Passion for Creation

“Where is he who has been born as king of the Jews?” (Mt. 2:2). Pay attention now to where this birth has taken place. “Where has he been born?” I state, however, as I have often stated, that this eternal birth takes place in the soul totally in the way it takes place in eternity, neither less nor more. For it is only one birth, and this birth takes place in the being and foundation of the soul.

Behold how questions are now raised. First, since God is spiritually in all things and dwells within them more inwardly and naturally than things do within themselves, and since God, wherever he is, must have effect, know himself, and declare his Word, the question is raised: What special characteristics does the soul have for this accomplishment of God more than other creatures endowed with reason in which God is also present? Heed the following explanation!

God is present, effective, and powerful in all things. He is only generative, however, in the soul. For all creatures are a footprint of God, but the soul is formed like God, according to its nature. This form must be adorned and completed through this birth. For this accomplishment and this birth no creature is more receptive than the soul. Truly, whatever perfection is to enter the soul, be it divine, unique light or grace or happiness, all of it must come into the soul of a necessity through this birth and in no other way. Wait only for this birth within yourself, and you will discover all blessing and all consolation, all bliss, all being, and all truth. If you neglect this, you will neglect dl blessing and all happiness. Whatever enters you in this brings to you pure being and constancy. Whatever you seek or love beyond this, however, will spoil, take it as you will and where you will. All of it will spoil. On the other hand, this thing alone gives being; everything else will spoil. In this birth, however, you will participate in the divine influence and all his gifts. Creatures in whom God’s image does not exist do not become receptive to it, for the soul’s image belongs especially to this eternal birth, which quite uniquely especially takes place within the soul, and is accomplished by the Father in the soul’s foundation and its most spiritual place. This is the place where no image has ever shed its light and into which no power has ever stolen a glance.

The second question is as follows. Since the effect of this birth takes place in the being and foundation of the soul, it takes place just as much in a sinner as in a good person. What grace or advantage is there in it for me? Does this mean that the foundation of nature is in both of them the same, and is the nobility of nature preserved even in those who are in hell?

Pay heed to this explanation. It is a characteristic of this birth always to take the lead with new light. It always brings a bright light into the soul, for it is a characteristic of goodness that it must be poured out wherever it is. In this birth God infuses himself into the soul with light in such a way that the light becomes so abounding in the soul’s being and foundation that it pushes out and overflows into the powers as well as into the external person. This is what happened to Paul when God touched him on the road with his light and spoke to him. A reflection of the light was externally visible so that all his fellow travelers saw it, and it surrounded Paul as light surrounds the saints (Ac. 9:3). Now the excess of light that is in the soul’s foundation overflows into the body, which as a result becomes full of brightness. Sinners, however, cannot receive any of this, nor are they worthy of it because they are filled with sin and evil, which is called “darkness.” For this reason it is said: “The darkness receives and does not understand the light” (Jn. 1:5). The blame for this is that the ways along which this light is to enter are burdened and blocked with falseness and darkness. Light and darkness cannot be together, nor can God and a creature. If God enters, the creature must at the same time go out. People become aware, of course, of this light. Every time they turn to God, a light at once shines and gleams within them and causes them to know what they are to do and give up, as well as many other good instructions concerning which they had previously known and understood nothing.

“Whence and how do you know this?” Look and pay attention! Your heart is often touched and turned away from the world. How could this take place unless through that illumination? It takes place so gently and pleasantly that everything that is not God or divine grieves you. You are attracted to God, and you become aware of many good admonitions and still do not know from where they come to you. In no case does this inner inclination come from either creatures or any kind of an indication from them, for what a creature indicates or accomplishes always comes from outside itself. But the foundation alone is touched by this deed, and the more unencumbered you keep yourself, the more light and clarity of vision you will discover. Therefore, people have only gone astray because they have right at the beginning gone out of this foundation and have wanted to cling too much to externals. Saint Augustine says: “There are many who have sought light and truth, but always only outside, where they did not exist.” On this account they end up so far outside that they never come home again or inside again. Thus they have not found the truth. For truth is inside in the foundation and not outside. Let those who wish to find light and insight into all truth look out and pay attention to this birth within themselves and within their foundation. Then all the powers as well as the inner person will be illuminated. For as soon as God touches the inner foundation with the truth, light is cast into the powers, and people can at times accomplish more than anyone else can teach them.

