Deepening

"The German Jesuit, Karl Rahner, said something like this (although his German is hard to translate): “The infinite mystery that you are to yourself and the infinite mystery that God is in God’s self proceed forward together as one.” In simple English, as you uncover God’s loving truth, you uncover your own, and as you uncover your own truth, you fall deeper into God’s mercy and love. I’ve certainly seen this in my own little journey. When I come to a breakthrough in my own shadow work, my own sinfulness, my own self-knowledge, or in wonder at my own soul, it invariably feeds and invites the other side, and I want to go deeper with God.

"In the same way, when my heart opens up in a new recognition of the nature of God, it always invites me into deeper and daring honesty, deeper self-surrender, deeper shadow work with my own illusions and my own pretensions. The two will always feed one another, and that’s why people who go deeper with God invariably have a very honest evaluation of themselves. They are never proud people. They can’t be, because the closer you get to the Light, the more you see your own darkness. And the closer you get to your own ordinariness (which sometimes includes darkness), the more you know you need the Light."

Richard Rohr

Justify a Life

God has reserved to Himself the right to
determine the end of life, because He alone
knows the goal to which it is His will to
lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a
life or to cast it away.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christian Nonsense

Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist
can say, "If you could only see it from the divine
point of view, you would realize that this also
is God." The Christian replies,
"Don't talk... nonsense."

- (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis, Into The Wardrobe

(Creation is not-God, and sometimes fails to
reflect the goodness and perfection of God.
This must be acknowledged; this must be
responded to.)

Comments?

Paradigm Shift

There comes a time when the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping. At that moment, a threshold is crossed. What seemed unthinkable becomes thinkable. Slowly, the realization emerges that the choice to continue what you have been doing is the choice to live in discomfort, and the choice to stop what you have been doing is the choice to breathe deeply and freely again. Once that realization has emerged, you can either honor it or ignore it, but you cannot forget it. What has become known can not become unknown again. 

 - Gary Zukav

Higher Emergence

As a spiritual teacher who teaches a new kind of evolutionary Enlightenment, participating in and contributing to the process of emergence in consciousness and culture is literally what I live for. In fact, all of my energy is devoted singularly to catalyzing higher emergence in the souls, minds, and personalities of those who are interested in my work. What does that look like? At the level of the soul, it looks like the sudden presence of a depth in which we feel emotionally connected to the enormity of the universe, the significance of knowing we're alive, and a powerful sense of responsibility to not waste the precious time we have to be the person we are right now. At the level of mind, it looks like the awakening of new capacities of intelligence, as our thoughts become animated by our awareness of the infinite. Because of this, we're able to embrace complexity, see subtlety, and appreciate nuance in ways previously unimaginable. And at the level of the personality, it looks like lightness of being. Enlightenment, expressed through the human personality, is lightness of being, because now we no longer take our psychological selves so seriously. We know that is only a small part of who we really are. When these profound qualities emerge in the soul, mind, and personality of any individual, it is a delight beyond words!

—Andrew Cohen

Not of This World

The world as we know is is ruled by fear, chaos, limitation and greed. But YOU are not of this world. You come from somewhere else. And to the extent to which you remember that, you are lifted above the effects of the world. In becoming free of its chains, you become one of its redeemers.

~Marianne Williamson

Inexhaustible Transcendence

The inexhaustible nature of transcendence is
expressed in the profusion of creatures. The
universe is the first Bible. Each being manifests
the creative word which gives it its identity
and attracts it. Each being manifests a dynamic
idea, something willed by God. Ultimately each
thing is a created name of Him who cannot be named.

- Olivier Clement, "The Roots of Christian Mysticism" -

An Immediate Experience of Being

Meanwhile, let us remind ourselves that
another, metaphysical, consciousness is
still available to modern human beings. . .
Underlying the subjective experience of
the individual self there is an immediate
experience of Being. This is totally
different from an experience of
self-consciousness. It is completely non-
objective. . . an immediate experience
that goes beyond reflexive awareness.

- Thomas Merton, Zen and the
Birds of Appetite

This Work Asks...

