Good morning. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thank you for the good questions that I get and also for the visits. And yesterday we spoke about the peak experiences and Father John asked me if I remembered any P.T. Francis was talking about, but I must be honest, I don't remember any. The way he spoke about his childhood, and he had some very sunny memories of his childhood. That probably pointed in that direction. Of course, Maslow also says that in our childhood, we have more of these peak experiences than later.

[01:12]

We are more alert to them. concretely particular I can't remember this is of course the limitation altogether I can only tell you the things that I remember I want to be faithful to my not very faithful memory but I do my best and Today, I would like to switch a little bit on our emphasis. Up to now, we have spoken about really basically about the word God from all different angles under the principle that

[02:25]

And that was the principle of Father Damascus, that we should question the words we use, question the words we use. What do they really mean? And put it in your own words, because only if you can put something that you have heard and that's important to you into your own words, then you have really... digested it and then you can't say what it really means to you and what's important is what it means to you not in some abstract sense and what it means to you depends on your personality and on your experience and in every respect on your uniqueness And when you can work with words and question them in this way, then that clears your mind.

[03:34]

And for the damage, it was very clear about the fact that clear thinking needs to clear living. Money thinking needs to money, living, and choose living. And the opposite of this attitude would be anti-intellectualism. Intellectualism can, of course, also be a flaw that you over-intellectualize everything and you live only in your head. So intellectualism is not the right way. But anti-intellectualism is also the wrong way. What we try to do is to use your intellect and not be carried away by it.

[04:38]

Live from the heart. That heart, we will come back to that again and again. That was to Father Danifusson. extremely important, the notion of the heart. I already mentioned the school of the heart. The heart was important to live from the heart, but the heart is not at all opposite to the intellect. The heart stands for the whole person, and that means intellect, will, emotions, everything, body, mind, the whole person. It's sort of the top root of the person is the heart. We are still one. Our personality unfolds and fans out into intellect, will, emotions, body, mind, but in the heart we are still one.

[05:46]

So today, having tried from the heart to speak about God or that great mystery that we call God, now we turn to another area, and that is the human heart. this Psalm 8 that asks, what is man? What is man that you think of him? At that time, we still had the whole literature in Latin. Everything was in Latin, even the readings were in Latin. So it was, commit est homo. and homo is more than man.

[06:54]

Deer is man and homo is the human. So this translation is what is man is a little sexist. We know what we mean by And that was a song that Father Damos commented on, and it was a question that was central to him. Who are we as humans? Think that through. And learn to say it in your own words. And... One aspect of this word homo, human, man, and that's why the damage is always stressed very much is that Adam, Adam, you know, is not a name of the first person, but means the human.

[08:18]

Adam means the human. is the earth and Adam is the earth's wing, the one that's made from earth. That was a concept that he again and again stressed and to that same word root in Latin belongs not only homo and human, but also humility and humor. Humility is the down-to-earthness, and to be truly human, you have to be humble, that means down-to-earth. You are on those things, so be down-to-earth. That has nothing to do with humiliation, for humility, down to person.

[09:20]

And humor. Unless you have humor, you are not really human. That belongs to the human. The humans are the ones that can laugh. Among the animals, only the hyenas can laugh. That's not really a very convincing kind of laughing. So we are the animals that can laugh. We are the ones that have humor. And this idea of the human as Earth's creature, as Earth's thing, leads into the realm of myths. And myths was also very important to call it damages, to come to grips with myths. And myth in that sense, of course, not the opposite to truth.

[10:22]

Sometimes in everyday language we say, well, it's not really true, it's just a myth. That would be completely off. It has nothing to do with the way in which we use here myths or in which Father Damerson used myths. Myth is a poetic answer to one of the deep questions of the human heart It is poetry. It must be poetry because if it is an answer to the deepest questions of the human heart, no other language can carry as much weight as poetry. Poetry is the language that carries the greatest weight or has the greatest to express things much more than any other way of talking and that is why when we are deeply moved by something then we wax poetic suddenly every schoolboy who falls in love suddenly writes poems or something like poems we are deeply moved

[11:46]

we become poetic. The things that moves most deeply can only be expressed in poetic language. And that is why I thought that was very frequently quoted poetry and was encouraging us to read and appreciate poetry. And there are lots of poetry books in the library. So that is probably one of his legacies to learn to live with poetry and to appreciate poetry in our lives and to appreciate myths. And this morning, I would like to speak about the first of the great myths. There are two great myths because there are two great questions of this human heart. two of the deepest questions on the human heart.

