Healing Divisions- CP material March 21, 2020

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

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.

Art and the Power to Transcend

I received a contemplating practice today, Contemplating Art, and I was totally immersed on the experience that I had.

Some of the great modern philosophers, Schelling to Schiller to Schopenhauer, have all pinpointed a major reason for great art’s power to transcend. When we look at any beautiful object (natural or artistic), we suspend all other activity, and we are simply aware, we only want to contemplate the object. While we are in this contemplative state, we do not want anything from the object; we just want to contemplate it; we want it to never end. We don’t want to eat it, or own it, or run from it, or alter it: we only want to look, we want to contemplate, we never want it to end.

In that contemplative awareness, our own egoic grasping in time comes momentarily to rest. We relax into our basic awareness. We rest with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. We are face to face with the calm, the eye in the center of the storm. We are not agitating to change things; we contemplate the object as it is. Great art has this power, this power to grab your attention and suspend it: we stare, sometimes awestruck, sometimes silent, but we cease the restless movement that otherwise characterizes our every waking moment. . . .

Think of the most beautiful person you have ever seen. Think of the exact moment you looked into his or her eyes, and for a fleeting second you were paralyzed: you couldn’t take your eyes off that vision. You stared, frozen in time, caught in that beauty. Now imagine that identical beauty radiating from every single thing in the entire universe: every rock, every plant, every animal, every cloud, every person, every object, every mountain, every stream—even the garbage dumps and broken dreams—every single one of them, radiating that beauty. You are quietly frozen by the gentle beauty of everything that arises around you. You are released from grasping, released from time, released from avoidance, released altogether into the eye of Spirit, where you contemplate the unending beauty of the Art that is the entire World.

That all-pervading Beauty is not an exercise in creative imagination. It is the actual structure of the universe. That all-pervading Beauty is in truth the very nature of the Kosmos right now. . . . If you remain in the eye of the Spirit, every object is an object of radiant Beauty. If the doors of perception are cleansed, the entire Kosmos is your lost and found Beloved, the Original Face of primordial Beauty, forever, and forever, and endlessly forever. And in the face of that stunning Beauty, you will completely swoon into your own death, never to be seen or heard from again, except on those tender nights when the wind gently blows through the hills and the mountains, quietly calling your name. [1]

[1] Ken Wilber, The Eye of Spirit: Integral Art and Literary Theory (Shambhala: 1997), 44.

The Universal Christ: Contemplative Retreat June 15, 2019

Nancy Moran and I have been working together to lead this retreat. Our intention is to bring the message of the Universal Christ in a contemplative environment. We really give thanks to Contemplative Outreach Northeast Ohio for allow us to plan this retreat, to the Center of Action and Contemplation for the use of the videos from the latest conference on March 28-31, 2019 and to Laurel Lakes retirement Community for allow us use this place and for all help provided to make this event free of charge for our community.

The Universal Christ: Another Name for Every Thing
Saturday, June 15, 2019
Contemplative Retreat

What if Christ is a name for the transcendent within of every “thing” in the universe?
What if Christ is a name for the immense spaciousness of all true Love?
What if Christ refers to an infinite horizon that pulls us both from within and pulls us forward, too?
What if Christ is another name for every thing—in its fullness?
—Richard Rohr
Christ is more than Jesus’ last name. Jesus is a person whose example we can follow. Christ is a cosmic life principle in which all beings participate. The incarnation is an ongoing revelation of Christ, uniting matter and spirit, operating as one and everywhere. Together—Jesus and Christ—show us “the way, the truth, and the life” of death and resurrection.
On June 15, join Contemplative Outreach Northeast Ohio for Centering Prayer, contemplative teachings and practices, and reflection with 3 videos featuring Richard Rohr during the March 28 – 31, 2019 Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Registration required for lunch planning. NO FEE. Free will offering will be accepted. Date and Time Saturday, June 15, 2019 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (8:30 am to 9:00 am Registration. Please arrive early so we can start promptly at 9:00 am) Location and Directions Laurel Lake Retirement Community  200 Laurel Lake Dr. Hudson, OH 44236 Contact Information To RSVP for this event, please contact Nancy Moran at email nancymoran94@gmail.com, no later than June 12. For further information: contact Josefina Fernandez at email fucsina@mac.com Retreat leaders Nancy Moran and Josefina Fernandez
More Information Click here for more information about the schedule on the website of Contemplative Outreach Northeast Ohio.

Julian of Norwich Visions_Summary

John Philip Newell’s beautiful summary of Julian’s visions:

She says that Christ is the one who connects us to the “great root” of our being. . . . [1] “God is our mother as truly as God is our father,” she says. [2] We come from the Womb of the Eternal. We are not simply made by God; we are made “of God.” [3] So we encounter the energy of God in our true depths. And we will know the One from whom we have come only to the extent that we know ourselves. God is the “ground” of life. [4] So it is to the very essence of our being that we look for God. . . .

God “is in everything,” writes Julian. [5] God is “nature’s substance,” the very essence of life. [6] So she speaks of “smelling” God, of “swallowing” God in the waters and juices of the earth, of “feeling” God in the human body and the body of creation. [7] . . . Grace is given to save our nature, not to save us from our nature. It is given to free us from the unnaturalness of what we have become and done to one another and to the earth. Grace is given, she says, “to bring nature back to that blessed point from which it came, namely God.” [8] It is given that we may hear again the deepest sounds within us.

What Julian hears is that “we are all one.” [9] We have come from God as one, and to God we shall return as one. And any true well-being in our lives will be found not in isolation but in relation. She uses the image of the knot . . . to portray the strands of time and eternity intertwined, of the human and the creaturely inseparably interrelated, of the one and the many forever married. Christ’s soul and our soul are like an everlasting knot. The deeper we move in our own being, the closer we come to Christ. And the closer we come to Christ’s soul, the nearer we move to the heart of one another. In Christ, we hear not foreign sounds but the deepest intimations of the human and the divine intertwined.

And for Julian, the key to hearing what is at the heart of the human soul is to listen to our deepest longings, for “the desire of the soul,” she says, “is the desire of God.” [10] Of course, many of our desires have become infected or overlaid by confusions and distortions, but at the root of our being is the sacred longing for union. It is to this deepest root that Christ leads us. Our soul is made “of God,” as Julian says, so it is grounded in the desires of God. And at the heart of these holy desires is what Julian calls “love-longing.” [11] It is the most sacred and the most natural of yearnings. The deeper we move within the human soul, the closer we come to this divine yearning. And the nearer we come to our true self, “the greater will be our longing.” [12]

How did we ever lose such massive, in-depth wisdom?

Gateway to Presence:
If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.

[1] Julian of Norwich, Showings, chapter 51 (long text). See Revelation of Divine Love, trans. Elizabeth Spearing (Penguin: 1998), 123.

[2] Chapter 59 (long text). Ibid., 139.

[3] Chapter 53 (long text). Ibid., 129.

[4] Chapter 62 (long text). Ibid., 145.

[5] Chapter 11 (long text). Ibid., 58.

[6] Chapter 56 (long text). See Showings,trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Paulist Press: 1978), 290.

[7]Chapter 43 (long text). See Revelation of Divine Love, Spearing, 104.

[8] Chapter 63 (long text). Ibid., 146.

[9] Chapter 6 (short text). Ibid., 10.

[10] Chapter 43 (long text). Ibid., 103.

[11] Chapter 63 (long text). Ibid., 147.

[12] Chapter 46 (long text). Ibid., 107.

John Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation (Jossey-Bass: 2008), 67-69.

Contemplative Retreat The Universal Christ: Another Name for Every Thing

Saturday, June 15, 2019

What if Christ is a name for the transcendent within of every “thing” in the universe?
What if Christ is a name for the immense spaciousness of all true Love?
What if Christ refers to an infinite horizon that pulls us both from within and pulls us forward, too?
What if Christ is another name for every thing—in its fullness?

                                                                                 —Richard Rohr

Christ is more than Jesus’ last name. Jesus is a person whose example we can follow. Christ is a cosmic life principle in which all beings participate. The incarnation is an ongoing revelation of Christ, uniting matter and spirit, operating as one and everywhere. Together—Jesus and Christ—show us “the way, the truth, and the life” of death and resurrection.

On June 15, join Contemplative Outreach Northeast Ohio for Centering Prayer, contemplative teachings and practices, and reflection with 3 videos featuring Richard Rohr during the March 28 – 31, 2019 Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Registration required for lunch planning.
NO FEE. Free will offering will be accepted.

Date and Time

Saturday, June 15, 2019

9:00 am to 4:00 pm

(8:30 am to 9:00 am Registration. Please arrive early so we can start promptly at 9:00 am)

Location and Directions

Laurel Lake Retirement Community

200 Laurel Lake Dr, Hudson, OH 44236

Contact Information

To RSVP for this event, please contact Nancy Moran at email nancymoran94@gmail.com, no later than June 12

For further information: contact Josefina Fernandez at email fucsina@mac.com

Retreat leaders

Nancy Moran and Josefina Fernandez

                                                                                                 

Agenda

  8:30 am ­– 9:00 am                Registration

  9:00 am – 9:20 am                Opening and Introduction

  9:20 am – 11:00 am              Centering Prayer ­– Introduction to the Universal Christ (video)

11:00 am ­– 11:15 am              Break

11:15 am – 11:45 am              Contemplative Sharing

11:45 am – 12:30 pm              Lunch

12:30 pm – 1:40 pm                Centering Prayer ­– The Universal Christ (video)

  1:45 pm – 2:15 pm                Contemplative Sharing

  2:15 pm – 2:30 pm                 Break

  2:30 pm – 3:15 pm                 Contemplation, The Tomb and Not Knowing (video) 

  3:15 pm ­– 3:45 pm                 Contemplative Sharing

  3:45 pm – 4:00 pm                 Closing

The Mind of Christ

Lectio Divina material for our online prayer group on Monday, February 25th.

…as it is written:

“What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, 

what God has prepared for those who love him, this God has prepared for those who love him”,

this God has reveled to us through the Spirit.

For the Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God. Among human beings, who knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. And we speak about them not with words taught by  human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.

Now the natural person does not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God, for to him it is foolishness and he cannot understand it, because it is judged spiritually. The spiritual person, however, can judge everything but is not subject to judgment by anyone.

For “who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:9-16

The Spiritual Journey Series: Part II, Model of the Human Condition, online video

The Spiritual Journey Series: Part II, Model of the Human Condition, online video

– Model of the Human Condition

Contemplative Outreach YouTube channel here.

Set includes:

  The Human Condition: The Evolutionary Model
  Formation of the Homemade Self: The Existential Model
  The Pre-Rational Energy Centers
  Frustrations caused by the Emotional Programs
  Dismantling the Emotional Programs
  The False Self in Action

This is part two of the “The Spiritual Journey” video series.

Guidelines for Christian Life

Guidelines for Christian Life, Growth and Transformation

  The following principles represent a tentative effort to restate the Christian spiritual journey in contemporary terms. They are designed to provide a conceptual background for the practice of centering prayer. They should be read according to the method of lectio divina.

1. The fundamental goodness of human nature, like the mystery of the Trinity, Grace, and the Incarnation, is an essential element of Christian faith. This basic core of goodness is capable of unlimited development; indeed, of becoming transformed into Christ and deified.

2. Our basic core of goodness is our true Self. Its center of gravity is God. The acceptance of our basic goodness is a quantum leap in the spiritual journey.

3. God and our true Self are not separate. Though we are not God, God and our true Self are the same thing.

4. The term original sin is a way of describing the human condition, which is the universal experience of coming to full reflective self consciousness without the certitude of personal union with God. This gives rise to our intimate sense of incompletion, dividedness, isolation, and guilt.

5. Original sin is not the result of personal wrongdoing on our part. Still, it causes a pervasive feeling of alienation from God, from other people and from the true Self. The cultural consequences of these alienations are instilled in us from earliest childhood and passed on from one generation to the next. The urgent need to escape from the profound insecurity of this situation gives rise, when unchecked, to insatiable desires for pleasure, possession, and power. On the social level, it gives rise to violence, war, and institutional injustice.

6. The particular consequences of original sin include all the self serving habits that have been woven into our personality from the time we were conceived; all the emotional damage that has come from our early environment and upbringing; all the harm that other people have done to us knowingly or unknowingly at an age when we could not defend ourselves; and the methods we acquired–many of them now unconscious–to ward off the pain of unbearable situations.

7. This constellation of prerational reactions is the foundation of the false self. The false self develops in opposition to the true Self. Its center of gravity is itself.

8. Grace is the presence and action of Christ at every moment of our lives. The sacraments are ritual actions in which Christ is present in a special manner, confirming and sustaining the major commitments of our Christian life.

9. In Baptism, the false self is ritually put to death, the new self is born, and the victory over sin won by Jesus through his death and resurrection is placed at our disposal. Not our uniqueness as persons, but our sense of separation from God and from others is destroyed in the death dealing and life-giving waters of Baptism.

10. The Eucharist is the celebration of life: the coming together of all the material elements of the cosmos, their emergence to consciousness in human persons and the transformation of human consciousness into Divine consciousness. It is the manifestation of the Divine in and through the Christian community We receive the Eucharist in order to become the Eucharist.

11. In addition to being present in the sacraments, Christ is present.

12. Personal sin is the refusal to respond to Christ’s self-communication (grace). It is the deliberate neglect of our own genuine needs and those of others. It reinforces the false self.

13. Our basic core of goodness is dynamic and tends to grow of itself. This growth is hindered by the illusions and emotional hang-ups of the false self, by the negative influences coming from our cultural conditioning, and by personal sin.

14. Listening to God’s word in scripture and the liturgy, waiting upon God in prayer, and responsiveness to his inspirations help to distinguish how the two selves are operating in particular circumstances.

15. God is not some remote, inaccessible, and implacable being who demands instant perfection from His creatures and of whose love we must make ourselves worthy. He is not a tyrant to be obeyed out of terror, nor a policeman who is ever on the watch, nor a harsh judge ever ready to apply the verdict of guilty. We should relate to Him less and less in terms of reward and punishment and more and more on the basis of the gratuity–or the play of divine love.

16. Divine love is compassionate, tender luminous, totally self-giving, seeking no reward, unifying everything.

17. The experience of being loved by God enables us to accept our false self as it is, and then to let go of it and journey to our true Self. The inward journey to our true Self is the way to divine love.

18. The growing awareness of our true Self, along with the deep sense of spiritual peace and joy which flow from this experience, balances the psychic pain of the disintegrating and dying of the false self. As the motivating power of the false self diminishes, our true Self builds the new self with the motivating force of divine love.

19. The building of our new self is bound to be marked by innumerable mistakes and sometimes by sin. Such failures, however serious, are insignificant compared to the inviolable goodness of our true Self. We should ask God’s pardon, seek forgiveness from those we may have offended, and then act with renewed confidence and energy as if nothing had happened.

20. Prolonged, pervasive, or paralyzing guilt feelings come from the false self. True guilt in response to personal sin or social injustice does not lead to discouragement but to amendment of life. It is a call to conversion.

21. Progress in the spiritual journey is manifested by the unconditional acceptance of other people, beginning with those with whom we live.

22. A community of faith offers the support of example, correction, and mutual concern in the spiritual journey. Above all, participating in the mystery of Christ through the celebration of the liturgy, Eucharist, and silent prayer binds the community in a common search for transformation and union with God. The presence of Christ is ministered to each other and becomes tangible in the community, especially when it is gathered for worship or engaged in some work of service to those in need.

23. The moderation of the instinctual drives of the developing human organism for survival and security, affection and esteem, control and power allows true human needs to come into proper focus. Primary among these needs is intimacy with another or several human persons. By intimacy is meant the mutual sharing of thoughts, feelings, problems, and spiritual aspirations which gradually develops into spiritual friendship.