And therefore for God's love beware of sickness
as much as thou well mayest, so that this be not
the cause of they feebleness, as far as thou
mayest. For I tell thee truly, that this work
asketh a full great restfulness, and a full whole
and clean disposition, as well in body as in soul.

- The Cloud of Unknowing,
anonymous 13th Century English author -

Sabbath

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

~Wendell Berry

Always Look Within

Dear God,
As the Dragon Fly follows me on this path
It’s sharing a message that will always last
 

Now he circles around me on a bridge
Guiding to a place that I have never been

From the Mountains to the Trees to the Water Steam
He wants me to know that he is taking care of me

As the wind whispers in my ears
I Love You
And Remember …
‘Always Look Within’

 

~Anonymous

We Cannot Expect to Find Truth... Whenever

We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal.
We may be true or false, the choice is ours.
We may wear now one mask and now another, and
never, if we so desire, appear with our own true
face. But we cannot make these choices with
impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie
to ourselves and to others, then we cannot
expect to find truth and reality whenever we
happen to want them.

- Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation

A Perfect Whole

All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird; —
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

~Emerson

The Water of Life

"Water is everywhere & in all living things - we cannot be separated from water. No water, no life. Period. Water comes in many forms - liquid, vapor, ice, snow, fog, rain, hail. But no matter the form, it's still water. Human beings give this stuff many names in many languages, in all its forms. It's crazy to argue over what its true name is. Call it what you will, there is no difference to the water. It is what it is. Human beings drink water from many containers - cups, glasses, jugs, skins, their own hands, whatever. To argue about which container is proper for the water is crazy. The container doesn't change the water. Some like it hot, some like it cold, some like it iced, some fizzy, some with stuff mixed in with it - like alcohol, coffee, whatever. No matter. It does not change the nature of the water. Never mind the name or the cup or the mix. These are not important. What we have in common is thirst. Thirst for the water of Life! As it is with water, so it is with God."

-- Robert Fulghum

Those Who Imagine... Strength of Their Own Will

Those who imagine they can attain to holiness
by any wisdom or strength of their own will find
themselves after many labours, and struggles,
and wary efforts, only the farther from
possessing it, and in proportion to their
certainty that they of themselves have
gained it.

- Bl. John of Avila -

God's Choice

It is my firm conviction that Spirit as the Uncreated, Unborn, Unmanifest, timeless Ground of Being "chose" to create the universe. How do I know this? Because from our vantage point in the 21st Century, we can look back and see where we all came from, which is no-thing whatsoever. God or absolute Spirit must have wanted to do something after doing absolutely no-thing whatsoever for eternity. That's why, when we experience the creative impulse in the universe vibrating and pulsating in our bodies and minds, we experience a powerful sense of purposefulness. When you awaken to evolution, you awaken to a profound sense of directionality that is inherent in the life force, that is inherent in existence itself. At the lower levels, the purpose of existence is to survive. At the highest levels, the purpose of existence is to create. God or Spirit as manifestation is the felt desire to create and give rise to that which has never existed before.

—Andrew Cohen

Would You Spend More Time in Prayer?

Don't imagine that if you had a great deal of
time you would spend more of it in prayer. Get
rid of that idea! Again and again God gives
more in a moment than in a long period of time,
for God's actions are not measured by time at all.

- Teresa of Avila -

Now, the Only Point We Contact GOD

The difficulty, stated in its simplest terms,
is not to hold on (to cling to passing things)!
Not to hold on to the fleeting years, for example.
People at seventy tell themselves that they are
as old as they feel they are, and therefore that
they're still young. Whereas the true self tells
us to 'be our age,' or, more profoundly, that NOW,
since it is on the only point at which we make
contact with God, is the best age for us to be."

- Dom Aelred Graham, Zen Catholicism

Emptiness and Fullness

One of the new discoveries of modern physics and cosmology is that what looks like a vacuum or the complete emptiness of space between the stars and around atoms is, in truth, a great fullness. The emptiness of space is the fullness of unlimited possibility. The empty vacuum is nothing less than infinite potential boiling up into material existence and then, just as quickly, collapsing back into the “empty” field of a seemingly infinite fullness.

