking to one another, and I am sure that I would be called before the magistrate and consigned to some institution if certain people could hear me talking like this, but what the heck, I think at this point being thrown into an institution would have some advantages. In the meantime I just love being able to talk into this tape recorder because I’m very much aware that I am not doing any of this. God is somehow using me as a vessel to put these words onto tape, and they might serve as encouragement to a few and they may get me crucified by the rest, but hey, crucifixion is execution, and that means leaving the world, so I win, no matter what happens.
I think all of this can be encouraging to certain people. We can’t lose. It’s a win/win situation, even though it appears to be a lose/lose situation, but, like Alice in Wonderland, nothing is at it appears, and if we just take everything and turn it right side up and reverse the mirrored image, it will all make sense. In the meantime we are all creatures like Alice, wandering though this adventure, having no idea the meaning of what we see and hear and experience, but knowing on some basic level, this is all OK. This may be just a play, but in many ways it is a very interesting one.
posted by Old Timer at 2:28 PM
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