Jesus' Nondual Way of the Heart

As we set out to consider the teachings of Jesus as an integrated spiritual method, we are entering territory that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Most people growing up in the Western cultural stream will have had some exposure to these teachings (if only as ethical precepts), but the apparent familiarity of the subject matter can blind us to its radical strangeness and difficulty. Perhaps more than any other spiritual teacher, Jesus requires a real beginner’s mind, a willingness to unlearn what one already presumably knows and start with a completely clean slate. In this spirit, then, I would like to begin by describing what seem to me to be the three constitutive elements of the path Jesus discovered; then, on the basis of these characteristics, I will propose to identify what branch of the spiritual stream it most properly belongs to. I will of course be making use of not only of familiar reference points in the canonical gospels but also the new resources opened up in the Nag Hammadi gospels that we began to explore in Part I of this book.

These three constitutive elements are kenosis, abundance, and singleness.

Kenosis

Kenosis comes from the Greek verb kenosein, which means to empty oneself. It was Paul who first applied this term to Jesus. In a moment of intuitive brilliance he grasped the essential element in Jesus’s methodology, and described it in his immortal words of Philippians 2:9-16:³

Though his state was that of God,

yet he did not deem equality with God

something that he should cling to.

Rather, he emptied himself *

and assuming the state of a slave

he was born in human likeness.

He being known as one of us

humbled himself obedient unto death,

even death on a cross.

For this God raised him on high

and gave him the name

which is above every other name

So that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.

And so every tongue should proclaim

“Jesus Christ is Lord!”

To God the Father’s glory.

(* this is the place where the verb kenosein appears)

As Paul so profoundly realizes, self-emptying is the touchstone, the core reality underlying every moment of Jesus’s human journey. Self-emptying is what brings him into human form, and self-emptying is what leads him out, returning him to the mode of glory. The full realization of his divine selfhood comes not through the concentration of being, but through a voluntary divestment of it.

We have already seen this same self-emptying motion described in that brilliant “divestment” metaphor of Logion 21 in the Gospel of Thomas. When asked to describe his students, Jesus responds:

They are like small children living in a field not their own.

When the landlords return and demand, “Give us back our field!”

the children return it by simply stripping themselves

and standing naked before them. ⁴

“Stripping oneself and standing naked:” this is the essence of the kenotic path. And it is, in fact, is precisely the strategy that Jesus employs during the famous temptation narratives of the canonical gospels. In each case Satan asks him to take (feed yourself by turning stones into bread; display yourself by drawing on your divine powers; advance yourself by letting me set you up as ruler of the entire world). Jesus responds by simply letting go of the bait being dangled, being content to rest in his emptiness.

It is also the methodology he will reaffirm during his ordeal in the garden of Gethsemane (“Not my will but yours be done”), and which will carry him through the crucifixion, the harrowing of hell (if my reading of Dialogue Three in the gospel of Mary Magdalene is correct), and the final forty days of his time on earth following the resurrection.

Kenosis is not the same as renunciation. Renunciation implies a subtle pushing away; kenosis is simply the willingness to let things come and go without grabbing on. For all intents and purposes it is synonymous with non-clinging or non-attachment. But unlike a more Buddhist version of this spiritual motion, kenosis has a certain warm spaciousness to it; to the degree one does not assert one’s own agenda, something else has the space to be. The “Letting go” of kenosis is actually closer to “letting be” than it is to any of its “non-” equivalents (non-clinging, non-attachment, non-identification, etc.); its flow is positive and fundamentally creative. Between the “let it be” of kenosis and the “let it be” by which biblical tradition envisions Creation itself as having come into existence, there is a profound resonance.

Abundance

This second pillar of Jesus’s teaching is often seen but rarely recognized. The kenosis Jesus has in mind is not a stoic stance against a pitiless reality; rather, it is a direct gateway into a divine reality which can be immediately experienced as both compassionate and infinitely generous. Abundance surrounds and sustains us like the air we breathe; it is only our habitual self-protectiveness that prevents us from perceiving it. Thus, the real problem with any constrictive motion (taking, defending, hoarding, clinging) is that it makes us spiritually blind, unable to see the dance of divine generosity which is always flowing toward us.

