What is Emerging?
Posted on April 1, 2023, by Mary Ellen McElroy SL
Many of us are familiar with the sermons and writings of Meister Eckhart who lived between 1260 and 1328. He has become popular in the past several years because of the paradigm shift taking place in our time. People are becoming more aware of the wisdom of the mystics of the past and many of these seekers, looking for different meanings that reside beneath the surface, are drawn to Eckhart’s spirituality.
One of Eckhart’s teachings that reputable scholars today adhere to is that “the human being is in its very nature divine, and spiritual life is a matter of ceasing to search outside of oneself for an intimacy that already is ours. Eckhart’s emphasis on not seeking after God points to the need for self-forgetfulness. Instead of continual guilt and self-doubt from not measuring up to something outside of oneself, a person is able to accept that one is already divine in the truest aspect of one’s being. Because it is not necessary to search or grasp for anything, not even a reason for living itself, Eckhart encourages us to ‘live without a why,’ finding ourselves in God even as we live and move about in the world”*
Eckhart further advises: “You should love God unspiritually, that is, your soul should be un-spiritual and stripped of all spirituality, for as long as your soul has a spirit’s form, it has images, and so long as it has images, it has a medium, and as long as it has a medium, it is not unity or simplicity.”**
We invite you to join us in pondering this wisdom of Meister Eckhart. How does this teaching — that you and I and all humans are in our very nature divine — change our thinking? Our behavior? Our life? What do we need to let go of in order to truly become what we already are? If you would like to share your reflections with us, we would be happy to receive them. Thank you.
*Presence, An international Journal of Spiritual Direction, Vol. 22, # 3, Sept. 2016. “Living Without a Why: The Senseless Faith of Meister Eckhart,” by Philip Browning Helsel, used with permission.
**Same source as above Additional source: “Meditations with Meister Eckhart,” by Matthew Fox, 1982
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