A Secret Practice, part II

 I would speak again of the secret practice which must be performed inside oneself and which one must dedicate oneself to without revealing it to the outside world.

The worship of God is a sacred thing which should not be touched by our ordinary life and the way we live it. 

It's permitted for God to touch ordinary life; in fact it is the right order. But it's forbidden for ordinary life to attempt to touch God. This is one of the secret meanings of the story of the Tower of Babel. All of the ordinary parts were long ago cast into the confusion of tongues so that they would be unable to conspire to touch God. This arrangement continues within human beings to this day.

The paradox is that we find ourselves in the midst of the confusion of tongues, which was referred to by Gurdjieff as the doctrine of having many “I’s.” Their separation from God and their inability to work together was created intentionally so that they could not conspire against the sacred work of God that takes place within each person.

This work is for each creature God’s greatest work; the way that He brings creation itself to the threshold of each Being and gives it form. Each Being begins as a perfect and loving expression of that will and act of creation. Each being is a representative of that sacred and secret word of God, which must not be spoken and never be touched.

Within each being is the door to the Kingdom of Heaven. All of creation has this same door at its heart; and everything that is created emanates from it in a radiance of Perfection that is so great that it annihilates Being itself if one gazes directly into its light. Thanks be to God that we do so rarely, if ever.

If through good fortune and great suffering and an honesty and sincerity God should open even a tiny crack in the door to the Kingdom, it persists within the soul and a small amount of that radiance leaks into ordinary life. 

In this way, God can touch ordinary life; and for those who have such a crack in the door, they already know forever that they cannot touch that radiance, for it belongs to itself and is immeasurably greater that the results of the creatures who receive it. 

Until and unless such knowledge is born in a human being, they will forever think that they have authority. This is the end of a real work.

To receive the light of the Kingdom of Heaven is to Be. One can then begin to form, reciprocally, that secret work of prayer and thanksgiving and prostration that's required in response. There are many guidances on this kind of work available in the great religions, but in the end it is impossible for any external force to lay out the proper template for an individual. The template is created only by the radiance of the Kingdom of Heaven itself; and in knowing that radiance, one is called to and gradually knows what must be done in response. Some know of what I speak.

This must never be shown to other men or women; and although it may reflect the attitudes and norms and forms and substances of the great traditions, it must become its own tradition that belongs exclusively to he or she who receives the radiance of the Lord’s light. 

In this way one becomes responsible as a living and organic expression for the actual tradition, not its form or its theory or its theology or the ideas and intellectual propositions that delineate its parameters. Until this takes place, we live within the theory and the idea, not the breath and the practice. 

Yet it is the breath and the practice one must hope for; and one must come to that breath and that practice on bended knee, with song and prayer, both old and new, both spontaneous and planned.

We are not truly worthy to receive the gifts of the Kingdom of Heaven; yet they arrive. This mystery cannot be comprehended, but we can agree to its propositions as they arise. The truth that they bring is  self evident.

And so one withdraws into a quiet and still place that lies within the soul; and one finds a moment in the morning when all is still, in darkness, and one can remain hidden from everyone else, even one’s loved ones. 

There one comes to the time and place where one offers one’s heart and soul to what is right and what is good, pray for forgiveness for the inability to understand and receive, and ask for help.

How this ought to be done I cannot explain. Only intimations and directions can be given. 

The entire sum of one’s lifetime and all of the experiences and impressions that one has taken a need to be brought to bear upon this particular moment. It is not a moment of sitting as is practiced in the Gurdjieff work or in Buddhism. It is a moment of prayer; and they are not the same thing. Prayer contains an active element in it that does not compromise itself in silence. 

I speak here not of the silence of God, which never contains compromise, but our own silence, which is of our own authority and remains compromised from the beginning. 

I speak here of mysteries which you must attempt to understand yourself. It is not seen, for example, that the silence we usually seek is a silence of our own authority and not the one which is given by the Kingdom of Heaven.

Without forming the secret practice, there is no receptive soil within the soul. There may be earth everywhere, but it has no water, and no light reaches us.

 Ponder that for a while.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.