In Yoke

From Franciscan Mystic, Fr. Richard Rohr...  Facing Reality Friday, September 13, 2019 To love is to be conscious, and to be fully conscious would mean we are capable of loving. Sin always proceeds from lack of consciousness. Most people are just not aware and not fully living in their own present moment. When Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34), he was absolutely right. Most people are on cruise control, and most of their reactions are habituated responses—not fully conscious choices. We may have moments when we are conscious of our real motivations and actual goals, but it takes years of practice, honesty, and humility to be consistently awake. Whenever we do not love, we are at that moment unconscious. If we consistently choose to defend our imagined state of separateness, then, spiritually speaking, we are unconscious, or in religious language “in sin.” As has often been said, unless we make the unconscious conscious, ...

Darkness and Light Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but one. —Psalm 139:12 Perhaps the most universal way to name the two spiritual traditions of knowing and not-knowing is light and darkness. The formal theological terms are kataphatic or “affirmative” way—employing words, concepts, and images—and apophatic or “negative” way—moving beyond words and ideas into silence and beyond-rational knowing. I believe both ways are good and necessary, and together they create a magnificent form of higher consciousness called biblical faith. The apophatic way, however, has been largely underused, undertaught, and underdeveloped since the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. In fact, Westerners became ashamed of our “not-knowing” and tried to fight our battles rationally. For several centuries, Christianity in the West has been in a defensive mode, a siege mentality where not-knowing and the mystical tradition are considered too risky....

from "Living Presence"- Kabir Helminski. According to Attar's "Remembrance of the Saints", a group of prominent Sufis were denounced as blasphemous heretics before the Caliph of Baghdad. The Caliph ordered them to appear before him.  Without trial the Caliph ordered these five pious men-Abu Hamza, Raqqam, Shebli, Nuri, and Junaid-- to be immediately slain. The executioner was about to slay Raqqam when Nuri thrust himself fearlessly into Raqqam's place. Laughing with joy, he cried, "Kill me first!" "It's not your turn yet, said the executioner, "and a sword should not be wielded to hastily." "I wish to die first. I prefer my friends to myself. Life is the most precious thing in this world, and I would like to give the last minutes to serving my brothers. I do this even though one moment in the world is dearer to me than a thousand years in the next. For this world is the place of service, while the other world is the pla...

---excerpt from Fr. Richard Rohr, explaining what he believes to be true about the Perennial Tradition. Rami Shapiro illuminates his teaching. Very instructive in my own spiritual and metaphysical understanding. Finding the One in the Many Sunday, August 5, 2018 Over the next several weeks, I will explore the divine image and likeness in many spiritual streams throughout history and around the world. I can’t even attempt to give an exhaustive study—there are so many wonderful examples from the Perennial Tradition. I’ll simply focus on the religious expressions which have most influenced and broadened my own life. The Jewish mystical teacher Rabbi Rami Shapiro writes: To me, religions are like languages: no language is true or false; all languages are of human origin; each language reflects and shapes the civilization that speaks it; there are things you can say in one language that you cannot say as well in another; and the more languages you speak, the more nuanced your under...

A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks, or does is without consequences.                                                                          – Norman Cousins Galatians 6:7-9 (KJV) "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.  And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." This Judeo-Christian scriptural truth, illustrated by the concept of photosynthesis and growth of vegetation from the Letter to the Galatians, by the founder of Christianity, Saul of Tarsus, nee "Paul", is also...

Be my mirror, able to sort out the thoughts and intentions of my own sullied and sinful heart. Please Lord Christ, liberate me from my own self. By your spirit, help me not to evaluate, judge, or act. Help me to be nothing, so that I may receive something. Save me, Lord, from my own tyrannical ego, my own self, my own tyrannical ego/self -From my own judgments -from my own opinions -from my own feelings about everything, about anything Through your Spirit - enable me to allow your love to guide and control my seemingly always undisciplined emotions. May my own tyrannical emotions, and ego, my own self, may it die.  Like the mystics say, may I “die before I die”.   So that my life and my motives may be “born again”. May my personhood and my “personality” be in direct continuity with your life, your love, your “mind”. For I am created in Your Image.  Who “I am” is a further breathing forth of the eternal and perfect “I AM WHO I A...

God has given us a dark wine so potent that, 
drinking it, we leave the two worlds. God has put into the form of hashish a power
 to deliver the taster from self-consciousness. God has made sleep so 
that it erases every thought. God made Majnun love Layla so much that
 just her dog would cause confusion in him. There are thousands of wines 
that can take over our minds. Don't think all ecstacies
 are the same!
 Jesus was lost in his love for God.
 His donkey was drunk with barley. Drink from the presence of saints,
 not from those other jars. Every object, every being,
 is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur,
 and taste with caution. Any wine will get you high.
 Judge like a king, and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear,
 or some urgency about "what's needed." Drink the wine that moves you 
as a camel moves when it's been untied, and is just ambling about. ---------------Mathnawi IV, 2683-96
The Essential Rumi, Coleman Bark...