by Ben Gilberti, H.W.,M.
 
Chapter 25 ~  Via Negativa, Via Positiva
 
Via Positiva:
This visible world is wonderfully to be delighted in, and highly to be esteemed, because it is the theatre of God's righteous Kingdom.
Thomas Traherne (1636-74), English clergyman, poet, mystic. Centuries, "Second Century," no. 97 (written c. 1672; first published 1908).
 
Via Negativa:
The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.
Simone Weil (1909-43), French philosopher, mystic. "Human Personality" (written 1943; published in La Table Ronde, Dec. 1950; repr. in Selected Essays, ed. by Richard Rees, 1962).
 
The consciousness that I am is God being all there is. What is it that is blocking my experience of that? The fact that it just isn't anything like the personality I'm pretending to be. It's not even close. The personality I'm pretending to be is anything but "God being all there is." Quite the contrary, the personality I'm pretending to be knows very little, has very limited intelligence, needs all kinds of things like food and shelter and clothing and comfort and sleep, has all kinds of desires and all kinds of aversions, can only be in one place at one time, is vulnerable to illness and accident, and so on and so on. So what is blocking my experience of the consciousness that I am being God being all there is, is all that I experience of myself to the contrary.
 
Now, I can in response either say, "Get Thee Behind Me Satan" to all that contrary experience, dissolving it as the nothingness of hypnotism lying about the Truth, OR, I can say, "Enter, for thou art the Son of God knocking at my door through this experience."
 
In Medieval Mysticism it was called via negativa or via positiva. Both are the same. Whether you're telling Satan to beat it or welcoming God in His fullness, either way it amounts to the same thing. Telling Satan to beat it is to see limitation and separateness as nothing. Welcoming God is to see infinity and oneness as all. They're both the same. Seeing infinity and oneness as all automatically sees limitation and separateness as nothing. And seeing limitation and separateness as nothing automatically leaves infinity and oneness as all.
 
So realize that you are doing both whenever you are doing either. Whether you are nothingizing or welcoming you are doing the same thing. You can't do one without the other. If you welcome an experience as God, everything about the experience that appeared to entail limitation and separateness vanishes. If you nothingize those aspects of an experience that entail limitation and separateness, the experience reveals itself to be God. You never nothingize that which is not God, without in turn welcoming God. And you never welcome God, without having nothingized anything about the experience that appeared to be not God.
 
Both can be done simultaneously as one act -- what Lillian calls "The Act of Truth." And when they are done simultaneously as one "Act of Truth" it can be done all the time. We can at every moment of our lives (which is actually the one timeless and eternal present moment) be both welcoming God and nothingizing any appearance of not God in EVERY SINGLE EXPERIENCE WITHOUT EXCEPTION.
 
What would qualify as an exception anyway? What possible experience could possibly warrant being accepted as something less than God? What possible action could possibly be appropriate as our response to the experience except the act of Truth? If we DON'T welcome the experience as God, then what do we do? Push it away as something other than God? If we DON'T nothingize anything about the experience that appears to be less than God, then what do we do? Welcome limitation and separateness as God? Seen from this perspective it is utter insanity to relate to ANY experience at ANY TIME in any other way than with the Act of Truth.
 
Now, how do we know what it is about an experience that actually is the appearance of something other than God? Having an aversion to something just means that we learned to judge it evil or bad. It does not mean that it is other than God. So how do we know what's God and what isn't if our own desires and aversions are not the criteria?
 
We know ONLY to the extent that the principle of infinite oneness is intelligible to us. God being all there is because there can be no other and therefore being one and therefore being boundless and therefore being infinite, is, in fact, the only intelligible thing intelligence can know. And you are the one and only intelligence that CAN know it. And when we contemplate the principle in stillness, we DO know it, and we know it with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY. Then it just becomes a matter of using that knowledge as the criterion. Is there something about an experience that appears to be other than infinite and one? Is there something about an experience that appears to be limited and separate? If there appears to be, it is contrary to the only thing that is intelligible -- infinite oneness -- and so we nothingize it and welcome the experience as God -- infinite oneness. We can, and should, be doing it continuously at every moment of the day. Not only is there nothing else worth doing, but anything else we do besides that is creating the illusion of limitation and separation that we long so much to get free of.

 
 

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