21. (E)merging Themes
We are, of course, venturing into that place where the core themes of psychology merge with the core themes of sacred practice.
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In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest ... the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.
— Annie Dillard
There is, indeed, a place of "forever empty," a lived absence that brings only terror. Deeper still there exists hidden grounding: Sacred ground, holding all things, even the black hole itself. Catholic monk Thomas Merton described it as "hidden wholeness," the unseen, unrecognized source from which all things unfold.
Now.
Now.
And now.
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This hidden dimension has a thousand names, yet remains beyond all names.
"God," "Original Presence,” “Ground of Being,” no matter what name we choose, the Source of all things cannot be owned, trademarked, or controlled. Great Mystery simply cannot be possessed. (This has not stopped many within organized religions from attempting to do so for millennia.)
Named or unnamed, hidden wholeness is always grounding us. It always holds what is and offers newness from the roots we find here. This dimension, further down, cannot be attained or acquired. It is given. We either awaken to holding or we don't. We either trust in roots that are already deep and sustaining us, or we deny them by believing they must first be earned or we refuse to believe that grounding is even possible.
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How long does it take to discover hidden holding? Only as long as it takes to realize it takes no time at all.
We dare not call this deeper dimension anything. If we were to call it Level Three, we would immediately "thingify" what is continually emerging, fresh, unbound. ("It just moved.") Wholeness-as-potential space is always dynamic, alive, and outside the control of any set definition.
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Maybe it’s Level AND.
Now. AND now.
AND now.