May 192016
 

Like other spiritual traditions, mystical and otherwise, Christian mysticism is chock full of highly prescriptive goal-oriented approaches to spiritual development. Whether we are speaking of purification, sanctification, illumination, holiness, righteousness, or what have you, one very common thread is to begin with a fairly detailed vision of what we presumably can and should become; in other words, we establish specific goals for how we intend to think, behave, and appear to others. Typically this vision is largely defined by religious doctrines about right beliefs and virtuous behaviors, and is usually illustrated by reference to certain historical figures as exemplars.  Even those in rebellion against tradition may simply work up a kind of anti-traditionalist vision to idolize. In any case, once the vision is crafted, we then strive to manifest it in ourselves.  Even most teachers and preachers who claim that only God actually creates the changes in our lives nonetheless challenge us to constantly work at fulfilling specific goals.  The work may take many forms, including every kind of spiritual discipline – prayer, scriptural study, fasting, almsgiving, confession and penance, worship, abstaining from sins and vices, and so on.  Such approaches have value, and the present intention is not to categorically denounce them, but rather to consider why and how we might also take another path in spiritual development.

One of the reasons for taking another path is that an approach based on attaining specific character outcomes can too easily become about reworking the persona, changing the mask of public identity each of us wears, rather than actually transforming the soul at deeper levels.  In other words, the energy we give to our spiritual disciplines is essentially devoted to pretending as much as possible that we are the vision we have idolized.  One danger here is simply in misrepresenting the truth of ourselves to others, encouraging others to believe we are more pure, holy, illuminated, etc., than we actually are. We might even secretly enjoy the deception and the esteem and favor of others we gain by it. In the worst cases, we may slip into psychological denial of our whole humanity and fool ourselves into believing we have become the idol, all the while struggling to conceal a host of vices, including false humility, spiritual pride, and spiritual materialism. There should be no need to go further into how unwise such circumstances are, and the unhealthy effects they can have on our souls, other people, and the world around us. Sooner or later, these idols, these masks, are bound to crack and reveal the ordinary human soul within. The guilt and shame in inevitably realizing our deceptions and our failures to live up to such visions can be miserable and counterproductive. On the other hand, and speaking from personal experience, sometimes the toppling of these towers of illusion can be among the most transformative and truly illuminating experiences of our lives, despite how painful they are. To some extent, such moments of disillusionment may be unavoidable for most of us.  Even so, there are other ways of spiritual development that can be less fraught with these particular challenges, and it may well be worthwhile to engage them.

Taking a less goal-oriented approach to spiritual development doesn’t mean forgoing spiritual practices or disciplines; the difference is in the mental framework by which we engage them. We can begin by reminding ourselves that the self, our whole being, is more than our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and that there are aspects of us beyond the awareness and control of our conscious minds. Furthermore, as mystical Christians we believe there are mysterious dimensions of the soul that are superior to our conscious minds in some ways. It therefore follows that we must acknowledge the conscious mind’s inability to micromanage our spiritual development. The conscious mind isn’t fully equipped to predetermine what all our outcomes should actually be, let alone precisely how we should attain them. At this point we may once again see the real value of an unassuming faith and hope, and leaning upon them we can begin giving up some of our presumptions about the changes in our being that might result from a practice or discipline.  In this way we can take an experimental approach to spiritual practice, like a scientist performing an operation to observe what happens and learn from it. There obviously still is a goal, which is simply to learn, yet it isn’t prescriptive of specific results that we might fool ourselves into believing have happened when they haven’t.

It may be worthwhile to consider the prayer of silence as a practice especially fitting to a less goal-oriented path of spiritual development.  In the prayer of silence we aren’t asking anything from God, or telling God anything, we are simply sitting as quietly as possible in openness to the presence of God. We also let go, as best we can, of any expectations for how God is or might be present to us. Similarly, we are open to the immediate actuality of ourselves, neither trying to filter out what we deem undesirable nor attaching our minds to thoughts of who or what we desire to be. We simply abide in acceptance of the present moment as it actually is, faithful that we are communing with God in ways beyond our awareness, understanding, and control. We do not even assume that any effects of such communion will be noticeable to us or anyone else, let alone that they will conform to preconceived notions of what spiritual development should produce. The prayer of silence is thus a very deep practice of accepting the presence of God, ourselves, and everything else; it is an act of all-embracing unconditional love.

