Category Archives: Group

Concept of Wisdom

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Cynthia Bourgeault says that: “Wisdom is not knowing more but knowing more about oneself”. This opens a fundamental redirection of our efforts to know and understand the meaning and purpose of life. Before, we’ve relied on our rational-thinking brains to tackle life’s big questions. But with the work of Wisdom comes the use of our hearts and our bodies as well.

Wisdom is deeper than any religious expression in a real sense. It is rather the deep undercurrent that connects all the religions of the world and from which flows from the subterranean spring of unitive reality.

Perhaps we can say that Wisdom does not represent the what in terms of the content of a particular belief system, but rather the how in terms of the way things are expressed when they descend to the level of the unitive. However, instead of being linked exclusively to any religious system, the Wisdom is explicitly interfaith. But the depth that marks this Wisdom is qualitatively different from what is found near and above the surface. There, on the surface, the various spiritual traditions are distinguished by significant differences in beliefs, rituals, and theologies. But in the depths of Wisdom all come together through the unitive understanding that unites all life into one profound whole.

As Christians, we could affirm that our religion provides that place where Wisdom comes from. We can have a deep sense that Jesus himself embodied this, Wisdom. In fact, the main title given to Jesus was that of moshelim, that is, a teacher of Wisdom, and he taught in mashal, that is, parables and sayings of Wisdom. He himself seemed the embodiment of Wisdom, moving through life with a heart full of compassion, generosity, and love. However, not everyone caught on to his actions or his teachings. Some of his listeners got it, but the vast majority didn’t. Even the people, who sometimes seemed to get the message he was conveying, were not always able to maintain this understanding.

Jesus, the teacher of Wisdom, does not implore his listeners to be better and more upright citizens; if not, he tries to convince them and begs them to wake up. He never preached a morally upright life to be lived in this life to gain entrance to heaven in the next life. On the contrary, he invited his listeners to realize that the kingdom of heaven is right here, in the present moment.

The friends and followers who seemed to pick up on the Wisdom of the master seemed to have done so because their level of being was raised, at least temporarily, to a point where they could resonate with the frequency of the Wisdom he was teaching and passing on and his truth touched the depths of their hearts. In addition, their presence provided them with a kind of divine alchemy that led to a generalized sense of togetherness. Through this experience they were transformed from the inside out.

Opening to the full depth of Gospel Wisdom requires the receptivity of a certain state of mind or a certain state of being. Without that, the Wisdom of Jesus cannot be received. When you pass into the deep truths of the Wisdom of Jesus only through the small mind, all you get is a deeper consolidation in what you already believed without the accompanying transformation occurring.

This understanding has been tragically overlooked in the West. Beginning with the doctrinal controversies of the third and fourth centuries, the Church has made our faith a matter of mental belief, and our tradition has become overly influenced by creeds and doctrinal statements of belief and not guided by the actual spiritual truth that is born of the experience.

Therefore, the work of Wisdom is an effort to return to the essential foundations of our Christian faith experience.This does not mean that we ignore, deny or underestimate grace, but rather that we must be instruments of reception and transmission of God’s love.

The kingdom that Jesus speaks of requires that we employ a new operating system that can perform operations of an entirely different order. When this system is in operation a whole new way of seeing is possible and where our being can be accessed at a much higher level. We can call this new system the operating system of the heart.

The work of Wisdom involves growing beyond our small minds into our larger minds, or our hearts. Therefore, the work of Wisdom is not to cancel the egoic operating system of the smaller mind, it is rather to help us develop the operating system of the heart of the larger mind, which we already have but which is in a dormant form, and to achieve the integration of these two systems in our being.

[1] Cynthia Bourgeault, An Introductory Wisdom School: Course Transcript and Companion Guide (Wisdom Way of Knowing: 2017), 2.

[2]William Redfield. Notes from the program From Self to Other. September 18, 2022 

https://www.williamredfield.com

Concepto de Sabiduría

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Cynthia Bourgeault dice que: “La sabiduría no es saber más sino saber más de uno mismo”. Esto nos abre una redirección fundamental de nuestros esfuerzos por conocer y comprender el significado y el propósito de la vida. Con anterioridad, hemos confiado en nuestro cerebro de pensamiento racional para abordar las grandes preguntas de la vida. Pero con el trabajo de Sabiduría se añade el uso de nuestros corazones y nuestros cuerpos también.

