Two thieves

More from Ramana Maharshi:

Question: The yogis say that one must renounce this world and go off into secluded jungles if one wishes to find the truth.
Ramana Maharshi : The life of action need not be renounced. If you meditate for an hour or two every day you can then carry on with your duties. If you meditate in the right manner then the current of mind induced will continue to flow even in the midst of your work. It is as though there were two ways of expressing the same idea; the same line which you take in meditation will be expressed in your activities.

Question: What will be the result of doing that?
Ramana Maharshi: As you go on you will find that your attitude towards people, events and objects gradually changes. Your actions will tend to follow your meditations of their own accord.

Question: Then you do not agree with the yogis?
Ramana Maharshi : A man should surrender the personal selfishness which binds him to this world. Giving up the false self is the true renunciation.

Question: How is it possible to become selfless while leading a life of worldly activity?
Ramana Maharshi: There is no conflict between work and wisdom.

M. Scott Peck on techniques of suffering, will, and love

I've recently been struck by the way that M. Scott Peck's psychological discussion of suffering, will, and love in The Road Less Traveled applies in the spiritual sense as well. He writes:

What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of experiencing the pain of problems constructively that I call discipline? There are four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing. As will be evident, these are not complex tools whose application demands extensive training. To the contrary, they are simple tools, and almost all children are adept in their use by the age of ten. Yet presidents and kings will often forget to use them, to their own downfall. The problem lies not in the complexity of these tools but in the will to use them. For they are tools with which pain is confronted rather than avoided, and if one seeks to avoid legitimate suffering, then one will avoid the use of these tools. Therefore, after analyzing each of these tools, we shall in the next section examine the will to use them, which is love.

And this one. The emphasized passage below haunted me in my 20s ... turns out the lifelong duration was true for me:

In summary, for children to develop the capacity to delay gratification, it is necessary for them to have self-disciplined role models, a sense of self-worth, and a degree of trust in the safety of their existence. These “possessions” are ideally acquired through the self-discipline and consistent, genuine caring of their parents; they are the most precious gifts of themselves that mothers and fathers can bequeath. When these gifts have not been proffered by one’s parents, it is possible to acquire them from other sources, but in that case the process of their acquisition is invariably an uphill struggle, often of lifelong duration and often unsuccessful.

I'm not sure the effort needed to be lifelong. I think that looking for it via therapy was perhaps not the most efficient way to get there.

Make room for it

Neale Donald Walsch (emphasis mine):

Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that. You cannot hold onto the old all the while declaring that you want something new. The old will defy the new; the old will deny the new; the old will decry the new. There is only one way to bring in the new. You must make room for it.

I've been "doing" Advent this year, which for me, has included praying the daily office, abstaining from meat and sugar, and fasting until sunset twice a week. I've been doing this not to "earn" grace (which is a gift) but to remove what are probably impediments to receiving it.

One metaphor I've heard used is tuning in a radio station, but last night I was thinking more along the lines of being receptive to the gift as well. Watching crap TV or eating fast food, to me, is the equivalent to turning your back on a gift rather than holding one's hands out to receive.

Interesting to see it reflected in this Walsch quote from today's daily meditation from Richard Rohr.

St Isaac on silence

St Isaac of Ninevah on silence from his Homily 64:

Love silence above all things, because it brings you near to fruit that the tongue cannot express. First let us force ourselves to be silent, and then from out of this silence something is born that leads us into silence itself. May God grant you to perceive some part of that which is born in silence (p. 452).

St. John Climacus on stillness

From Fr Martin Laird's book A Sunlit Absence:

Let the name of Jesus cling to your breath, and you will know the meaning of stillness.

More from Fr Laird:

 

Christ is our Memory

John Philip Newell on John Scotus Eriugena, nature, and grace (emphasis mine):

One of the greatest teachers in the Celtic world, John Scotus Eriugena in ninth-century Ireland, taught that Christ is our memory. We suffer from the “soul’s forgetfulness,” he says. Christ comes to reawaken us to our true nature. ... This leads the Celtic tradition to celebrate the relationship between nature and grace. Instead of grace being viewed as opposed to our essential nature or as somehow saving us from ourselves, nature and grace are viewed as flowing together from God. They are both sacred gifts. The gift of nature, says Eriugena, is the gift of “being”; the gift of grace, on the other hand, is the gift of “well-being.” Grace is given to reconnect us to our true nature. At the heart of our being is the image of God, and thus the wisdom of God, the creativity of God, the passions of God, the longings of God.

It's not about you

It's a paradox, but the challenge with spiritual searching is to ensure it's not an ego-trip. Fr Laurence Freeman writes:

The great pitfall of ‘finding oneself’ is the pitfall of narcissism and self-centredness – the danger of seeing it all revolving around yourself and for yourself.

Lots more in his e-book Finding Oneself. 

If the church were Christian

Quaker pastor Philip Gulley suggests ten standards for rediscovering the values of Jesus. He writes that, if the church were Christian:

• Jesus would be a model for living, not an object of worship
• affirming our potential would be more important than condemning our brokenness
• reconciliation would be valued over judgment
• gracious behavior would be more important than right belief
• inviting questions would be more important than supplying answers
• encouraging personal exploration would be more important than communal uniformity
• meeting needs would be more important than maintaining institutions
• peace would be more important than power
• it would care more about love and less about sex
• this life would be more important than the afterlife

Gulley's book looks like a must-read to me. HT to Richard Rohr.

René Girard's mimetic theory

A very interesting theory that says we learn to desire by seeing what others desire and that this inevitably leads to conflict. More here, here, here, and here.

Love is of God

Authentic recovery

From Richard Rohr's book Just This:

The real gift is to be happy and content ... when we can see and accept and say that every single act of creation is “just this” and thus allow it to work its wonder on us. This is the ultimate and real recovery movement. Authentic recovery is not actually about mere sobriety as much as it is about simple and ever-deeper connection with what is. Deep connection is our goal, and it frees us from all loneliness, separateness, and boredom, and is far beyond just stopping the addictive behavior. 

Jesus' teaching on prayer

From Matthew 6:5-8 comes Jesus' explicit teaching on prayer:

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

In The Naked Now (via this link), Richard Rohr speaks to how we may be missing the import of this:

When we emphasize [traditional] public, verbal, and social prayer forms, along with group rituals, while not giving people any inner experience of their own inner aliveness (the “Indwelling Spirit”), it tends to keep religion on the level of a social contract; this is often what we call cultural Christianity or civil religion. ... Social and public prayers hold groups and religions together, but they do not necessarily transform people at any deep level. In fact, group certitude and solidarity often becomes a substitute for any real journey of our own. ...

Prayer too easily became an attempt to change God and aggrandize ourselves instead of what it was meant to be – an interior practice to change the one who is praying, which will always happen if we stand calmly before this uncanny and utterly safe Presence, allowing the Divine Gaze to invade and heal our unconscious, the place where 95 percent of our motivations and reactions come from. All we can really do is return the gaze.

Jesus does give his disciples a specific verbal prayer: The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). After the jump, John Piper breaks down the specific asks.

Deepening Your Prayer Life

Love this from Carl McColman ... five ways you can deepen your personal prayer life:

1. Read the Bible every day (Lectio Divina). Lectio Divina is different from “Bible Study” — it’s a slow, meditative way of reading the Bible, to allow the words to speak to your heart in a quiet and prayerful way. You can learn more about it here. 
2. Pray a Psalm every day. A long term goal for monastic oblates and other serious pray-ers is to pray all or part of the Daily Office. But for beginners that may seem daunting. A gentler way to start: pray one Psalm each day. Most can be prayed in about 2 minutes, so it’s not a huge time commitment — but it’s a great way to anchor your daily prayer life. 
3. Try to find (and serve) God through others, every day. Prayer is more than just saying prayers! The purpose of prayer is to foster intimacy with God, and scripture reminds us that when we serve others, we serve Christ. So whether it’s a work of mercy like feeding the homeless, or simply a good deed like helping an elderly lady carry her groceries to the bus stop, look for ways to be kind to others — and see such acts as embodied prayers. 
4. Take time to reflect on a spiritual truth, every day. Traditionally this is called “mental prayer” or “meditation” but you don’t need the fancy labels to enjoy this rich way of praying. St. Luke reminds us of how Mary would ponder things in her heart in regard to Jesus. We can do the same thing — and it’s prayer. So take some time to ponder a spiritual truth: God is love; God is merciful; God forgives; God wants us to love our neighbors, and so forth. But don’t just think pious thoughts — keep in mind that such times of reflection nourish us because God is always present. 
5. Spend some time in silence every day. Finally comes the crown of daily prayer: silent prayer, or contemplation. This, at heart, is simply a wordless gaze of love into the unseen face of God. Catholics love this kind of silence in an adoration chapel, but it can be just as prayerful (and meaningful) in your living room, or your garden, or any other quiet, undistracted place.

Principles behind the 12 steps

An interesting way to look at the 12 steps from SoberRecovery:

1. Honesty — The operative principle behind step one is honesty. If you cannot get honest about the scope of your problem, and honest about a sincere effort to resolve it, you will not succeed in your recovery. How about a definition of honesty as "the absence of the intention to deceive"? Why do we try to fool ourselves and others? 
2. Hope — In order to engage in a course of addiction recovery, we must have hope of success. If there is no hope, why try? Perhaps you have failed on our own, so how about enlisting some help? A way to find hope is to realize that recovery is not a question of your ability. After all, there are millions in recovery. Your hope of recovery is not through ability, but through persistence and application. 
3. Faith — This step represents a stage of action where you begin to employ the recovery skills being learned. You can seek out help with the skills, but it is also necessary to utilize them on your own. Your job is to become willing to do the right thing. A simple way to view the 'next right thing' is to not engage in your old behavior. Have faith that your recovery will work. 

Abandonment prayer

I like this prayer from Father Dolindo Ruotolo, who wrote as if Jesus were speaking (emphasis mine):

Shut your eyes and say with all your soul: Jesus, You take over. Don’t be afraid, I indeed will take care of you, and you shall bless My Name, in humility. A thousand prayers do not equal only one act of abandonment; don’t ever forget it. There is no better novena than this: Oh Jesus I abandon myself to You, Jesus, You take over.

There's also a novena version.

Make use of suffering

Beautiful

Thanks to the PBS airing of Carole King's Tapestry concert in Hyde Park, today's prayer is Beautiful.

You've got to get up every morning
With a smile in your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
Then people gonna treat you better
You're gonna find, yes you will
That you're beautiful, as you feel

Waiting at the station with a workday wind a-blowing
I've got nothing to do but watch the passers-by
Mirrored in their faces I see frustration growing
And they don't see it showing, why do I?

Chorus

I have often asked myself the reason for sadness
In a world where tears are just a lullaby
If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness
Maybe not, oh, but we can only try

Chorus

To Will One Thing

A prayer from Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing by Søren Kierkegaard.

Father in Heaven, what are we without you?
What is all that we know, vast accumulation though it be,
But a chipped fragment if we do not know you?
What is all our striving?
Could it ever encompass a world,
But a half-finished work
If we do not know you?
You, the One who is one thing and who is all. 

So may you give
To the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing
To the heart, sincerity to receive this and this only
To the will, purity that wills only one thing
In prosperity, may you grant perseverance to will one thing
Amid distraction, collectedness to will one thing
In suffering, patience to will one thing. 

You that gives both the beginning and the completion
May you early, at the dawn of the day,
Give to the young the resolution to will one thing
As the day wanes, may you give to the old
A renewed remembrance of that first resolution
That the first may be like the last
And the last like the first
In possession of a life that has willed only one thing,
To know God.

Stages of spiritual travel

Father William Meninger recently spoke at the Assisi Institute's inaugural Kriya conference and shared the "necessary stages" of spiritual travel: purification, illumination, and union (emphasis mine). 

In the first stage, purification, we confront our demons, attachments, and aversions. Through rituals, religious observances, self-discipline, and formalized prayers, we largely overcome our self-destructive tendencies, and we begin to hunger for a deeper, more personal experience of God. This hunger is often described as the "dark night of the senses," because those things that once brought us pleasure no longer do so.

In the second stage, illumination, we practice meditation, live simply, and devote ourselves to a God-realized Guru. In this stage, we enjoy moments of illumination, experiencing God as peace, joy, love, light, silence, and liberating insight. But as wonderful as these experiences are, they are not the final frontier because they imply a subtle but distinguishable line of separation between God and us. Sooner or later, God stops the flow of these sweet consolations, and we find ourselves experiencing the "dark night of the soul." Often, we are tempted to think that God has abandoned us, or that we have done something to push God away. However, this is not the case. God is lovingly preparing us for what is beyond: mystical union, or samadhi.

I think the "dark night of the senses" hunger is what has enabled me to find meaningful recovery.

The method of Centering Prayer

Contemplative Outreach has uploaded videos of Father Thomas Keating presenting the basic method of centering prayer. Check the CO site for workshops or groups near you who may offer workshops not on the CO calendar. They also have a centering prayer app (iOS or Android).

Your one wild and precious life

This is a lovely poem called "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver. It's not a prayer, but maybe it should be one.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

St. Anselm's prayer

O my God, teach my heart where and how to seek You,
where and how to find You.
You are my God and You are my all and I have never seen You.
You have made me and remade me,
You have bestowed on me all the good things I possess,
Still I do not know You.
I have not yet done that for which I was made.
Teach me to seek You.
I have not yet done that for which I was made.
Teach me to seek You.
I cannot seek You unless You teach me
or find You unless You show Yourself to me.
Let me seek You in my desire,
let me desire You in my seeking.
Let me find You by loving You,
let me love You when I find You.

Matthew Kelly's spiritual habits

From Resisting Happiness:

• Believe: Have faith that holiness is possible, and everything you do every day leads you closer to or further from the-very-best-version-of-yourself and the holy life God wants for you.
• Ten minutes a day: Create a daily habit of prayer.
• Hour by hour: Offer every hour of your life to God as prayer, especially your work.
• Free your mind: Spend time reading the Bible and other spiritual books.
• Serve powerfully: Get outside yourself by finding ways to make a difference in the lives of others.
• Mass: Attend daily Mass once or twice during the week to develop a deeper love for the faith.
• Fasting: Deny yourself in small ways many times a day so that God can fill you with spiritual strength.
• Reconciliation: Confess your sins regularly and open yourself up to spiritual coaching.

We're reading this book at my church for book club. Chapter 26 (on delaying gratification) has my name written ALL over it.

Thomas Merton prayer

Thomas Merton's prayer from Thoughts in Solitude:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Heart of Christianity

Cynthia Bourgeault quotes Kabir Helminski, a modern Sufi master. "I realize that I quote it in nearly every book I have written, but I do so because it is so fundamental to the wisdom tradition that I have come to know as the authentic heart of Christianity."

We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. Beyond the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative and creative faculties; and image-forming and symbolic capacities. Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification for they are working best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. This total mind we call 'heart.' 

The heart is the antenna that receives the emanations of subtler levels of existence. The human heart has its proper field of function beyond the limits of the superficial, reactive ego-self. Awakening the heart, or the spiritualized mind, is an unlimited process of making the mind more sensitive, focused, energized, subtle, and refined, of joining it to its cosmic milieu, the infinity of love.

Or as is found in Matthew 5:8:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

The Will of God

Thomas Merton on the will of God, one of the "fine ideas in Guardini on Providence:"

the will of God is not a ‘fate’ to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new ... something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation (seeking first the Kingdom of God) consists not solely in conforming to laws but in opening our wills out to this creative act which must be retrieved in and by us -- by the will of God.

The Welcome Practice

The video above is a wonderful explanation of the Welcome Practice developed by Mary Mrozowski, one of the founders of Contemplative Outreach and an associate of Fr. Thomas Keating.

