The Guidance That Starts on the Mountaintop

There is one teaching that is not really a teaching, and it doesn’t end on the mountaintop – it starts there. Almost all other teachings are predicated on the separation illusion they seek to undermine. Does infinite being need to be told to simply be? Does God’s infinite being need to be reminded that it is itself? What remains of the teaching when the one to whom it is addressed, is no longer there? All experience and knowledge take place in duality, the subject–object relationship. This division of reality never really happens. It takes place in the imagination. What remains when the emotion is no longer an emotion, when sorrow is no longer sorrow? When the emotion or sorrow are too close, too intimate, to stand apart from? There is just experience. As Meister Eckhart said, ‘When you come to the one that gathers all things into itself, there you must stay.’

There is one teaching that is not really a teaching, and it doesn’t end on the mountaintop – it starts there. Almost all other teachings are predicated on the separation illusion they seek to undermine. Does infinite being need to be told to simply be? Does God’s infinite being need to be reminded that it is itself? What remains of the teaching when the one to whom it is addressed, is no longer there? All experience and knowledge take place in duality, the subject–object relationship. This division of reality never really happens. It takes place in the imagination. What remains when the emotion is no longer an emotion, when sorrow is no longer sorrow? When the emotion or sorrow are too close, too intimate, to stand apart from? There is just experience. As Meister Eckhart said, ‘When you come to the one that gathers all things into itself, there you must stay.’