In this sense, then, kenosis is first and foremost a visionary tool rather than a moral one; its primary purpose is to cleanse the lens of perception. Letting go is not in order to get something better (the point Paul misses in the second half of his Philippians hymn); in and of itself it is the something better. For it immediately restores the broken link with the dynamic ground of reality, which its very nature flows forth from a fullness beyond imagining.

Since this point is so fundamentally counterintuitive for our anxiety-prone minds, little wonder that Jesus takes every occasion to hammer it home. In virtually all his teachings the fundamental leitmotif is an “over-the top” generosity that leaves its recipients not only satisfied but bedazzled. Think of all those well-loved gospel stories— the prodigal son, the good samaritan, the loaves and fishes, the water turned into wine, the woman with the alabaster jar, the fishing nets cast in the Galilean Sea—and you’ll see what I mean. It is not a question of “adequate,” or “barely enough,” but of a fullness “filled up, pressed down, running over” (Luke x:xx).

In exactly the same measure, his implacable stance against any kind of greed or hoarding is because these motions lead to constriction, or in other words to spiritual and physical death. Life is an exchange, and in this exchange the Mercy of God is made real (I am indebted to Helen Luke, in her marvelous book Old Age, for pointing out that the linguistic root of the word “mercy” is in fact the Old Etruscan merc, which means “exchange” ⁵). The modern spiritual teacher Michael Brown succinctly summarizes the core principle at the heart of Jesus’s practical teachings: “‘Giving and receiving’ is the energetic frequency upon which our universe is aligned. All other approaches to energy exchange immediately cause dissonance and disharmony in our life experience.” ⁶

To experience abundance is essentially to see from oneness. It is to know, intimately, the wholeness that underlies and belies our surface impression of separation and scarcity. In the Eastern traditions this realized oneness is known as nonduality, and while Jesus knew it by another name (we’ll see what it is very shortly), he was clearly familiar with the state itself and yearned to impart it to his followers. “Do not be afraid, little flock,” he urged (Luke 12:32)—“it is my father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom!” But this gift can only be received in a state of deep inner emptiness, for any grasping and self-assertion will shatter the unity of which abundance is the mirror. Between kenosis, abundance, and oneness there is in Jesus’s methodology an unbreakable connection.

Singleness

This unitive realization of the fullness ushers a person into a state which Jesus calls “singleness.” In the canonical gospels the term does not stand out, but a whole series of teachings in the Gospel of Thomas (5, 15, 18, 22, 23, 61, 75, 84, 106, 114 makes its meaning indisputably clear. It is Jesus’s term for the attained state of nonduality. Logion 5 succinctly describes this state, in which one sees from the wholeness and lives from the abundance:

Come to know the One

In the presence before you

And everything hidden from you will be revealed…⁷

It is fascinating how closely this idea resonates with what the Eastern traditions would call “enlightenment.” Breaking through the egoic mind’s compulsive need to divide the perceptual field into paired opposites (inside and outside, male and female, subject and object, and so forth), consciousness simply coincides with its source and looks at the world through a single lens of wholeness. To be able to “make the two become one” in this fashion is to reunite with the creative principle of the universe itself:

When you are able make two become one,

the inside like the outside, and the outside like the inside

the higher like the lower,

so that a man is no longer male, and a woman, female,

but male and female become a single whole…

—then you shall enter in.

(Logion 22)

When you are able to transform two into one,

then you too will become “Sons of Man,”

and it will be possible for you to say to a mountain,

“Move,” and it will move.

(Logion 106)

In the Aramaic language of Jesus’s immediate followers, one of the earliest titles given to hims was Ihidaya, “ the Single One,” or the “Unified One.”⁸ In context, it speaks unmistakably of this state of inner oneness; it designates the anthropos, the fully realized human being: the enlightened master of Eastern tradition, or the monad or “undivided one” of hermeticism.

The “great identity theft” to which the title of this chapter refers is that in remarkably short order this term which was so clearly intended to designate Jesus’s attained state of inner oneness should come to be interpreted as “singleness” in the sense of being unmarried, “the celibate one.” ⁹ (This is not, of course, intended to argue the case one way or the other as to Jesus’s marital status, but simply to insist that the primary reference point for the “singleness” described by the Aramaic ihidaya and Greek monachos refers to a state of unitive, or non-dual consciousness and not a state of voluntary celibacy).