La Sabiduría es más profunda que cualquier expresión religiosa en un sentido real. Es más bien la corriente subterránea profunda que conecta todas las religiones del mundo y de la cual fluye desde el manantial subterráneo de la realidad unitiva.

Tal vez podamos decir que la Sabiduría no representa el qué en términos del contenido de un sistema de creencias en particular, sino más bien el cómo en términos de la forma en que las cosas se expresan cuando descienden al nivel de lo unitivo. De todos modos, en lugar de vincularse exclusivamente con cualquier sistema religioso, la Sabiduría es explícitamente interreligiosa. Pero la profundidad que marca esta Sabiduría es cualitativamente diferente de lo que se encuentra cerca y por encima de la superficie. Allí, sobre la superficie, las diversas tradiciones espirituales se distinguen por diferencias significativas en creencias, rituales y teologías. Pero en las profundidades de la Sabiduría todos se unen a través de la comprensión unitiva que une toda la vida en una totalidad profunda.

Como cristianos, podríamos afirmar que nuestra religión proporciona ese lugar de dónde viene la Sabiduría. Podemos tener la profunda sensación de que Jesús mismo encarnó esta Sabiduría. De hecho, el título principal que se le dio a Jesús fue el de moshelim, es decir, un maestro de Sabiduría, y enseñó en mashal, es decir, parábolas y dichos de Sabiduría. El mismo parecía la personificación de la Sabiduría, moviéndose por la vida con un corazón lleno de compasión, generosidad y amor. Sin embargo, no todos captaron sus acciones o sus enseñanzas. Algunos de sus oyentes lo entendieron, pero la gran mayoría no. Incluso la gente, que a veces parecía captar el mensaje que estaba transmitiendo, no siempre fue capaz de mantener este entendimiento.

Jesús, el maestro de la Sabiduría, no implora a sus oyentes que sean mejores y más rectos ciudadanos; sino, les trata de convencer y les suplica que despierten. Nunca predicó una vida moral recta para ser vivida en esta vida a fin de ganar la entrada al cielo en la próxima vida. Por el contrario, invitaba a sus oyentes para que se dieran cuenta que el reino de los cielos está aquí mismo, en el momento presente.

Los amigos y seguidores que parecían captar la Sabiduría del maestro parecían haberlo hecho porque su nivel de ser se elevó, al menos temporalmente, a un punto en el que podían resonar con la frecuencia de la Sabiduría que él estaba enseñando y transmitiendo y su verdad tocó lo más profundo de sus corazones. Además, su presencia les proporcionó una especie de alquimia divina que los llevó a un sentido de unión generalizado. A través de esta experiencia fueron transformados de adentro hacia afuera.

La apertura a toda la profundidad de la Sabiduría del Evangelio requiere la receptividad de un cierto estado mental o un cierto estado de ser. Sin eso, la Sabiduría de Jesús no puede ser recibida. Cuando pasas a las profundas verdades de la Sabiduría de Jesús solo a través de la mente pequeña, todo lo que obtienes es una consolidación más profunda en lo que ya creías sin ocurrir la transformación que le acompaña.

Este entendimiento ha sido trágicamente pasado por alto en Occidente. Comenzando con las controversias doctrinales de los siglos tercero y cuarto, la Iglesia ha hecho de nuestra fe una cuestión de creencia mental, y nuestra tradición se ha vuelto excesivamente influenciada por credos y declaraciones doctrinales de creencia y no guiada por la verdad espiritual real que nace de la experiencia.

Por lo tanto, el trabajo de Sabiduría es un esfuerzo para regresar a los fundamentos esenciales de la experiencia de nuestra fe cristiana. Esto no quiere decir que ignoremos, neguemos o subestimamos la gracia, sino que debemos de ser instrumentos de recepción y transmisión del amor de Dios.

El reino del que habla Jesús requiere que empleemos un nuevo sistema operativo que pueda realizar operaciones de un orden completamente diferente. Cuando este sistema está en funcionamiento es posible una forma completamente nueva de ver y donde se puede acceder al ser de uno a nivel mucho más alto. Este nuevo sistema lo podemos llamar el sistema operativo del corazón.