[12:50]

And the first question is, who am I? Sooner or later, a human being will be confronted with the question, who am I? And if I ask you right now, just say to yourself, what is the first thing that comes into your mind if I ask, who are you? Just think for one second, what would you say quickly? You can always change it later, but right now, what's the first thing that comes into your mind? Who are you? And of course, I do not know the concrete answers that you are giving individually. We're very different from one another, but I'm pretty sure of one thing, if you analyze your own answer long enough, it will be the expression of some sort of relationship.

[13:54]

It will express a relationship. You will either say a name, well, that's the handle by which other people relate to you, or it will be a vocation that you have I'm a monk I'm a Christian I'm a human being even that expresses a relationship to other human beings in the last analysis who am I the answer is always the expression of some relationship and in the And the myth that answers that great question is called the myth of origin. That's now Father Damasus had studied and was deeply interested in comparative religion. So in comparative religion, this one of the two great myths is called the myth of origin.

[15:04]

the most frequent form of it and the one that interests us today is the creation myth, myth of creation. There are other myths of origin but to us the creation myth is the important one. That is, as I said, the poetic answer to the deep perennial learning question of the human heart, who am I? And it expresses the relationship to that great mystery that which, as humans, we are constructed. And there are thousands of different creation myths that are reported by the anthropologists that we can find, and many of them are very, very beautiful, And, of course, in our own book of Genesis, we have the new tradition in relation with, and all of them have, in spite of being so different in their form, all of them have a similar structure, have three elements that belong to

[16:33]

that make up that myth. And these three elements are, first, the one who is. The one who is. And that can be expressed, when I say the one who is, that's not poetic language, that's prose and philosophically language, but now the myth-maker, the poet, wants to express that in some way, ancient one, because if that one is, it must be ancient, not always there. So there are different ways of expressing it. The father, the grandfather, the grandmother, The Ancient of Days. Oh, sounds many, many different with the earth maker.

[17:36]

Native Americans are often speaking of the earth maker. And the main thing is that one is not questioned. It's not a story how this one came about. It's never a question. The story opens with the one who is. That's the first element. Unquestionably is our vis-a-vis, that great you, that now that we spoke about, to my I. And the second element is to the one who is, and the one, and the nothing. Nothing, empty nothing, nothing, nothing. And the myth-makers, it's very difficult to express in a story this nothingness. So they express, and that nothing is that out of which everything is made, the whole universe and we humans, that nothing.

[18:49]

And so the storytellers have great difficulty finding an image for this nothingness. in our Genesis story, it's mud. Like we say in English sometimes, my name is mud, I'm nobody. In that sense, nothing, nobody. But when you compare the different creation with all over the world, you find other very inventive methods, inventive ways of expressing this nothing. For instance, in Polynesian myths you often find that earth maker or creator has a dream. So this dream substance is out of which he or she makes everything. And so the creator has to take this dream and

[19:51]

push it together because it's so invasive and then press it hard and trample down on it and then he says, now I have a place to stand. Now I will create a world. And there's even another still more nothing way and that comes from the Apache Indian And they say it's only the outline of the Creator that a dog scratches with his paw. So I will tell you this myth because it's a good image, it's a good example for a creation myth that's not our own from the Book of Genesis. So the first is the one who is, The second is the material out of which we and everything else is made.

[20:52]

Try to make it as close to nothing as possible. And the third is the intimate unity between the two. The intimate unity. The two are so united that you can't take them apart. And in our own creation myth, you have, in the beginning, God. Not question, in the beginning, God. And then God takes slime of the earth, so it's close to nothing, and makes a little figure out of it, and breathes God's own breath into the nostril of this little lifeless finger. And so the human, Adam, becomes a living creature.

[21:55]

So we are mud, nothings, as Joseph, you can come, alive with the life of God who is. So that's this intimate communion, this intimate union. that we are as human beings, because that's how we experience ourselves. As the human, as the community, as the unity of the divine mystery with absolutely nothing from ourselves and our own part. And now I tell you this Apache myth, because it's one of my favorites, and it expresses this these three elements so beautifully. The Apaches say, the Dracula Apache is a particular tribe of Apaches, and they say, in the beginning, an earth maker was going around with his dog.

[22:58]

Because the Apaches can't imagine. that anybody walks around without a dog. Everybody has a dog with them. So Earthmaker also has a dog. This is poetry. It doesn't mean where does this dog come from or anything. Earthmaker was walking around with the dog. And the dog starts the whole thing going because the dog says to Earth's auctions, Grandfather, will you always be around? And The earthmaker says, well, there may be a time when I will not be around. And the dog says, in that case, please make me a companion. So we always, according to this myth, are around because dogs need companions in order to twist to the story.

