Mirrors Only

my mind is the autumn moon

shining in the blue-green pool

reflecting glistening clear pure

nothing compares

there is no more to say

- Han Shan

God does not intend that people have a place reserved in themselves in which God might work. People must be emptied...so that if God wants to act...God must be the place in which God acts. God takes responsibility for the action and is the scene of that action.

- Meister Eckhart, Blessed Are The Poor

There are many passages in the writings of the early Christians of the Egyptian desert which highlight the direct experience of God and which are consequently in keeping with the historical, scriptural witness of Christianity and Judaism. However, most Christianity since then has erected barriers between people and God, and have not penetrated to the inmost soul of the believer. Historic, common religious practise has most often been presented on a level of collective, subconscious, and exterior social and liturgical forms. Today this historical ersatz religious experience has been factually debunked. Doing so equips modern people to easily substitute the now pseudo-religious roles of state and class for genuine religious experience. These modern parodies of the genuine encounter with God continue to evoke a false self in society as it has in the church. And once again, the collective acceptance of this false interiority seems to be sufficient to make it as acceptable today as historical religious collectivity made themselves acceptable in the past; even in the church its members and magisterium collude today to falsely assure one another of the institution’s continuing greatness and infallibility. All of this is none other than a pale representation haunting a group gone mad. There is a world of difference between true and false religion/interiority. Love and social activity are not the same. Contemplation's driving one to openness cannot coexist with magical thinking. Nor is aspiration on behalf of its practitioners, secular or religious, good enough to make up for these deficiencies. Simply allowing God to act in the expanse of the world is the opposite of personal, creative involvement in doing God's will, no matter how steeped the good intentions of the later are in the institutions created and overseen by people. Only a madman would filter light through something in the belief that doing so would improve the light.