LAW OF THREE (45) Not my will but yours.

LAW OF THREE (45)

NOT MY WILL BUT YOURS.

"We human beings naturally try to achieve satisfaction in all things through our own autonomous

effort and control. This is just as true in our search for spiritual fulfilment as it is in the rest of life.

We may yearn to "let go and let God" but it usually doesn't happen until we have exhausted our own efforts." Gerald May

St. Teresa of Avila. says "el centro del alma es Dios" (The centre of the soul is God"). St. Teresa reminds us that God shares with us all the tribulations of our life.

The discovery of the hidden immanent presence does not come through our own efforts.  It comes when we have exhausted all our own efforts. It may come over when we realise that nothing we have been trying works and that we need help.

"Let go and let God" requires change of signs in the triad. From acting as an initiating force to acting as receptive force.  From closing our hands to opening our hands. From feeling proud of our achievements to feeling humbled by our shortcomings.

God's evolution in us* needs our receptive cooperation. It needs letting God do in us and through us with our conscious consent. It requires letting go our own autonomous efforts to accomplish our aims and allowing God accomplish in us his aims.

This interdependence of God and Man makes us co-creators:

"God Is but cannot Do. Man can Do but Is not. So God Does in Man and Man Is in God. (Father S. Jordana)

An "inter-abading" experience that requires an eternal space to manifest.

* "God will bring people and events into our lives and whatever we may think about them they are designed for the evolution of HIS LIFE in us." Thomas Keating

LAW OF THRE (44) Time-Space-Consciousness

LAW OF THREE (44)

TIME-SPACE-CONSCIOUSNESS

"Consciousness give us an added dimension to our mental experience, a dimension that is "in depth" rather than time and space. J.G. Bennett

Traditional wisdom schools indicate that to function properly we need to become receptive to three independent sources of "information". The two primary sources of information come from the world of time and space. We start learning that two solid bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and so on,  but in order to move further or to grow up we need to realise that consciousness or depth resides in a deeper dimension than space and time.

"Christianity must accept unreservedly the new dimensions (spatial, temporal and psychological)

of the world around us" Teilhard de Chardin.

Our presence or our being, is neither located in the dimension of time nor in the dimension of space. Presence can´t fit in the dual world of cause and effect or the world of bodies.

Spiritual work referred sometimes as the practice of developing consciousness, lead us to the perception of inner depth. Depth leads us into the word of presence. We are here. Now!

The experience of our being here, now, is not a transcendental or third world experience; but the experience of "the third dimension of the one and the same world, opening us up to a more real union with reality" Raimon Panikkar, * 

The experience of the third dimension of the world we are living in, is a wake up call that may lead us to the search for higher levels of receptivity.

LAW OF THREE (43) Time-Space-Eternity (2)

LAW OF THREE (43)

TIME-SPACE-ETERNITY (2)

" I am Absolute, I am timeless, infinite, and I am awareness, without being aware of awareness... Unless there is space and duration I cannot be conscious of myself." Nisargadatta Maharaj

Humanity suffers from a chronic case of mistaken identity referred to as the False Self, the Finite Self, the Ego-memory, the Personality, etc., all of which are inhabitants of the dual world of time and space

This temporal identity does not obscure completely the dimension of that Self which is present beyond time and space. The spiritual way could be described as the path which leads from a transient self  to the transcendental Self, or the journey from time to eternity.    

The transient identity of the ego is relativised  with the awareness of the presence of a third dimension of time (eternity) 

"The spiritual experience that we may call "mystical" does not put us in touch with a third world, but let us experience the third dimension of the one and the same world, opening us up to a more real union with reality" Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being, The Unbroken Trinity.

We identify ourselves with the transient and the finite. We derive our identity from the changing or the world of time and space, the next step consists on the awareness of the underlying presence of the third dimension of the one and the same world would open us up to a more real perception of reality.

LAW OF THREE (42) Life-Death-Love

LAW OF THREE (42)

LIFE, DEATH, LOVE

"Every one who begins to study and know their own states is well aware that our experience is a constant dying and rebirth, We must not be frightened when we come to see this, although it is a terrifying thing that we have no power to keep hold of our own life; that is has to be renewed or given back to us by something that does not come from ourselves.

But even when we do see the helplessness with which we fall into oblivion, at that moment when we are most trying to hold on to ourselves, we must learn o trust that there is something than call us back. And if it calls us back from sleep at night, it will call us back from the other sleep into which we shall enter, the sleep of death."J.G.Bennett

I can´t imagine a more reassuring description of the presence and action in our lives of a power does does not come from ourselves in which we are invited to place our most absolute trust

St Paul on absolute trust adds:

" I am convinced that neither death, nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither things present, nor thing to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus." 

Romans 8:38.