Christ be with you

Maranatha

Agape

Jun 042015
 

Recently, I got very ill for a few days. I lost over 6 pounds in 3 days! I was in such pain with fever one night that I was in tears. That has happened once before in my adult life, and the previous experience actually Opnamedatum:  2011-04-29facilitated an epiphany.  In the depths of misery, I realized there are many people in this world who would willingly take some or all of that pain on themselves to give me relief. Just the knowledge that someone would be willing produced a feeling of gratitude that was immensely powerful, and relieving in its own way. I found that this willingness to give up some of one’s own comfort to relieve the suffering of others is part of how I understand the presence of Christ in the souls of all people. I know prayer for others is part of living with awareness of this presence in our own souls. Jesus was constantly uttering prayers for others, and he also knew what it was like to desperately pray to be spared from suffering. So, as I reconnected with these memories in my recent suffering, I thought of the times others have prayed for me, and my gratitude was magnified. When I hear or say, “Christ be with you,” it means, in part, that I hope you know the beauty of both giving and receiving from such willingness.

There is another connection here, which is my awareness of people’s misery in feeling distant from The One we call “God.”  I have felt that misery, and the memory of it is part of whatilluminor drives me to serve those who feel it.  My prayer is that the words I write may in some way comfort others with hope and by knowing that they aren’t alone, at the very least. But it is also my prayer that what I write helps facilitate the realization that, no matter how lost anyone feels, we are all already intimately connected with God right now, no matter what we are thinking, feeling, or doing, no matter how distant God seems.  In this sense, when I say “Christ be with you,” it is an expression of my hope that you know the mystical truth that Christ is with you.

Christ be with you.

Maranatha

Agape

Feb 232015
 

Christianity, like other religions, has its share of believers who insist that the most virtuous life is only achieved through self-denial, extreme emotional, physical, and social austerities, self-loathing, and even actual self-flagellation. In fact, it seems that most Christians share in this belief to some extent, having been conditioned to do so by our churches, families, and much of society at large. For many of us, myself certainly included, that conditioning manifests as a nagging and belittling of ourselves for our shortcomings and mistakes, and an often harsh critique and minimization of our talents and successes. In this reflection we’ll examine some of the foundations and effects of this kind of religion, and then we’ll consider the alternative of self-love.

Is Violence against the Self Virtuous?

We must acknowledge that many respected Christian leaders seem to have spoken of self-love as a vice.  For example, St. Ignatius of Loyola said:

Experience proves that in this life peace and satisfaction are had, not by the listless but by those who are fervent in God’s service. And rightly so. For in their effort to overcome themselves and to rid themselves of self-love, they rid themselves of the roots of all passion and unrest.

Statements like this are, in part, based upon the truthful realization that we are shortsighted, ignorant creatures who are often our own worst enemies. Yet it is a sad irony that this truth is often interwoven with the belief that we must do something cruel and combative with ourselves in order to serve God better or to be more acceptable to God. So it is that many of us think, feel, and act as if we must be our own judge, prison guard, and torturer, demonstrating to God how terribly aware we are of our unworthiness (as if God wouldn’t otherwise know!), and exacting from ourselves some degree of the retribution we fear we might otherwise suffer.

There are noteworthy problems with this kind of religion. First of all, it fails to acknowledge the pure grace of God’s mercy, instead making God’s forgiveness and salvation a prize to be won by effort. It also reveals another irony in our assumption, and perhaps hubris, that we have the power to make ourselves holier through violence against our own souls. In short, it is more a denial of Jesus’ teachings about meekness, peacemaking, and loving at all costs than it is a denial of ourselves.

There are not only theological problems with this practice, but it also has unhealthy consequences on our psyches. To begin with, any attempt by the self to restrain or attack anything within the self is by necessity an act of self-assertion. There can thus be no self-denial in any complete sense, but only denial of one part of the self by another. It is simply delusional to convince ourselves that we are overcoming the self by our own will and effort, for it is the self that initiates and sustains that very effort. This loss of contact with reality then becomes fertile ground for further self-deceptions, and the more we deceive ourselves the more likely we are to do harm to ourselves in other ways.  Unfortunately, these ills cannot simply be contained within ourselves, because the more we succumb to self-deception and self-harm, the less able we are to be the fervent servants of God in this world that St. Ignatius would have us be. In the end, the self-neglect and self-abuse that are the denial of self-love position us to contribute more to the ills of the world. There is very little about any of this that can rightly be called virtuous.

The Virtue of Self-Love

In the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas expressed the essential wisdom of self-love very simply and directly:

Well-ordered self-love, whereby man desires a fitting good for himself, is right and natural.

The Anglican theologian, clergyman, and mystical poet of the 17th century, Thomas Traherne, unfolds this wisdom further by saying:

Had we not loved ourselves at all, we could never have been obliged to love anything. So that self-love is the basis of all love.