Thus says the prophet: “I have gained knowledge over all who have ever taught me” (cf. Pr. 1:16). Understand also that be-cause this light cannot shine and give light within sinners, this birth could not possibly take place within them. This birth cannot exist along with the darkness of sin, even though it does not occur in the powers but rather in the soul’s being and foundation.

Now an additional question is raised. What difference does it make that God the Father only generates in the soul’s being and foundation, not in the powers themselves? What has their service to do with the fact that they are to remain idle and take a rest? Why is it necessary that the act of generation should not take place at all in the powers? This is a good question. Now pay attention to the following explanation:

Every creature carries on its activity for the purpose of a goal. The goal is always the first in intention and the last in execution. In the same way, God aims at a quite blissful goal, which is himself, so that he can bring the soul with all its powers to this goal, namely, himself. For this reason God accomplishes all his deeds; for this reason the Father generates his Son in the soul so that all the powers of the soul will come to this goal. He traces everything that is in the soul and invites all of it to this hospitality and to this celebration. The soul, however, has extended and scattered itself through its powers outside itself, each power through its own activity: the power of seeing into the eye, the power of hearing into the ear, the power of taste into the tongue. As a result, the soul’s inner powers for effective deeds are all the weaker, for every divided power is incomplete. If the soul wishes to be effective inside itself, it must recall all its powers and gather them together from all the scattered things to an internal activity.

Saint Augustine says: “The soul is more in the place where it loves than in the place where it gives life to the body” Let’s make a comparison. A pagan scholar who was devoted to the science of arithmetic concentrated all his powers on it He sat at his hearth, making calculations and exploring this science. Then someone came by and brandished a sword, not knowing who the scholar was, and exclaimed: “Tell me right away what your name is, or I’ll kill you!” The scholar was so engrossed with himself that he neither saw nor heard his enemy. He was unable to pay attention to what the other wanted or to realize that he had only to open his mouth just far enough to say: “My name is so and so.” After the enemy screamed loudly and fiercely at him, and he still did not answer, his enemy cut his head off. This took place in pursuit of one of the natural sciences. How much more should we remove ourselves from all things and gather all our powers in order to look at and know the unique, immeasurable, uncreated truth! For this purpose, gather up all your senses, all your powers, your whole reason, and your whole memory. Direct all these things to that foundation where this treasure lies hidden. If this takes place, you should understand that you must divest yourself of all other accomplishments and arrive at ignorance if you wish to find this treasure.

Here another question is raised. Would it not be more worthwhile if each power kept its own deed, and if one power did not hamper the other in its deeds, and also if it did not hamper God in his deeds? Can there not be in me some kind of natural knowledge that does not have a hindering effect, just as God knows all things without hindrance, and just as the saints also know them? This is a useful question. Pay attention now to the following explanation!

The saints see in God only a single image, and in this image they know all things. Indeed, God himself looks thus into himself, and knows himself thus in all things. He has no need to turn from one thing to another, as we must do. If it could be so in this earthly life that we at all times might have a mirror before us in which we in a single moment could see all things, and could know them in a single image, neither deed nor knowledge would be a hindrance for us. Since we have to turn, however, from one thing to another, there can be for us no departure from the one without a hindrance of the other. For the soul is so closely tied to the powers that it must flow where they are flowing. This is because in all deeds that the powers accomplish, the soul has to be a part—and, indeed, with dedication. Otherwise, the powers could not have any effect at all. If the soul flows off, then, with its dedication into external deeds, it must of necessity be all the weaker spiritually in its inner effect. For God wishes to have, and has to have, an unencumbered, untroubled, and free soul for this birth, a soul in which there is nothing but him alone, a soul that looks out for nothing and no one but for him alone. Christ spoke in this sense when he said: “Whoever loves something other than me and tenderly loves father or mother and many other things is not worthy of me. I have not come on earth to bring peace but a sword in that I cut off all things and separate sister, brother, mother, child, and the friend who truly is your enemy. For the one who is close to you is your enemy” (Mt. 10:34–36). If your eye wishes to see all things and your ear to hear all things and your heart to ponder all things, your soul must truly be dispersed in all these things.

