Good morning. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thank you for all the good questions that I get and also for the visits. And yesterday, we spoke about the peak experiences. And Father John asked me if I remembered any peak experiences that Father Danforth was talking about. But I must be honest, I don't remember any. The way he spoke about his childhood, he had some very memory of his childhood, that probably pointed in that direction. And of course, Maestro also says that in our childhood we have more of these deep experiences than later.

[01:12]

Yeah, more alert to them, but completely particular and can't remember. This is, of course, the limitation altogether. I can only tell you the things that I remember. I want to be faithful to my not very faithful memories, but I do my best. Today, I would like to switch a little bit our emphasis. Up to now, we have spoken about, really basically, about the word God from all different angles under the principle that

[02:24]

And that was a principle of Father Damattis, that you should question the words we use. Question the words we use. What do they really mean? And put it in your own words, because only if you can put something that you have heard and that's important to you into your own words, and then you have, really, digested it, and then you can't say what it really means to you. And what's important is what it means to you, not in some abstract sense. And what it means to you depends on your personality and on your experience and your respect on your uniqueness. And if you can work with words and question them in this way, then that clears your mind.

[03:33]

And Father Damocles was very clear about the fact that clear thinking leads to clear living. Muddy thinking leads to muddy living, confused living. And the opposite of this attitude would be anti-intellectualism. Intellectualism can of course also be a fraud, if you over-intellectualize everything and you live only in your head. So intellectualism is It's not the right way. But anti-intellectualism is also the wrong way. What we try to do is to use your intellect and not be carried away by it.

[04:38]

Live from the heart. That heart, we'll come back to that again and again. That was to follow down to something It's extremely important, the notion of the heart. I already mentioned the school of the heart. The heart is important to live from the heart. But the heart is not at all opposite to the intellect. The heart stands for the whole person. And that means intellect, will, emotions, everything, body, mind, the whole person. One of the absolute of the person is the heart. where we are still one, and then our personality unfolds and expands out into intellect, will, emotions, body, mind, but in the heart we are still one.

[05:43]

So today, from the heart to speak about God or that great mystery that we call God. Now we turn to another area, and that is the Yoma. this Psalm 8 that asks, what is man? What is man, if you think of him? At that time, had their whole liturgy in Latin, everything was in Latin, even the readings were in Latin.

[06:45]

So, it was, Knit est homo, and homo is more than man. Vir is man, and homo is the human. So this translation is, what is man, is a little sexist. Anyway, you know what we mean by it. And that was a salon that Father Damascus commented on, and it was a question that was You are we as humans, and things just flow. And you learn to say it in your own words.

[07:47]

One aspect of this word homo, Latin, human, man, and that's why the Lamas always stress very much in that Adam is not a name of the first person, but means the human. Adam means the human. Adamah is the earth, and Adam is the earthling, the one that's made from earth. That was a concept that he again and again stressed. And to that same broad root, Lahiri then belongs not only homo and human, but also humility and humor.

[08:58]

Humility is the down-to-earthness, and to be truly human, you have to be humble, that is, down-to-earth. But you are an earthling, so be down-to-earth. It has nothing to do with humiliation or false humility. Down-to-earthness. Humor. Unless you have humor, you are not really human. That belongs to the human. The humans are the ones that can laugh. Among the animals, only the hyenas can laugh, and that's not really a very convincing kind of laughing. So we are the animals that can laugh. We are the ones that have humor. And this idea of the human as Earth's creature, as Earthling, leads into the realm of myth.

[10:04]

And myth was also very important to Prokofiev, to come to grips with myth. And myth in that sense Now, of course, not the opposite to truth. Sometimes in everyday language we say, well, it's not really true, it's just a myth. And that would be completely off. It has nothing to do with the way in which we use here, myth, or in which Father Damascus used myth. Myth is a poetic answer to one of the deep questions of the human heart. It is poetry. It must be poetry, because if it is an answer to the deepest questions of the human heart, no other language can carry as much weight as poetry.

[11:07]

Poetry is the language that carries the greatest weight, that has the greatest power to express things, much more than any other way of talking. And that is why, when we are deeply moved by something, then we wax poetic. Suddenly, every schoolboy who falls in love suddenly writes poems, or something like poems. When we are deeply moved, we become poetic. The things that we move with most deeply can only be expressed in poetic language. And that is why Fr. Zemlitz very frequently quoted poetry and was encouraging us to read and appreciate poetry.