If, as St. Ignatius alludes, our highest calling is to serve God, and if the highest form of service is love, as Jesus teaches, then Traherne’s comment begs us to remember that the place most immediately present and constantly available for such service is within oneself, and likewise the most immediately present and constantly available person one can serve is oneself. Furthermore, if we also believe the scriptures and many mystics claiming that God is love, and that to love is to know God, then the most immediately present and constantly available way of knowing God must be through loving oneself. We should also recall the second of Jesus’ Great Commandments, where he urges us to love our neighbors as ourselves. This statement reveals that self-love is not only recommended, but is also understood by Jesus, as is later explained by Traherne, to be central to our ability to love others.

The ways we do and do not love ourselves shape the ways that we do and do not love others; to a significant degree, we cannot help but love others as we love ourselves. This view is more than a theologically sound appreciation of self-love; it draws attention to the deep psychological dynamics by which one’s social and moral character in the world is formed.  By analogy, consider that people who starve the body of food and water eventually become compromised in their ability to serve others food and water. So, for example, our refusal to be forgiving of our own shortcomings and mistakes leads us to be more hostile towards those of others, despite any pretense of forbearance we might offer.  Likewise, if we are in the habit of harshly criticizing and minimizing our own talents and successes, then we will habitually do the same to other people, though we might try hiding our negativity behind feigned appreciation and admiration. In the extreme, violence to our own souls can even produce an attitude of justification in exacting unmerciful and vengeful violence on others. Thankfully these dynamics also produce positive results and thus reveal the virtue of self-love — the more we practice genuine acceptance, intimacy, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and care for ourselves, the more freely we offer them to others.

Self-Love in Contemplative Practice

The hallmark of contemplative practice in Christianity is silent prayer, the practice of being still and quietly attentive to the present moment.  Silent contemplative prayer is practiced with faith that the Holy Spirit is revealing God to us in and through this very moment just as it is, including not merely what is apparent to us through our physical senses, but also, and more importantly, though what is occurring within our hearts and minds.  In other words, God, as Truth, is always immediately present to us in the truth about ourselves, a truth that we encounter most clearly and fully when we are simply attentive to and accepting of the natural flow of our thoughts and feelings.  We simply practice being as consciously present as possible to the truth of ourselves without judgment, neither condoning nor rejecting, but just being honestly aware of our bared souls. It is a way of being that, while often wordless, may be approximated with words like these:

Ah, yes, there is pain. Ah, yes, there is pleasure.
Ah, yes, there is anger. Ah, yes, there is peace.
Ah, yes, there is sadness. Ah, yes, there is joy.
Ah, yes, there is confusion. Ah, yes, there is clarity.
Ah, yes, there is doubt. Ah, yes, there is certainty.
Ah, yes, there is gluttony. Ah, yes, there is temperance.
Ah, yes, there is greed. Ah, yes, there is generosity.
Ah, yes, there is arrogance. Ah, yes, there is humility.
Ah, yes, there is distrust. Ah, yes, there is faith.
Ah, yes, there is despair. Ah, yes, there is hope.
Ah, yes, there is love, always love, in and around all of this.

It might not be immediately apparent that this way of being is actually the cornerstone of self-love, but it becomes apparent when we consider what we most desire in giving and receiving love with others.  Underlying all the wonderful experiences and expressions of love between human beings, and between us and God, what we most need is to know we are intimately welcomed, unconditionally accepted, and compassionately understood, just as we are, without hiding or pretending in any way.

Self-Love in Extension

As we have already seen, how we love ourselves determines our character in this world. So it is that the contemplative practice of silent prayer leads us into greater awareness, acceptance, and compassionate understanding of the world as it really is and of other people as they actually are. This is the kind of love that Jesus revealed God freely offers us, and which he urges us to let flow through us for ourselves and others. Indeed, this kind of love can mystically reveal to us that the self is not actually an entity separate from others. It can awaken us to the reality that each individualized self, with all its limitations, is nonetheless a precious expression of the one infinite Spirit lovingly breathed into all of humanity, the one Self that is God’s living presence in all of us.

This mystical realization has a number of additional benefits. At a very personal level, it frees us to develop, express, and enjoy our uniqueness as gifts of God to this world. There is no need to crush our spirits with false humility, excessive guilt, toxic shame and other forms of self-abuse. It further enables us to embrace and celebrate the same freedom for other people, letting go of expectations for everyone to conform to the mores and customs of a particular culture, the specific beliefs of a single religion, or the attitudes and behavioral patterns of a particular personality type. In welcoming ourselves and others as we are, and knowing God’s love is always abundantly present within us and through our spiritual interconnectedness, we are less likely to regard relationships, other people, rights, and liberties as personal possessions we must jealously keep to ourselves. It isn’t hard to see how such significant shifts in attitudes would result in less psychological and physical suffering in this world, and more peace, harmony, and healthy creativity.

A Closing Observation

While there is so much to be gained in the practice of self-love, we should avoid assuming that it automatically results in nothing but rainbows and butterflies. There are constant temptations to fall back into our self-deceptions and vacillations between self-aggrandizement and self-condemnation, and we are surrounded by other human beings with similar struggles. Contemplatives also invariably become more sensitive to the suffering in this world. A huge portion of the work of loving self and others is therefore persevering in our intentions to practice non-judgmental awareness, acceptance, and compassionate understanding when it seems most difficult and least rewarding to do so.  Of course, this also means returning to patience and understanding with ourselves when those intentions have been temporarily lost. It certainly helps to keep a sense of humor!

 Agape

Jan 052015
 

Recently, a friend asked about how to “grow in the love of Jesus.”  It’s an interesting question, because “the love of Jesus” can mean either (1) love directed at Jesus or (2) the kind of love Jesus gave.  I think 2 is the best way to 1, but I also think it’s helpful to meditate in a way that is similar to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.

It seems to me that it’s especially helpful to first become familiar with Jesus as he is actually presented in the gospels, rather than relying solely on what theologians and preachers have said about Jesus. As one studies Jesus and the way he behaves in the gospels, seeing how very human he was, one can meditate on what it would be like to sit and talk with him, to dine with him, to walk and work with him as his contemporaries did.  These sorts of meditations can be done as a merely analytical observer, but one can also respond emotionally as one would in actuality.  Who wouldn’t feel great compassion and sorrow for the agony Jesus felt in Gethsamane and on the cross? Who wouldn’t speak to him with those feelings, trying to comfort him with a gentle touch and let him know he is not as alone as his sleeping disciples would make it seem?  Beyond these scripture-based meditations, we can also imagine him with us in moments of our own lives, supporting us, counseling us, having compassion for us.  In meditating upon Jesus in this way, we cannot continue to regard him as some angelic judge far removed from humanity, but increasingly he becomes known as a real human being who understands what it’s like to be tempted, to doubt, to distrust, to fear, to falter, and to forgive.   We better understand the love he gave to others, and we feel kinship with him and a more immediate sense of his presence in our lives.  All of these things contribute to growing in the love of Jesus in every sense.

Meditations on being present with Jesus in this way have influenced some of my posts on this blog, including this series: Alone in the Wilderness, parts 1, 2, and 3.

 

Maranatha

Agape

Apr 142014
 

During Holy Week, it isn’t uncommon for Christians to take time in reading, meditation, prayer, or dialogue to reflect on the themes of the coming Easter celebration.  For most Christians, Easter is a time to celebrate the physical resurrection of Jesus as proof of God’s love for humanity.  We often speak of everything that led up to it — all the betrayal, physical suffering, and emotional anguish suffered by Jesus — as if those things are just necessary plot elements in an elaborate melodrama written by God.  It’s as if they merely point to that one moment when the laws of nature seem to be overruled so that Jesus can rise from the dead, all with the single purpose of bolstering our hope that we don’t have to fear death.

Excuse me, please, but I find this perspective on Holy Week to be a little vain.  To me, it is heavily interwoven with our desires to hold onto our own self-concepts, to avoid the reality that all things must pass, and thus try to maintain the many illusions that we create for own comfort.  In other words, we can too easily focus on the Resurrection because what we really want from God is a promise of a glorious immortality.   We hope to be delivered into some idealized state of perfection in which we will never have to experience radical change again, and then we can spend all eternity feeling completely satisfied with ourselves.

So, let’s consider an alternative to this way of thinking about the Passion of Jesus.  Let’s deeply consider two moments that many of us find powerfully compelling and hard to reconcile with the notion that the Passion is merely prelude to the Resurrection.  The first is the time Jesus spent in Gethsemane, so desperately fearful about what was ahead of him that Luke says an angel came to give him courage!  Even after the angel appeared, Jesus was still so distraught that he was sweating blood as he prayed.  Does this sound like the behavior of someone who knew it was all going to conclude in a glorious supernatural event?!  Even the miracle of an angelic appearance didn’t snap Jesus out of his horrible dread.  The second moment of this nature is when he was crying out on the cross, feeling abandoned by God.  Once again, we should stop to seriously and prayerfully reflect upon whether or not this is something that would be said by a human being so thoroughly united with God that he knew all things.  No, Jesus obviously doesn’t have complete confidence that he will be resurrected to a life after death the way it is later portrayed by some of the gospel writers.  These moments show us that Jesus was far more like us than many of us want to believe.  He was a human being confronting the facts of his suffering and death, and he was miserable and afraid because of it.