This understanding is both a paradox and a mystery, and perhaps paradigmatic of something larger, a metaphysical truth that was well understood by the mystics  from across traditions and all generations.

Read, for example, Rumi’s powerful poem. Read it both ways—one using emptiness as a sign of the divine and limitless Infinitude, and the other way as an expression of an unlimited and eternal Fullness.

In the end, they are the same and our “existence” stands in the Light of an eternal grandeur from which we have come and to which we are returning.

Praise to the emptiness (fullness) that blanks out existence.
Existence: The place made of our love for that emptiness (fullness).
Yet somehow this emptiness (fullness) comes, and existence goes.
Praise for that happening, over and over again.

For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness (fullness).
Then with one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is all over.

Free of who I was, free of my own self,
free of dangerous fear and hope,
free of mountainous wanting...
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness (fullness).

These words I am saying begin to lose their meaning.
“Existence, emptiness, fullness, mountain, straw.”
Words and what they try to say--
all swept out the window and down the slant of the roof.
               --adapted from Coleman Bark's translation.

The Fallen Condition

The hell of the fallen condition is
abolished in Christ. Everything now
depends not on merits, but on faith
and love, on the relationship of each
individual with Christ and with the
neighbor."

- Olivier Clement, The Roots of
Christian Mysticism

The Face of Altruism

Along with love, compassion is the face of altruism. It is a feeling from deep in the heart that you cannot bear others’ suffering without acting to relieve it. As compassion grows stronger, so does your willingness to commit yourself to the welfare of all beings, even if you have to do it alone. You will be unbiased in your service to all beings, no matter how they respond to you.

~The Dalai Lama

Opacity and Light

The Luminous Gospels are an attempt to break open the darkness of human ignorance and restore us into Light. As the three luminous Gospels (Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Philip) teach, we are held captive by our own un-consciousness, as well as by the constraints of a kosmos (world order) that binds us and drives us, preventing us from realizing our own freedom and the unique iconography that is our true Being. So long as we are opaque to our true Self, we are unable to see the light shining through all things (Cheetham). For as Thomas says:

I am the Light shining upon all things.
I am the sum of everything, 
for everything has come forth from me,
and towards me everything unfolds.
Split a piece of wood, and there I am.
Pick up a stone and you will find me there. (77)

I Am not some centuries-old voice from the past.
I listen inside this day like a freshly risen Jesus...
not some archaeologist looking for shards.

There is a sovereign for whom all earthly politicians
are mere stable boys.

Some drink old wine from old wine skins
I drink eternal truth by the jar,
by the barrel-full.

I Am the soul's source,
the temple of the heart.
I Am the ever turning sky
not some church dome over a nave.

I Am a pure mirror--no dust
I Am the burning core of Mt. Sinai
not some jealous God full of hatred.

I Am intoxicated by a wine not pressed from grapes...
the one everyone wants deep inside their troubles.

Archangels, prophets, even you
could come here and sit beside me...
if you became God
if you could say, I Am that, I Am.

I Believe in Order to Understand

I long to understand in some degree thy
truth, which my heart believes and loves.
For I do not seek to understand that I may
believe, but I believe in order to understand.
For this also I believe, that unless I
believed, I should not understand."

- Anselm of Canterbury -

Thou Art God

“You say you seek God, but a ray of light doesn’t seek the sun; it’s coming from the sun. You are a branch on the vine of God. A branch doesn’t seek the vine; it’s already part of the vine. A wave doesn’t look for the ocean; it’s already full of ocean. Because you don’t know that who you are is one with God, you believe all these labels about yourself: I’m a sinner, I’m a saint, I’m a wretch, I’m a worm and no man, I’m a monk, I’m a nurse. These are all labels, clothing. They serve a purpose, but they are not who you are. To the extent that you believe these labels, you believe a lie, and you add anguish upon anguish. It’s what most of us do for most of our lives. In the secular world we call it our career. In monastic terms, we call it our vocation.

Before you can know in your own experience what the Psalmist meant when he said, ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ you must first learn to be still and know who you are. The rest will follow.”

Into the Silent Land— A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird