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.”