The recognition of the presence and action of the love of God in our lives surely must be the ultimate source of inner stability. St. Paul's realisation starts with the words "I am convinced",  and J.G.Bennett's use of the words "we must trust", both speak of the inspiring insights which enabled them to recognise the presence and action of a third conscious force in their own lives.

"When two or three are gathered together in my name I am there in the midst of them"

Matthew 18:20

LAW OF THREE (41) Back to Basics: List of Quotes (1-40)

LAW OF THREE (41)

LIST OF QUOTATIONS.     BLOGS:1-40

L3/1

"The spiritual experience that we may call "mystical" does not put us in touch with a third world, but let us experience the third dimension of the one and the same world, opening us up to a more real union with realty" 

Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being, The Unbroken Trinity. 

L3/12

The Law of Three: "People who grasp this law intellectually are very rarely nearer to it than those who feel completely lost. It is one thing to be able to deal with these matters in words and quite another to live them: At the very start we all suffer from a tremendous drawback: the working of our centres (head-heart-body) are dominated by polarity so that everything we look at, everything we feel and think and sense, is experienced in terms of two forces and not three." 

 J.G. Bennett

L3/13

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe" 

 Carl Sagan,  cosmologist and astronomer.

L3/14

"We often represent God to ourselves as being able to draw from non-being a world without sorrows, faults, dangers - a world in which there is no damage, no breakage. 

This a conceptual fantasy and it makes it impossible to solve the problem of evil." 

Teilhard de Chardin 

The transformation of the negative, a major sign of intelligence:

"Ordinary criteria of positive and negative do not apply.. The stress and noise of city life becomes transformed into an energy of meditation. Pain becomes a way of understanding the body. Moral suffering becomes a way of freedom from the personality. Mistakes become a way to truth. Lies become a way to sensitive perception. Death becomes a way to life. Anger becomes a way to compassion. The inversion of the negative is a major sign of intelligence"

 Anthony Blake

L3/15

"Without imperfection, you or I would not exist"

Stephen Hawking

"Look for one and you will find two. Look for three and you will find one"

Law of Three saying.

"To break dualism (and blaming God for the negative force) our worship has to be directed towards the The Third Cosmic Impulse - the reconciling, loving, compassionate and yet omnipotent will that transcends Existence and yet enters into it equally at all levels and on every scale."

J.G. Bennett.

L3/16

"The whole body of the world's religions are expressions of the Trinity and thus a unity between Christ and creation. The silence of the Father is expressed in Buddhism; the Logos is found in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity; and the various movements of the Spirit are present in multiple forms in Hinduism. Without the Trinity there is no Christ, and without Christ there is no Trinity."

Raimon Panikkar

L3/17

A political perspective:

HERE IS A POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE

"The rationalist part of the Enlightenment thought that to liberate man from the yoke of religion it was necessary to remove the experience of hazard, uncertainty and risk. Socialism has been the most radical in this attempt, but different forms of statism move in the same direction. Nevertheless, man is a being structurally confronted with hazard and risk and when the State tries to take upon its shoulder all the weight of insecurity, under such weight it wobbles and brakes.."

Rocco Buttiglione.

L3/18

Metaphysics are based on three conceptions so broad and consequently indefinite that they are hard to seize and may easily be overlooked. I call them conceptions of the First, Second and Third. First is the conception of being or existing independent of anything else. Second is the conception of being relative to., or the conception of reaction with something else. The Third is the conception of mediation, whereby the first and the second are brought into relationship. 

C. S. Peirce (1839-1914)

L3/19

"Both the affirmative and the receptive will are necessary for salvation. But there is a third will, the reconciling will, that is the Will of God. Nothing can happen without it. It is through this third will that the Divine Omnipotence is manifested. Man can only affirm or accept; he can neither make laws nor set himself free from them. Those powers are reserved by God; but it seems that, at moments, God allows man to exercise them. That is the real secret of freedom. Man is never alone. His "I" can affirm or it can accept, but nothing whatever can happen without God, for there can be no act without the third or reconciling will." 

J.G. Bennett

"And therefore keep watch for you do not know the day your Lord will come. Mat. 24:42. and when Jesus found in Gethsemane the three disciples asleep and said::  Can´t any of you stay awake with Me for just an hour? Mat. 26:40 (note three disciples). 

L3/20

Jesus Christ - the Anointed - from His conception on, and which is present in every person from the very moment he or she appears and starts being alive. To the extend that we open ourselves to this anointing, we become "Christified"... transformed in an Alter Christus. 

Javier Melloni

L3/22

"When we want to understand something, we cannot just stand outside and observe it. We have to enter deeply into it and be one with it in order to really understand. If we want to understand a person, we have to feel his feelings, suffer his sufferings and enjoy his joy. The word "comprehend" is made up of the Latin roots cum, which means "with", and "prehendere", which means "to grasp or pick it up". To comprehend something means to pick it up and be one with it. There is not another way to understand something. In Buddhism, we call this kind of understanding "non-duality". Not two." 

Thich Nhat Nanh

L3/23

My dear people, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another. No one has ever seen God, but as long as we love one another God will live in us and his love will be complete in us... If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him, and he in God...God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him.

 John 17:11-19

L3/24

"Intelligence communicates instantaneously with intelligence, wherever and in whatever it acts. This is so between people, between a musician and his instrument, between persona and an idea. We can understand the world because it has intelligence. The true scientist listens to the intelligence of Nature in a form of dialogue."

Suffering is an inevitable factor in existing and being alive; and the failure to understand suffering is one of the major signs of the lack of intelligence in our world today. 

Anthony Blake.

L3/25

"To those who only know it outwardly, Christianity seems desperately intricate. In reality...it contains an extremely simple and astonishingly bold solution of the world. In the centre, so glaring

as to be disconcerting, is the uncompromising affirmation of a personal God: God as providence, directing the universe with loving, watchful care; and God the revealer, communicating himself to man on the level of and through the ways of INTELLIGENCE" 

 Teilhard de Chardin.

L3/26

"Understanding is not the product of one function in man, but the resultant of several functions working in harmony. For example, if one appreciates something with the mind, one "knows" it; if one appreciates it with the emotions, one "feels"it; if one appreciates it with the external physical organs, one "senses" it. But if one simultaneously appreciates it with the mind, emotions and physical senses, then one understands it." 

Rodney Collin

L3/27

"Being open. Everything is available, waiting for us. We are bathed in cosmic radiations, all help. But we have to make ourselves open. Open our pores. Catch everything. What prevent us from being open, receiving what is going, is being preoccupied with ourselves, thinking of ourselves. If we forget ourselves, everything comes to us." 

Rodney Collin.

"Noticing enters our lives from another dimension or another world. It is one of the simplest ways that influences from a higher world come into this world."  

J.G. Bennett

L3/28

Each of man's functions: thinking, emotional and moving, has its own definite repertory all of which is in constant interaction. A man can never get out of the charmed circle of his postures or behaviour. Even if a man recognises this and begins to struggle with it, his will is insufficient. A man's will can be sufficient to govern one centre for a short time. But his will can never be sufficient to govern all three centres. The other two centres prevent this. 

P.D. Ouspensky

L3/29

"Discover that all that exists is this moment. Life is always now. Your whole life unfolds in this constant now. Even past and future events exist only when you remember or anticipate them. And you can only do so by thinking about them in this only moment that exits... (now) Mistaking the present moment with its contents gives birth not only to the illusion of time, but also to the illusion the ego"

Eckhart Tolle 

L3/30

"Our faculties can only comprehend the things of God, like the beauty of creation, the goodness of the attraction we feel for others, or the glimpses of truth we experience in religious images and concepts. All these things may reflect or represent God to us, but they miss the essence of God. To our normal human capacities God is nada, no-thing." 

"As soon as we use the label "God" or "divine presence", we make an object of it, separate from ourselves. Taken together, these reasons encourage us to dwell in the more comfortable, controllable world of "God and me" (duality) rather that the vague, vulnerable realm of "God in me and I in God" (non dual)" 

 Gerald G. May M.D

"We just do not understand ourselves, or know who we are. At worst we give lip service to God's presence, but then feel and act as if we were completely on our own." 

Teresa of Avila 

L3/31

"In phenomenological terms, love is a non dualistic experience. This is the reason why its is only with great difficulty that love enters into any "understanding". Love is neither equality nor otherness, neither one nor two. Love requires differentiation without separation; it is "going" toward "the other" that rebounds in a genuine "entering" into oneself by accepting the other within one's bosom."

Raimon Panikkar 

The same Spirit and dispositions that are in Christ are present in us, inspiring us with the same willingness to open ourselves to everybody's sufferings, in so far as we capable of bearing them. Moreover we are not just individuals. We are individual and social in our very being. We cannot be individuals without being totally united with everybody else, and we cannot be united with everybody else without being an individual member of the mystical body of Christ. (Note the triadic nature of this statement) 

Thomas Keating.

L3/32

"If we were deprived of like and dislike - if we had no polar nature at all - we shouldn't have anything from which to draw force. It is like the poles of a magnet. In order to get force from the poles of a magnet you have to hold yourself right in the field of action of its two poles. In the same way, in order to get force out of the dualism of our nature we have to hold ourselves in the field of it - not let ourselves be drawn to one side or the other, because this simply neutralises their polar force"

 J.G. Bennett

L3/33

"We have no conception of a pure affirmation that does not depend upon a denial. Neither can we conceive a receptive impulse that could sustain its own character except in opposition to an affirmation. Nor can we visualise a reconciling impulse that does not need the presence of opposing forces to elicit its quality.  

P.O. Ouspensky

"...be quiet, until the appropriate action arises by itself." 

Tao-te-king. Chap 15

L3/34

"Yes" is of the mind . "No" is of the body. The reconciling is of the emotions. Body knows the "how" of things. Mind knows the "what" of things. Emotion, plus mind and body, understands the "why" of things. Scientists are interested in the "how" of things, not in the "why" of things. 

S. Nott

L3/35

"God will bring people and events into our lives, and whatever we may think about them, they are designed for the evolution of His life in us." 

"We are invited to give God a chance to experience God in our humanity, in our difficulties, in our weakness, in our addictions, in our sins."

"In letting go of identifications, we suddenly realise who we really are... not the "I am " of myself but the "I AM" of God" 

Thomas Keating

L3/36

"Wisdom can only be given in a state of presence, with the three centres of our being in a state of presence. Anything less is asleep. Presence is the narrow gate thorough which one passes to wisdom. Samadhi or enlightenment, romanticised in the west, really means "a settled mind", or one rigorously present, balanced, and awake, in whatever emotional circumstances" 

Cynthia Bourgeault.

"As one level of being increases , receptivity to higher meaning increases and vice-versa" 

Maurice Nicholls

L3/37

EVOLUTION OR INVOLUTION: "We must remember the action of the three forces in different order. If the active force begins. the passive force unavoidably reacts, and the result of the struggle is a meaningless average. This happens in ordinary life. This process has nothing to do with the mysterious order of forces that bring regeneration, which begins with the third force - with understanding, with tolerance, with invisible help. When we know the taste of this other order of forces which begins not by imposition but by acceptance, we will find that by it everything becomes easy. And that the positiveness that we are trying to demand by force is already there." 

Rodney Collin

L3/38

EMBRACING PARADOX: "That there are many terminologies is essential. We argue that there is there is no one interpretation of the triad to be set against all others.  Such was the course of religions; and the comparison is apt, because we are striving to "hear the Word". The triad speaks the language of the engineer, the artist and the religious equally: it is THE language of languages, the logos.It is

holy fire: the essence of information."

Anthony Blake. The Triad.

L3/39

"I am one with the source insofar as I too act as a source by making everything I have received flow again - just like Jesus" 

R. Panikkar

L3/40

Two men were playing cards while discussing the power of God. "God can do anything he chooses" said one. "No he can't replied the other, "He can't beat my ace of trumps." 

Sufi story,

LAW OF THREE (40) Back to Basics

LAW OF THREE (40)

BACK TO BASICS

NO RULES NO CREATION:

Two men were playing cards while discussing the power of God. "God can do anything he chooses" said one. "No, he can't, replied the other, "He cannot beat my ace of trumps." 

Sufi story,

THE LAW OF THREE: A REMINDER.

According to the Law of Three, every phenomenon, on every scale (from subatomic to cosmic) and in every domain (physical, sociological, and psycho-spiritual) is the result of the interweaving of three independent forces: the first is active or affirming, the second passive or denying, and the third neutralising or reconciling.

When we see three independent forces in every event and every phenomenon, then we see the world as it really is.

In order to produce any phenomenon or event the three forces need to meet in a relationship of positive, negative and neutralising.

Considered by itself, every force in the universe is positive or active.

Only at the point of meeting do the three forces become structures in this relationship.

We can see very easily the positive or active force in any event or phenomenon.

Sometimes we are ware of the negative or resisting force as well.

But very rarely are we aware of the presence and action of the third neutralising or reconciling force.

Three conditions to creation:

God's sacrifice is Self-limitation by manifestation. The conditions of this limitation are three: The Universe is created in Space, in Time and in Equilibrium.

Boris Mouravieff.

"Without imperfection, you or I would not exist"

Stephen Hawking

LAW OF THREE (39) Man as a Reconciling Force

MAN AS A RECONCILING FORCE:

"I am one with the source insofar as I too act as a source by making everything I have received flow again - just like Jesus" 

R. Panikkar

Man is the bridge between the visible and the invisible realms. The bridge needs to be activated in order to become a medium for transformation.  The bridge is activated with the entrance of a 3rd force.

The link between the two realms needs to be activated by conscious acts of will.  Acts of will may be directed by different spiritual practices of letting go of attachments to the visible.  Specially the attachment to the illusion that "I can do it all by myself"

The practice of letting go of attachments opens a "gap" that reveals the presence of an underlying consciousness which fills all things but is touched by no-things.  Consciousness is receptive to the spiritual influences of Faith, Hope, Love (reconciling forces)