Nothing but God
There is nothing but God, what else matters?
We become what we focus on. If we give all our attention and passion to making money, it is inevitable that we become greedy. If we dedicate our hearts to peace, we turn into people of peace. We become what we love, what becomes the center of our lives. In the Gospel of John, Jesus offers a prayer after the Last Supper. The first part of this prayer is our Gospel today. Jesus prays, “This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ…I revealed your name.” This line reveals how Jesus was centered on nothing but God.
Though there are others, I think one phrase can summarize the mysticism of Meister Eckhart: nothing but God. Eckhart is captivated by the vast and utterly fascinating Mystery of God. God is his absolute delight, and his delight is contagious. Throughout his sermons, the Meister invites us to center our hearts on nothing but God. This refreshes our faith. In our time so many use God to advance an agenda or a morality or a religion. Many people are invested in these projects rather than God. They do not seem to be interested in God as God but only in trying to control others, attempting to gain notoriety, or else to secure a fantastical sense of safety (usually by excluding people).
The God Eckhart focuses on, though, does not appear as the traditional God of the catechism. He preaches a wild and incomprehensible God who differs significantly from conventional theology. Eckhart does not present a God made up of thoughts and ideas, abstract and unrelated to our lives. Nor does he present an ideological God, one who validates political views of the right or left. Rather, Eckhart simply wants us to let God be God. His message is to let go of our ego self and its tendency to fashion a God according to its image. Then, at the same time, let God be who God is. But who or what is God? The divine is nothing, which means utterly transcendent and gloriously mysterious.
In Sermon 71, Eckhart preaches on a line from the Acts of the Apostles, “Paul rose from the ground and with eyes open he saw nothing.” Commenting on this line, he says, “It seems to me that this little word [i.e., nothing] has four meanings. One meaning is: When he got up from the ground, with eyes open he saw nothing, and the nothing was God; for when he saw God, he [Luke] calls this a nothing. The second: When he got up he saw nothing but God. The third: In all things he saw nothing but God. The fourth: When he saw God, he viewed all things as nothing.” Eckhart is saying God is nothing, there is only God, all things are the divine nothing, and without God nothing would exist.
How do we practice seeing nothing but God? First, Eckhart tells us to be aware of what we pay attention to in the course of a day. This practice of centering on nothing but God “demands hard work and great dedication and a clear perception of our inner life and an alert, true, thoughtful and authentic knowledge of what the mind is turned towards in the midst of people and things." We have to dedicate ourselves to seeing God alone, but we also have to analyze our minds to notice what steals our attention, what harasses our hearts, what captivates our passion. Then, take those moments as prime opportunities to re-center ourselves on nothing but God.
Second, in order to see nothing but God the Meister says to “delight in nothing but God." The desire for God alone determines our focus. This pure intention for God necessitates being in “the state of pure nothingness,” as Eckhart says in Sermon 103. To see nothing but God we must be nothing within, which means we are detached from our thinking and not paying any attention to ourselves. There is nothing but God for us when we want God alone. There is nothing but God for us when we "remain in a present now." There is nothing but God for us when we are nothing within. There is nothing but God for us when we are detached from our psychological world of thinking and emotions. In this right state of mind "all things become for you nothing but God, for in all things you have your eye only on God."
Therefore, Meister Eckhart invites us to enjoy nothing but God, and to subtract the ego from our consciousness. When we intend, seek, and are aware of God alone, we change. We let go of self-centeredness and grow in love. Joy, generosity, peace, kindness, and freedom appear spontaneously in our lives. The Risen Jesus is wholly transformed, transfigured, and alive in God. The life of the Resurrection is thoroughly God-centered.