‘Take a burning coal and put it on my hand. If I said the coal burnt my hand, I would do it injustice. Were I to say truly what burns me, it is negation, for the coal contains something that my hand has not. It is this not that burns me. But if my hand contained all that the coal has or can effect, it would be all of the nature of fire. Then, if anyone were to take all the fire that ever burnt, and poured it out on to my hand, that could not hurt me.’
From Sermon 13 (b) in Meister Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, Trans. and Ed., Maurice O’C. Walshe, Crossroad, New York, 2009, 109
materialism, mysticism and art 
Thanks. Now I know what burns me.
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Hi oneanna, if you focus on the not, a solution will always be at hand. Best wishes, Phil
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Take negation out of the dialect and you have…
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Hi Jason, I considered titling the post ‘The Power of Negative Thinking’, but since those words have already been used over and again (Damn! But I suppose the spirit of Norman Vincent Peale was calling out for the obvious response), I’ve altered it to ‘To hold fast to the positive in its negative…’
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Nice one Phil, I can live with that.
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Excellent post. Eckhart was a gift for those who want to see the inner workings of outward appearances.
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Hello Michael, thank you for your comment.
Your words on Eckhart are all the more applicable to the Neoplatonic current of which he was a part. Having been stood on its feet by Marx and Engels, and with further developments on it, it is the epistemology of the future.
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