"ONE MINUS ONE EQUALS EVERYTHING" ...from The Light Tree Journal...

   When I went to school, I learned that one minus one equals nothing. Like one apple take away one apple, was no apple. For surely one thing, minus one thing, was no thing? 

   Like everyone else I went through life believing that this was the only reality there was; and certainly in Earthly life that is the only one there is.  I knew that if I had something, and then, should I find it taken away from me, I had nothing, that was normal; even though that didn’t feel too good! To have some nice thing, and then discover that that nice thing was being removed from me, it left me uncomfortable inside. And I looked at that feeling; and I decided that it wasn’t good; no, not at all!

   But when I began to believe in God I come across heavenly life; and I began it with the inescapable truth that God is Good, and therefore everything he does must be good, too. So, if I should come across something that didn’t feel good to me, then I would know that that couldn’t be of God, because God is Good; and because he is good, he wouldn’t take, he would give! So, where and when I came across a contradiction of his Good-ness, such as something being removed from me, or taken from me…ah! …enter an anomaly! …and confusion! How could that be, God? God wouldn’t do that! And owing to the natural tendency of my human nature under such circumstances, I would distance myself and then I would even throw the baby out, with the proverbial bathwater! I have proof! God is, not good! And this thing was proof! Now I had a legitimate reason to reject him. Well, at least, in some measure! And I felt better!
   Oh, I would have had even more proof, if I had read that dreadful sentence of his which reads, ‘whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.’ What…? God’s going to take away from me – who hasn’t got anything – everything that I have? Then even more did I feel there was something about God that was dreadfully wrong somewhere. Why, it smelled of cheating! God was being mean and stingy! More, he was being unjust; and even cruel!  I could not comprehend that anyone could possibly be deemed good, and fair, and right, in saying, ‘he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath!’ It was preposterous!
   In a way I was right. I was right in my indignation. Because in the Heavenly realm, of course God is all gorgeously Good, and all perfectly Perfect.  For if God was good then he was always good, in or under all circumstances. So, being told that ONE MINUS ONE EQUALED EVERYTHING…when I was dismayed that suddenly I had more like NOTHING, as I was being minus-ed, something being taken from me – well, that wouldn’t help me very much, would it? How could that possibly be, I asked myself? How could I have something, and then when it was being taken away, I had everything? That was just plain crazy. That was nonsense.
   Fortunately I calmed down after a bit; and even enough to open up to this mysteriously threatening thing. And I thought if I should really want to understand this curious conundrum, then I might as well let slip into my brain a thought. ‘What on earth’s the ‘hath,’ and the ‘hath not,’ anyway? Have, or have not …what?’ Later, when I used the key of knowledge to unlock it, I found out the answer. It’s easy. It’s LIFE! The ‘hath’ it was best to ‘have’ was, life!
   Life is not what I think it is. It is two things. One is being alive on the inside; and the other is being alive on the outside, which was only a shadow of it. So, if I were the former, I ‘hath;’ and if I were the later, I ‘hath not.’  Simple.
   [Now, dear reader, please don’t get cross! You will see how this pans out in a minute, if you just hang in here, and keep reading. You will soon see how very ingenious, and wise and fair it is; and give poor old God a good slap on the back. You’ll find out, he is a dear chap really, if you’ll only give him a chance. (This is my professor’s’ voice sneaking in! Oh, and further down, you might find young Anna’s voice popping in, too; thought I’d better tell you, so you ‘get it!’ J )]
   Now, guess what, if I have lovely bananas, I have lovely bananas? Yes? And if I have nice carrots, I have nice carrots? Yes? So, if I have nice life, I have nice ‘life-things;’ and if I have lovely not-life, I have lovely ‘not-life-things.’ Simple. Like with like: affinity with affinity; and you always get what you want. (If you want life you can, have it. It is free. Only you have just got to be willing to lose your first one, first. For this kind of life is one of those second things that you have to ask for, because you weren’t born with it the first time: for your first eyes, saw first things; only your second eyes could see second things. Oh, it is so easy, it is easy to miss.)