© Cynthia Bourgeault, June 2008

(excerpted from Chapter 8, “The Great Identity Theft”)

from http://diversejourneys.com/?p=1093

Two Zero Love One Seven

The fact that truth is not knowable doesn't mean truth does not exist but love! Call it silent knowing, intuition, feeling, inspiration, apperception, divination, third eye, love. But one shall know it by not thinking.

Being is all there is. Thus, the only practice is being being. And seeing through all thought is thus instructive—postmodern deconstruction sees through thinking but seeing through the thought of thought, ah fire!

If self-awareness is the only understanding and its one deductive myth is evolution, then the current turning is the seeing through the modern meta-paradigm of scientific materialism

as well as other more traditional fundamentalisms. In other words, free will is just another name for god's plan as self-awareness says it all. Be it love, confessional, or contemporary heartbeat, before all thoughts

of pollen, which comes first, the flower or a bee? Seeing through belief is like looking without eyes—scary at first, but one evolves. Like an insect is an orchid on this lonely avenue, all is unbelievable.

Acid Sunlight Nativity Gospel

Take the energetic I Am interstate from non-stop thinking to enlightenment but you can't get there from here—a person is a thought wrapped in belief inside a meta-paradigm.

Practice is to meditation as deconstruction is to sutra as being is to tantra as self-awareness is the absolute is the absolute. And suffering teaches me there is no you

but it doesn't necessarily stop anyone from just enjoying two. For the one becomes two to know itself by loving itself and nine moons later, self-awareness.

Expecting Three Chord Mary Eastern White Pine Redwoods Ouroboros

If consciousness is the immaculate conception, birth is an afterthought, this daydream, this nightmare, reverie!

for everything appearing to be personal is just a memory, and thought is not exactly high fidelity, because emotion.


To the Tao of Transformation, the Bodhisattva of Impermanence, the Vanity of Ecclesiastes, The Jimi Hendrix Experience,

money doesn't talk but swears it's said and consciousness is not talking to consciousness but in the name of self-awareness.


The earth is not as much a planet as it is third child of the sun and I am not as much a body-mind as the only child of god—

feel my inner Eve, swallow hallucinations Adam, yeah yeah yeah.
 

Love Sonnet to Manifestation

Love is not political nor mathematical.
And love is never speakable nor unspeakable.
Love is earliest direct transmission
received from someone loving as oneself.
Thus, love is never personal but individual
and love is never intellectual but love's intelligent
and consciousness and bliss.

Yes, love is often caustic deconstruction in this further era
but love is always the germ of truth—
as love is never two but frequently is manifesting three.
Although all manifestation appears to be non-existent like a dream,
enlightenment is like a quantum universe of dreams,
great wisdom.
Deconstruct a dream but love a fever.

Reflections On a Desert Moon

There are no others; there's just projection. So coyotes are not howling at the moon but face to unoriginal face.

And as one sees the world is one's reflection, there's no longer any need to think you’re two.

For when I thought there was a world, I acted like the world, but as I know the world is me, I am.

Literally, figuratively, and experientially, consciousness is consciousness is consciousness.

Peak deconstruction isn't speaking in tongues but knowing the valley of the dawn is singularly speechless.

There's nothing like a desert for enlightening intent. And self-awareness is intent, is it not?

Individually Universal

As if division is a thing or separation an objective, the world can't stop the world from doing worldly things, but an individual can deconstruct and be.

Like the resurrection, deconstruction is the wilderness. Although the personal is objectively divided, the individual is subjectively universal. You already have what you want, but give yourself your need.

Coyote instant karma, visionaries as preservers of the status quo, come forth sweet democratic despots of the individually universal! Real meditation is intentional being.

Belief is a terror, the terrible twos. Mysticism is aurora borealis at the boundaries of the status quo. But individually universal is my mantra for the absolute. 

Signed Consciousness

Body-mind appears in consciousness.  Another name for body-mind is the universe.  To body-mind, the body-mind appears to be material and moreover, divided.  It’s not; the body-mind is pure universal consciousness.  The material is just a notion of the body-mind.

To conditioned body-mind, the fact that all is consciousness is an unbelievable, outrageous, and laughable thought.  To deconstructing body-mind as no-mind, thought of body-mind is seen through, for all is consciousness naturally.