As nicely explained by Wisdom Way of Knowing, the practice has three steps:

1. Focus or ‘sink in’ to become aware and physically present to the particular experience or upset. Bring your attention to what is happening as sensation in your body. Without analyzing or judging yourself or your state, inwardly tune into what is happening as the physical embodiment of the experience. Don’t try to change anything at this stage – just stay present. ...
2. Welcome and lightly name the response that is being triggered by the difficult situation (such as “fear” or “anger” or “pain”). Acknowledge the response as sensation, and recognize that in this moment, if the experience is not being rejected or repressed, it can be endured. Ever so gently, begin to say ‘welcome’ (such as “welcome fear”, etc…) ...
3. Transition to a ‘letting go’, whereby the intensity of the situation can recede. This enables the natural fluidity of sensation to come and then go. ...

Archbishop Romero’s Prayer

A lovely prayer, written by the late Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw. It was renamed Archbishop Romero’s Prayer after his 1980 assassination.

A Step Along the Way: Archbishop Romero’s Prayer 

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Amen.

Fr Basil Pennington on centering prayer

If you are at all interested in centering prayer, this is a must-watch introduction by one of the fathers of the modern practice. It's a bit dated video-wise (it was filmed in 1991), but the content is well worth it.

Note: there is a glitch in the editing. Right around the 22:10 mark (until about 50:00) the video shows a late Saturday AM session on lectio divina. The Friday evening intro to centering prayer starts around 50:30. The lectio section "fits" around the 1:59:00 mark.

No time to watch? Check out the online transcript.

Thomas Merton on contemplation

From The New Man:

If we would return to God, and find ourselves in God, we must reverse Adam and Eve's journey, we must go back by the way they came. The path lies through the center of our own soul. Adam and Eve withdrew into themselves from God and then passed through themselves and went forth into creation. We must withdraw ourselves from exterior things, and pass through the center of our souls to find God. We must recover possession of our true selves by liberation from anxiety and fear and inordinate desire.

From What is Contemplation? 

Why do we think of the gift of contemplation. infused contemplation, mystical prayer, as something essentially strange and esoteric reserved for a small class of almost unnatural beings and prohibited to everyone else? It is perhaps because we have forgotten that contemplation is the work of the Holy Spirit acting on our souls through His gifts of Wisdom and Understanding with special intensity to increase and perfect our love for Him. These gifts are part of the normal equipment of Christian sanctity. They are given to us at Baptism, and if they are given it is presumably because God wants them to be developed.... But it is also true that God often measures His gifts by our desire to receive them, and by our cooperation with His grace, and the Holy Spirit will not waste any of His gifts on people who have little or no interest in them.

See this for more.

Walk into love

I had to pull this snippet out of Cynthia Bourgeault's Heart of Centering Prayer talk with Boston College. Someone in the audience asked whether there is a relationship between the state of consciousness induced by a substance (e.g. peyote) compared to that of contemplation.

Bourgeault brings up Ken Wilbur's teaching on distinguishing between states and stages and notes that:

[The] states may look alike ... but the stages are going to be completely different. Because as we approach centering prayer, we're approaching it not to have a blissful experience ... it's the gentle laying down of self, the humble work, the not asking for visions. ...

So to come to prayer in humility ... in the genuine willingness to be given nothing, but to give because it's the divine nature to give and we have that in us. ...

So ... forget your intoxication with states. We don't get enlightened by swooping up to some high state ... we get enlightened by realizing that everything, every instant of divinity, every power of the fire of the divine heart is right here, right now. Nothing missing. We simply have to put our feet on the ground and walk into love. 

Or as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing writes:

Lift your heart up to the Lord with a gentle stirring of love, desiring him for his own sake and not for his gifts.

I have realized that for me, the desire for the "blissful experience" was the ego, wanting to fix my hurts on my own. Time to let go!

The Heart of Centering Prayer

Ego death

Adyashanti on ego death (or lack thereof):

It is said that the ego must die in order for you to truly live. But nothing need die; you simply need to grow up. A child does not die in order to grow into an adult. The child simply grows up; it evolves and leaves behind what is no longer appropriate. See that the ego is no longer useful or appropriate and leave it behind. Only the ego makes its own demise seem dramatic.

Now is the hour

The prologue of the Rule of St Benedict contains this:

Now, therefore, let us finally arise. Scripture stirs us up saying, “Now is the hour to rise from sleep.”

It's explained by Michael Casey: (emphasis mine)

No call is resisted and resented so fully as the call to wake up. So we need not be surprised if we do not want to be stirred into action, especially when we do not know exactly what will be involved. ... 

By creating a miasma of sensory fireworks we effectively block out anything beyond what is sensate: any spiritual perceptiveness, any attention to interiority. ... 

The result is that we are so awake on one level that there is no room for a more interior awakening. ... 

To be awake and alert spiritually we have to limit the amount of attention we give to other areas. And, according to St. Benedict, we have to make a start right away. “Now is the hour to rise from sleep.”

Grounding

Suffering

Craig Bullock (Assisi Institute) on suffering and the love of God (emphasis mine):

Jesus tells us that we will experience suffering in this world. He teaches us that that life on planet earth is a mixture of light and darkness, and that we must each carry our crosses with faith and dignity. Half the battle, therefore, is accepting pain as a part of life and understanding that life will necessarily "appear" to be very unfair at times. ... We humans seem to be unwilling to grow, to evolve, or to reach for God without the presence of pain.

Find the sweetness

Jesus and the 12 steps

I just started Richard Rohr's Breathing Under Water class, which looks at the gospel principles in the 12 steps. In the intro of the book, he lists the "foundational ways that ... Jesus and the Twelve Steps are saying the same thing but with different vocabulary." See below.

