Father Thomas Keating is a Rebel with a Cause
One of the country’s few Trappist monasteries is tucked into the hills outside of Snowmass. There, a boundary-pushing monk named Father Thomas Keating helped St. Benedict’s find its spiritual center and establish one of the world’s longest-running interfaith conversations.
Read article:
http://www.5280.com/2018/02/father-thomas-keating-rebel-cause/
Fr. Thomas introduces us to the antidote to our programs for happiness — the Beatitudes. He says, “The beatitudes are the quintessence of the teaching of Jesus. They represent his comprehensive approach to happiness.”
The Beatitudes
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.
— Matthew 5:3-12
The Beatitudes simply mean: “Oh, how happy you would be, if ….” That’s what “beatitude” really means. In other words, Jesus is saying, so to speak, “You folks don’t know what true happiness is. What you think is happiness is misery. If you’d like to know what it is, let me tell you!” “Oh, how happy you would be, if you are poor in spirit, then you would have the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, true happiness is to forget about security, to be free of it, to put your trust in God. And, “Oh how happy are the poor who don’t have all these symbols, like millstones around their necks, that prevent them from experiencing the joy and the freedom of trusting in God to protect them, to provide for them, to nurture them. They have perfect happiness.”
The next one: “Blessed are those who mourn. They shall be comforted.” Now whenever we let go of something we love—good, bad, or indifferent—there’s a period of mourning. There’s a hole in our heart for a while. But if we accept that pain of loss, then it heals in such a way that we either enter into a new relationship with what we lost that is better than the one we had; or we learn how to live without something that was actually harmful, that was really a straitjacket, that was really phony happiness.
The third Beatitude, “Blessed are the meek;” that is, those who don’t want to have power over other people, who couldn’t care less if they are insulted or mistreated because they know that that’s not their problem. That’s the problem the other guy has who is treating them that way. The meek are those who can put up with insults and find happiness in the freedom from wanting to control or to have power over people.
The other Beatitudes correspond to the higher stages of consciousness, all the way up to divine union and the Beatitude of the peacemakers. The Beatitude of the merciful and the Beatitude of hungering and thirsting for justice is addressed to the Mental Egoic level of consciousness, to full personhood and its corresponding acceptance of our own personal response to Christ, to life, and to the needs of others.
The Gospel, then, is a message that challenges our programs for happiness head on and invites us to change them. If we hear that message and follow it, this is represented as wisdom. If we don’t, then we have to rely on the tragedies of life to turn us around and finally convince us, as we wind up on the bar room floor or some other place, that our program for happiness was not so hot after all. Why wait until you have to be clobbered by life before getting this message? It’s as obvious as the nose on your face that this can’t possibly work. Not only that—it is destroying our relationships with other people. It’s making us miserable and hindering the good that we could be doing other people, because as long as we’re wrapped up in obtaining the happiness that these emotional energy centers are seeking, you can’t even hear what other people are saying, because their melodrama has to be filtered by yours. And so, they tell you something …your emotions start reacting and pretty soon you’re more involved in their melodrama than they are, maybe; I don’t know how it goes. But anyway, we don’t hear the clear call for help that somebody has when we don’t have the freedom from our own emotional selfish programs. To live out of these centers is to opt out of God’s process of human development into higher states of faith, love and consciousness.
Material from Spirituality and Practice
Session 21: Oh, How Happy you will Be…
The Spiritual Journey Formation in the Contemplative Christian Life with Contemplative Outreach.
The Spiritual Journey Formation in the Contemplative Christian Life “The Human Condition: The Pre-Rational Energy Centers, Part 1” Excerpted from The Spiritual Journey Part 2, The Human Condition Fr. Thomas Keating
“A whole program of self-centered concerns has been built up around our instinctual needs and have become energy centers — sources of motivation around which our emotions, thoughts, behavior patterns circulate like planets around the sun. Whether consciously or unconsciously, these programs for happiness influence our view of the world and our relationship with God, nature, other people, and ourselves. This is the situation that Jesus went into the desert to heal.”
