The Destination is Here!

– Meister Eckhart

There is something that transcends the created being of the soul, not in contact with created things, which are nothing. . . . It is akin to the nature of deity, it is one in itself, and has naught in common with anything. It is a stumbling-block to many a learned cleric. It is a strange and desert place, and is rather nameless than possessed of a name, and is more unknown than it is known. If you could naught yourself for an instant, indeed I say less than an instant, you would possess all that this is in itself. But as long as you mind yourself or any thing at all, you know no more of God than my mouth knows of color or my eye of taste: so little do you know or discern what God is. (1)

Therefore I say, if a man turns away from self and from all created things, then — to the extent that you do this — you will attain to oneness and blessedness in your soul’s spark, which time and place never touched. . . . [I]t wants to get into its simple ground, into the silent desert into which no distinction ever peeped, of Father, Son or Holy Ghost. In the inmost part, where none is at home, there that light finds satisfaction, and there it is more than it is in itself: for this ground is an impartible stillness, motionless in itself, and all those receive life that live of themselves, being endowed with reason. (2)

It is in the purest thing that the soul is capable of, in the noblest part, the ground — indeed, in the very essence of the soul which is the soul’s most secret part. There is the silent “middle,” for no creature ever entered there and no image, nor has the soul there either activity or understanding, therefore she is not aware there of any image, whether of herself or of any other creature. . . .

In the soul’s essence there is no activity, for the powers she works with emanate from the ground of being. Yet in that ground is the silent “middle”: here is nothing but rest and celebration. . . .(3)

The soul in which God is to be born must drop away from time and time from her, she must soar aloft and stand gazing into this richness of God’s: there there is breadth without breadth, expanseless expanse, and there the soul knows all things, and knows them perfectly. . . . [This] is wider than the expanse of heaven. . . . In this expanse and in this richness of God’s the soul is aware, there she misses nothing and expects nothing.(4)

References
1. Meister Eckhart: Sermons & Treatises, trans. and ed. M. O’C. Walshe (Longmead, Shaftsbury, Dorset, Great Britain: Element Books, 1979), 1:144.
2. Sermons & Treatises, 2:105.
3. Sermons & Treatises, 1:3.
4. Sermons & Treatises, 1:216–217.