[12:07]

And there are lots of poetry books in our library. So that is probably one of his legacies, to learn to live with poetry and to appreciate poetry in our lives, and to appreciate myth. And this morning, I would like to speak about the first of the great myths. There are two great myths because there are two great questions of the human heart. Two of the deepest questions of the human heart. And the first question is, who am I? Sooner or later, a human being will be confronted with the question, who am I? And if I ask you right now, just see to yourself what is the first thing that comes into your mind if I ask, who are you?

[13:18]

Just think for one second, what would you say quickly? You can always change it later, but right now, what's the first thing that comes into your mind? Who are you? And of course, I do not know the concrete answers that you are giving individually. We're very different from one another, but I'm pretty sure of one thing, if you analyze your own answer long enough, it will be the expression of some sort of relationship. It will express a relationship. You will either say a name, well, that's the handle by which other people relate to you, or it will be a vocation that you have, I'm a monk, I'm a Christian, I'm a human being, that expresses a relationship to other human beings. In the last analysis, who am I?

[14:21]

The answer is always the expression of some relationship. And the myth that answers that question is called the myth of origin. That's now for the dhammas I had studied, and I was deeply interested in comparative religion. So in comparative religion, This one of the two great myths is called the myth of origin. Or the most frequent form of it, and the one that interests us today, is the creation myth, the myth of creation. There are other myths of origin, but for us, the creation myth is the important one.

[15:25]

And that is, as I said, the poetic answer to the deep perennial burning question of the human heart, who am I? And it expresses the relationship to that great mystery with which, as humans, we are confronted. And there are thousands of different creation myths that are reported by the anthropologists and that you can find, and many of them are very, very beautiful. And, of course, in our own book of Genesis we have the Jewish Christian creation myth, and all of them have, in spite of being so different in their form, all of them have a similar

[16:27]

structure of three elements that make up that me. And these three elements are, first, the one who is. The one who is. And that can be expressed, when I say the one who is, that's not poetic language, that's prose and philosophical language, but now the myth-maker, the poet, wants to express that in some way, the ancient one, because if that one is, it must be ancient, always there. So there are different ways of expressing it. The father, the grandfather, the grandmother, the ancient of Danes.

[17:31]

There are many, many different... The earth maker. Native Americans were often speaking of the earth maker. And the main thing is, that one is not questioned. It's not a story how this one came about. There's never a question. The story opens with the one who is. That's the first element. Unquestionable is. Our vis-a-vis, that great view, that now that we spoke about, to my eye. And the second element is to the one who is and the nothing, nothing, empty nothing, nothing, nothing. And if we mismake it, it is very difficult to express in a story this nothing.

[18:36]

So they express, and that nothing is that out of which everything is made, the whole universe and we humans. There's nothing. And so the storytellers have great difficulties finding an image for this nothingness. So in our Genesis story, it's mud. Mud. Like we say in English sometimes, my name is mud. I'm no one. In that sense, nothing, no one. But when you compare the different creation myths all over the world, you find other very inventive methods, inventive ways of expressing these myths. For instance, in Polynesian myths, you often find that Earthmaker, Creator, has a dream.

[19:38]

And so this dream substance is out of which he or she makes everything. And so the creator has to take this dream and push it together, because it's so evasive, and then press it hard and trample down on it. And then he says, now I have a place to stand. Now I will create a world. And there is even another. a still more nothing way, and that comes from the Apache Indian, and they say it's only the outline of the creator that a dog scratches with his paw. I will tell you this myth because it's a good example. for a creation that's not our own from the book of Genesis.

[20:43]

The first is the one who is. The second is the material out of which we and everything else is made. Try to make it as close to nothing as possible. And the third is the infinite unity between the two. The intimate unity, the two are so united that you can't take them apart. And in our own creation myth, you have, in the beginning, God. Last question, in the beginning, God. And then God takes slime of the earth, so it goes as nothing, mud, and makes a little finger out of it and breathes God's own breath into the nostril of this little lifeless finger.

[21:49]

And so the human, Adam, becomes a living creature. So we are nothing, those of you who can come, alive with the life of God who is. So that's this intimate communion, this intimate union that we are as human beings. Because that's how we experience ourselves. As the communion, as the unity of the divine mystery with absolutely nothing from ourselves, on our own part. And now I'll tell you this Apache myth, because it's one of my favorites, and it expresses these three elements so beautifully. The Apaches say, The Jaquila Apaches, a particular tribe of Apaches, and they say, in the beginning, Earthmaker was going around with his dog.