Sin

Richard Rohr notes that sin is a symptom (emphasis mine):

The great illusion that we must all overcome is that of separateness. Religion’s primary task is to communicate union, to reconnect people to their original identity “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). ...

What most people call “sin" is more the symptom of sin, not the delusional state itself! ... Our primary and self-destructive illusion is that we are separate and alone. This is the true basis, motivation, and loneliness that leads to all “sin.”

Awakening

More here

Christ has no body

Robert Holden on the Beatitudes

Psychologist and Hay House contributor Robert Holden has written two posts (part 1 and part 2) on a mystical interpretation of the Beatitudes. He begins by 'explaining that Christian mystics recognize most scriptures offer three levels of meaning':

The first is the level of stone, which conveys the literal, written meaning of the words; the second is the level of water, when the words speak to your heart; and the third is the level of wine, when water turns to wine, and you have a direct experience of the spiritual meaning of the words.

His explanations are brief, but worth a read for those, like me, who are exploring these important teachings from Jesus.

Selfish mindfulness

An interesting take on mindfulness from professor of psychology Thomas Joiner in Friday's WaPo:

What we might call authentic mindfulness [the nonjudgmental awareness of the richness, subtlety and variety of the present moment], I found, is a noble and potentially useful idea. But true mindfulness is being usurped by an imposter, and the imposter is loud and strutting enough that it has replaced the original in many people’s understanding of what mindfulness is. ... 

Mindfulness, as popularly promoted and practiced, can itself be a distraction. It purports to draw on ancient traditions as an antidote to modern living. Yet it exacerbates the modern tendency toward navel-gazing, while asking us to resist useful aspects of our nature.

Much more worth checking out in the longer article.

Ikigai

I came across the Japanese concept of ikigai in one of my feeds recently. There seems to be a useful connection with recovery ... i.e., learning to answer the "why do I get up in the morning?" question in a better way.

Presence and awareness

Hoping to be saved

I recently watched To The Bone, the Netflix movie about one girl's battle with anorexia. This quote by Keanu Reeve's character (Dr. Beckham) towards the end may feel trite or cliche to some (as it did to Ellen in the story), but it really resonated with me:

This idea you have, that there's a way to be safe, it's childish and cowardly. It stops you from experiencing anything, including anything good. ... Stop waiting for life to be easy. Stop hoping for somebody to save you. You don't need another person lying to you. Things don't all add up, but you are resilient. Face some hard facts and you could have an incredible life.

Cardinal Tobin on faith

This:

We’re encouraged to compartmentalize faith. Faith is seen as equivalent to worship and thereby reduced to an hour on Sunday morning, if that. It really impoverishes the notion of faith, of which the biblical image is a type of vision, a different way of looking at things. 

Faith is not an opiate or belief in the pie in the sky and the great by‑and‑by. It’s about the great drama of human existence and seeing something differently. I think that part of ministry and the life of the church is to help people make that connection, to see something differently. 

Faith tells me that my life with God is not simply about me and Jesus, because if it’s just me and Jesus, then it’s mainly about me. Faith impels me to have the vision to see other people not as objects or people who will do things that will meet my needs but as fellow daughters and sons of God, as brothers and sisters, as fellow pilgrims.

No such thing

"No such thing" is the title of Mirabai Starr's cover article in the Summer 2017 issue of The Mendicant, the newsletter of Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation which looks at Christian mystic Julian of Norwich's take on sin.

Julian description of her experience of the Divine:

I did not see any sin. I believe that sin has no substance, not a particle of being, and cannot be detected at all except by the pain it causes. It is only the pain that has substance, for a while, and it serves to purify us, and make us know ourselves and ask for mercy.

Starr adds (emphasis mine):

Julian informs us that the suffering we cause ourselves through our acts of greed and unconsciousness is the only punishment we endure. God, who is All-Love, is “incapable of wrath,” and so it is a complete waste of time, Julian realized, to wallow in guilt. The truly humble thing to do when we have stumbled is to hoist ourselves to our feet as swiftly as we can and rush into the arms of God, where we will remember who we really are. ... 

Sin is nothing but separation from our Divine Source, and separation from the Holy One is nothing but illusion. We are always and forever connected in love with our Beloved. Therefore sin is not real; only love is real.

Addiction and connection

Marc Lewis on what the overdose epidemic teaches us:

In short, we need opioids to feel safe and to connect with each other. Then what does it say about our life-style if our natural supply isn’t sufficient? It says we are stressed and isolated. That’s a problem we need to resolve. ... 

The early 21st century offers less structure and stability through religion, and through extended family relationships, than we have experienced in thousands of years. And maybe that’s just the way it is. But we don’t have to throw away the basic currency of security and interconnectedness entirely. We can build social structures — governments, corporations, community organizations, and systems of education and care — that encourage stability, hope, and trust in our day-to-day lives. ... If we fail to do that, many of us will want to hook ourselves up to an opioid pump. Just to endure.

Grounding Christianity in love

From today's Daily Meditation from Richard Rohr (emphasis his):

Franciscans never believed that “blood atonement” was required for God to love us. We believed that Christ was Plan A from the very beginning (Colossians 1:15-20, Ephesians 1:3-14, John 1:1-18). ... The Franciscan view grounds Christianity in love and freedom from the very beginning. It creates a coherent and positive spirituality, which draws us toward lives of inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing, and universal at-one-ment, instead of any notion of sacrifice, which implies God needs to be bought off. Nothing changed on Calvary, but everything was revealed as God’s suffering love—so that we could change!

