Seeking Solid Ground — Meister Eckhart

“A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox’s or bear’s, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”     Meister Eckhart

 

An incredible book that brought to life for myself the mystical insight this late 12th to early 13th century Dominican priest named Meister Eckhart.   The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart was the first book I had read on Eckhart, though I had heard of him I feared I would not be able to absorb his message.  Since reading it I have come to cherish it as one of my favorites on Christian mystism and refer back to it whenever I need to reference soul, my soul that is, to find that grounding the he speaks to over and over again throughout his sermons.   It has lead me to seek out further publications of his sermons and writings.   

For those who love to talk Soul —- I would recommend highly.    

Soul Intention  

 

 

Your Greatest Vice

“A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.  …………..When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience.  When we find our vocation – thought and life are one.”

Thomas Merton –Thoughts in Solitude

 

Thomas Merton in these few sentences gives us clear explanation of how we will know if we are living what our Soul’s intented purpose.   “…when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live”  - “thought and life are one”    It sounds so simple – maybe too simple for most of us,  especially in a world of complex decision making.   Taking time to listen to our souls is difficult at best with a cell phone ringing in one hand and an office phone ringing within arms reach. 

 

To truly find what we love to do, what we were meant to do, is usually to find what comes to us naturally – without struggle or meditation; but once that door is opened there will be no shutting it until our life here is done, and that may be the one fear that prevents us from fulfilling it.

 

“Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.”  Ernest Hemingway

 

Soul Intention

Is there Soul in Science?

I believe that there is a search for Soul in all aspects of life – Science included.  Some of the greatest Scientist’s of the 20th Century were seeking answers to questions far beyond what the physical world had revealed to them.   For a deeper look at these scientists- Bohr, Pauli, Ehrenfast, Einstein and more (including the passion of one women scientist Lise Meitner) I highly recommend Gino Segre’s, Faust in Copenhagen.
 
 It is well worth reading, for science lovers and soul seekers.  Enjoy.

Beware the Fairy Doctor -

In 1895 a young women in Ireland by the name of Bridget Cleary was murdered by her husband, family and neighbors because she was thought to be a changeling.  She had fallen ill and her husband and family were desperate to find a cure for the young women.  As a course of action that was taken at that time in Ireland they sort the advice of a “fairy doctor.”    The fairy doctor convinced the family that Bridget had been abducted by the fairies and was replaced with a sickly changeling.   The doctor devised several ordeals designed to make the changeling come forth, confess and return the real Bridget Cleary.  The actions were so severe that Bridget died.  Her husband believed it was the fairy he killed and went to the fairy fort and waited for his real wife to return on a white horse.  Needless to say his wife never returned and the crime of her murder was soon found out and her husband was charged with murder. 

 

What is the moral of the story – you may say to yourself that the family was obviously poor ignorant souls.  Ignorant souls or not the family was desperate for an answer and solution to the ills of Bridget and as the saying goes, “desperate people do desperate things.”  Let’s site a few more examples:

 

In the early 20^th Century the Czarina of Russia Alexandria was desperate with having a young hemophilic son.   He had been near death several times and prayed for answers, she believed her pray was answered by a charismatic by the name of Rasputin a self proclaimed holy man that indulged in liquor and sexual excursions.  But his ability to check the bleeding in the young prince gave him such a profound power over the Czarina and in turn her husband that it affected the decision making of the Russian Empire.   When the Royal Family was murdered by the Bolshevik’s in 1917 each of the children was wearing a picture of Rasputin on their body.

 

In the early 1930’s a man by the name of Hitler became known as the savior of the German people.  The country had fallen into a severe economic crisis with the loss of World War I.  The Treaty of Versailles left the German people poor and humiliated, ripe in desperation for a hero.   “I love this man, he is greater than Jesus Christ,” were the words Goering used to describe Hitler.   Hitler grew in such power that he held Germany and eventually Europe as well as parts of Africa and Russia captive.  He convinced a country that all Jews needed to be exterminated and methodically lead 6 million of them to slaughter.

 

Were all these people ignorant?  Far from it – but most of them were desperate – in one degree or another.  

 

It is difficult to keep a grip on our sense of individuality and ethics in situations we have no control over, but this is when we need  them most.  We need to be grounded in who we are, in what we believe as truth and ethics.  This is when we need our individuality and courage to listen and follow our own heart.  

 

There is no savior, no guru that walks this earth that has the total answer for you in time of desperation.  It is up to each of us to find that source within our own soul and with our God.   

 

In Writing

 

in writing I cast my heart

very much alone

            in a  void

            in a crevasse

 in a labyrinth with a quill

 

castles all around-

            left naked

 without the two buck toll

 to pay the greedy gatekeeper

 at the entrance to my soul

 

            up going Jacobs ladder

 to scale the Kingdom’s wall

         I read a message in the mortar

 of a prior writers fall -

 

 taking focus on the moment

        I glanced from where I came

                     I saw Jesus in the junk-yard

                       Buddha without shame –

 corruption in the structure

        only magnified the pain – what gain?

 

 ascending upward

  to the underground – what left unfound?

  but a virgin in a breadbox

  recording a world

            with no sound –

 

 she motioned – enter

            the apparition fell away

       leaving a mirror and a mantra

       only without prayer

       and a writer rapt in parchment

 ink just laughing everywhere 

 

                                  bkmackenzie