[23:59]

And so Earthmaker lies down on Earth and says, scratch my outline on the ground. So this is how they come to as close as nothing. And the dog scratches the outline of the Earthmaker on the ground. And then the Earthmaker says, and now go away and don't look back. But, of course, the dog is there. He knows. He goes only a little way. And he looks. And he says, oh, grandfather, somebody is lying where you had been lying. And the earthmaker says, don't look. I told you. Go further. So he goes and goes away. Then he turns around. Oh, earthmaker, somebody is sitting where you had been lying. I told you go further. Oh. grandfather, somebody is standing where you had been lying. Okay, he says, now come, look it over.

[25:03]

Oh, come, says Hans, look it over. Oh, he's wonderful. He says, he's wonderful. Earthmaker said, yeah, I think he's pretty good. And he goes behind him like a mother goes behind a baby and takes him by the elbow and sort of comes in a little bit. He said, go, go, walk. The human walks a little bit, and then he takes him to the shelf and says, Rani, Rani speaks circuits, and the dog is thinking light, and it barks, and on and on, and on, and then comes back, and then he says, speak, say something, make words. Four times he has to encourage the human to say something. Then the human says, what next? The creator laughs, and the dog barks, and everybody laughs, and because everybody laughs, the dog barks, the human also starts to laugh.

[26:12]

And then Earthmaker says, now you are fit to live, because you have been laughing. And then it says, and Earthmaker walks away. No, no, not Earthmaker. And the human walks away with his dog. It's not Earthmaker that goes away, but the human walks away with the dog. And that's, of course, what leads already in the story of the fall. That is how they express the fall. We walk away with our dogs and turn away from the one who lives in us and in whom we live. This is a very beautiful story. And now the question for us is, how would we put this now? And put it now from our experience. Somehow, how do we experience, we experience who we are, who are we?

[27:22]

And that's a completely different approach, but it wants to express the same thing that the myths express in other terms. And then we can start from the experience that sometimes I say I, and sometimes I say I myself, and I want to really emphasize who did it. I myself did. I and myself. And we can ask, well, yes, we mean one, but why do we use two different terms, I and myself? It's a very interesting fact in our language. And now we want to ask, How do we find these cells?

[28:24]

You know, they mean something different, a little different when we say just I, and then we say I myself. What is the little difference? How can we find that reality, that actuality, that we mean when we say cells? And there's a little experiment that we can make, sort of a mental experiment. We can't watch ourselves. This is another very interesting fact that as humans we can watch ourselves. Is there one or is there two? Obviously there's only one and yet that one can watch himself. I can certainly watch myself sitting here and talking to you because our consciousness allows that. You can watch yourself sitting there listening. And now we can't very well express this in words.

[29:29]

How do we do that? We have to use images. The image would be something like you go up and you look down on yourself. You may have some other image, but one way would be I go up and I look down on myself. I am at the same time here talking and at the same time somewhere else a little distance looking. And now you can go back and back into that looking until you are now both the observer and the observed. This is how our consciousness allows that. And now you can go back deep enough into the observer until you are the observer whom nobody can observe anymore, not even yourself. You just simply are the observer, nobody observes, and you observe yourself.

[30:33]

Then you have what you are observing is the eye, and the observer whom nobody else can observe is the self. And now you can see this is an experiment that everybody can do without their difficulty. And it is an approach to that strange reality which the myth expresses as the unity of all and nothing. Because you know that this I is created really close to nothing. It has a beginning before which, before my conception, nobody knew that I would ever be around. Nobody missed me. I just wasn't. Then I'm conceived and born and live, and then I die, and when I die, I die this reality

[31:41]

Clearly, reality, that thing, among other things, in time and space, is over. And after a while, nobody will even remember or miss me. There are millions and millions of people that lived and died. Nobody misses them. They're gone. And they are recycled. You eat them. Their atoms and their molecules get into our food, and we eat them. They're gone. They're not. So this eye is, and not only what I've just now said, but we have already referred to the fact that it's continuously renewed. Every moment it dies, and every moment it is renewed. I mentioned that our, for instance, our red blood corpus, by the millions, die every second, and by the millions, new ones are made. And so with They say that within seven years or something like that, there's not one atom in your body that was there before.