 El trabajo de Sabiduría implica crecer más allá de nuestras mentes pequeñas para entrar en nuestras mentes más grandes o sea nuestros corazones. Por lo tanto, el trabajo de la Sabiduría no es cancelar el sistema operativo egoico de la mente más pequeña, es más bien ayudarnos a desarrollar el sistema operativo del corazón de la mente más grande, que ya tenemos pero que se encuentra en forma adormecida, y de lograr la integración de estos dos sistemas en nuestro ser.

[1] Cynthia Bourgeault, An Introductory Wisdom School: Course Transcript and Companion Guide (Wisdom Way of Knowing: 2017), 2.

[2] William Redfield. Notes from the program From Self to Other. September 18, 2022 

https://www.williamredfield.com

Two Kinds of Level of Knowing

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During the study of the Gospel of Thomas we are exposed to 2 levels of knowing:

  1. The visible level of words and concepts. This is the consciousness formed by reading, encounters, and thoughts of others.
  2. A deeper level of knowing is revealed by the inner work of meditation. Consciousness that arises directly from self-knowledge, of the “Living One” within us.

This is the consciousness that Jesus invites us in the Gospel of Thomas; not to become better Christians but to become Christs – awakened human beings. This deeper knowing is called pure consciousness. To be more precisely, the pure energy of consciousness. This energy exists in many levels, and it can be allowed to descend into our body, heart, and mind. Through its own active force make us awakened and fully human being.

Reading the Gospel of Thomas in a way to allow the words into the mind and heart of our humanity, will lead us into a voyage of transformation toward a full realization of our being. It is the mentally clear and emotionally calm state that is achieved in our “Silence”. From this ground rather than from mental agitation that the words of the Gospel of Thomas can bear the fruit of light.

From the Gospel of Thomas by Jean-Yves Leloup (2005)

Material used during our first meeting to study the Gospel of Thomas,

The Mind of Christ

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This week I have being presented with the concept of the apostle Paul as one of the most misunderstood teacher, and mystic. Having the sample of Paul, I encounter a direct message that talked to my heart at this moment in which I am interested in the process of how the non-dual mind mind is formed by prayer and embodiment practices. A beautiful summary has been presented during this week and I would like to have it near to remind me that all human being have access to the Divine Flow , that is always happening and everyone can plug in.

The Mind of Christ – Practice

We encourage you to create some space this week for intentional silence and stillness, using Father Richard’s description of contemplation and “the mind of Christ” as an entry into prayer:

In contemplative practice, we refuse to identify with any one side, while still maintaining our intelligence. We hold the creative tension of every seeming conflict and go beyond words to pure, open-ended experience, which has the potential to unify many seeming contradictions. We cannot know God the way we know anything else; we only know God subject to subject, by a process of mirroring. This is the “mind of Christ” (see 1 Corinthians 2:16). It really is a different way of knowing, and you can tell it by its gratuity, its open-endedness, its compassion, and by the way it is so creative and energizing in those who allow it.

Truly great thinkers and cultural creatives take for granted that they have access to a different and larger mind. They recognize that a Divine Flow is already happening and that everyone can plug into it. In all cases, it is a participative kind of knowing, a being known through and not an autonomous knowing. The most common and traditional word for this change of consciousness was historically “prayer,” but we trivialized that precious word by making it functional, transactional, and supposedly about problem solving. The only problem that prayer solves is us!

Material from Daily Meditations_Center of Action and Contemplation Week Mark 20 – March 25 2022

Learning to Letting Go with Centering Prayer

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Learning to Let Go

Centering Prayer is a devotional practice, placing ourselves in God’s presence and quieting our minds and hearts, but as Cynthia Bourgeault explains, it doesn’t only work on that level. What the desert abbas and ammas, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, and even Thomas Keating could not have known when he formally started teaching the practice five decades ago, was that it works on a physiological level as well, strengthening neural pathways, and making “letting go” that much easier. When it comes to releasing our strong preferences, especially our desire for power and control, it seems safe to say that some practice of kenosis is necessary for any movement forward. 

The theological basis for Centering Prayer lies in the principle of kenosis, Jesus’s self-emptying love that forms the core of his own self-understanding and life practice. . . .

The gospels themselves make clear that [Jesus] is specifically inviting us to this journey and modeling how to do it. Once you see this, it’s the touchstone throughout all his teaching: Let go! Don’t cling! Don’t hoard! Don’t assert your importance! Don’t fret. “Do not be afraid, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom!” (Luke 12:32). And it’s this same core gesture we practice in Centering Prayer: thought by thought by thought. You could really summarize Centering Prayer as kenosis in meditation form. . . .