[22:57]

Because the Apaches can't imagine that anybody walks around without a dog. Everybody has a dog with them. So the Earthmaker also has a dog. This is poetry. It doesn't mean, where does this dog come from, or anything. The Earthmaker was walking around with the dog. And the dog starts the whole thing going. Because the dog says to Earth's grandfather, will you always be around? And the earth maker says, well, there may be a time when I will not be around. And the dog says, in that case, please make me a companion. So we humans, according to this myth, are around because dogs need companions. Isn't that wonderful? twist to the store.

[23:59]

And so Earthmaker lies down on the earth and says, scratch my outline on the ground. This is how they come as close to nothing. And the dog scratches the outline of the Earthmaker on the ground. And then the Earthmaker says, and now go away and don't look back. But of course the dog is very nosy and he goes only a little way and he looks and he says, oh, grandfather, somebody is lying where you have been lying. And the earthmaker says, don't look, I told you, go further. So he goes, he goes away. Oh, earthmaker, somebody is sitting where you have been lying. I told you, go further. Oh, grandfather, somebody is standing where you have been lying. Okay, he says, now come, look it over.

[25:02]

The dog comes and runs and looks over. Oh, he's wonderful. He says, he's wonderful. The nursemaker says, yeah, I think he's pretty good. And goes behind him like a mother goes behind a baby and takes him by the elbows and sort of helps him a little bit. The human walks a little bit, and then he just starts shouting, he says, run! He runs, big circle, he says. God, he's ten feet wide, and walks, and runs around, and then comes back and then asks me to say, speak! Say something! Make words! He has four times he has to encourage the human to say something. And then the human says, what next? The gator laughs, and the dog barks, and everybody laughs, and because everybody laughs, the dog barks, the human also starts to laugh.

[26:11]

And then Earthmaker says, now you are fit to live, because you have been laughing. And then it says, and Earthmaker walks away. No, no, not Earthmaker. And the human walks away with his dog. It's not earth making that goes away, but the human walks away with the dog. And that, of course, leads already in the story of the whore. That is how they express the whore. We walk away with our dogs and turn away from the one who lives in us and in whom we live. This is, in my mind, a very beautiful story. Now the question for us is, how would we put this now? I put it now from our experience. Somehow, how do we experience who we are?

[27:17]

And that's a completely different approach, but it wants to express the same thing that the myth expressed, in other terms. And there we can start from the experience that sometimes I say, I, and sometimes I say, I myself, when I want to really emphasize who did it. I myself did it. I and myself. And there we can ask now, yes, we mean one, but why do we use two different terms? Is it the I and myself? It's a very interesting fact in our language. And now we want to ask, is How do we find this self?

[28:23]

You know we mean something different, a little different than you say, just I, or you say, I myself. How can we find that reality, that actuality, that we mean when we say self? And there's a little experiment that we can make, a sort of a mental experiment. We can watch ourselves. This is another very interesting fact, that as humans we can watch ourselves. No longer is there two, obviously there is only one, and yet that one can watch himself. I can certainly watch myself sitting here and talking to you. Our consciousness allows that. You can watch yourself sitting there, listening. And now, we can't very well express this in words.

[29:29]

How do we do that? We have to use images. The image would be something like you go up and you look down on yourself. They have some other image, but one way would be that I go up and I look down on myself. I am at the same time here talking and at the same time somewhere else. a little distance looking. And now you can go back and back into that looking until you are now both the observer and the observed. Our consciousness allows that. And now you can go back deep enough into the observer until you are the observer whom nobody can observe anymore. Not even yourself. You are the observer. Nobody observes.

[30:29]

And you observe yourself. Then you have what you are observing is the I, and the observer, who nobody else can observe, is the self. And now you can see, this is an experiment that everybody can do without great difficulties, and it is an approach to that strange reality which the myth expresses as the unity of all and nothing. Because we know that this I is Pretty close to nothing. It has a beginning before which, before my conception, nobody knew that I would ever be around. Nobody missed me, I just wasn't. Then I'm conceived and born and live, and then I die, and when I die, I die, this reality

[31:40]

Really, reality, that thing, among other things, in time and space, is over. And after a while, nobody will even remember or listen. There are millions and millions of people that have lived and died, and nobody listens to them. They're gone. And they are recycled. The atoms and the molecules get into our foods, and we eat them. They're gone, they're gone. So this I is, and not only what I've just now said, but we have already referred to the fact that it's continuously renewed. Every moment it dies, and every moment it is renewed. I mentioned it, for instance, our red blood corpuses, by the millions, die every second. and by the millions new ones are made. And so they say that within seven years or something like that, there's not one atom left in your body that was there before.

