In Yoke

"Why study attention? What is the faculty of attention? It could almost be said that a human being is attention. Whatever occupies our attention-whether inwardly or outwardly, whether profound or trivial--is what we are at that moment.  Therefore, if we are attentive only to the outer world, we forfeit our inner life. On the other hand, if we are excessively introverted, we cut ourselves off from the impressions of the outer worlds that could enrich and enliven us. If we attend only to the material world, we sacrifice the spiritual. If we think we can focus exclusively on the spiritual, we might lose ourselves in a world of dreams that never connect with reality. We need not only attention, but balance - balance between the narrow and the wide, and the inner, the material and the spiritual.  Life requires so much of us that none of us can afford to be without our full attention. More often than we know, moments come that will make a difference to the quality of our lives. Th...

Richard Rohr's post this morning is particularly meaningful. Spark of the Divine Friday,  August 7, 2020   Matthew Fox has studied, written, and taught on theology and the mystics for decades. In one of his books on Meister Eckhart, Fox writes: In the soul, Eckhart maintains, there is “something like a spark of divine nature, a divine light, a ray, an imprinted picture of the divine nature.” [1] . . . But we have to make contact with this divine spark by emptying ourselves or letting go. And then we will know the unity that already exists. [2] Indian-born teacher Eknath Easwaran (1910–1999) puts it in similar terms: Life’s real and highest goal . . . [is] to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts. . . . When we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all—all individuals, all creatures, all of life. [3] Meister Eckhart was frequently criticized by his contemporaries (and still is by some people today) b...

  Change Is Inevitable Sunday,  July 5, 2020   The word   change   normally refers to new beginnings. But the mystery of transformation more often   happens not when something new begins, but when something old falls apart . The pain of something old falling apart—chaos—invites the soul to listen at a deeper level, and sometimes forces the soul to go to a new place. Most of us would never go to new places in any other way. The mystics use many words to describe this chaos: fire, dark night, death, emptiness, abandonment, trial, the Evil One. Whatever it is, it does not feel good and it does not feel like God. We will normally do   anything   to keep the old thing from falling apart, yet this is when we need patience and guidance, and the   freedom to let go   instead of tightening our controls and certitudes. Perhaps Jesus is describing just this phenomenon when he says, “It is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to ...

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...