Longing and Certitude

“... and there’s not a trace of doubt…” Even a monkey-mind acknowledges the longing for certitude. Such longing itself testifies to the presence of God, but how easily this affirmation, the longing instead gets misconstrued as abandonment and taken as an elevator down to despair. 

     Mystics and other seekers of God have tried for ages to tell us that our conception, the picture we hold of “reality,” determines what we know and how it’s revealed.  A person’s construction depends on whether he or she is committed (a) to things of this world or (A+) to God’s World. It takes a special faith to discern Truth in a culture shadowed for centuries by the legacy of “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am), a world entrenched in the “scientific method.” How demanding it is to live in reliance upon the Word Who speaks in a whispered stillness that’s often heard only by the individual in his or her unique aloneness, often inarticulate and unconfirmed by anyone else. And yet, how thrilling! How awesome the inner temple of God!

“… the answer [to the more superficial aspects of human’s condition], as Ghazali had discovered for himself, lay only in internalizing the formalities of religion through ‘tasting’ (dhawq): personal religious experience… the only way to certitude” (p. xviii, Introduction by T.J. Winter to Al-Ghazali: The Remembrance of Death and the Afterllife)

     Neither the furthest reaches of human thought nor one’s hardest effort can reach the Divine; for the assurance of God’s presence rests upon God’s grace. When left to the human mind, doubt is certain. The great Divine cannot be known through human resources alone.

“How far apart is the one who seeks proof through God from the one who seeks proof for God! The one who seeks proof through God acknowledges the due that he owes, and affirms the matter by reference to its original existence. One seeks proof for Him only because one has not reached Him. Otherwise, when was it that He became absent, such that one would need to seek proof for Him? And when was it that He became distant, such that one would need to follow the tracks of created things to find him?” (p. 240,  Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari, Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Sufi Treatise on the Secrets of the Divine Name).

     When I enter the wholeness of the ephemeral blossom of life/death, when nested into the beauty of early sunlight igniting the yellow and red poppies, the inner light reflects God’s Majesty. This conjoining of the Immanent and the Transcendent, the yielding to paradox, breaks open the false self, the prison of human arrogance, the pride of self-sufficient intellect. That which is true can only be found in the One, in God; for Truth is one of God’s names. In surrendering completely to God’s Sovereignty, we may be admitted, by God’s Grace, to the Unity, to the full mystery of Love, Peace, Justice, Mercy, Beauty, and the full spectrum of Life/Death.

“Thus, dear disciple, if you wish to be among the people of union, you must gather the beautiful names within your true self. For the secret of the names lies in their gathered totality. God says: ‘He taught Adam all the names” [Qur’an 2:31], and the totality of the names is the secret of union of the everlasting presence.” (p. 230,  Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari, Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics)

     Richard Rohr’s meditation this week elaborates the textures of longing drawing especially on Teilhard de Chardin and Saint John of the Cross. Quoting from Teilhard:

“God does not offer Himself to our finite beings as a thing all complete and ready to be embraced. For us God is eternal discovery and eternal growth. The more we think we understand God, the more God reveals Himself as otherwise. The more we think we hold God, the further God withdraws, drawing us into the depths of Himself.” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 119. Note: some changes made for inclusive language.)

“John of the Cross describes the doubt that disrupts a soul in the dark night, when all sense of knowing God is absent. Mirabai Starr translates from John’s classic work Dark Night of the Soul:

‘The deep suffering of the soul in the night of sense comes not so much from the aridity she must endure but from this growing suspicion that she has lost her way. She thinks that all spiritual blessing is over and that God has abandoned her. She finds neither support nor delight in holy things. Growing weary, she struggles in vain to practice the tricks [prayer practices] that used to yield results. . . The best thing for the soul to do is to pay no attention to the fact that the actions of her faculties are slipping away. . . . She needs to get out of the way. In peaceful plentitude, let her now say “yes” to the infused contemplation God is bestowing upon her. . . . Contemplation is nothing other than a secret, peaceful, loving inflow of God. If given room, it will fire the soul in the spirit of love. [John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, trans. Mirabai Starr. Riverhead Books, 2002), 67, 68–69, 70.]