And in a very complementary way, here is today's reflection from Craig Bullock (emphasis mine):

Many years ago, I went to my spiritual director complaining that I was praying to God for guidance, but God was not responding. He answered, “You know, God is very busy. He has many responsibilities.” I asked him if that meant that God was too busy to answer my prayers. He said, “No, but God is not going to waste time speaking to you if you are not going to listen to what He has to say.” Simply put, God’s miraculous love can only break into our lives to the degree that we are open to it, without conditions or qualifications. In other words, the willingness to obey God’s guidance is the necessary precondition for receiving guidance. We are hesitant to be open and obedient because we fear what God might do. We believe that God wants to limit our happiness, when, in actuality, God’s will is the only source of true happiness. Yogananda tells us that, “God is love; His plan for creation is rooted only in love.” And he also says, “There is no other way to find God’s love than to surrender to Him.”

Hummingbirds vs jackhammers

Sorry to only be seeing this now (it's from 2015), but this is a great talk by Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert on hummingbirds vs jackhammers ... aka people motivated more by curiosity vs passion.

Watch the whole thing over on Oprah.

It's a mystery

A fave line from Shakespeare in Love. I'm posting it now as I will likely refer to this again and again.

ADDICT

Celebrate Recovery is big on acrostics, like this one for RECOVERY:

 I got to thinking about the word ADDICT.

A
Deeply
Distressed
Individual
Comforting
Themself

This is more acronym than acrostic, but I like it. I may tweak over time.

Thoreau: The cost of a thing

I'll take that

I'm seeing my therapist later today after a two-week, 4th of July break. At our last meeting, she had been astonished that I had completely stopped binge eating after June 15th (when I stopped drinking).

She and I have been doing lots of work related to attachment/development trauma and she's a big fan of the internal family systems model (read: lots of inner children), so she and I both know that this is not some miracle cure ... but that at least for now, the binge eater has gone MIA. Or perhaps, as in her metaphor, the others have "locked her up."

It may be a little of both. The "dutiful daughter" (I can be great at compliance when externally motivated) has shown up as a result of perceived "threat" (said therapist was frustrated at my "extreme codependence" in avoiding rehab to be caretaker for an invalid pet).

Anyways, on the plus side, since DD has shown up, I'm now down 12 pounds. Since I've got a crapload more than that to go, I'll take it!

How did I do it? Following the guidelines of the Nutrition GPA app. Eat lots of veggies and fish, avocado, and legumes at least once a day. Avoid refined flour, fried foods, processed meat, excess sugar, and alcohol. Oh, and ice cream for dessert in the evening (that's for the kids 👧).

I used to be a weight loss blogger formerly. All of the years that I spent agonizing and arguing about carbs, fat, gluten, fasting, vegan, paleo, ad nauseum ... when it looks like this moderate approach (at least for me) might be a winner. We'll see!

Revolutionary Contemplation

Thanks to a Richard Rohr pointer, this post's title and morning's reading is from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams's address to the Synod of Bishops in Rome from 2012; this is the first address by an Archbishop to that community (see video below).

Like Fr Rohr, I find some interesting passages in the address that really apply to my current journey, such as (emphasis mine):

To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter. [8]

Thomas Merton describes [a time when he] had contracted flu, and was confined to the infirmary [and] felt a ‘secret joy’ at the opportunity this gave him for prayer – and ‘to do everything that I want to do, without having to run all over the place answering bells.’ He is forced to recognise that this attitude reveals that ‘All my bad habits…had sneaked into the monastery with me and had received the religious vesture along with me: spiritual gluttony, spiritual sensuality, spiritual pride.’ In other words, he is trying to live the Christian life with the emotional equipment of someone still deeply wedded to the search for individual satisfaction. It is a powerful warning: we have to be every careful in our evangelisation not simply to persuade people to apply to God and the life of the spirit all the longings for drama, excitement and self-congratulation that we so often indulge in our daily lives. [9]

Invoking the Holy Spirit is a matter of asking the third person of the Trinity to enter my spirit and bring the clarity I need to see where I am in slavery to cravings and fantasies and to give me patience and stillness as God’s light and love penetrate my inner life. Only as this begins to happen will I be delivered from treating the gifts of God as yet another set of things I may acquire to make me happy, or to dominate other people. [10]

I will leave the "works vs faith" undertone/commentary for a later date, though I tend to agree very much with this:

It should not need saying that this is not at all to argue that ‘internal’ transformation is more important than action for justice; rather, it is to insist that the clarity and energy we need for doing justice requires us to make space for the truth, for God’s reality to come through. Otherwise our search for justice or for peace becomes another exercise of human will, undermined by human self-deception. ... True prayer purifies the motive, true justice is the necessary work of sharing and liberating in others the humanity we have discovered in our contemplative encounter. [11]

It's really quite easy to let this be all about my ego! I don't know that doing action (works) and contemplation (faith) together is a panacea about that ... very likely not. But as Fr Rohr writes, action and contemplation "must be brought together or neither one would make sense."

A new name for codependency

Somewhere in my travels I came across Ross Rosenberg. He has coined a couple of terms related to codependency. The first is "Self-Love Deficit Disorder." In an article summarizing SLDD and how he treats it, Rosenberg writes:

"Codependency" is an outdated term that connotes weakness and emotional fragility, both of which are far from the truth. The replacement term, “Self-Love Deficit Disorder” or SLDD takes the stigma and misunderstanding out of codependency and places the focus on the core shame that perpetuates it.