Therefore a master of the spiritual life says: “If people are to accomplish a spiritual deed, they must collect all their powers, as if into a corner of their souls, and conceal themselves from all images and forms.” Then they can accomplish their deed. In this connection they must arrive at forgetfulness and unself-consciousness. Wherever this Word is to be heard, it must occur in stillness and in silence. We cannot be of greater service to this Word than through stillness and silence. There we can hear it and understand it correctly, in that state of unknowing. Where we know nothing, it becomes apparent and reveals itself.

Now another question is raised. You might say, “Sir, you are placing all our salvation in ignorance.” This sounds wrong. God created human beings so that they could have knowledge. As the prophet says: “Lord, make them knowledgeable!” (cf. Tb. 13:4). Where there is ignorance, there is a defect and emptiness. This is the way an animal-like person is, an ape or a fool! This is true as long as the person persists in this ignorance. Meanwhile, we must come here to a transformed knowledge. At the same time, this ignorance should not come from ignorance; instead, from knowledge we must come to a state of ignorance. Then we shall become knowledgeable with the divine knowledge, and then our ignorance will be ennobled and adorned by supernatural knowledge. And in this situation where we are suffering, we are more perfect than if we were accomplishing deeds. Therefore, a master of the spiritual life says that the power of hearing is much more noble than the power of sight. For we learn more wisdom through our sense of hearing than our sense of sight, and we live more in wisdom through our hearing. Let’s consider the following incident involving a pagan scholar. As he lay on his deathbed, his disciple spoke in his presence of a higher science. He raised up his head, even though he was dying, listened to him, and said: “Oh, let me learn only about this science, and I shall have eternal joy in it” Listening brings more inside us, while seeing directs us more to external things; at least this is the case for the activity of seeing itself. On this account, we shall be much happier in the eternal life thanks to our hearing than to our sight. For the event of hearing the eternal Word is within me while the act of seeing departs from me. I undergo hearing, but I accomplish seeing.

Our happiness, however, does not lie in our accomplishments but rather in the fact that we undergo God. For to the same ex-tent that God is more noble than a creature, God’s accomplishment is more noble than mine. Indeed, God in his immeasurable love has placed our happiness in our capacity to undergo. For we undergo more than we accomplish, and we receive a good deal more than we give. Every gift, however, benefits our receptivity for a new gift and, indeed, for a greater gift. Every divine gift increases our receptivity and longing to receive what is higher and greater. For this reason, many masters of the spiritual life say that in this the soul is equal in birth to God. For to the extent that God is boundless in his giving, the soul is equally boundless in taking and receiving. Just as God is omnipotent in his deeds, the soul is just as profound in its capacity to receive. For this reason it is transformed, with and in God. God has to accomplish deeds while the soul has to receive. He has to know and love himself in the soul, while the soul has to know with his knowledge and love with his love. For this reason, it is much happier through God’s interests than through its own. Similarly, its happiness is placed more in his accomplishment than in its own.

The disciples of Saint Dionysius asked him why Timotheus surpassed all of them in perfection. Dionysius replied: “Timotheus is a man who undergoes God.” Whoever has a clear understanding of this point would surpass all others.

Thus your ignorance is not a defect but your highest perfection, and your undergoing is thus your highest accomplishment. In this way you have to divest yourself of all your activities and bring all your powers to silence if you really wish to experience this birth within yourself. If you wish to find the newborn King, you must outrun and cast behind you everything else you may find.

May he who became a human child so that we could become God’s children help us to outrun and put aside everything that does not please this newborn King! Amen.

COMMENTARY: Finding the Treasure That Ignorance Brings/How Knowledge Precedes True Ignorance and How True Ignorance Transforms Knowledge/The Need for Stillness and Silence/How the Soul, Alone of All Creatures, Is Generative Like God Is

In the previous sermon Eckhart asked when the union of God and people takes place and his response was that it takes place in a “single moment” of time or of what might be called timeless time or ecstasy. Like a flash of lightning, enlightenment takes place. In this sermon Eckhart develops the same basic theme of the kind of knowing that takes place when we let go of all things. This knowing he calls in this sermon an arrival at forgetfulness and ignorance, a knowing nothing, an internal activity that gathers together all the soul’s powers that have been scattered about outside. Letting go allows nothingness to be, as he says elsewhere. “Letting go borders so closely on nothing that between perfect letting go and nothingness there can be nothing.”¹

In commenting on a previous sermon (number Fifteen), we traced Eckhart’s use of the term Abgeschiedenheit to an expression of Paul’s in his letter to the Romans. In the present sermon Eckhart reveals another biblical source for his use of that term. He interpolates Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel. In the Gospel we read: “I have not come on earth to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father . . .” But Eckhart interjects his interpretation when he says in the present sermon: “I have not come on earth to bring peace but a sword in that I cut off all things and separate sister, brother . . .” The words he interjects are abschneiden and abscheiden, root words of Abgeschie-denheit, letting go. Thus Eckhart looks on letting go as a sort of sword that cuts us off from other creatures. And he derives his concept of letting go from Paul and from Jesus’ sayings as reported in Romans and the Gospel of Matthew. The aim of letting go of knowledge is, in fact, nothingness. “What is the object of pure letting go? I answer that neither this nor that is the object of pure letting go. It aims at a mere nothing and I will tell you why: pure letting go aims at the highest goal in which God can work entirely according to his will.”² Only emptiness allows God’s fullness to take place. “When the heart that has let go takes the highest aim, it has to be toward the nothing, because in this there is the greatest receptivity.”³

In the present sermon, speaking from the text in Matthew’s Gospel where the Wise Men are in search of the infant King of the Jews, Eckhart asks: Where does this union of God and people take place? The text reads:

After Jesus had been born at Bethlehem in Judaea during the reign of King Herod, some wise men came to Jerusalem from the east. “Where is this infant King of the Jews?” they asked. “We saw his star as it rose and have come to do him homage.” (Mt. 2:1–2)

Eckhart responds: Pay attention now to where this birth has taken place . . . this eternal birth takes place in the soul totally in the way it takes place in eternity, neither less nor more. And, as in the previous sermon he said the union was one single moment and not two, so here he declares that the place is not two places, but one sacred place or space. It is only one birth, and this birth takes place in the being and foundation of the soul. Now he names this place that is more than a place and has become the most sacred of spaces. It is the being and foundation of the soul. It is there, just as much as in Bethlehem, that the King of the Jews is born. The person is truly the kingdom of God, as we saw in Sermon Nine, and Bethlehem, the place for the birth of the new creation, where God’s birth is taking place. Do not look to institutions for the real incarnations of God, Eckhart is subtly declaring, but look to the being and foundation of the soul. We are the new Bethlehem. Wise men and wise women search here for the divinity in our midst.

How is this possible? It is because the soul is a boundless soul, as oblivious of time and place and as without boundaries as God is. The soul is as omnipotent in its capacity to receive as God is to give. In our let-, ting go we experience this bigness and we create a void that God must enter into. God has to accomplish deeds while the soul has to endure. “Letting go forces God to love me.”⁴ For, wherever God is . . . he must declare his Word. In our sinking into unknowing, we are known by God and we begin to know all things. To do this we need to collect all our powers and conceal ourselves from all images and forms. It is not that seeing things or acting on things is bad—God sees all things, and saints do, but they see them in the unity that they are or in a single image. We, however, see things piecemeal and in a fragmented way and so we need to let go of such piecemeal consciousness in order to see things in the whole in which they truly are: in their inness in God and God’s inness in them, for God is spiritually in all things and dwells with them more inwardly and naturally than things do within themselves. As Schürmann comments.- Eckharfs “doctrine must not be reduced to a bewildered discrediting of the things that envelop our existence. Rather, it aims at an education of seeing.”⁵ The goal is to look at and know the unique, immeasurable, uncreated truthl This is a treasure that lies hidden. To arrive there we need to pass through the via negative*, wherein we gather up all our senses, all our powers, our whole reason, and our whole memory. Then we direct all these things to that foundation of being where the treasure lies. What is needed is utter concentration such as the scholar had whose head was cut off. Concentration on one thing, for example, God, is an ignorance of all other things. Arrive at ignorance if you wish to find this treasure. The foundation of the soul and the foundation of being do not yield their secrets to the noisy, busy, and superficially compulsive goings-on of the world. They are laid open to those who know silence and stillness, ignorance and nothing.

Wherever this Word is to be heard, it must occur in stillness and in silence. We cannot be of greater service to this Word than through stillness and silence. There we can hear it and understand it correctly, in that state of unknowing. Where we know nothing, it becomes apparent and reveals itself.

To explore our deepest depths, the unknown unconscious of the vortex that is our spirit, we need to listen. “Faith comes through hearing,” says Paul, and Eckhart insists that we learn more wisdom through our sense of hearing than our sense of sight, and we live more in wisdom through our hearing. Biblical scholar Thorleif Boman points out how the Jewish way to experience reality is primarily through hearing, while the Greek way is primarily through sight.⁶ In another sermon Eckhart elaborates on the need for silence at our depths:

The Word lies hidden in the soul in such a way that one does not know it or hear it. Unless room is made in the ground of hearing, it cannot be heard; indeed, all voices and sounds must go out, and there must be absolute silence there and stillness.⁷

The ground of the soul needs to meet the ground of hearing in the stillness that encompasses all grounding. I listen to what is deepest within me, but I see what is outside me. The event of hearing the eternal Word is within me, while the act of seeing departs from me. I undergo hearing, but I accomplish seeing.

Eckhart is intent on contrasting inner and outer knowledge, which corresponds to what we saw in Sermons Two and Three as the difference between the inner and outer person. The via negativa is a journey to inner stillness and ignorance and in Eckhart’s theology it is parallel to Jesus’ story of the seed dying. For in speaking of the need of the soul to be unencumbered, untroubled, and free so that God can be born there, he invokes the following text from Matthew’s Gospel, included in its fuller pericope:

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be those of his own household.

“Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mt. 10:37–39)

This dialectical and paradoxical way of finding life from losing it is the way Eckhart is thinking of the via negativa. Elsewhere, Eckhart distinguishes two kinds of knowledge, “evening knowledge” and “morning knowledge.” The former is “when we know a creature in its own essence.” In this way of seeing creatures we see “in images of multiple difference.” In other words, such outer knowledge is fragmented. Morning knowledge, however, is a unifying and synthetic knowledge that “knows a creature in God.” By such knowledge “we see a creature without all differences, deprived of all images and stripped of all similarity in the one who is God himself.”⁸ Eckhart’s goal in the way of ignorance is that we might see creatures in God, which is how, in fact, they are, as we saw in Path One.

Thus Eckhart takes great pains in this sermon, as he does on numerous occasions, that he not be misunderstood when he says ignorance is a good thing. Knowledge is a good thing in Eckhart’s estimation; “even the knowledge of evil things is good,” he declares.⁹ He was most likely the finest intellect with the best education of any philosopher or theologian of his century. And so he insists in the present sermon that this ignorance should not come from ignorance; instead, from knowledge we must come to a state of ignorance. In other words, we need to have something to let go of, before we dare let go! The via negativa presumes an intellectual life, a thinking and vital consciousness that already relates deeply to creation. It presumes Path One. This is an extremely important point to make, as the entire history of spirituality since Eckhart’s condemnation forgot it time and time again. All sentimental spiritualities are anti-intellectual, as are all sentimentalists, Anne Douglas points out.¹⁰ Spiritualists are notorious for wanting to jump into the via negativa or into Eckhart’s Path Two without having imbibed of creation itself or Path One. Eckhart roundly condemns such foolishness. He addresses anti-intellectualism head-on as a theological issue of faith, namely, that God has made us to know:

You might say, “Sir, you are placing all our salvation in ignorance.” This sounds wrong. God created human beings so that they could have knowledge. As the prophet says, “Lord, make them knowledgeable!” Where there is ignorance, there is a defect and emptiness. This is the way an animal-like person is, an ape or a fool!

And so Eckhart invents a term for the kind of knowledge he is talking about. He is talking about our coming to a transformed knowledge, and one does this by experiencing a transformed ignorance, that is, a willful ignorance that comes offer knowledge and does not precede it. In transformed knowledge we become knowledgeable with the divine knowledge and our ignorance becomes ennobled and adorned by supernatural knowledge. In the previous sermon, Eckhart went out of his way to indicate that letting go did not mean putting down the body or the senses; so in this sermon he is being deliberately explicit about how this way of ignorance or letting go of intellect on no account is to be confused with putting down knowledge. Would that fundamentalist spiritualist theologians from the fifteenth century (I am thinking of Thomas à Kempis, for example) right up to today had heeded this important observation from Eckhart! Instead, what has often passed as spirituality since Eckhart’s condemnation has been an enshrining of the via negativa and an “ascetic theology” (which is a term invented in the seventeenth century) that utterly ignores creation and Path One of Eckhart’s spiritual journey.¹¹ After all, as we saw in the previous sermon and as Eckhart alludes to in this one, the purpose of any traveling down the via negativa at all is that we might see creatures as God sees them. This, he has said, is the ultimate test of whether we have traveled that route rightly or not. The purpose of developing the inner person in Eckhart’s view is not that people will be introverted and withdrawn from outside activities—this will be very clear as we study Paths Three and Four—but that our outer activities might truly operate from our inner depths and be worthy of our divine origins. The via negativa is not meant to escape the world but to deepen our relationship to the world. It is meant to contribute to our transformation of the world, but to do this we need also to transform the very way we see the world. Thus Eckhart gives an analogy of a door and a hinge as standing for the outer and the inner person:

However much our Lady lamented and whatever other things she said, she was always in her inmost heart in a state of immovable letting go. Let us take an analogy of this. A door opens and shuts on a hinge. Now if I compare the wood of the door to the outward person, I can compare the hinge to the inner person. When the door opens or closes, the outer boards move to and fro, but the hinge remains immovable in one place and it does not budge at all as a result. So it is also here, if you only know how to act rightly.¹²

“How to act rightly”—there is Eckhart’s intention In taking us on this journey of blessed ignorance. He wants to get our hinge so well grounded in the foundation that is our soul and being that our swinging may be steady and sturdy and useful.

In inviting us to take the journey that is the via negativa, Eckhart urges us not to be afraid of the dark. After all, Paul’s very conversion, as reported in Acts 9, was accompanied by his first going blind. While light is good and is a sign of life, and while birth needs light, still darkness can be a means to seeing the light more fully. By darkness our knowledge can be transformed. After all, in the very depths of the soul’s foundation and in its most spiritual place . . . no image has ever shed its light. We need to make contact with that deep, dark ground. For what is at stake is the birth of a new light that will accompany a new creation. God brings this new light, with the result that even our body will become full of brightness. Transformed and translucent, enlightened through and through, from soul’s ground to body’s activities—there is the conversion or transformation that Eckhart envisions for us.

It is a characteristic of this birth always to take the lead with new light. It always brings a bright light into the soul, for it is a characteristic of goodness that it must be poured out wherever it is. In this birth God infuses himself into the soul with light in such a way that the light becomes so abounding in the soul’s being and foundation that it pushes out and overflows into the powers as well as into the external person.

Our conversion or transformation of knowledge—like Paul’s—will be accompanied by our being touched by God with a divine light. To bolster our courage in face of the darkness that precedes conversion and transformation, Eckhart distinguishes this kind of divine darkness from a darkness that burdens and blocks the light. Because light and darkness cannot be together, something must give when they encounter each other. One kind of darkness—that caused by evil and sin—blocks the light. The other kind, that of letting go, makes room for the light and allows transformation to take over. When God enters this kind of darkness, the creature must at the same time go out. Eckhart is suggesting that true evil prevents our letting go. It always seeks to control. Thus God cannot enter there. People driven in this way succumb to externals and superficialities and never come home again to their divine origin. They end up so far outside that they never come home again or inside again. Thus they have not found the truth. For truth is inside in the foundation and not outside. Eckhart’s words to such people give no hint of moralizing or condemning but rather they glisten with a kind of sadness, for such people have simply not found the truth.

Those who have learned to let go and let be and have become more and more transformed to the way all is in God and God is in all are also people who have learned to receive. In the previous sermon Eckhart defined the new knowledge as a wonderful capacity for sensitivity and receptivity. He develops this theme further in this sermon where we are told that our receptivity or our undergoing is our highest accomplishment. We need to develop our capacity to receive and not only our capacity to give. And in receiving there are no limits. Every gift benefits our receptivity for a new gift and, indeed, for a greater gift. Every divine gift increases our receptivity and longing to receive what is higher and greater. Gift consciousness is the result of love of creation and of new creation. “Thank you” is the ultimate prayer, as we saw in Sermon Eight. We are divine in our capacity to receive gifts and ever new ones. Just as God is omnipotent in his deeds, the soul is just as profound in its capacity to receive. For this reason it is transformed, with and in God. It is our capacity to receive that ultimately allows us to be transformed. This capacity is what is learned in letting go and letting be. And what does this transformation consist of, what do we become by it? We actually begin to know with God’s knowledge and love with God’s love. Behold the rewards of letting go.