Running and Returning

Can we even talk?

I have to admit that, as a "reader" and someone who has come to love discovery, learning, knowledge, it is a bit "unnatural" to try to move away from intellectual concepts to "pure" experience.  I know, of course, that experiences can never be "pure" as the "I" that experiences them has been conditioned/shaped/created by all the experiences, internal and external that went before.   Nevertheless, there is a great emphasis in so much writing on contemplation that warns against trying to "get to it" in an overly intellectual manner. 

From the Cloud of Unknowing: 

"For God limits his divinity to come down to our level and our souls find an affinity with him because we have the great distinction of having been created in his image and likeness.  And he alone and only he is able to fulfill the longing and intentions of our soul; by virtue of his grace, which re-creates us, our soul is capable of comprehending him completely by love, though God can never be comprehended by any created intelligence–either by a human being or by an angel. But by that I mean that they do not comprehend him in the understanding, not by means of their love. He is only incomprehensible to their intelligence, not to their love. "

Years ago, I read a book whose name I no longer recall that recounted the story of a Jewish woman who was trying to recover / participate in the mystical traditions of Judaism.  One of her questions was how to "remain" in the state of contemplation and not leave it.  The answer seemed to be that she could only "run and return."   She could "run" up the mountain to the more clear presence of God, but inevitably she had to "return" down the mountain again.  

Again from the Cloud of Unknowing: 

"..pay attention to his wonderful divine activity in your soul.  Properly understood, it is always an impromptu and unpremeditated impulse, which leaps up to God as a spark springs from the coal...Yet because we are fallen creatures, he can quickly fall prey after each impulse to some thought or memory of some deed that he has either done or left undone. But so what? The soul can immediately spring up again as unexpectedly as it did before." 

Perhaps an answer is that, at the top of the mountain, I can only "be still" in the presence of God.  When I return to the bottom, then there may be a place for talk.  One story I read at some point said that Moses on the mountain did not receive any commandments, but he heard only silence, but at the bottom of the mountain, he delivered the tablets of God's word.  No one, however, suggested that the tablets, however, were the "real thing" but in a modern idiom, only a "reflection" of the "real thing."  

A blog cannot be a place to have the real thing, but some reflection may be OK, as long as it does not become the "only thing." 

Jeffrey Shy

Mesa, Arizona

"Running and Returning"