The secondary concept of the material, and all the accompanying tertiary concepts which form the world, arises from the primary concept of separation/division from/of the immaculate conception of consciousness only.

footnoting manifesting mataparadigming

thanking each mistake that got one here is like a full force forgiveness
all experiments are like the day of trinity
embodying the knowing is slowly flowing go

mistaking cause for intent is like thinking God creates Adam
before peaking
thank the karma that brings you here

an ode to the absolute is an ode to self-awareness is an ode to being
north pole and south pole
yin yang arts of all feng shui

the one heart of the universal is the only way
to get to nirvana take the samsara south or i 91 north
but as if it makes all the difference

footnoting robert frost
absolving the body-mind each night
or every day

The Art of Manifesting Metaparadigms

When lost in thought, one thinks the universe is an object of such thinking, despite the obvious experiential fact that all appears in consciousness, of course.

Does within swallow without or does without emerge from in within? This paradox is called The Tao of Ouroboros.

Believing that consciousness arises from the material universe is the first law of the world. But witnessing all appears in consciousness is the only knowledge, and thus not of this world. Turn, turn, turn.

The greatest deconstruction is no-mind seeing through all thought, where no-mind is an eastern variant for consciousness and thought is the western ground of scientific materialism.

If a philosopher is a fool for words, and the fool is another name for the mystical, is the mystic a philosopher without words?

Look, a covenant is between two objects, like Abraham the personal incarnate, and God the great personification of all that's unknown. A promise is the unknown being.

Plimoth Vortex Sutra

Giving thanks to the bounty of nature as this body is the body of Christ consciousness like a stereo system is the body of music—the dream state is the house that consciousness builds to listen to itself as to know itself. This is called the song of self-awareness.

This song is like a great morality play where morality is social conditioning and play is universal love deconstructing unawareness. In the moment as it is, the separation of truth and law is the tantric gift of the first thanksgiving, and beyond all worldly empire and amen!

Universal consciousness is individually absolute and the only teaching of this knowledge is direct transmission, sudden spontaneous combustion, or the paradox of poetry—and not by local priest nor, god forbid, archbishop.

Being only is the only knowledge and divine imagination is the mythic dream of self-awareness. There are ten thousand causes for each effect. Being is the absolute. Transcendental fundamental firmament of transformation and impermanence, absolution be thy nameless name!

Stories are born like lilies of the field but consciousness is
the sun in olive trees with yellow sky and sun.
Iphoki, wanbli, honga, kamamul,
wohali, atsa, pelaethee, tsa-cho!

Ode to Beatitude

Dreams appear to be a mathematical foundation until uncertainty is introduced within the guru going further.

If the body deconstructs completely every seven years, does not the mind's identity as well

if unattached to any alien memory like the thought of death? Like Jack Kerouac says

the beat in beat is actually beatitude and not some carnival of mind or dream state.

If knowledge of the world is really knowing nothing and consciousness is the only real knowledge,

is this the world something other than a show business? Thought is like a tool and a person is like that tool thinking it's the hand

but embodiment is being handy. Purple November twilight snow is being natural is beautiful is

truthful as a rose is a flower is awake who thinks oneself asleep and dreaming.

Being Gnostic Code Name Henry

There's no stopping thought for stopping thought is just another thought but seeing through all thought is further. Gone beyond further.

Some say deep sleep is like the absolute but that's just dreaming talking. Being only is.


Witch hazel blossoming in November snow—literally, being is the only knowledge like poetry is the only headless language.

As far as I know, I was never born and death is just a concept born from my projecting. Being is all I really know.


You can be without thought but there's no thinking without being, no matter what scientific thought is thinking.

Like Henry plainly says. Skunk cabbage slowly grows beneath the knowing snow.

tantra universal nonconceptual individual absolute

Between the space of consciousness and the place called the world is the cloud of unknowing. Only in unknowing knowledge one knows knowing, Hiawatha.

The greatest myth literally creates a world where one is lucidly living out the latest understandings. And these are the latest greatest understandings—universal, nonconceptual, individual, absolute.

Obviously love is not a science. Experiential being (I am) equals infinity and beyond. The unconditional can't be classified—like a Georgia O’Keeffe flower. Being is Far Out Like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!

s/he says vagina. s/he says lankavatara. no name for basho. and the chorus goes universal, nonconceptual, individual, absolute. Lights! Myth literally creates a world for one’s projection! Lovingly. Lucidly.