Fascinating confirmation that kenosis is indeed an evolutionary human pathway is emerging from—of all places—recent discoveries in neuroscience. From fMRI data collected primarily by the California-based HeartMath Institute, you can now verify chapter and verse that how you respond to a stimulus in the outer world determines which neural pathways will be activated in your brain, and between your brain and your heart. If you respond with any form of initial negativity (which translates physiologically as constriction)—freezing, bracing, clinging, clenching, and so on—the pathway illumined leads to your amygdala (or “reptilian brain,” as it’s familiarly known) . . . which controls a repertory of highly energized fight-or-flight responses. If you can relax into a stimulus—opening, softening, yielding, releasing—the neural pathway leads through the more evolutionarily advanced parts of your forebrain and, surprisingly, brings brain and heart rhythms into entrainment. . . .

Every time we manage to let go of a thought in Centering Prayer, “consenting to the presence and action of God within,” the gesture is actually physically embodied. It’s not just an attitude; something actually “drops and releases” in the solar plexus region of your body, a subtle but distinct form of interior relaxation. . . . And in time, this gentle and persistent “inner aerobics,” undertaken under the specific banner of Centering Prayer and in solidarity with Jesus’s own kenotic path, will gradually establish that “mind of Christ” within you as your own authentic self.

We invite you to spend some time today practicing “letting go” through Centering Prayer or another practice of kenosis.

Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice (Shambhala: 2016), 33, 34, 35–36.

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation.

Good and Bad Power

August 8 – August 13, 2021

Differences Between Contemplation and Meditation

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Differences between Contemplation and Meditation.

Contemplation in it, has a wonderful dimension, a prayer meaning, that you are called from the other side. You are not the active agent. You are dancing with an invisible partner, but you are not dancing solo and you are not doing it.

Contemplation on the traditional way in the orthodox branch of Christianity it is being absorbed more and more deeply.  An sample or an image, when you worship with an icon and you are looking at the eye balls of Jesus and all of the sudden you have the feeling distinct that Jesus is looking at you, and then you and the icon disappears, and then you drop at some kind of portal at the cave of your heart.

Contemplation is a relational event that drops you finally into that deeper level of being absorbed in something that your mind cannot comprehend and get in top by itself.

Your practice cannot get on top, but you are met and that is the shade of difference.

Oneness, Session 3: The Secret Embrace – Thomas Keating’s Poetry, with Cynthia Bourgeault

1:08:34. To 1:10:30

Mystical Hope

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Mystical Hope   
Thursday,  April 16, 2020

Hope is the main impulse of life. —Ilia Delio, OSF [1]

Because we are so quickly led to despair, most of us cannot endure suffering for long without some sliver of hope or meaning. However, it is worth asking ourselves about where our hope lies. My friend and colleague Cynthia Bourgeault makes a powerful distinction between what she calls ordinary hope, “tied to outcome . . . . an optimistic feeling . . . because we sense that things will get better in the future” and mystical hope “that is a complete reversal of our usual way of looking at things. Beneath the ‘upbeat’ kind of hope that parts the seas and pulls rabbits out of hats, this other hope weaves its way as a quiet, even ironic counterpoint.” She writes,

We might make the following observations about this other kind of hope, which we will call mystical hope. In contrast to our usual notions of hope:

  1. Mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome, to the future. It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions.
  2. It has something to do with presence—not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by something intimately at hand.
  3. It bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy, and satisfaction: an “unbearable lightness of being.” But mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, it seems to produce them from within. . .

[It] is all too easy to understate and miss that hope is not intended to be an extraordinary infusion, but an abiding state of being. We lose sight of the invitation—and in fact, our responsibility, as stewards of creation—to develop a conscious and permanent connection to this wellspring. We miss the call to become a vessel, to become a chalice into which this divine energy can pour; a lamp through which it can shine. . . .

We ourselves are not the source of that hope; we do not manufacture it. But the source dwells deeply within us and flows to us with an unstinting abundance, so much so that in fact it might be more accurate to say we dwell within it. . . .

The good news is that this deeper current does exist and you actually can find it. . . . For me the journey to the source of hope is ultimately a theologicaljourney: up and over the mountain to the sources of hope in the headwaters of the Christian Mystery. This journey to the wellsprings of hope is not something that will change your life in the short range, in the externals. Rather, it is something that will change your innermost way of seeing. From there, inevitably, the externals will rearrange. . . . 

