What a clear and thoughtful set of reflections, starting from Buber's I-Thou relationship and exploring the presence which dwells in the interspace. That brings into focus Meister Eckhardt's reference to God as inhabiting the place between things. Silence becomes the quietness allowing well expressed words from the heart to be spoken, and heard. And the blank page, the open field in which contradictions can be transformed into complementarities. This silence without form is the original ether, never empty, endlessly giving rise to all forms and all polarities. I think you are guiding people back to this most ancient of places, and reminding them that the act of forgetting is the tragicomic act of losing face, having exchanged the mirror which the complementary other provides for the solipsistic and narcissistic iterations of the selfie. You speak with gentle invitations to reflect, not with admonishment, and this itself brings the possibility of healing.
Thank you so much for this beautiful and thoughtful response — I’m genuinely moved by the depth and clarity of your reflections. You’ve drawn together Buber, Eckhart, and the creative silence in a way that enriches the original piece.
One phrase especially stayed with me: “this silence without form is the original ether.” That captures something deeply true — the silent, unmanifest field that, in Kabbalistic terms, echoes the Ayin, the no-thing from which all things arise. It’s not absence but a fullness before form — the womb of divine possibility.
I’m grateful for your presence in this space and the wisdom you’ve brought into the conversation.
Your posts are guideposts. They point backwards, not in regression, but in remembering or rather, retracing. Ariadne's thread (symbol of the protective, generative love from the womb of being) allowed for Theseus's escape from the labyrinth (of psychic and elemental confusion). You describe our present times rather as a wind of forgetting which has covered all understanding with sand. This loss of vision, when examined more closely as you have done, becomes transformable through stillness. Only from stillness can the sacred point of origin be discerned and the errant pathway retraced. The kabbalistic concepts of Ayin and Ein Sof are very compatible with the "pre-scientific" concept of the ether. A vortical dynamo in the ether was the original model for the atom, mirroring the divine whirlwind which gives rise both to events in time, and to form. As you suggest in your remark, the womb of divine possibility is the female generative aspect of the sacred, that quintessential complement to male enlivening. It is this female infinite potentiality in the unfathomable source of all being that humans seem to have lost touch with - to their peril and great detriment. By the same token, guideposts such as the ones you are gently putting up allow for the reflective reader to re-orient their steps with greater clarity.
What a clear and thoughtful set of reflections, starting from Buber's I-Thou relationship and exploring the presence which dwells in the interspace. That brings into focus Meister Eckhardt's reference to God as inhabiting the place between things. Silence becomes the quietness allowing well expressed words from the heart to be spoken, and heard. And the blank page, the open field in which contradictions can be transformed into complementarities. This silence without form is the original ether, never empty, endlessly giving rise to all forms and all polarities. I think you are guiding people back to this most ancient of places, and reminding them that the act of forgetting is the tragicomic act of losing face, having exchanged the mirror which the complementary other provides for the solipsistic and narcissistic iterations of the selfie. You speak with gentle invitations to reflect, not with admonishment, and this itself brings the possibility of healing.
Thank you so much for this beautiful and thoughtful response — I’m genuinely moved by the depth and clarity of your reflections. You’ve drawn together Buber, Eckhart, and the creative silence in a way that enriches the original piece.
One phrase especially stayed with me: “this silence without form is the original ether.” That captures something deeply true — the silent, unmanifest field that, in Kabbalistic terms, echoes the Ayin, the no-thing from which all things arise. It’s not absence but a fullness before form — the womb of divine possibility.
I’m grateful for your presence in this space and the wisdom you’ve brought into the conversation.
Your posts are guideposts. They point backwards, not in regression, but in remembering or rather, retracing. Ariadne's thread (symbol of the protective, generative love from the womb of being) allowed for Theseus's escape from the labyrinth (of psychic and elemental confusion). You describe our present times rather as a wind of forgetting which has covered all understanding with sand. This loss of vision, when examined more closely as you have done, becomes transformable through stillness. Only from stillness can the sacred point of origin be discerned and the errant pathway retraced. The kabbalistic concepts of Ayin and Ein Sof are very compatible with the "pre-scientific" concept of the ether. A vortical dynamo in the ether was the original model for the atom, mirroring the divine whirlwind which gives rise both to events in time, and to form. As you suggest in your remark, the womb of divine possibility is the female generative aspect of the sacred, that quintessential complement to male enlivening. It is this female infinite potentiality in the unfathomable source of all being that humans seem to have lost touch with - to their peril and great detriment. By the same token, guideposts such as the ones you are gently putting up allow for the reflective reader to re-orient their steps with greater clarity.