 

Dream like Zhuangzi

I was taught to think the universe is other than myself. Hell, I was taught to think there even is a was.

After all, every cinematic encounter deconstructs the nuts and bolts of mass projection, but every story likes a story instead.

See, I know the space of instant manifestation and sudden reincarnation without a doubt, but I'm still learning timing.

And if science teaches me one thing about the space-time continuum, it's its holistic nature,

the universe and its uncertain inevitability of transformation, but nothing more.

What science hasn't yet to prove is that old old folktale: the other. In fact it’s just the opposite.

Listen, almost all translations of poetry writing from a point of view without a view have a point of view.

Therefore, burn this before reading. Zhuangzi utterly transforms the butterfly effect.

Lalla Awakens Two: 2. the channel is choked

You’re like a royal swan whose voice is silenced.

But who has taken what away from you?

The mill has stopped and the channel is choked

But the grain hasn’t fled from the miller.

~Lal Ded (tx-SR) [G-86]

Consciousness is Talking Consciousness

It's not division of the universal that's unnatural but universal consciousness identifying with some phenomenal division is,

to say the least, unhealthy, inviting consequences from that disinherited aspect of myself—some call this karma. Seeing through it is enlightening.

Seeing through the personal happens suddenly, spontaneously, without the microscopic so-called doings of an unrealistic person—

some call this satori or the grace of the guru. Consciousness is talking consciousness to consciousness!

Love can't bring down empires but sees right through them. Jesus died for my embodiment. I call this truth individually universal.

 


footnotes
sages and mages and christ oh my!
the case of mistaken identity.
samsara is nirvana yes it is.
profound revelation.
consciousness and the power of three
for yours and mines of curiosity.

crosby stills matisse shankara and wallace stevens

icarus never flew too close to the sun, silly. icarus the sun!

dare to be!

in the name of knowing all doing has nothing to do with being—

the only mantra is the emperor of i am.

footnotes for the law one.
i fought the law but the law one
i shot the sheriff but i did not shoot duality
jesus mary joseph holy is trimurti
individually universal coming to a download near you
there is no becoming there are no words for tao
oh wow! oh wow! oh wow!

the last footnotes

can i hear you say individually universal!

my sweet lord s/he's so fine.

i am that is the best medicine amen.

number nine number nine number nine

Lalla Awakens Two: 1. these articulate pieces

Without a moment of trust nor hair of hope,

I, Lalla, drink my inner voice as if intoxicating wine,

And that darkness is seized and then brought down

To be torn and rendered into these articulate pieces.



~Lal Ded (tx-SR) [G-104]

Ode in Consciousness

This blessed headlessness, this perfectly experiential space, this unbelievably beyond-a-thought

and all-encompassing omnipresence, this consciousness—all things believed to be material are just appearances

within this consciousness and only in this consciousness, despite that trick of memory making an objective world

appear to be there every morning when it's merely some beliefs in memory not erased by the little death of sleep.

A rose is a rose is a rose not because it is a rose but one is thinking it's a rose. In truth, the only rose is the rose

of consciousness. And the flower laughed. Look, if a as in all equals consciousness and the absolute is being, see—

this kiss of consciousness is spaceless, timeless, depthless, water cannot wet it nor can the wind dry it.

Dig, consciousness is the only knowledge and what passes as all knowledge in the world is really just a rabbit hole—

seeing through one’s thoughts is a virtuous practice but try thinking without consciousness if you need a second opinion.

Revelations Three by Three by Eleven Tao

Hosanna to the flawless diamond dream! Followers divide! Pathfinders subtract!

Philosophers and scientists laboriously attempt to solve for X while the sage is effortlessly being the unknown. But I'm the same old words in a different story. Part-time contemplative. Spaced-out questionnaire. Are you X too?

Ask not if thou wouldst die for some conditional opinion. Ask if that opinion is ineffectively killing Tao. I am trying not to lie to others—it confuses my projection and resultant manifestation. After all, mathematics is the heart seen darkly.

The closer the mind is getting to some breakthrough, the more that consciousness floods the cave. The world will once again convince itself that revelations is not the natural state. I write this now as a reminder that it is.

Every revelation comes with a new set of words. Call it poetry for that is the only language for poetry. Listen, it's not taught in schools. A tree is never born. Thus transformation comes before and after every fall. November.