[32:49]

And yet, you recognize the person even after 10 years and 15 years when you meet him again, you recognize him. That is their soul. See, what we call the soul is what makes this body to this body. And it is the connection, if you want to put it that way, between the self and the I. And the self is not in time and space. Our mind is sort of, in its workings, it's still in time and space, but it touches upon something that is not in time and space. That observer is not in time and space. because it remains, it is not subject, it can't look down on time and space. So it's distant, it's separate from time and space. It's not in time and space.

[33:52]

And the soul is our participation in this timeless self. The most important aspect of this self is not that it's not in time and space, so that it means it is eternal. But the most important aspect is that it is one, it cannot be divided. It can only be divided if it is in time and space. If it's not in time and space, it can't be divided. So that means all of us have one self. Our soul is our participation in that self, By our souls, we are distinct from one another because the soul is what makes this body uniquely to this body. That is the definition, according to Scholarz's philosophy, of the soul, for the corporis. But the self is one for all of us.

[34:55]

And that has now, in the different spiritual traditions that we mentioned yesterday, very different names, but they have already discovered it, and the Buddhists call it the Buddha nature. Everything has Buddha nature. The Hindus call it the Atman, and we call it Christ in us, the Christ reality in us. St. Paul says, I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me. It doesn't mean, that's not a private statement about St. Paul, That is true for you and me and for everybody. So if everyone of us can say, I live, let not die, Christ live in me, that Christ's reality is what unites us. And if we keep that in mind, then we are I myself and keep that in mind.

[35:58]

You don't have to keep it in mind in the sense that every moment you remember it. But don't forget it. Very much like your name. You don't keep your name in mind by every moment saying to yourself, I'm David, I'm David. You'd get crazy if you did that. But if anybody asks you, you know who you are. And it makes a difference, this consciousness of your name. And so to know that Christ lives in you makes a difference, complete difference, by the way you live. Because anybody else you meet, you meet Christ in the other. We are one, basically we are one. But we play different roles. Even different roles when we are born and we play this role. We try to play this as well as possible, that means as kindly.

[37:04]

as possible. And this word kind is a beautiful English word because we are of the same kind. And if you are of the same kind, the human kind, you behave kindly to those of whom you are of the same kind. So kindness is really what you express when you remember I myself And now comes the great danger, namely that the eye forgets the self. That is a real possibility. Like humans can't forget their name. There are certain forms of insanity where you can't remember what your name is. That is much less dangerous than if you forget yourself. If you forget that Christ lives in you and you live in Christ.

[38:07]

Because the moment you forget that you are one with all, your eye gets frightened. Fear. That is the first thing that happens. Fear. Because... Here I have this tiny little eye among these billions of other eyes. You forget that you have this great self. So you shrink. And that we call the ego. Ego is not something additional to the eye and the self. The ego is the eye when it forgets the self. It shrinks. It gets fearful. And out of this fearfulness comes everything that goes wrong. Because of fear, you become violent. Fear makes violence. All violence comes from fear.

[39:09]

Even a tiny little mouse, when you make it fearful, it runs away. But when it gets in a corner and you go after it with the broom and it can't run away anymore, it gets aggressive. Even the little mouse will attack you and your broom out of fear. It takes much more courage to make peace and to be kind than it takes to be aggressive. But when you forget we are of one kind, because we share this one self, Buddha nature or Atman or Christ self, and forget that, you become aggressive. So fear leads to aggression. It leads to rivalry. You reach your elbows. There are all these others. I have to get ahead. You reach your elbows. And maybe there isn't enough around. You live out of a sense of scarcity all of a sudden, out of fear that there isn't enough around, so you get greedy.

[40:14]

So aggression, rivalry, greed. That all springs out of fear, and that springs from forgetting yourself, forgetting that you are one with all. And the opposite of fear is trust, or faith. The religious word for this trust, trust in God, trust in life, trust in the mystery, is faith. Fear and faith, those are the great choices. Thank you. If you are one with all, you don't need to fear. You have trust. You are all one. What do you have to fear? We play different roles, and some play rather dangerous roles, and so you have to be careful. But being careful and cautious is something very different from fear. Actually, fear makes you crazy, and you're not even cautious anymore because any harm that you

[41:15]

do to anybody else, and ultimately one that you do to yourself. So fear is absolutely insane, makes you insane. But if you keep in mind and trust, you're all one, okay, we'll work it out. So instead of fear, you have trust, and instead of violence, you have kindness, nonviolence, negotiation, we'll work it out. There are differences when we work it out. It's the opposite of violence. Instead of rivalry, you have cooperation. Obviously, cooperation. We all want the same. We all want to be happy. We are all one. We want to express that in kindness and cooperation. And instead of greed, share. So much more joy if you share. There's always more. The more you share, the more there is around. Because when you share, What belongs to anybody else belongs also to you.