Of what benefit is this view of the Passion?  The short answer is that the story of Jesus is thus an even more meaningful example to us of acceptance, faith, and love.  It wasn’t foreknowledge of his resurrection that carried Jesus through his ordeal, but rather it was his commitment to what he felt in his heart was worthy of sacrificing everything, including his own existence.  What was it that was so worthy of such sacrifice (literally meaning “to make sacred”)?  This is a question we will revisit.

It may well be that the author of the earliest gospel, Mark, recognized that this story of willing self-sacrifice was not only an important part of the story, but that it was the most important.  After all, the original version of Mark ends with 16:1-8, and thus all we have is an empty tomb, a young man only claiming that Jesus will appear again, and the three women running away in fear.  We are left with a lot of unanswered questions, and Mark therefore evokes both our instinctive fear of the unknown as well as our equally deep-rooted hope.  How fitting this is!  And it is especially fitting for those of us who, like the three women, don’t have the benefit of actually seeing Jesus risen in the flesh.

This is where we can return to that question about self-sacrifice.   For you, what is worth the sacrifice of everything, even your own life, with no promise at all that there would be anything but oblivion afterward?  Surely there are many answers people might offer, but consider for a moment the possibility that they all come down to love in some form — love of family, of friends, of country, of humanity, of freedom, of truth, or, perhaps ultimately, of love itself.

Let’s follow that question with these:  How am I willing and unwilling to make such sacrifices?  How am I avoiding or entering into the darkest unknowns love points toward?  More specifically, how am I letting go of my treasured notions about myself in order to be more completely and wholly devoted to love?  How am I putting a narrow love of self above a more expansive and inclusive love?

If you’re like me, you encounter lots of different “voices” in yourself when you turn within to meditate and pray with such questions.  One voice is critical, judgmental, and unforgiving.  Another voice is accepting, comforting, and encouraging.  Another is defensive, fragile, and desperate. Still another is disinterested, apathetic, and indifferent.  Yet another is tempting, seductive, and self-indulgent.  And there may be others.  From what I can tell, this is all very ordinarily human, and we are all challenged to deal with a complex reality of mixed and muddied attitudes, motives, and intentions.  Penetrating just a little behind these veils reveals that we are mysteries to ourselves, and thus brings into question our pretense of certainty and deep conviction about many things, not the least being our religious beliefs.  Just this little bit of honest self-awareness can be terribly uncomfortable, at least at first, and so it can be seen as a significant step in taking up the cross of Jesus and beginning the work of sacrificing our illusions.

Embracing the mysteries of life, both those within and without, leads back to the very questions that have driven many of us into religion, even if we weren’t fully aware of them.  This can be frightening because it forces us into some degree of confrontation with the truth that we don’t really know everything that we want to know, or even think we should know.  It forces us to, in some way, admit that we have uncertainties and doubts about many things that we would rather be able to take for granted.  In fact, many of us have been raised with religious admonitions that such uncertainties and doubts are unacceptable, even evil.  But Jesus himself experienced them!  Unless we are willing to say part of Jesus was unacceptable and evil, then we have to rethink the notion that uncertainties and doubts have no place in our faith.

Logically, faith cannot exist without uncertainty and doubt.  Where there is complete and undeniable certainty, there is no room left for faith.  Faith is therefore not the opposite of doubt, not the cessation of uncertainty, but rather it is an ongoing response to doubt and uncertainty.   Yet faith isn’t merely the choice of one possible answer among many, but is instead a deep conviction about and commitment to something that we feel in our hearts is worthy of our devotion even in the face of the most threatening uncertainties, like those suffered by Jesus, and worse.  The aim of penetrating into our doubts and uncertainties is therefore not to abandon faith, but to refine it, making it increasingly focused upon the one thing that is most worthy of devotion.

Suppose I speak in the languages of human beings and of angels. If I don’t have love, I am only a loud gong or a noisy cymbal.  Suppose I have the gift of prophecy. Suppose I can understand all the secret things of God and know everything about him. And suppose I have enough faith to move mountains. If I don’t have love, I am nothing at all.  Suppose I give everything I have to poor people. And suppose I give my body to be burned. If I don’t have love, I get nothing at all. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Now we see only a dim likeness of things. It is as if we were seeing them in a mirror. But someday we will see clearly. We will see face to face. What I know now is not complete. But someday I will know completely, just as God knows me completely.  The three most important things to have are faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.  1 Corinthians 13:12-13

Despite what many preachers would have us believe, we don’t need to be obsessed with the promise of resurrection in order to live our faith well.  In actuality, if our faith is like that of Jesus, we love more freely simply because how we express love right here and right now is what matters most to us.  This isn’t a path of works alone, doing good things because that’s what is expected of us.  It is a path in which unconditional love increasingly becomes the driving force of our lives, shaping our faith, hopes, and our works in its own way.