24. Spiritual friendship involving genuine self-disclosure is an essential ingredient for happiness both in marriage and in the celibate lifestyle. The experience of intimacy with another or several persons expands and deepens our capacity to relate to God and to everyone else. Under the influence of Divine Love the sexual energy is gradually transformed into universal compassion.

25. The spiritual radiation of a community depends on the commitment of its members to the inward journey and to each other. To offer one another space in which to grow as persons is an integral part of this commitment.

26. Contemplative prayer, in the traditional sense of the term, is the dynamic that initiates, accompanies and brings the process of transformation to completion.

27. Reflection on the Word of God in scripture and in our personal history is the foundation of contemplative prayer The spontaneous letting go of particular thoughts and feelings in prayer is a sign of progress in contemplation. Contemplative prayer is characterized not so much by the absence of thoughts and feelings as by detachment from them.

28. The goal of genuine spiritual practice is not the rejection of the good things of the body, mind, or spirit, but the right use of them. No aspect of human nature or period of human life is to be rejected but integrated into each successive level of unfolding self-consciousness. In this way, the partial goodness proper to each stage of human development is preserved and only its limitations are left behind. The way to become divine is thus to become fully human.

29. The practice of a spiritual discipline is essential at the beginning of the spiritual journey as a means of developing the foundations of the contemplative dimension of life: dedication and devotion to God and service to others. Our daily practice should include a time for contemplative prayer and a program for letting go of the false self.

30. Regular periods of silence and solitude quiet the psyche, foster interior silence, and initiate the dynamic of self knowledge.

31. Solitude is not primarily a place but an attitude of total commitment to God. When one belongs completely to God, the sharing of one’s life and gifts continually increases.

32. The Beatitude of poverty of spirit springs from the increasing awareness of our true Self. It is a nonpossessive attitude toward everything and a sense of unity with everything at the same time. The interior freedom to have much or to have little, and the simplifying of one’s life-style are signs of the presence of poverty of spirit.

33. Chastity is distinct from celibacy, which is the commitment to abstain from the genital expression of our sexuality. Chastity is the acceptance of our sexual energy, together with the masculine and feminine qualities that accompany it and the integration of this energy into our spirituality. It is the practice of moderation and self-control in the use of our sexual energy.

34. Chastity enhances and expands the power to love. It perceives the sacredness of everything that is. As a consequence, one respects the dignity of other persons and cannot use them merely for one’s own fulfillment.

35. Obedience is the unconditional acceptance of God as He is and as He manifests Himself in our lives. God’s will is not immediately evident. Docility inclines us to attend to all the indications of His will. Discernment sifts the evidence and then decides, in the light of the inward attraction of grace, what God seems to be asking here and now.

36. Humility is an attitude of honesty with God, oneself, and all reality. It enables us to be at peace in the presence of our powerlessness and to rest in the forgetfulness of self.

37. Hope springs from the continuing experience of God’s compassion and help. Patience is hope in action. It waits for the saving help of God without giving up, giving in, or going away, and for any length of time.

38. The disintegrating and dying of our false self is our participation in the passion and death of Jesus. The building of our new self, based on the transforming power of divine love, is our participation in his risen life.

39. In the beginning, emotional hang-ups are the chief obstacle to the growth of our new self because they put our freedom into a straight jacket. Later, because of the subtle satisfaction that springs from self-control, spiritual pride becomes the chief obstacle. And finally, reflection of self becomes the chief obstacle because this hinders the innocence of divine union.

40. Human effort depends on grace even as it invites it. Whatever degree of divine union we may reach bears no proportion to our effort. It is the sheer gift of divine love.

41. Jesus did not teach a specific method of meditation or bodily discipline for quieting the imagination, memory, and emotions. We should choose a spiritual practice adapted to our particular temperament and natural disposition. We must also be willing to dispense with it when called by the Spirit to surrender to his direct guidance. The Spirit is above every method or practice. To follow his inspiration is the sure path to perfect freedom.

42. What Jesus proposed to his disciples as the Way is his own example: the forgiveness of everything and everyone and the service of others in their needs. “Love one another as I have loved you.”

More information can be obtained by reading the bookOpen Mind Open Heart by Fr. Thomas Keating.