The revelation of the Name in the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai is God’s self-revelation of glory, ‘I AM WHO I AM,’ to Moses, communicating in the Name ‘I AM,’ ineffable release (Ex 3:14). The revelation of the Name to Elijah on Mount Carmel reveals ‘I AM: He is God,’ ‘I AM: He is God,’ exposing the delusions of Baal with all-consuming fire, revealing ineffable openness (1 Kings 18:39). The revelation of the Name to Elijah on Mount Horeb, not in an earthquake, wind or fire but in the stillness of a gentle whisper, is the unveiling of revelatory presence (1 Kings 19: 9-13). The prophet veiled his face with his cloak as he stood at the entrance of the cave, veiling the visible glory of ineffable presence so that the mystery was not profaned. The ineffable release of Sinai, the ineffable openness of Carmel and the ineffable presence of Horeb were all intrinsic to the transfiguring theophany of Tabor, when the indwelling, uncreated light of the Name of Christ was revealed to Peter, James and John in the presence of Moses and Elijah. Ineffable release on Sinai unveiled ineffable openness on Carmel as ineffable presence on Horeb, unveiling ineffable oneness of release, openness and presence on Mount Tabor. Tabor is the place of wondrous grace where the Name of the Son is declared Beloved by the Father, when the oneness of the Name of presence is revealed as transfiguring light (Mt 17:1-8; Mk 9:2-8; Lk 9:28-36). The Spirit of truth reveals Ineffable release as radical openness and unconcealed presence, dissolving the veil of cloud into uncreated light. The way of glory unveils the truth of presence through the life of the Name, releasing reification to let presence manifest, including glory’s temporal coming to fulness of presence and timeless effulgence of presence. The ineffable release of Name-hallowing is voluntary self-emptying not emptiness conceived as the impersonal emptiness of everything. The Name grants presence by releasing into self-emptying openness, by revealing presence as self-emptying oneness.
The Name reveals a destiny of glory that releases openness into ineffable presence, unveiling ineffable oneness. Grace grants openness of presence that breaks through reified oneness, leaping over reified division, overcoming external confrontation with awakened communion. Release dissolves confusion, passing way beyond division, blessing the poor in spirit whose sovereignty is God’s. Willing nothing, true poverty of spirit knows nothing and possesses nothing, releasing reification in every direction. Self-emptying rids awareness of reified presence and presence of reified awareness, revealing oneness beyond all reification. Divine poverty is the key to Christ-like humility, for divine poverty knows that it is by grace that I am what I am (1Cor 15:10). Glory self-empties the created into the uncreated and the uncreated into the created, unborn glory that cannot die, undying glory that births God in us. Wisdom’s breakthrough and glory’s leapover are indivisible in timeless presence because although time may appear to separate them, they are actually always simultaneous and whole. Wisdom breaks through delusion into the same timeless presence as glory, leaping over division, unveiling presence in timeless freedom. Their union is the oneness that wisdom and glory know in the Holiest of Holy Holies. Their oneness is the oneness of the Father and the Son, the oneness of the Spirit with the Father and the Son, oneness of awareness and presence in the Name. This place of grace is timeless wisdom releasing reified oppositions into unreified openness, glory restoring timeless presence to oneness in glorification.
Revelation of the Name unites both the Old and the New Covenants by releasing the openness of pure presence into all-embracing oneness, embracing the Sinai revelation of the Name in the Burning Bush together with Carmel’s revelation of the consuming flame of the Name within Horeb’s whispering but ineffable presence, welcoming Moses and Elijah on Tabor into the deifying oneness of uncreated light. God is one and his Name is one, releasing openness into liberating presence of hallowing oneness in all revelations of the Name. All Name theophanies address forgetfulness of God with recognition and remembrance of God, releasing reified god-substitutes that usurp God, sustaining radical openness with hallowing presence, curing dualistic separation with indivisible oneness. Ineffable release uncovers a horizon of openness that unveils presence as ineffable oneness. But without wisdom, there is no turning, no seeing, no union of seer and seen, no revelation of glory through the Name. Wisdom is our home-coming, our homeland of glory, the place of grace that grounds us and holds us steady. It is the place of indwelling where the Name unveils God in the midst. Wisdom lets mystery be, fending off the calculating mind. Glory unveils realms of light, illuminating the eye of the heart. Presence is absence of counterfeit presence, burning away every veil that distances presence. The liberating rootedness of the hallowed Name is truly radical, giving wisdom power to move mountains of obscuration.