— Thomas Keating, Journey to the Center
“Christ began his teaching not with any literal commandments but with a psychological idea — the idea of metanoia which means change of mind. … This word, metanoia, awkwardly translated as repentance, means a new way of thinking about the meaning of one’s own life. … That is its starting point: to feel the mystery of one’s own existence, of how one thinks and feels and moves, and to feel the mystery of consciousness, and to feel the mystery of the minute organization of matter. All this can begin to effect metanoia in a [person]. The contrary is to feel that everything is attributable to oneself. The one feeling opens the mind to its higher range of possibilities. The other feeling closes the mind and turns us downwards through the senses.”
— Maurice Nicoll, The Mark
“The heart of the Christian ascesis — and the work of Lent — is to face the unconscious values that underlie the emotional programs for happiness and to change them. Hence the need of a discipline of contemplative prayer and action.”
— Thomas Keating, The Mystery of Christ
Today’s gospel (Mark 1:29-39) was about how Jesus grasped the hand of Simon’s mother-in-law who was sick with a fever. He helped her up and the fever left her and she waited on them. My mind just focuses in this piece of the gospel because this is the way how I started my spiritual journey jumping to the unknowing with my total trust that He will take my hand and guide me. I remember that I bought a bible and used the parish bulletin to guide me with the daily readings. This strategy forces me to know my parish and get involved and to be faithful to the daily readings. Little by little, I began to be attracted to silent. I was exposed to a Centering Prayer group few years later and realized that I was praying in similar way intuitively. My participation in this group began and I learn about this prayer more formally. The path has been slow because changes are slow. Every time I reach a dead end in my way, I usually got a little anxious until I remember that I am not in charge that He is guiding me. With time, the image of holding His hand has been with deeper trust and confidence. The daily practice of Centering Prayer has giving me the way to develop a deeper relationship with God and a total confidence that He is taking my hand always guiding me wherever He wants I need to go.
Centering Prayer and Embodied Contemplative Practices – My experience
The article Contemplative Movement on the January 2018 of Contemplative Outreach Ltd. bulletin by Robin Gates, stirred in my mind so many experiences that I observed after few years of my Centering Prayer Practice. I noticed that my body began asking for movement as never before during reading, working on the computer, attending conferences, etc. My body always was asking me to move even in a small way. I did not know what was happening so I decided to have a standing working station, and began doing more physical exercises. When I found a direct correlation of my Centering Prayer Practice, and the growth of my spiritual awareness with all these changes, I began searching for explanations. Finding scientific research papers supporting the cultivation of interoceptive, proprioceptive and kinesthetic awareness at the core of movement-based contemplative practices such as Yoga, Qigong and Tai Chi, my interest to add some of this kind of practices began in order to find a better balance in my daily life.
I began practicing yoga and then I decided to understand this discipline in a deeper form after I found a lot of benefits in my life. I began with yoga studies and yoga training in the Satyananda tradition (Bihar Yoga) where I have been exposed to yoga philosophy and yoga psychology too. My mind opened a 180 degree radio after this studies and training, given me the discipline and strength necessary to keep going forward in my Centering Prayer practice as transformative tool in the Christian Contemplative Heritage.
Movement-based embodied contemplative practices: definitions and paradigms. Front. Hum. Neurosci., 14 April 2014 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00205.
Editorial: Neural Mechanisms Underlying Movement-Based Embodied Contemplative Practices. Front. Hum. Neurosci., 26 April 2016 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00169
Satyananda Yoga/Bihar Yoga http://www.biharyoga.net/yoga-vision/satyananda-yoga/
1. Friendship or kinship.
2. The capacity to heal or healing. To heal is to become or to make something healthy or well again. Thus, healing can be seen as a process of transforming and removing suffering, so that wellbeing can be present in ourselves, in our relationship with ourselves, and with others.
3. The joy that we cultivate in ourselves or the joy that we offer to other person. When we’re gratified by the joy that another person is experiencing, this is known as “altruistic joy”, to feel happy for another person’s advantageous conditions or achievements.
4. Interbeing. Some people associate the terms “equanimity” and nondiscrimination” with equal rights, gender and racial issues so the term interbeing is used. In fact, interbeing encompasses equanimity, nondiscrimination, inclusiveness an letting go.
5.Trust and confidence and the consequences that those elements bring: breathing freely, freedom from fear, confidence, reliance, comfort, encouragement and inspiration.
6.Reverence or respect. Reverence is a capacity to recognize and to be in awe of what is.
(to put down upon the earth, turn or direct direct toward, deposit with, entrust or commit to, to place at the head, receive with reverence, call to mind, reflect, and ponder.)