[32:49]

And yet, you recognize that person even after 10 years and 15 years and you meet them again, you recognize them. That is their soul. What we call the soul is What makes this body to this body? And it is the connection, if you want to put it that way, between the self and the I. And the self is not in time and space. Our mind is sort of, it's working, it's still in time and space, but it touches upon something that is not in time and space, that observer, not in time and space, because it remains, it is not subjunctive, it can't look down on time and space, it's distant, it's separate from time and space, it's not in time and space.

[33:50]

and the soul is our participation in this timeless self. The most important aspect of this self is not that it is not in time and space, so that it means it is eternal, But the most important aspect is that it is one, it cannot be divided. If it's something, it can only be divided if it is in time and space. If it's not in time and space, it can't be divided. So that means all of us have one self. Our soul is our participation in that self, and by our souls we are distinct from one another, because the soul is what makes this body unique to this body. That is the definition, according to scholastic philosophy, of the soul, form or corpus. But the self is one for all, and that has now, in the different

[35:01]

spiritual traditions that we mentioned yesterday, very different names, but they have all discovered it, and the Buddhists call it the Buddha-nature. Everything has Buddha-nature. The Hindus call it the Atman, and we call it Christ in us, the Christ-reality in us. St. Paul says, I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me. It doesn't mean, and that's not a private statement of what's important, that it's true for you and me and for everyone. So if every one of us can say, I live, let not I, Christ live in me, that Christ's reality is what unites us. And if we keep that in mind, of I, myself, and keep that in mind. You don't have to keep it in mind in the sense that every moment you remember it.

[36:03]

But you don't forget it, very much like your name. You don't keep your name in mind by every moment saying to yourself, I'm David, I'm David. You get crazy with that. But if anybody asks you, you know who you are. And it makes a difference. this consciousness of your name. And so to know that Christ lives in you makes a difference, a complete difference by the way you live. Because anybody else you meet, you meet Christ in the other. We are one. Basically we are one. But we play different roles. We have different roles when we are born and we play this role. And we try to play this role as well as possible. That means as kind as possible.

[37:05]

Kind is a beautiful English word because we are of the same kind. And if you are of the same kind, the human kind, you behave kindly to those who are of the same kind. So kindness is really what you express when you remember, I myself, And now comes the great danger, namely, that the eye forgets the Self. That is a real possibility. And you always can't forget your name. There are certain forms of insanity where you can't find out what your name is. that is much less dangerous than if you forget yourself, if you forget that Christ lives in you and you live in Christ, because the moment you forget that you are one with all, your eye gets frightened.

[38:18]

Fear, that is the first thing that happens, fear, because Here an eye, this tiny little eye, among these billions of other eyes, you forget that you have this great Self, so you shrink, and that you call the ego. The ego is not something additional to the I and the Self. The ego is the eye when it forgets the Self. It shrinks, it gets fearful. And out of this fearfulness comes everything that goes wrong. Because of fear, you become violent. Fear makes violence. All violence comes from fear. Even a tiny little mouse, when you make it fearful, it runs away. But when it gets in a corner and you go after it with the broom and it can't run away anymore, it gets aggressive.

[39:21]

Even the little mouse will attack you, your broom, out of fear. And it takes much more courage to make peace and to be kind then it takes to be aggressive. But when you forget we are of one kind, because we share this one self, Buddha nature, or Atman, or Christ self, we forget that, we become aggressive. So fear leads to aggression, it leads to rivalry, use your elbows, there are all these others, I have to get ahead, use your elbows, and Maybe there isn't enough around to live out of a sense of scarcity all of a sudden, all of fear that there isn't enough around to give them freedom. So aggression, rivalry, greed, that all springs out of fear, and that springs from forgetting yourself, forgetting that you are one with all.

[40:28]

And the opposite of fear is trust, or faith. The religious word for this trust, trust in God, trust in life, trust in the mystery, is faith. Fear and faith, those are the great choices. And if you are one with all, you don't need to fear. You have trust. You are one with all. What do you have to fear? We play different roles, and some play rather dangerous roles, and so you have to be careful. But being careful and cautious is something very different from fear. Actually, fear makes you crazy, and you're not even cautious anymore, because any harm that you do to anybody else is ultimately harm that you do to yourself. So, fear is absolutely insane, makes you insane. But if you keep in trust, you're all right. Okay, we'll work it out.