The Name in the heart works mysteries of purification, illumination and glorification, radically releasing obstructive fixations into openness, transfiguring presence into oneness. Wisdom beholds the oneness of awareness and presence in the Name, a oneness that clarifies a clearing in the midst in which mutual reciprocal self-emptying, uncreated and created, underlies co-inherence. Forgetfulness of God obliviously offers consolation instead of transformation, maintaining control rather than true peace, nourishing academic reputations rather than spiritual poverty, ensuring institutional order not spiritual transfiguration. When we awaken to being destined for glory, we turn and see who it is who reveals his glory in the Name. The way or hodos of the Name is the ‘method’, ‘met-hodos,’ of Name hallowing, which embraces the great expanse of limpid translucence as it ascends from light to glory. Turning, teshuvah, turns awareness back to its primordial glory, awakening wisdom to the glory of the age to come, turning awareness right round, transforming the heart in self-emptying metanoia. A peregrine anonymity replaces fixated identities, the Shem of the Name generating a Shema of ineffable listening. The ground of the heart opens to the inmost ground of the heart of God, the Name awakening the heart to the uncreated light of God. Where awareness and presence meet, there is peregrine joy, the joy of holy pilgrimage, holy wandering. Where wisdom and glory conjoin, there is the joy of mystical marriage in the Bridal Chamber of the Holiest of Holies. Where God’s wisdom speaks, we are spoken by God; God begets himself in us and we are then begotten by grace in the only-begotten Word that names the Name. Openness to the mystery of grace opens wisdom to the glory that crowns grace, releasing expanse into boundless openness and presence into the oneness of ineffable union.
Glorification restores glory that is overlooked when awareness falls from presence so oneness is perceived as separation. When the heart listens to Sinai’s shattering release, to Carmel’s burning openness, to Horeb’s liberating presence, it is awakened to Tabor’s dazzling oneness through the Name. Glory unveils the timeless oneness of translucent awareness and transfiguring presence. Glory is spontaneous when wisdom dawns, dispelling the dreams of confusion and division. Glorification dies in Christ to the deadly dream of glory lost, rising with him into resurrection’s uncreated light, ascending through him to originating glory, partaking with him in his own all-embracing glorification. When wisdom dawns, the deadly dream dispels and dissolves into uncreated light, emptying light into glory. Christ shows glory does not really fall but waits in glory for falls to fall away as light releasing into glory. Tabor reveals glory in uncreated light as glory really is, even whilst we still dream our falls from glory that confuse and divide. Christ dispels our dreams of fallen glory by restoring glory in the midst of uncreated light, releasing delusion into wisdom, expanding glory into openness, awakening presence to awareness of ineffable oneness in the Name. The dream becomes lucid when the heart is translucent, transforming fear into transfiguring love. Glorification beckons hearts to turn and see Christ in the midst, to behold with his indivisible eye apparently gross energies transmuting into uncreated light, transfiguring light unveiling glory without end.
Glorification shifts mountains of confusion, separation and division through Christ, infallibly restoring glory in the Spirit to the Father. Gross matter reveals its inherent translucence as wisdom transfigures created energies into uncreated light, unveiling the Name in glory. Moses bears witness to the Name as ineffable release, Elijah to the Name as radical openness in gentle presence, but when Christ on Tabor is transfigured, the Name is revealed to be the radiant oneness of all-embracing transfiguration. Transfiguration regenerates the imagination by opening images to their source in the uncreated imagination. The purification of the imagination occurs through its illumination, instantaneous in timeless principle, progressive in the temporal unfolding of its efficacy. Uncreated light re-imagines everything as the translucence of transfiguring glory. Sinai, Carmel, Horeb and Tabor regenerate the degenerate imagination by purifying images of all confusion, separation or division between impurity and purity. This is deification, no longer determined by confusion or separation, by the divisive knowledge of good and evil, but transfigured by wisdom’s vision, which is how God sees and is seen in God, Holy Trinity. The mystery of glorification is called deification (theosis) in the desert because it restores imageless clarity at the heart of imaginal degeneration, transfiguring our earthly world with a diaphanous, heavenly glory.
Revelation of the Name on Sinai releases glory from all delusive falls, reveals on Carmel its purifying openness, unveils on Horeb its revelatory presence, transfiguring all three revelations of the Name with the uncreated light of Christ’s enlightening energies of wisdom and glory on Mount Tabor. Release hangs loosely in the freedom of the Spirit, at home in openness, centred in hallowing presence. Creation transfigured in God co-inheres in uncreated light by grace without confusion or division, just as in Christ creation is united with the uncreated without confusion or division. All falls from glory fall away in Christ, so that in him they spontaneously cease to retain their grip. The Name releases every obstruction into uncreated openness, unveiling ineffable presence as all-embracing union in the Holy of Holies. Uncontrived awareness unites with unstructured presence in the Holiest place, beyond every centre and every periphery. Blessing overflows without restraint, here, where the uncreated is inseparable from the created and the created, without confusion, is united with the uncreated. Deification lives revelation of the Name in every moment, liberating reifications of every kind into revelation of God in many modes. Sinai, Carmel, Horeb and Tabor are one revelation here, where the Name is revealed anew in every moment. The New Jerusalem is illumined from within by the Name, unveiling the City of God to be the radiance of the hallowed Name. The Name hallows the saints in realms of glory that abide in peace beyond fixations of any kind. Release into openness grounds presence in hallowing oneness, where the Name unveils glory in realms of uncreated light.