CAC faculty emerita Cynthia Bourgeault highlights that the primary quality of the kingdom of God is an experience of interabiding—one with God and with one another.
The hallmark of this [kingdom] awareness is that it sees no separation—not between God and humans, not between humans and other humans. And these are indeed Jesus’s two core teachings, underlying everything he says and does.
No separation between God and humans. When Jesus talks about this Oneness, he is not speaking in an Eastern sense about an equivalency of being, such that I am in and of myself divine. What he more has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other. His most beautiful symbol for this is … where he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Abide in me as I in you” [see John 15:4–5]. A few verses later he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love” [John 15:9]. While he does indeed claim that “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30) … he does not see this as an exclusive privilege but as something shared by all human beings. There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual interabiding that expresses the indivisible reality of divine love. We flow into God—and God into us—because it is the nature of love to flow. And as we give ourselves into one another in this fashion, the vine gives life and coherence to the branch while the branch makes visible what the vine is…. The whole and the part live together in mutual, loving reciprocity, each belonging to the other and dependent on the other to show forth the fullness of love. That’s Jesus’s vision of no separation between human and Divine.
No separation between human and human is an equally powerful notion—and equally challenging. One of the most familiar of Jesus’s teachings is “Love your neighbor as yourself” [Mark 12:31; Matthew 22:39]. But we almost always hear that wrong. We hear “Love your neighbor as much as yourself.”… If you listen closely to Jesus’s teaching however, there is no “as much as” in there. It’s just “Love your neighbor as yourself”—as a continuation of your very own being. It’s a complete seeing that your neighbor is you. There are not two individuals out there, one seeking to better herself at the price of the other, or to extend charity to the other; there are simply two cells of the one great Life. Each of them is equally precious and necessary. And as these two cells flow into one another, experiencing that one Life from the inside, they discover that “laying down one’s life for another” [John 15:13] is not a loss of one’s self but a vast expansion of it—because the indivisible reality of love is the only True Self.
Reference:
Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—a New Perspective on Christ and His Message (Shambhala Publications, 2008), 30–32.
Image credit and inspiration: Shivam Mistry, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, India, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. In a great and ever evolving mystery, the Divine pours into us as we empty ourselves.
Story from Our Community:
I am eighty years old and was raised Catholic. The work of the CAC led me to Cynthia Bourgeault and a local Wisdom group. Through Cynthia’s books and those she references, I am learning what I knew all along but that was not acceptable or even spoken of back then. For the first time I have a sincere interest in learning more about who Jesus really was and is. Here I am facing the last years of my life and finally finding a fit in my spirituality—one I am enthusiastic about, one that has meaning, and also makes sense to me.
— Mary F.