The journey to the wellsprings of hope is really a journey toward the center, toward the innermost ground of our being where we meet and are met by God.
[1] Delio, Ilia, “Hope in a Time of Crisis,” The Omega Center, March 9, 2020, www.omegacenter.info/hope-in-a-time-of-crisis/ 

Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God (Cowley Publications: 2001), 3, 5, 9-10, 17, 20, 42. 
https://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/BEBFF876C5C032E02540EF23F30FEDED/01F5CC100F253DFD0F8C96E86323F7F9

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

From where, does Wisdom come?

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“As Christians, we might reflexively assert that our religion provides that place.  But, while I agree that it can, I wonder how much it really does.  The history of religion in general and of Christianity in particular has been checkered to say the least.  Indeed, the number of human beings slaughtered in the various names of God is too large to even fathom.  Or on a more parochial level, how often do we hear stories of clergy and congregations behaving badly—all while everyone is singing hymns of praise to God and reciting prayers for peace.  But all of this may not be the fault of religion per se or certainly of any of the great spiritual teachers whose lives and works gave rise to the various religious traditions; it may be more the result of our failure to live the lives to which they invite us.  The question, though, is why.  I will get to that.

Indeed, we may have the deep sense that Jesus himself embodied this Wisdom.  In fact it is true that the primary title given to Jesus was that of a moshelim, that is, a master of Wisdom, and he did teach in mashal, that is, parables and Wisdom sayings.  And he himself seemed the epitome of Wisdom, moving through life with a heart overflowing with compassion, generosity, and love.  Clearly, however, not everyone caught on to either his Wisdom actions or his Wisdom teachings.  Some of his listeners got it, but many more did not.  And even the people, who did at times seem to get a grasp of the Wisdom he was conveying, were not always able to maintain it.

By the way, I am not talking about moral uprightness here.  Although that was often the spin that others put on his teachings, Jesus’ Wisdom was never actually about that.  Jesus, the Wisdom master, did not so much implore his listeners to be better and more upright citizens; instead he coaxed and implored them to awaken.  Similarly, he never preached a straight and narrow moral life to be lived in this life in order to gain entrance into a heaven in the next life.  Instead, he invited his listeners to wake up to the kingdom of heaven right here in the present moment.  But while many were fascinated with his Wisdom teaching and drawn to his powers of healing, the sad truth is that he actually had mixed success in winning hearts.

The friends and followers who did seem to grasp the Wisdom of the master seemed to have done so because their level of being was raised—at least temporarily—to a point where they could resonate to the frequency of the Wisdom he was teaching and transmitting.  Maybe because their desperation drove them to an extreme point of openness and vulnerability, maybe because their desire was so great, maybe because they had somehow coaxed their hearts into a state of open receptivity—whatever the reason—his truth touched the very depths of their hearts.  From this higher level of being—like a tuning fork—they came to vibrate at same frequency as the Wisdom master, and they saw just as Jesus saw.  His teachings and his very presence provided a sort of divine alchemy that brought them into a deeply pervasive sense of union.  Through this experience they were transformed from the inside out.

But those people who approached Jesus with skepticism, criticism, and judgment—well, they didn’t get his Wisdom at all.  Instead of being able to match his level of being, they sought to bring Jesus down to their own level.   Consequently, they were blind and deaf to his teaching and even closed to his healing.  Because they were not able to rise beyond the strong gravitational pull of their own small-mindedness, they simply could not grasp Jesus’ Wisdom.

It seems, then, that openness to the full depth of the Gospel Wisdom requires the receptivity of a certain state of mind or a certain state of being.  Without that, the Wisdom of Jesus cannot be received.  We simply need to grow beyond the small mind—because unless or until we do, we will end up twisting and distorting this Wisdom substantially.  In fact, when you run the deep Wisdom truths of Jesus through the small mind alone, all you get is a deeper entrenchment in what you already believed in the first place.  Profession of a certain set of beliefs without accompanying transformation ends up not amounting to much at all.

Unfortunately, this understanding has become tragically overlooked and misunderstood here in the West.  Starting with the bitter doctrinal controversies of the third and fourth centuries, the Church has made our faith too much a question of mental belief, and our tradition has become far too influenced by creedal and doctrinal statements of belief and not steered by actual spiritual truth that is born out of experience.