O Mysterious One we know as Love Itself, help us in every moment to willingly give all for love, to make every moment sacred with love, to greet our doubts and uncertainties with faith in love, to seek the changes love begets as the continual rebirth we most desire. Amen.

Agape

Jan 172013
 

mirror-reflection-in-sphere2The image of a mirror can be very helpful in understanding contemplative experience, because it is the nature of our consciousness, of our minds, to reflect.   The term ‘reflect’ not only refers to the act of pondering upon something, but refers even more directly to the way the mind works.  All the images we see in our minds –  whether images of things in the world around us, of memories, fantasies, or inspired visions – are representations of things and not the things themselves.  This process is also true for all our other senses, but nothing represents the reflective nature of the mind better than the way a mirror works for the sense of sight.  Even when a person attempts to think of his or her own mind, the thought is only an image of the mind, and thus is an action or a part of the mind, but not the mind itself.

It may be that in those last statements you can see how thinking about something can actually interfere with our ability to be as authentically present in the moment as possible, and thus to more completely observe and perceive its greater reality or truth.   As an example, consider the well know phenomenon that thinking too much about doing something, like dancing, while actually trying to do it, gets in the way of dancing as well as we might.  Another example can be found in the obsessive shutterbug, one who can’t stop taking pictures of something long enough to simply be present in the more direct experience of it.  The more we think about something, the less we actually experience it, whether it is something we regard as external to self or something as internal as our most secret thoughts and feelings.

When practicing silent or contemplative prayer, one sits in greater openness to whatever arises in consciousness, whether a sensory perception in response to something external, or thoughts and feelings arising in other ways.  This kind of prayer is practiced in faithful acceptance of whatever actually is, filtering and distorting it as little as possible with expectations, rules, analyses, or judgments. It means opening our awareness  more completely to the immediate fact of God’s creation and the mysterious movement of the Holy Spirit.  We therefore see more clearly the truth of things just as they are in the present moment, and less as though in a cloudy mirror.   According to 1st Corinthians 13, seeing more clearly like this happens in the context of our maturation in love.

One of the most common experiences in this kind of practice is a greater awareness of the whole of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  Furthermore, most of us aren’t pleased to observe how much of a crazy mess is going on within us.   We discover that we aren’t nearly as rational, centered, well balanced, practically competent, emotionally secure, intellectually certain, spiritually enlightened, or morally virtuous as we like to pretend to others and ourselves.   In fact, anyone who practices like this for very long eventually comes to see in oneself the seeds, if not the seedlings, or even the flowers, of every sin ever committed by anyone.

There are many ways we can react to looking in that mirror.  I have no doubt that an intuitive sense of these possibilities, if not some actual experience of them, leads some people to consider contemplative practice too dangerous, and even speak of it as risking demonic possession.   Those sorts of fears should be respected for the individuals gripped by them, because too much raw truth can be harmful  when we’re unprepared to cope with it.   Yet, for others, the initial shock and horror of their existential disillusionment eventually gives way to deeper and more authentic reverence, humility, gratitude, compassion, kindness, and selflessness.  We get past being entirely captivated by all the frailty, confusion, fragmentation, dishonesty, and negativity of our own humanity and that of others, and we see that these things come and go within a greater context, the beautiful wholeness of our being and becoming.  Our own looking inward upon the mirror of the soul, releasing our illusions and accepting what is, in turn leads us to see others more clearly and to love them more freely.  This is how contemplative practice serves the Great Commandments to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Agape

Nov 162012
 

The great mystic anchoress, Julian of Norwich, has said these two simple things:

Between God and the soul there is no between. (1)

The fullness of Joy is to behold God in everything. (2)

While these statements are short and plainly written, their implications for the mystical life are nonetheless profound.

First, let’s consider what is meant by ‘soul’. Today, as in Julian’s day, it is common for Christians to think of the soul as an immaterial thinking and feeling aspect of our being that occupies or animates the physical body. (Anima, the Greek root of ‘animate’, actually means soul.)  For some people, ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ are interchangeable, yet in Christianity there is an ancient tradition of considering the whole human being as a trinity – body, soul, and spirit – where spirit is the very essence of our being in its most transcendent state or level. The soul is therefore the immanent manifestation of spirit, taking on a particular identity through life in this world. In this context, we see that the soul of a human being, at least while living in this world, cannot be understood in its wholeness apart from the body. The importance of this wholeness to Christianity is reflected in the doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body.   In any case, all of our thoughts and feelings, our knowledge of self, of the world, and even of God, develop in conjunction with our bodily experiences in this world. Therefore, in reflecting upon the soul’s relationship with God, it makes sense to consider all the dimensions of human experience – physical, emotional, intellectual, and transcendental – as offering ways of knowing oneness with God or, as Julian says, beholding God in everything.

