Having the responsibility to prepare material for the retreat that Nancy Moran and I lead on June 15 at Laurel Lakes, gave me the opportunity to be an online participant of the Universal Christ: Another Name for Every Thing conference, to read the book and listen the conferences several times.
The material from the conference touched me very deeply in my heart. Each presenter had special way to transmit crucial concepts and reading the book The Universal Christ by Fr. Richard Rohr gave a more solid experience. I do not have the right way to express my gratitude to Fr. Rohr for the gift he has provided me, helping to be more centered in my Christian roots.
Probably when you read the book, The Universal Christ, and /or watch the video presentations of the conference could signify for you new ideas, more theory and theology and you may consider them. This Christ Mystery needs to rewire you on the physical, neurological and the cellular level in order you experience reality in a new way. We need to experience our Christian faith at this new label of awareness. This is to start enjoining a Christ consciousness.
Telling people is always ineffective. Telling is not training. We need to offer actual training in how to practically rewire our responses. We need practices that teach how look out from ourselves, and to be aware.
Do we want to change? We need to find a prayer form, a practice that actually invades our unconscious. Contemplative Outreach is given us some tools to prepare our body for this new way of seeing. The practice of Centering Prayer is a prayer form that teach us to learn to sit in silence and observe how our mind works. The simple experience of being exposed to the constant thoughts during the prayer time and learn to let them go and the pure intention of being in the presence of God during the prayer give us the assurance that whatever is happening inside is handling by this Christ Mystery.
The Welcoming Prayer is other tool that is used to learn how our false self-works. By observing the external and internal body reactions of our human interactions through the five senses help us to know how really, we are. The Welcoming Prayer allows to add a pause in our reactions, so we may able to take a conscious response in our daily life.
Another practice that teach us to look from ourselves is the use of short phrases or sentences that you may repeat during the day. It is called the use of an active prayer sentence or phrase. Sometimes are called mantras, sayings or whatever you may call these short sentences.
Some samples are:
“I am nothing, I have nothing, I desire nothing except the love of Jesus”.
“ Everything is a grace. Everything. Everything. Everything.”
“Christ is in my though, Christ is in my lips, Christ is in my actions all day long”.
We need to embody these phrases, so we need to repeat them daily for certain period of time until you notice that the phrase comes very easily to your mind. You may notice that when you have a conflict on your mind, the introduction of this phrases calm you and give space to be present to the action of this Christ Mystery in your life.