[42:16]

When you are grieving, you have nothing but what belongs to you. And those are two completely different attitudes of the human being, the ego and the ourselves, but they are also completely different results in completely different social forms. And there is where the greatest importance comes in, this distinction, because the ego creates the power pyramid. Everybody wants to be on top. If you are fearful, you want to be on top. So you get at least as close to the top as you can, and you tread down on all those who know you and use your elbows, and you don't share. So you get... violence, rivalry, exploitation, and greed.

[43:18]

And if you live out of this I myself of the consciousness that you are one, only playing different roles, then you get a network. We dismantle that pyramid of power and you create a network. Everybody depends on everybody else, and some, yes, some have to command at certain times, that is also being part of the network, but it doesn't create a pyramid. It can have other functions within this network, and everything hangs together with everything. So it has often been expressed, the difference between these two race of living in society as the love of power or the power of love. And we have to make a choice. If we live out of love of power, we create a pyramid.

[44:23]

If we live out of power of love, we create a network that we network with other networks and that will be a completely different world order. And people already hinted at it, but the monastic life, of course, goes out of the faith in the power of love. That is what makes monastic life what it is, and also the structures of monastic life. So monastic life is typically a network. That's the ideal network. of monastic life, not the power structure. And even in the rule of St. Benedict, that's not a power pyramid, but the abbot is the servant of all. He just feels a different role. And obedience is to the abbot, but also all the brothers should be obedient to one another, St.

[45:28]

Benedict says. So there is a network of obedience in the community. And the great danger of the institutional church is to become a power pyramid, to become worldly over and over. And that is why Father Damacy said we are to be the pikes in the crop pond. We are to constantly challenge the love of power by the power of love. That is our calling as monks. So you see how our understanding of the myths in which we are, we live in this realm, in this one realm of I and time and space and self that touches on this mystery, the Christ self within us.

[46:32]

and how that reflects in society, whether we have it or not, and how this is both a tremendous gift and a tremendous challenge for us to live that in monastic life. So we'll have to say more about it, particularly if you have questions, and I will try and answer these questions, but that is the general framework. And for your homework, this is... It would be good if we think together on this. I would ask you again to complete a sentence. And the sentence reads, the second deep question of the human heart might be dot, dot, dot. And then you can fill it in. What do you think the second question might be? And then we pick that up this evening. We will talk about the second of the... great questions. That will be then expressed in the second of these two great myths that, in a sense, are the decisive ones for the human family, these two types of myths.

[47:50]

Okay, are there any immediate questions that we need to address, yes? Yes, maybe you're talking. I know what you mean when it was like, I guess I'm lucky, but when you were saying that, you know, ah, wow, that's where he's come from, and that, that, and stuff like that, but how would you relate that to Lexio? With? With Lexio. Lexio. Aha, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing that Father Damophis always stressed about Lectio is when he would say, when you come here, you are probably used to reading in a very different way from what Lectio is. You're probably reading as much as possible when you sit down.

[48:55]

And Lectio starts with reading No more than absolutely necessary. So we don't sit down and pick up this book and say, okay, I'll read a chapter. Or even a paragraph. Just start reading. And if the very first word sends you, that's better than if you have to read two words, you would say. read until it grabs you, until it sends you. And what grabs you there is that great mystery, this vow thing that we're talking about. So this, we have, it's not under our control. We might have to read slowly and with an open heart, you know, and he said, beat you in the desert and beat to your heart. When we go, Sit down to you, our next divina. We go into the desert.

[49:56]

That means we don't take anything with us. We make ourselves vulnerable. Just receptive. And then listen with the ears of your heart. And then it may be that on some days you have to read quite a bit before something really speaks to you. it makes a difference whether you are open to receiving as soon as possible. Then you follow this word and you let it lead you, and it always leads you into that mystery. And when you notice that it first wanted the medium, but now your thoughts are just wandering off and you're thinking about what am I going to do next, and what's my job, and things like that.

[50:56]

Then you come back to the word. You come back to the next word. But that encounter with mystery, that is the decisive thing of the lecture divina. Is that a little bit answering your question? Don't hesitate to follow up later on, but that's a good question. We always want to apply these things concretely to our monastic life day-back day. Okay, then let's again pray, because all this is caught up in that great mystery of the Blessed Trinity, I think. ancient form of the Doctrine. Glory be to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, Islam and the American world without aim.

[52:05]

Amen.

[52:06]

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