[41:29]

So, instead of fear you have trust, and instead of violence you have kindness, non-violence. Negotiation, we'll work it out. It's the opposite of violence. Instead of rivalry, you have cooperation. Obviously, cooperation. We all want the same. We all want to be happy. We are all one. We want to express that in kindness and cooperation. And, instead of greed, sharing. So much more joy if you share. There's always more. The more you share, the more there is around. Because when you share, what belongs to anybody else belongs also to you. When you are greedy, you have nothing but what belongs to you. And those are two completely different attitudes of the human being. the ego and the I myself, but they are also completely different, resolved in completely different social form.

[42:40]

And there is where the greatest importance comes in, of this distinction. Because the ego creates the power pyramid. Everybody wants to be on top. If you are fearful, you want to be on top. So you get at least as close to the top as you can, and you tread down on all those who are below you, and you use your elbows. and you don't share. So you get violence, rivalry, exploitation, and dreams. And if you live out of this, I myself, of that consciousness that we are one, only playing different roles, Then you get a network. You dismantle that pyramid of power and you create a network, where everybody depends on everybody else.

[43:46]

Yes, some have to come and end at certain times. That is also still part of the network, but it doesn't create a pyramid. They have other functions within this network, and everything hangs together with everything. So it has often been expressed, this difference between the two ways of living in society, as the love of power or the power of love. And we have to make a choice. If we live out of love of power, we create a pyramid. If we live out of power of love, we create a network that will network with other networks and that will be a completely different world order. And I've already hinted at it, but the monastic life, of course, goes out of the faith in the power of love.

[44:50]

That's what makes monastic life what it is, and also the structures of monastic life. So monastic life is typically a network. That's the ideal of monastic life. not the power structure. I mean, even the role of St. Benedict, that's not a power pyramid. But the abbot is the servant of all. He just assumes a different role. And the obedience is to the abbot, but also all the brothers should be obedient to one another. And that's the network of obedience in the community. And the great danger of the institutional church is to become a power pyramid, to become world over and over. And that is why Father Danilson said we are to be the pikes in the cloud pond.

[45:56]

We are to constantly challenge the love of power by the power of love. That is our calling as monks. So you see how our understanding of the myth in which we are, we live in this realm, in this one realm of I, in time and space, and self, that touches on this mystery, the Christ self within us, and how that reflects in society, whether we have it or not, and how this is both a tremendous gift and a tremendous challenge for us, to leave that in monastery to us. So we'll have to say more about it, particularly if you have questions, I will try and answer these questions. But that is the general framework. And for your homework, it would be good if you think together on this.

[47:03]

I would ask you again to complete a sentence, and the sentence reads, The second deep question of the human heart might be dot dot dot, and then you can fill it in what you think the second question might be. And then we pick that up this evening, and we'll talk about the second of those great questions, because that will be then expressed in the second of these two great myths that in a sense are the decisive ones for the human family. There's two types of men. Okay. Are there any immediate questions that we need to address? Yeah? How would you relate that with Lectio?

[48:15]

With Lectio? Lectio. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Try it. Right, right. One thing that for the diameters always stressed about Lectio is Then he would say, when you come here, you are probably used to reading in a very different way from what lecture is. You're probably reading as much as possible when you sit down. And lecture starts with reading no more than absolutely necessary. So you don't sit down and pick up this book and say, okay, I'll read a chapter. or even a paragraph. Just start reading. And if the very first word sends you, that's better than if you have to read two words, you would say.

[49:21]

Read until it grabs you, until it sends you. And what grabs you there is that great mystery, this wow thing that you talk about. It's not under our control. We might have to read slowly and with an open heart, you know, as you said, read through the vessel and speak through your heart. When we go sit down to do our next webinar, we go into the desert. That means we don't take anything with us. We make ourselves vulnerable. you're receptive, and then listen with the ears of your heart. And then, it may be that on some days you have to read quite a bit before something really speaks to you, but it makes a difference whether you are open to

[50:24]

receiving as soon as possible. Then you follow this, and you let it lead you, and it always leads you into that mystery. And when you notice that it first wanted to lead you, but now Your thoughts are just wandering off, and you're thinking about, oh, it's worth a trip, what am I going to do next, and what's my job, and things like that. Then you come back to the world. Come back? To the next world. But that encounter with mystery, that is the decisive thing of the next big arena. Is that a little bit answering your question? Yes. Don't hesitate to follow up the story later on. That's a good question. We always want to apply these things concretely to our own life, to go back there.

[51:28]

Okay, then let's again pray, because all this is caught up in the great mystery of the Blessed Trinity, the ancient form of the Father. Glory be to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, Now we are going to start a world without error. Amen.

[52:06]

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