It is my observation that most people who are driven to experience greater communion with God tend to seek powerful emotional or intellectual experiences they take to be the preferred evidence of God’s presence in their lives. In fact, many people focus almost exclusively on a particular type of experience as the only one they consider truly valid, and so they might strive repeatedly to evoke such an experience through corresponding activities and ignore or negate the other possibilities. However, if Julian is right, and I believe she is, then limiting the ways we are open to knowing God is how we ourselves create an illusory “between” to separate us from God, and thereby we rob ourselves of the “fullness of joy” that is possible for us.

Opportunities to appreciate this fullness are constantly available.  It takes very little consideration to realize that these dimensions are intricately interconnected. Indeed it is arguably impossible to conceive of a physical, emotional, or intellectual experience that is not accompanied by experience in at least one of the other two dimensions.  Even dreams, visions, and hallucinations, which we might be tempted to deny any material reality, are nonetheless accompanied by electrochemical activity in our bodies, and they are experienced by the mind as having the sensory characteristics of physical objects and events. And while intuiting or contemplation in the transcendental dimension can occur apart from the other dimensions, it also immediately gives rise to reactions in one or more of them.

Finally, in playing on Julian’s words, I want to note that ‘the fullness of love is to behold the beloved in all ways’ – physical, emotional, intellectual, and transcendental.  In its various forms, prayer, being the intentional effort to commune with God,  also has the potential to reach across all four dimensions, if it does not always do so to some degree. These realizations, taken with Jesus’ teaching to love God with all that we are and our neighbors as ourselves, and all of it considered within the context of St. John’s assertion that God is Love, provides us with the richest, most promising, most accessible, and most whole model for what it can mean to be a Christian mystic.

Maranatha

Agape

 

 

1.Chapter 46, Revelations of Divine Love; another version reads, “For our soul is so fully oned to God of His own Goodness that between God and our soul may be right nought.”

2. Chapter 35; another version reads, “…for it is more worship to God to behold Him in all than in any special thing.”

Oct 102012
 

Following the theme of my previous post on the personal dimension of Christianity, and picking up on the resurgence of interest in spiritual experiences in ChristianMystics.com, this post examines what it can mean to have a ’personal’ experience of and relationship with God.  As a case in point, I’ll be sharing the experience of a young man with whom I have been close friends.

I want to begin by stating that any spiritual experience or relationship would necessarily be ‘personal’ to the extent that one relates it to his or her own presence in this world as a more or less unique and self-aware human being, a person.   Just as your own experience or relationship with nature is said to be your personal experience or relationship with nature, so it is with spiritual experiences.  Very simply put, they are personal if for no other reason than persons are having them.  Still, it’s been my observation that by ‘personal’ we Christians often mean something else.  What I think we typically mean is that we are conceiving of our experience and relationship with God as we would with another person.  In the previous post, I highlighted our tendency to anthropomorphize God, which is perfectly understandable since that is the primary (but not the only) language the Bible and our tradition uses to address the Divine.  But rather than simply rehash that particular issue, I want to draw attention to how we conceptualize our spiritual experiences.  To do that, I will start by sharing the story of a young man’s spiritual, if not mystical, experience. He prefers to remain anonymous, and so I will refer to him as ‘Thomas.’

One Sunday afternoon in his senior year of high school, Thomas lay on his bed aware that the time was drawing near for the youth meeting at church.  As president of the youth group, he felt a duty to be there, but he was seriously considering staying home because he was in the midst of a spiritual crisis.   As a leader of his youth group and a baptized Christian, Thomas was feeling like a phony in his recent realization that he had never had the personal experience of God or Jesus that seemed to be central to the spirituality he had been taught.  For weeks he had lamented that, even though he believed in God and Jesus, and loved the story of Jesus and his legacy in our religion, he only knew Jesus as a historical figure and could only imagine relating to him as the human being described in scripture.   In other words, he had never sensed any living presence of God or Jesus in his heart and mind that seemed to have a spirit and life of its own.  Thomas had felt strong emotions of awe, humility, and gratitude when he thought about God and Jesus, and even powerful feelings of inspiration, hope, and motivation, but he took those as his own emotional reactions to things he believed about God and Jesus.  He had to admit to himself that, while he believed in God, he had never really felt directly touched by God, and also that Jesus wasn’t any more personally real to him than Moses or King David.