The codependency arises when people:

repeatedly are attracted to or find them self intractably in a relationship with a narcissist despite the lessons they keep willing themselves to learn ... [and they] feel trapped in their relationships because they confuse sacrifice and selfless caring with commitment, loyalty and love.

Rosenberg also has coined the term "codependency anorexia," which happens:

when [codependents] hit bottom and can no longer bear the pain and the harm meted out to them from their malevolent pathological narcissists. ... In an effort to protect themselves ... they flip their vulnerability switch to "off," which results in a complete shutdown of their emotional, relational, and sexual machinery.

Stuff to ponder.

Community and addiction

In a post on trauma and addiction, Stanton Peele includes a couple of interesting (IMO) points. First Peele notes:

Community is the fundamental factor in human survival and satisfaction. In fact, [Sebastian] Junger finds, it is the community to which people return that determines PTSD outcomes, and not the events that trigger it.

And he quotes anthropologist Gary Barker on a similar point:

Our whole approach to mental health has been hijacked by pharmaceutical logic. PTSD is a crisis of connection and disruption, not an illness that you carry within you.

The leader at last night's CR meeting made a similar point on the importance of community in CR. I think that's one of the things that is great about their format. Everyone starts together, and you're in a room with folks with all sorts of different "hurts, habits, and hangups."

And depending on the meeting, you may hear people refer to the group as a "forever family." Kinda nice!

Thoughts for today

Two complementary comments from two of my regular reads. First, from Richard Rohr:

Contemplative prayer is like striking a tuning fork. All you can really do in the spiritual life is resonate to the true pitch, to receive the always-present message.  ... Prayer is connecting with God/Ultimate Reality. It is not an attempt to change God’s mind about us or about events. Such arrogance is what unbelievers make fun of—and often rightly so. Prayer is primarily about changing our own mind so that things like infinity, mystery, and forgiveness can resound within us.

Then from Craig Bullock of the Assisi Institute:

To be born a human is a great gift because we have been fashioned in God's very own image. What does this mean? We are meant to hear the highest harmonies, to behold the most luminous lights, to taste the sweetest of delights, to inhale heaven's most intoxicating fragrances, and to touch the Divine in all persons. What then has gone wrong? Our soul's senses are enslaved by lesser gods, dulled by the dross of ignorance, and governed by the whims of desire. Restoration to our original innocence, to our full potential in God, cannot occur without our own effort – and the effort required is of the will and the heart. We must choose to make an interior journey, to pull ourselves into our own center.

Wholeness

Why this? Why now?

I wanted to make a note for now about why this, why now? I wasn't blogging when I first came across an "a ha" moment for me (so no link), but basically it was something along the lines of "you do not earn grace, nor do can you achieve it through works ... you can only remove the obstacles to it."

For me, those obstacles certainly include the "hurts, habits, and hang-ups" of codependency (or as Ross Rosenberg calls it, "self-love deficit disorder"), food, alcohol, and screens (TV, social media).

More on the obstacles later, but as far as why this, why now, I want to leave this from Fr Richard Rohr on being open to grace:

Contrary to the grace versus “works righteousness” split that became popular after the Reformation, it is a lot of work and practice to remain fully open to undeserved and unmerited grace (Philippians 2:12-13).

There's lots to say and I will at some point, but I'll just start with noting that at this late stage of my life, it's clear that not only does this "work and practice" involve stopping with the numbing out all the time, but to "search wholeheartedly" for God (Jeremiah 29:13).

I'll be honest, my snooty, judgmental, intellectual (left) brain is not so sure about all of this, so I'm just setting that aside and letting my heart seek for now.

Psalm 51:10

My prayer for healing the hardness of my heart (in fact, I wear it near my heart).

Mother Teresa on judgement

I'm doing Fr Michael Gaitley's Consoling the Heart of Jesus retreat, and have just completed the first part of obstacle 5, where he talks about softening the heart by overcoming the sins that harden it. One of these sins is judgement (or a judgmental attitude).

Bingo.

I'd actually marked down judgement in obstacle 2 under the section of attachments (the things that we think would cause us distress to give up).

Fr Michael mentioned this great Mother Teresa quote in today's lesson. Marking it here for inspiration!

St. Thérèse of Lisieux on love

Reza Aslan's three questions about faith

Posting this here for reference ... it's Reza Aslan's three questions on faith ("faith is a choice, but it's not an irrational choice") from Oprah's Super Soul Sunday.

1. Do you believe that there is something beyond the material realm?
2. If yes, do you want to experience that thing? To commune, to feel it?
3. If yes, how? Through religion, through relationships, through nature or awe? The how is a personal choice.

So for Aslan, it's "all about deciding whether you want to or not. It's not about needing proof."

This is one of the things that has propelled me on this journey (along with Pope Francis). As a liberal elite intellectual who was raised Catholic but been lapsed for 40-some years, the answer to both #1 and #2 is yes.

But #3 is proving to be a bit more difficult to answer, save for the belief that the answer includes Jesus.

Thinking and living

Love this quote on thinking from Richard Rohr. I'm so working on this! #toomuchleftbrain

Martin Sheen on spirituality and community

This is a very interesting interview with Martin Sheen! My fave part (emphasis mine):

Yeah, the love that I longed for and, I think, all of us really long for, is knowing that we are loved — a knowingness about our being that unites us to all of humanity, to all of the universe; that despite ourselves, we are loved. ...