Wisdom work, then, is an effort to correct this and to bring our Christian faith back to its essential experiential underpinnings.  It’s not that grace is being ignored, denied, or even undervalued; it’s more that, if we are to be instruments of the reception and transmission of God’s love, we have a responsibility to tune our instruments.

Thus, much of Wisdom work involves growing beyond our smaller minds in order to enter our larger minds (or our hearts, really).  Indeed, the word for “repent” in the Gospel, more than meaning, “feel really sorry for your sins” means “transform yourself by coming into your larger mind” or heart. (Marcus Borg)

Or maybe all of this is better conceptualized by thinking of the operating system of your computer.  We’ve been chugging along using the more limited operating system of the smaller mind (also called the ego); but that operating system is only capable of specific operations on a certain level of life.  Great for choosing which kind of spaghetti sauce you want to buy at Wegman’s, but not so good for grasping the meaning of life’s wholeness.

The kingdom of which Jesus speaks requires us to employ another operating system that can perform operations of a different order entirely.  When this system is up and running—and, by the way, we all come fully equipped with this other operating system, which we may call the heart operating system—a whole new way of seeing is possible and higher levels of being are accessible.   But the work of Wisdom is not to cancel out the egoic operating system of the smaller mind; it is rather to help us to bring this other operating system on line and then to integrate the two.

All of that is pretty conceptual, I realize.  So let me be more practical.  How do we do this?

Wisdom work, as I have come to understand and experience it, has two major components: attention and surrender.  Attention methods help us to more deeply connect to the energy field within and around us.  Through specific practices we learn to see and experience life more accurately and more directly.  To do this we usually need to get out from beneath the dominant sway of our own personal story.  You see, the story of “me” always puts me in the middle and insists that everything be judged and evaluated in terms of how it affects me.  But that keeps us focused on the surface of things.  With attention practices, we learn to see and experience what lies underneath that.

Surrender is the practice that Jesus perfected in his life.  By refusing to clutch or grab anything in life and by declining to brace against anything, he allowed everything to come to him and flow through him.  In this counterintuitive approach he found the gateway to union with God.  Practice in surrender methods (which includes both meditation practices and other more active practices) we work to pattern this gesture of surrender into our very being.  And we discover that this gesture connects to that in us that lives beyond death.  And it is the surrender of Jesus that becomes the bridge that can take us there.  But it’s not that surrender in this moment brings us a resulting reward in the next.  The truth is in the gesture and the letting go movement itself.  Learn that gesture and bring it into multiple aspects in your life and you will have found a passageway to the kingdom.”

Extract from :

https://www.williamredfield.com/writing/2018/6/24/what-is-wisdom

By William Redfield

Healing Divisions- CP material March 21, 2020

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United in Prayer Day
 March 21, 2020

“Healing Divisions”

A day dedicated to whole-making in ourselves,
our relationships and our world

“Prayer is the energy of awakening to this radical presence of God.  It is the breathing of God’s Spirit in me that awakens me to the reality of my own existence.  As I awaken to my own reality, I awake to the reality of the whole of which I am part, the whole that is the universe itself. … As I am pulled into the power of God, my mind is filled with light and my being expands.  Such is the power of contemplation.

“Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg describes the Spirit as a field in which one’s particular being exists. Each person is like a particle in a relational field in which the Spirit unifies the various fields of energy. If this analogy holds true, then the particularity of my existence depends on my energies of relatedness. Prayer expands my field of energies so that the more deeply I am related to God, the more expansive are my relationships which energize and unite, and thus contribute to the work of evolution.”
– Ilia Delio, ” Praying In Teilhard’s Universe,” The Omega Center Newsletter, January 14, 2020

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“The awakening of the inner eye of faith is the awakening of the contemplative process.  You begin to see the Divine Presence in everything without effort – even when the necessities of daily life require your full attention.  When the inner eye of faith is thoroughly opened, it is a fairly permanent state of mind. You see everything as it is, but you also see it in its Source which is the presence of God. … To see God in everything, however hidden, is an enormous enhancement of the capacity of perception. … The practice of silence allows God greater freedom to act in us as our interior life becomes freer from our predispositions and predetermined mindsets. …”

– Thomas Keating, God is Love: The Heart of All Creation companion book

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“For the Christian, the choice for wholeness is embedded in the gospel life, following the words of Jesus, ‘I have come so that you may have life and have it to the full.’ (Jn 10:10). We are to focus our minds and hearts on the whole and choose the whole for the sake of abundant life. …

“In a remarkable letter to the director of the Vatican Observatory, John Paul II wrote: … ‘Unity involves the drive of the human mind toward understanding and the desire of the human spirit for love.  … Unity is also the consequence of love. If love is genuine, it moves not towards the assimilation of the other, but toward union with the other. Human community begins in desire when that union has not been achieved, and it is completed in joy when those who have been apart are now united.’