   Next. Well, I had already discovered that it was true that I am one thing, and God, Altogether Other. I am human, and God isn’t. Well, not all ordinarily, like me. So, where I understand the things of God in my humanness, I am not where he is. He is Spirit, so only in spirit can I truly be with him, where he is; and only the kinds of things that are, there, could he give me. The things that are man’s man can give me. But the things that are God’s only God can give me. ‘Just like nobody else can give you me, can they?’ So only in whatsoever he gives me of his life, can there possibly be any of his life in me! I couldn’t eat life, where there wasn’t any to start with! ‘...Just like I can’t eat carrots and bananas, if I haven’t got any can, I?  If I haven’t got any, I haven’t got any. Simple.’ Of man, I receive man’s things, human things; and of God I receive God’s things, heavenly things. It’s just that, easy. Inanimate knowledge fits with an inanimate god; and living knowing with a living God; and the difference between them, is infinitely vast, and vastly infinite, and absolutely absolute.
   Now, getting back to the ‘haths,’ and the ‘hath nots.’ A clue is given in the last phrase of another version of that same uncomfortable sentence. The word ‘seemeth’ is added. ‘Whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.’ So now this puzzling sentence opens up to me; and it reads: Whosoever has life, to him shall be given more of it; (even tons of it!) and whosoever has not life, from him shall be taken even that which seems to him to be life, because it’s not. ‘And you wouldn’t want God not to take that from you, if’n you knew that what you had wasn’t going to get you nowhere, would you?’
   He loves me. So why would he leave me without life when he knows that that cannot bring me any lasting happiness? He wouldn’t do that! God is not, a meany! God is Good. So he made my shadows-of-life to be taken away by life, in order to leave me with just life that I might be with him where he lives, and enjoy him forever.
   So, I should be glad that from me shall be taken even that which, I seem to have of life, which isn’t life. ‘You wouldn’t want to be left dead in a dead shadowland, when all the while you could be found living in a living Everland now, would you? Them ‘seeming-things,’ what people seem to have, is nice fat pockets of knowledge about God; but it’s useless, cos it ain’t him. And if’n it’s not him, himself, it’s not him, is it?’ ...the having of which, is everything.
   There is another way of looking at it. The ‘haths’ have light; and the ‘hath nots’ have not light. Just like life. Light is not what I think it is. There are two lights.
   The ‘hath’ light feels like nothing, because it is God’s light, the real light which always comes in personal self awareness: and so it is effective light. The ‘hath not’ light feels like something, because it is my light, the seeming light which does not come as personal self awareness: and so it’s ineffective light: only the outsides of knowledge which cannot effect change against itself. It cannot disagree with itself: it cannot cross itself out! It may be nice knowledge about that, but it does not actually do it! And so, no ‘crossing out,’ no being on the other side; no taking away, no being on the other side of the mirror. And this ineffective seeming light will pale into insignificance, and be seen as nothing – taken away – wherever the true light shines.
   Why? Because one of the lights makes God small, and the other makes him big. Wherever seeming light is, it makes him shrink; and wherever true light is, it makes him bigger. Because wherever I understand God I diminish him, and I get bigger in my own estimation because I think I understand him. But wherever I understand myself, I am diminished, and God grows in size in my estimation, because I know I don’t understand him.
   The seeming light makes me think I understand God, and the true light makes me understand me. Wherever I think I understand God I diminish his size. Unknowingly, I belittle him; for he becomes for me an understandable and usable Item, amongst other understandable and useful items. But truly, where I think I understand him, I don’t. Where I think I have a grasp on him, I haven’t one on me! And where I have him, in my own image I’m not in his! Taken away, is my seeming light, by the true light!
   I went grocery shopping. When I got home, and I was putting away the things on their shelves in the pantry, I saw something. Cornflakes. They come in a cardboard box. Marmalade. That came in a jar. Margarine; in a plastic tub. Tomato paste, in a tube; and baked beans they were in a tin…all the food from a shop, comes in packages! And I thought. I am so used to things being in packages that I easily slip into thinking that ‘God food’ may be similarly packaged! (Why, there are even ‘God shops’ to buy and sell him in!) So I saw how I got used to thinking that a package of ‘God-stuff’ would gain me more of God. Only it didn’t. It gained me only more packages of ‘God-stuff.’ Packages? Yes. They are those understandable entities of God. Like knowing he is ‘this,’ and ‘that,’ and ‘the other;’ the knowing of which, made me something. But where I have them, I haven’t him: and I ‘hath not.’
