13 The Hermit Lives in the Presence of all Creation
In Christianity there is the understanding that there is communion in the Godhead itself, and the Son, which is the word, which is creation, and the Father, which is the silence or ground upon which everything arises, are in communion, bound together by love, which is the Holy Spirit. The world is the place where God’s manifestation and self-realisation can take place, which means that creation has meaning and purpose, and this is a very profound understanding of the nature of reality, and it has far-reaching implications.
If there is no meaning to creation, if we’re born, have some pleasures and sorrows, and at the end of it all we just die, and it’s all simply an accident of natural forces, then only two attitudes are worth pursuing: maybe you seek pleasure in this passing world, or when you see the futility of that, your only escape is to separate yourself from this transient world and its sorrows. Most people waste their lives pursuing the first path; and the second path, unfortunately, has been spiritual practice throughout the ages. But this second way is based on a kind of radical dualism, in which God is seen as totally transcendent, and when that is the case creation has no ultimate significance.
But we see in the creation story that God made everything good (Genesis 1:4,10,12, etc.). In the origins God is at one with the world, and the world with God. Now if you look around you, at the stars in the heavens, the birds in the trees, the seas and the earth, they still all fulfill their nature perfectly. There is no problem until Adam and Eve arrive on the scene, and then we get alienation, degeneration. So if creation was, and is, harmonious and at one with the Creator, we have to ask what is it that brings about duality? The problem starts when Adam and Eve are in the garden and they have an idea, and that idea is that they want to be something other than the way they were created, and they’re persuaded to this idea by what is called the most subtle creature (Gen 5:1 ff), so what is the most subtle thing in creation? Surely the mind is, is it not? They are persuaded by the mind to be something other than what they are, what they want is to know good and evil and to be like God. These are stories of course, they are myths, but there is great meaning in them, great truths are embedded in them when you get below the surface, and see the depths of what is being said. Before they have this idea they are simply walking around in the garden, and God is present, but they reject their limitations, try to move away from the reality and totality of who they are, and that creates the primary dualism, and they get thrown out of the garden, out of love’s presence, and of course their descendants start killing each other (Genesis 4 ff).
Now if you’ve heard this call, I feel that you must place your trust in God and in creation, which means accepting your limitations, and your darkness and light, and my experience is that in the moment that you accept your poverty, not wanting to be elsewhere, that is when God is present to you. That is the meaning of the atonement. Jesus didn’t refuse the darkness which he could have done of course, he could have called upon ‘more than twelve legions of angels’ (Matthew 26:55) to save him, but he didn’t, he accepted the darkness, the pain and sorrow of the cross, and it was the suffering of one who is totally desolate, all sin is on the cross, and sin is separation from God and Jesus felt this which is why he asked ‘My God my God why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Mark 15:55). But still he placed his trust in God and at the end, ‘crying with a loud voice he said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ (Luke 23:46). That is why the cross is so meaningful: Jesus bears the pain and sorrow of the whole world, and out of that comes the resurrection, the rising to new life.
Since the fall of Adam and Eve people have only related to creation by seeking to dominate it, and if you look at history you can see that the fall is still continuing. As we get more and more enmeshed in thought, as culture becomes more important so we are getting farther away from nature and from God. If you look at the lives of tribals or peasants, whether farmers or herders, they still have a kind of reverence for the earth. But as culture has developed we have become very alienated, enclosed in factories and offices and suburbs, and we’ve lost contact with nature. We get caught up in theories and ideas, and with repeating them and passing them on, and we’re trapped in this world of the mind, the world of thought and culture, and we’ve lost contact with the earth, our mother, and with God our Father. And when there is this alienation and domination, when people have stopped wondering at the world about them, it’s at that point that the destruction of the environment begins. Thousands of trees cut down in the Amazon each day, huge dams destroying ancestral homelands, and all the rest of it.
We were saying before how we need healing inwardly, and how others need healing, but we’re at a point in history where the earth itself, which is being torn apart by greed, also needs healing. The world is a vehicle for God’s self-realisation, and it’s being torn apart by those who do not know God, except the god of their own vain imaginings. You needn’t be romantic or sentimental about creation, you must see the truth of it, which means seeing that there is this process of life and death. It’s not what your ideas would want it to be. But what are you placing your trust in – your fears and desires, your need for continuance and security? or do you place your trust in God and His creation? We fear life and death, we ignore it when it can be kept at length, and when it gets too close there are other more devious ways of separating ourselves from it. Death, or the dissolution of self is a primary fear that we all have. But if you trust God, if you turn away from yourself, that is metanoia, that is conversion, and when you’re no longer trying to be away from reality, when you are walking with God once more, then you are back in the garden.