Prescheduled. Steve is on holiday until Jan. 1. There will be no “Today” till then (pun intended).
Most of us are catching our post-Xmas breath or are otherwise occupied so I’m allowing myself to wander philosophically…. To have some fun.
If I were to go for a swim, I’d walk down to the water’s edge and gradually walk into the water.
Does the submerged part of me cease to be Steve?
Well, then, let’s pretend that the Transcendental, Immaterial, and Omnipresent One, which existed before language and certainly has no gender, wanted to take a swim.
When it entered the water, did it cease to be the One? No, it was the One having a swim.
I want to make the nature of the Mother clearer so let me say that the Mother is the One having a swim.
She’s having a swim in materiality – matter (mater, Mother). Same One, simply working a medium whereas the One on dry land is said to be working none. And doing no work of any other kind either. (Passive = Shiva; active = Shakti) = same One.
In fact, if we decided to drop the Father/Mother metaphor altogether and call them the Passive God (Father) and the Active God (Mother), all gender disputes would be solved and the whole situation might become clearer.
***
Very few of us seem to worship or serve the Father. For instance, I haven’t seen a Church of the Father.
Why is that? Factoring out my own biases, (2) I think it’s because the Mother is all we can know. I say that for two reasons: One, “I” dissolves in Oneness so who is there to know? And, two, we cannot “know” the One in the ways we understand knowing. The One remains unknown while the Mother can be known. (See 3)
We’re like fish in the water who come across the One swimming and know it. But when the One leaves the water, the fish know no more about it. We can only know what’s in our medium.
As it turns out, we can only know the One itself on its own terms, which is why so many sages say, only the One can know the One. (4)
Just pondering these matters raises love and bliss in me. Over the Xmas holidays, I plan to spend time reflecting on Self, lightwork, whom it is I serve, and what I want my service in the New Year to be.
That’s my assignment for the next six days, while I’m on holiday. Maybe I’ll write a book….
OK, OK! Maybe not. Maybe I’ll go for a swim.
Footnotes
(1) “We do not want anything capitalized.” (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Aug. 12, 2016.)
(2) I had a rocky relationship with my own father, I think to keep me focused on the Divine Mother.
(3) Here is Totapuri’s experience of the Mother. Totapuri was Sri Ramakrishna’s non-dual guru:
“Suddenly, in one dazzling moment, [Totapuri] sees on all sides the presence of the Divine Mother. She is in everything; She is everything. She is in the water; She is on land. She is the body; She is the mind. She is pain; She is comfort. She is knowledge; She is ignorance. She is life; She is death. She is everything that one sees, hears, or imagines. She turns “yea” into “nay”; and “nay” into “yay”. Without Her grace no embodied being can go beyond Her realm. Man has no free will. He is not even free to die. Yet, again, beyond the body and mind She resides in her Transcendental, Absolute aspect. She is the Brahman (Impersonal God) that Totapuri has been worshipping all his life.” (Nikhilananda in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 31.)
(4) “The final victory is the Lord God’s own.” (Zarathustra in Duncan Greenlees, trans. The Gospel of Zarathushtra. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978, 23.)
“[The] absolute cannot be realized or experienced by another; only the absolute can realize itself.” (Sage Vasistha in Swami Venkatesananda, ed., The Concise Yoga Vasistha. Albany: State University of New York, 1984, 46.)
“And who shall reign supreme on that day? Allah, the One, the Almighty.” (Koran, 160.)
“Only God sees God.” (Muhyideen Ibn Arabi, Kernel of the Kernel. trans. Ismail Hakki Bursevi. Sherborne: Beshara, n.d., 48.)
“Look from Him to Him.
“The one who journeys through all degrees and reveals Himself is Him.” (Ibn Arabi, ibid., 33.)
“I went from God to God, until they cried from me in me, ‘O thou I!'” (Bayazid of Bistun in Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy. New York, etc.: Harper and Row, 1970; c1944, 12.)