tach-ometers, isness, and self-traps

Contemplation, sitting with God, is not so much a detachment, as is often said, though I understand what that means, but an attachment, a joining of two forces, two energies that have always been together and are now as a joyous communion, co-mune-ion, laughing happily in each other's presence, neither of which can do without the other. Or perhaps could do, but life would be stark and grim. (I speak here of God and not of the Godhead, though the Godhead is present, always present, how could it not be?) God and I are very much attached to each other. In this sense, contemplation is pure attachment.

This is different from the generic mindfulness approach where one systematically detaches from everything.

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To live with God is NOT to abandon the affairs of this life, but to live in the isness. One can continue to attend to as much detail as one's particular level of obsessive-compulsiveness demands, but only out of the isness, this flow of IS. One is nowhere but in the isness, this ever-flowing process of unfolding.

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"...the failure to let ourselves participate in being contracts our awareness into a separative mode of cognition. . . ." (Kelley, Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge)

We hold back. We will allow ourselves to do no more than the actions of the little roles we have created for ourselves, the self-defined bounds beyond which we do not dare to open. We restrict our lives to manageable proportions, following some recipe we have concocted or inherited.

"I shall live to this extent and no more. "I have defined the character by which I am known and I will continue living up to it (or down to it)." "I am afraid of becoming different than the way I have always imagined myself to be." "I know the way the world is and I am going to continue responding to it in this way." "I am going to wear this same outfit (known as "me") for the rest of my earthly days." "Other people will be upset if I am who I really am." And so on.

"...the failure to let ourselves participate in being contracts our awareness into a separative mode of cognition. . . ."

Once we contract our awareness we fool ourselves into thinking that the world and ourselves is that big and no bigger. We have taken a contract out on ourselves and successfully killed or maimed our souls. We separate ourselves from life and fool ourselves into thinking that the separation is what life is.