This is a personal conversation that I will allow you to eavesdrop in on.
What keeps me from being with people?
My daughter came home late last night.
She was drunk.
She apologized.
She meant not to drink while she was home with us, but she got carried away with this guy, and bla, bla, bla.
I noticed right off my inability to be with her.
I held judgments toward her in my heart. My thoughts went along this line of thinking.
“You probably let the guy you were with touch you in ways I would consider inappropriate”.
“You are what the Apostle Paul was referring to by ‘silly women laden with sin‘. “
Needless to say, I chose my judgment of her, over her. Because of this attachment, I could not be with her.
The Metal Phase is associated with the direction West, the setting sun, and the planet Venus. It is a reminder that all have fallen, and there is none that are righteous. “All we like sheep have gone astray”, We have nothing to boast of. It is a realm of discarding attachments and being prepared to go through the eye of the needle. Inside this realm, all attachments previously considered by us to be the infallible truth, crumble before us and are transformed into mere viewpoints. All turns to vanity. Inside this realm we discover that all things fail except that which we are: LOVE. We discover that the only thing that can pass through the eye of the needle is LOVE. All else is discarded.
Once having passed through the eye we find our being in whatever calling God creates us to be that truly is inspiring. Wants and needs disappear inside of inspiration. Wants and needs are transformed into inspiration. This is the realm where we disappear inside an inspiring cause that is much bigger and grander than anything we ever imagined. We also discover others in ways never dreamed of.
Before passing through the eye of the needle, we experience always in our relating with intimate others, a persistent viewpoint of ourselves so much “in the way” that true intimacy with that person is cluttered and stifled. Inside the Metal Realm having passed to the other side of the needle we find the space for intimacy to thrive. Here there is a freedom where you are there without me getting in the way. This is where purity is experienced, for there is no righteousness here. There is no excelling. There is no pride. There is no triumph. There is no success. I simply am not there. You simply are not there. But we experience the purity that we are. We experience the Godliness that is us without giving space to the clutter of our “stuff”. We become a clearing, a cause, a space for the miraculous to be drawn to. This is a clearing of unbounded energy, and excitement. Although not there, Inside this realm we have the profound privilege to be in on the experience of being seen as we are seen and known as we are known.!
Blockages to this Heavenly Memory are maintained by the act of exalting ourselves in our personal righteousness and standing before God. Our standing before God is more important than being with our brother, spouse, or child in their condition which we have self-righteously called errant and sinful. There is an inability to connect and be with another and their so called “filth”. We are unable to descend to the depths with another, and be with them where they are at. We are always hopeful and expectant that they will rise to us, which thing they seldom if ever do. We can’t give space to their “garbage” which we have judged to be so, and still treat them as God, because we cannot give up our attachment to our exalted station and need to be right. We may be clean and sterile before God, but we find ourselves in a very lonely place because of that attachment which we have labeled as clean and unclean.