Dang Neghiem, Sister.(2015) Mindfulness as Medicine: A Story of Healing Body and Spirit.p.15-16
Let Your God Love You
Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty.
Before your God.
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God, look upon you
That is all.
God knows.
God understands.
God loves you.
With enormous love.
And only wants
To look upon you
With that love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.
Let you God-love you.
Edwina Gately and Jane Hammond-Clarke.
Whispers: Conversations with Edwina Gateley
Source Books, 2000
http://www.cachisdigital.com/wp-content/juf-websites/prayingfromtheheart/?p=158
Prayer of Abandonment (Br. Charles de Foucauld)
Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures –
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father, my Mother my Alfa and my Omega,
my refuge and my strength,
my inspiration and my consolation.
An Ancient Byzantine Prayer
Serene light shining in the ground of my being,
Draw me to yourself,
Draw me past the snares of the mind,
Free me from symbols and words
That I may discover the Signified,
The Word unspoken,
in the darkness that veils, the ground of my being.
God has a perfect plan for each one of us for the future as expressed in God’s words to Jeremiah:
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
plans to give you hope and a future … Jeremiah 29:11
God in All Things
Sunday, October 23, 2016
(Daily Meditation Oct. 23, 2016, Fr Richard Rhor)
The day of my spiritual awakening
was the day I saw and knew I saw
all things in God and God in all things.
—Mechtild of Magdeburg (c. 1212—c. 1282) [1]
Understanding the Cosmic Christ can change the way we relate to creation, to other religions, to other people, to ourselves, and to God. Knowing and experiencing the Cosmic Christ can bring about a major shift in consciousness. Like Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9), you won’t be the same after encountering the Risen Christ.
As with the Trinity, the Cosmic Christ is present in both Scripture and Tradition and the concept has been understood by many mystics, though not as a focus of mainline Christianity. We just didn’t have the eyes to see it. The Cosmic Christ is about as traditional as you can get, but Christians—including many preachers—have not had the level of inner experience to know how to communicate this to people.
The Cosmic Christ is Divine Presence pervading all of creation since the very beginning. My father Francis of Assisi intuited this presence and lived his life in awareness of it. Later, John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) put this intuition into philosophical form. For Duns Scotus, the Christ Mystery was the blueprint of reality from the very start (John 1:1). Teilhard de Chardin brought this insight into our modern world. God’s first “idea” was to become manifest—to pour out divine, infinite love into finite, visible forms. The “Big Bang” is now our scientific name for that first idea; and “Christ” is our theological name. Both are about love and beauty exploding outward in all directions. Creation is indeed the Body of God! What else could it be, when you think of it?
In Jesus, this eternal omnipresence had a precise, concrete, and personal referent. God’s presence became more obvious and believable in the world. But this apparition only appeared in the last ten seconds of December 31, as it were—scaling the universe’s entire history to a single year. Was God saying nothing and doing nothing for 13.8 billion years? Our code word for that infinite saying and doing was the “Eternal Christ.” (See John 1:1-5, Colossians 1:15-20, Ephesians 1:9-12 if you think this is some new idea.)
Vague belief and spiritual intuition became specific and concrete and personal in Jesus—with a “face” that we could “hear, see, and touch” (1 John 1:1). The formless now had a personal form, according to Christian belief.
But it seems we so fell in love with this personal interface with Jesus that we forgot about the Eternal Christ, the Body of God, which is all of creation, which is really the “First Bible.” Jesus and Christ are not exactly the same. In the early Christian era, only a few Eastern Fathers (such as Origen of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor) cared to notice that the Christ was clearly historically older, larger, and different than Jesus himself. They mystically saw that Jesus is the union of human and divine in space and time, and the Christ is the eternal union of matter and Spirit from the beginning of time.
When we believe in Jesus Christ, we’re believing in something much bigger than just the historical incarnation that we call Jesus. Jesus is just the visible map. The entire sweep of the meaning of the Anointed One, the Christ, includes us and includes all of creation since the beginning of time. Revelation was geological, physical, and nature-based before it was ever personal and fully relational (see Romans 1:20).
Gateway to Silence:
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
References:
[1] Sue Woodruff, Meditations with Mechtild of Magdeburg (Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co., 1982), 46.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Cosmic Christ, discs 1 & 2 (CAC: 2009), CD, MP3 download; and
Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 185, 210, 222.