Letting the divine pattern through - CE Vol 10

On being breathed forth without the false self image

In my previous writings, I’ve talked about how I think a Neoplatonic way of looking at a non-dual reality is a fruitful one.

On the one hand - this view is non-dual - all apparently separate things are projections in consciousness.

On the other hand - it explains how pure consciousness, or Being-Itself, which is experientially featureless, expansive, and non-personal “breathes out” into the visible, finite world.

Our humanity is part of that “breathing out” of the infinite into form, while still staying united. There are no finite or limited aspects of reality separate from the infinite ground of knowing-being.

Yet there is kind of an anti-pattern in the collective human mind - the anti-pattern of delusion. We believe that we are separate beings, not embedded in this one awareness, but little entities moving around a separate world.

One way of seeing this is as a kind of distortion of the original breathing out. The belief is real in that it is part of what manifests in awareness, but it is false in respect to the fact that it points at an entity that is never real, and has never been projected.

There has never been this separate self, ever. It is a mistaken belief.

So we can say that this distortion in human minds “interferes with” the breathing out of the infinite into the finite. It is like mud being thrown into a clear mountain stream. It leads to suffering, and perhaps even the “corruption” of the collective world we experience.

Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash

So - if this is all true, we need to let go of this belief in being a separate entity moving around a separate world. We have to let go of this self-concept when it arises in our minds, and recognise it as something false.

Then the clear stream of divinity can flow out into our life, and into our world (for there is no separation), without any muddying up or distortion.

This brings me to something that has always stuck with me since my more explicitly Christian days - the surrender devotion promulgated by Catholic holy man Fr Dolindo Ruotolo based on an interior revelation he had from Jesus.

I understand that many or perhaps most of my readers aren’t Christian, so this is not meant to be any kind of evangelisation - rather I just wanted to reflect on some aspects of this dialogue as it supports the ideas I mentioned above.

Consider the following quote from the aforementioned interior revelation:

“How many things I can do, be it a material or spiritual need, when the soul turns to me, looks at me and says to me: Jesus, you take over, and close its eyes and rests in me! You do not receive many graces because you insist on getting them yourself, but instead you will receive numberless graces, when your prayer is in full reliance on me. When you are in pain, and you pray that I may act, you want me to act as you believe I should… you do not turn to me, instead you want me to submit to your ideas; you are like a sick person who does not ask the doctor for the cure.”

“Shut your eyes and go with the flow of my grace.”

Jesus, according to Fr Dolindo

So what can we draw from this?