   In what I have of usable packages of God he is diminished by their contents, and I have not because I have not God. I think I have something of him, but all I actually ‘have’ is really nothing; and so it can be truly said to have been ‘taken away’ because it didn’t have him to begin with.  But God isn’t being mean in that; or stingy, or cruel, or horrible. He wasn’t being unfair in that. It is just the way things are. Like the law of gravity I cannot stop it because I might not agree with it. It just is; regardless. And just, as certain, I know that staying in my Earthly understandings will not give me Heavenly understandings. The two do not ‘compute.’ They are totally, different. They do not, mix. (‘...Like how oil and water don’t mix...even when I shake them up! I tried it...!’)
   The good thing is, that where I ‘hath’ of him, there I can ‘have’ more of the same; being as I am in the same realm as him. And the more I lose there, of what really isn’t, ‘have’ there more truly, what really is, more of him. Why, even the tiniest bit of an inside truly ‘having’ him was vastly larger than any outside ‘not-truly-having’ him. So, large, in fact, that though it might seem to me, that I have nothing, (because at first it feels like having nothing in my middle,) my nothing gets so filled up full to bursting with the all of God, that it becomes, everything. Because the insides of God are larger than his outsides.
   But if I will insist on having packaged ‘God-stuff,’ though all the while I wanted the actual stuff of him, which I can’t buy in any ‘God shop,’ I will still keep on getting my wires crossed. I will keep on finding that ‘I’ am crossed out; which I will not find to be pure delight: being as I am still ‘the wrong way round.’ And so, I won’t find it feel too good to me; no, not at all! So, of course, at first, I will get it wrong; and I will find God to be a big bad Meany unfair, and unjust!
   Well now, I did mention that you would soon find out the opposite of that; and that God is being good, and kind, in this ‘taking away’ business, and that you would see how ingenious and wise he is! And, of course, like him, his answer is wonderful. It is this. That he might be fair to all people, he chose to use ‘things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no one should glory in his presence.’
   You see, if my understandings of God were anything, then had I whereof to boast in his presence. I would have something in which I could glory before him; something I could own that somebody else didn’t have. You know the sorts of things, those that set us above others. But then some people would be more equal than others. (…as somebody once said, George Orwell, I think. On his animal farm?) But then the rejoicing couldn’t be in ourselves alone, as we were promised, but in others; because we thought they had more than us. And that brought in only the fear of man; and envy, discontent, and covetousness; and eventually misery. The fear of man is a curse. But God has made things so fair and just and true, it is simply amazing. In his foolishness – in using things which aren’t anything – he makes us all equal.  And, in his using things which seem weak and pathetic to me – like just having him nothing else added – he is strong enough to make it all easy.  He is stronger than man in his having no respect of persons; and he is wiser than man in his recognizing nothing but relationship; holding nothing higher than just, him in you, and you in him, nothing else added; whoever you are. God has made it simply impossible for people to compare themselves with one another and be sad. Now all people can have all of him, and be complete and happy in themselves, rather than in anything other.
   Only no life, I get in me, wherever I put myself and my hopes, elsewhere. Because where I do, I just get more and more holes, and ‘hath nots’ in me; which I then spend a lot of time trying to fill up again, with thousands of non-effective things, ‘hath not’ things – life-less things.
   But anyway, to cut a long story short, somewhere along the line I discovered the greater reality, the one I didn’t learn in school; namely, that ONE MINUS ONE EQUALS EVERYTHING. It levels everything: it makes everything equal.  It equals me – and it equals the whole world to me. And I couldn’t learn that in school because it’s the opposite to the world’s way of thinking: being the reality on the Other Side of the Mirror; the reality on God’s side of it! Though I was made in the image of him, he didn’t intend for me to stay in that ‘wrong-way-round’ mirror image of him: opposite him; he wanted me beside him at his right hand; so, he planned all along to ‘take me away’ to live with him, on his side of the mirror, where he lives. And there, standing together we look out in the same direction.
   And all the while I am with him, there, my ‘hath not’ things, (‘things that are,’) become exchanged for ‘hath’ things, (‘things which are not,’) and so God’s glory within me, gets to be more and more all his.
   No one can glory in his presence, it isn’t possible, to be utterly fair.  He takes only to give; to give more than what I began with! God’s arithmetic is truly amazing. Having more, by having less, all my minuses are pluses!

  

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