[…]

“Jesus began his mission by announcing the dawn of a new age, a new humanity unified in the love of God and committed to the reign of God. He challenged the social patterns of exclusivity and sought to replace it with the values of compassion and mercy. His inner oneness with God became manifest on the level of community, where he sought to overcome divisions by giving priority to men and women as coequal in God’s reign and by empowering the poor, lowly and marginalized. The reign of God is not an abstract ideal, he indicated, but a concrete reality. It begins with a consciousness of God and a desire to live in accord with God’s law of love. Jesus’ deep oneness with God empowered … a non-dual consciousness of belonging to the whole and the whole belonging to God. He lived from this wholeness by going ‘all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing people from every kind of disease and sickness’ (Mt 4:23). He constantly challenged others to see, to awaken to the presence of God, and to be part of an undivided whole, the kingdom (or ‘kin-dom’) of  God, where Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, male and female are invited as equals to the divine banquet.”

– Ilia Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness

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“In the Christian tradition love is the bottom line: ‘Love God with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself.’ The same God is in others as in us. All humans basically are equal and, if they consent, are inserted into the Mystical Body of Christ to serve each other and to build-up the Body of Christ in every possible way. …

“We belong to the human family and are developing and growing in breadth of perspective and in relationship to God. Christian non-duality then is this increasing merging of all our interests of body, soul, and emotions into the Body of Christ, the New Creation, who through the Spirit has given us the guidance of the Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit. …”

– Thomas Keating, That We May Be One: Christian Non-Duality

Incarnation

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Incarnation

Celebrating an Eternal Advent
Tuesday, December 24, 2019

In the first 1200 years of Christianity, the greatest feast was Easter with the high holy days of Holy Week leading up to the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. But in the 13th century, a new person entered the scene: Francis of Assisi felt we didn’t need to wait for God to love us through the cross and resurrection. Francis intuited that the whole thing started with incarnate love, and he popularized what we now take for granted as Christmas, which for many became the greater Christian feast. The Franciscans popularized Christmas. Maybe their intuition was correct.

Francis realized that if God had become flesh—taken on materiality, physicality, humanity—then we didn’t have to wait for Good Friday and Easter to “solve the problem” of human sin; the problem was solved from the beginning. It makes sense that Christmas became the great celebratory feast of Christians because it basically says that it’s good to be human, it’s good to be on this earth, it’s good to be flesh, it’s good to have emotions. We don’t need to be ashamed of any of this. God loves matter and physicality.

With that insight, it’s no wonder Francis went wild over Christmas! (I do, too: my little house is filled with candles at Christmastime.) Francis believed that every tree should be decorated with lights to show their true status as God’s creations! And that’s exactly what we still do 800 years later.

Remember, when we speak of Advent or preparing for Christmas, we’re not just talking about waiting for the little baby Jesus to be born. That already happened 2,000 years ago. In fact, we’re welcoming the Universal Christ, the Cosmic Christ, the Christ that is forever being born in the human soul and into history.

And believe me, we do have to make room, because right now there is no room in the inn for such a mystery. We see things pretty much in their materiality, but we don’t see the light shining through. We don’t see the incarnate spirit that is hidden inside of everything material.

The early Eastern Church, which too few people in the United States and Western Europe are familiar with, made it very clear that the incarnation was a universal principle. Incarnation meant not just that God became Jesus; God said yes to the material universe. God said yes to physicality. Eastern Christianity understands the mystery of incarnation in the universal sense. So it is always Advent. God is forever coming into the world (see John 1:9).

We’re always waiting to see spirit revealing itself through matter. We’re always waiting for matter to become a new form in which spirit is revealed. Whenever that happens, we’re celebrating Christmas. The gifts of incarnation just keep coming. Perhaps this is enlightenment.

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Adapted from “An Advent Meditation with Richard Rohr” (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), https://vimeo.com/246331333.