You know how so often people say they go on this journey — and I said it too, that I’m looking for God. But God has already found us, really. We have to look in the spot where we’re least likely to look. And that is within ourselves. And when we find that love, that presence, deep within our own personal being — and it’s not something that you can earn or something that you can work towards, it’s just a realization of being human, of being alive, of being conscious. And that love is overwhelming. And that is the basic foundation of joy. And we become enviable joyful.

Persistent, consistent

Love this!

Hurt people hurt people

Heard this from the leader at last night's CR meeting:

He also shared this which is oh so relevant to me right now:

Resentment is unexpressed anger.

On this note, I recently took the Enneagram. I want to keep in mind Cynthia Bourgeault's "love-hate relationship" with this tool and particularly her concern that people use it as another way "to get themselves further stuck in identification."

That said, I found this pretty interesting re type 9 and addiction:

Over-eating or under-eating due to lack of self-awareness and repressed anger. Lack of physical activity. Depressants and psychotropics, alcohol, marijuana, narcotics to deaden loneliness and anxiety.

Hmm. I suppose this could describe lots of folks. But it's pretty spot on for me.

Chesterton on Christianity

G. K. Chesterton's famous quote on Christianity, from his book What's Wrong with the World?

Being free

Today from Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations:

In order to be free for life, we must quite simply be free from our small selves. [Saint] Francis knew that Jesus was not at all interested in the usual “sin management” task that many clergy seem to think is their job. He saw that Jesus was neither surprised nor upset at what we usually call sin. Jesus was upset at human pain and suffering. What else do all the healing stories mean? They are half of the Gospel! Jesus did not focus on sin. Jesus went where the pain was. Wherever he found human pain, there he went, there he touched, and there he healed.

Francis, who only wanted to do one thing—imitate Jesus—did the same. But you cannot do that, or even see it, unless your first question is something other than “What do I want?” “What do I prefer?” or “What pleases me?” In the great scheme of things, it really does not matter what I want. We are not free at all until we are free from ourselves. It is that simple and that hard.

The Eight-Point Program of Passage Meditation

Filed for now ... Eknath Easwaran's Eight-Point Program of Passage Meditation:

1. Meditation on a Passage 
2. Repetition of a Mantram 
3. Slowing Down 
4. One-Pointed Attention 
5. Training the Senses 
6.  Putting Others First 
7. Spiritual Fellowship 
8. Spiritual Reading

My Serenity prayer

I like the longer version of the Serenity prayer they use in CR. But this version works better for me, since I'd rather avoid anthropomorphic expressions of God when I can.

Jesus, grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change.
The courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.  

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
Taking, as You did, this sinful world as it is;
Not as I would have it;  

Trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next. 

AMEN  

 --Reinhold Niebuhr

The Power of Powerlessness

I think the rest of the steps will be a cakewalk for me compared to the first. Note to self re powerlessness from Richard Rohr (emphasis his):

The way of the Twelve Steps is remarkably similar to Jesus’ Way of the Cross, St. Francis’ Way of Poverty, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s Little Way. These and many other saints and mystics teach the power of powerlessness either directly or indirectly. ... Many did recognize that it is the imperial ego that has to go, and only powerlessness can do the job correctly. If we try to change our ego with the help of our ego, we only have a better-disguised ego.

And this:

It is just as Jesus, St. Francis, John of the Cross, and Thérèse of Lisieux teach us: there is incredible power in powerlessness! The quickest ticket to heaven, enlightenment, or salvation is a willingness to face our own smallness and incapacity. Our conscious need for mercy is our only real boarding pass. The ego does not like that very much, but the soul fully understands.

Links to much more on the Twelve Steps from Fr Rohr after the break.

Marking this date

I took one of these tonight.

According to the CR tradition, taking a blue chip:

can signify any number of positive steps, including a commitment to tackle a new life issue, a return to recovery after a fall, a determination to do the right thing knowing a particular challenge is coming up, or our first admission that we need God to handle our hurts, habits or hang-ups.

For me, it was a pretty much all of the above. But I also stopped drinking today too.

The Eight Principles / Beatitudes

Celebrate Recovery's eight recovery principles are based on the Beatitudes: the statements Jesus made at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-12).

There will be lots more on this later, but for now, I want to leave a note with Cynthia Bourgeault's treatment of the Beatitudes (for the Center for Action and Contemplation) here:

Only through a point of nothingness can we enter the larger mind. As long as we’re filled with ourselves, we can go no further. (Sunday)

Only when we have dealt directly with our animal instincts, and the pervasive sense of fear and scarcity that emerge out of our egoic operating system, are we truly able to inherit the earth rather than destroy it. (Monday)

Jesus promises that when the hunger arises within you to find your own deepest aliveness within God’s aliveness, it will be satisfied—in fact, the hunger itself is a sign that the bond is already in place. (Tuesday)

Mercy is not something God has so much as it’s something that God is. Exchange is the very nature of divine life; all things share in the divine life through participation in this dance of giving and receiving. (Wednesday)

When your heart becomes “single,” when it can live in perfect alignment with that resonant field of mutual yearning we called “the righteousness of God,” then you “see God.” (Thursday)

When the field of vision has been unified, the inner being comes to rest, and that inner peaceableness flows into the outer world as harmony and compassion. This is what we mean by contemplative engagement. (Friday)

Hello, world!

Last night I attended my very first Celebrate Recovery meeting. And tonight I'm going to another. Pretty amazing considering my lifelong distaste for the 12-step movement. So amazing that I feel compelled to use a blog to keep a record of it.

Stay tuned. 😇