Hello,
And welcome to Methods,
An exploration in guided prayer and meditation.
This is our fourth season,
Feel.
In this season,
We'll attempt to showcase methods of prayer and meditation that facilitate feeling,
Embodiment,
And direct perception of reality beneath the web of our conditioned thought patterns.
This method is called negation.
It can be a challenging,
But a transcendent technique,
Because it applies the technique of dialectic,
Of thesis,
Antithesis,
And then synthesis.
There's a quote by Einstein that says,
No problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it.
And that's true across all disciplines,
Including theology.
So a way to solve problems isn't by coming up with the antithesis of it,
But by transcending the problem altogether.
This goes back to Pseudo-Dionysius.
In the Divine Names,
Dennis says,
Just as the senses can neither grasp nor perceive the things of the mind,
Just as representation and shape cannot take in the simple and the shapeless,
Just as corporeal form cannot lay hold of the intangible and incorporeal,
By the same standard of truth,
Beings are surpassed by the infinity beyond being,
Intelligences by that oneness which is beyond intelligence.
Indeed,
The inscrutable one is out of the reach of every rational process.
Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible good,
This one,
This source of all unity,
This superexistant being.
Mind beyond mind,
Words beyond speech,
It is gathered up by no discourse,
By no intuition,
By no name.
It is,
And it is as no other being is.
Because of all existence,
And therefore itself transcending existence,
It alone could give an authoritative account of what it really is.
So what he's essentially saying is that we can't know God in itself,
Because only God knows God.
We cannot know the essence of God until we are unified with him,
But we can know the energies of God,
As Gregory Palamas would say.
These are the divine rays that come off of the sun that are as close as we can get without blinding ourself from the brightness of the sun itself.
This method is rooted in a tradition which focuses on defining God by stating that which he is not.
So that when we say God is infinite,
We don't have a way of truly seeing what this means.
The most we can say is God is not finite.
This works in a three-step process.
We'll begin with a statement.
For example,
God is love.
We'll negate that statement by saying God is not love.
The negation is our admission that our limited human concepts of love do not fully encompass what God is.
And then we'll negate the negation.
God is not not love.
The third step is usually where the challenge is for a lot of people.
This is an act of humility.
It's a recognition that we still cannot fully know the ultimate,
Even by our acceptance or rejection of a certain label,
Even by claiming God is both X and not X.
Settle yourself briefly and bring your attention to your breath.
Notice the inhale and the rise of your chest or belly,
And the fall of your diaphragm as you exhale.
With your next inhale,
Think silently or say aloud,
God is love.
With your next exhale,
God is not love.
With your next inhale,
God is not not love.
Release these words and come back to your breath.
It's important that we focus on the immediate perception,
The feeling in our body and our spirit of what these words bring up and what this exercise does without analyzing it too much.
With your next breath,
God is Father.
With your next inhale,
God is not Father.
And with your exhale,
God is not not Father.
Release these words and come back to your breath again.
With the inhale,
God is Mother.
And with the exhale,
God is not Mother.
And with the next breath,
God is not not Mother.
Release these thoughts and come back to your breath.
God is peace.
God is not peace.
God is not not peace.
God is wisdom.
God is not wisdom.
God is not not wisdom.
God is here.
God is not here.
God is not not here.
Bring your attention back to your breath.
Give a few minutes thought to which statements or negations were the most difficult for you.
Feel free to speak with God about these feelings.
When you're ready,
Release your words and thoughts.
Spend some time with God enjoying wordless communion and new understandings or unknowings of the divine.