So Thomas lay there on his bed, unable to do anything else after weeks of wondering if there was something wrong with him, or if he had misunderstood what this whole experience of God was supposed to be like, or if he just hadn’t previously given this matter the attention it deserved.  He came to the conclusion that there must be something real to a personal experience of God, and in that moment it seemed like life wasn’t worth living without it.  With a silent voice from the depths of his soul, Thomas cried out that he was ready to die if that’s what it took to reveal the truth to him, one way or the other.  Thomas says that he hadn’t become suicidal, but that something inside him snapped.  He says he now believes it was the breaking of attachment to his old spiritual life and ways of thinking about God.  In that letting go, he wept until his eyes went dry and his body simply couldn’t sob any longer, and then found himself completely emptied of any but the faintest fleeting thoughts and feelings.  He was exhausted, and he was in a strange limbo between hope and hopelessness, just accepting the emptiness within him and the silence around him.  And then something happened.

Suddenly Thomas clearly felt another presence, which seemed to be both within and around him.  He felt the presence, its attention, and its care and concern for him, and he felt an infinite depth to it.  There was no voice or other sound, no flash of light, and no vision or image that appeared before him or in his mind. He simply felt it all very clearly, and instantly knew this was something quite different from previous emotional reactions to his beliefs about God and Jesus.  In that moment this presence was an undeniable ‘other’ which was nonetheless inseparable from him.  And, just as quickly, Thomas responded to this presence as The Presence, as God making Godself directly known to him, and he absolutely vibrated with joy and thankfulness.  Eventually he got off the bed and went to the youth meeting, and did so with an incredible new depth of assurance, gratitude, and peace.

Many observations and questions came up for Thomas in the aftermath of his experience. In particular, he noticed that there was nothing about it that immediately spoke to him as Jesus himself.  In fact, there really wasn’t much about the Presence that felt remotely human to him, except that he sensed It was aware and loving.  He recognized that he wanted to think of the Presence as Jesus, but he realized that to do so would have been an assumption about the Presence rather than something that was revealed to him by the Presence Itself.

One effect of this experience might seem a bit odd, because on the one hand Thomas felt a clearer and stronger connection with God and more spiritually alive than ever before, but he still hadn’t had an experience of Jesus as an actual living presence in his life.  In other words, he was feeling more connected to God and therefore his religion, but was also therefore even more acutely aware that he lacked something most others around him spoke about having – an immediate awareness of, and relationship with, Jesus.  Another part of the oddness was that even though he more clearly felt a difference between him and his Christian siblings on this matter, Thomas also felt a greater sense of peace with it. He now realized that his discomfort was solely about being different from other people, since his doubts about knowing and being loved by God were gone.  Thomas knew there was no issue between him and God about Jesus essentially remaining a historical figure to him.

Another effect of that experience was the initiation of his interest in meditation.  Soon after that experience, Thomas somehow got the impression that people who meditated were more likely to have such experiences, and even to have them repeatedly, if not whenever they liked.  Perhaps you can understand why that possibility sounded attractive to him. God had given him a very tasty treat, and he wanted more!  So Thomas began dabbling with meditation, but that’s about all he did.  The idea of meditation, let alone the practice of it, was extremely foreign to his world, which was a predominantly Southern Baptist, blue-collar, Texas town where people still sometimes rode horses on the street.  The library had only a few books that even touched on the subject, and none of them offered detailed instructions.  There certainly weren’t any meditation groups or teachers in town. About all Thomas could discover was that sitting cross-legged and chanting “aum” was supposed to be powerful stuff, so he tried it a number of times and found that he liked it. He found it produced an inner calm, stillness, peace, and centeredness close to what he had known just before and after his experience of the Presence.  In that space it was easy to remember the feelings he’d had in response to the Presence, and even to feel as though he was in some way drawing closer to the Presence.  Even so, the Presence Itself didn’t come to Thomas again like It had that first time.  He didn’t established a routine practice of meditation, and eventually ended up leaving it alone for several years, but he was still impressed with its value.

Over the next few years, as he continued to mature into young adulthood and become more acquainted with comparative religious studies, psychology, anthropology, and other sciences, and as the memory of the Presence faded a little, it became easier for Thomas to doubt the validity of his experience.  He learned there were plenty of scientists who considered such things to be entirely produced by the human brain, and he found their arguments persuasive enough to acknowledge that as a possibility for his own experience. Even so, he also remained quite open to the idea that it was exactly what he had understood it to be in the moment.  There were more tests and trials ahead of Thomas, including a long and sometimes miserable period of spiritual dryness.  But in time other understandings and experiences would come, he would return to the practice of meditation as a discipline rather than a quest, and his faith would be more fully awakened and realized. By the way, even though Jesus has remained a historical figure to him, Thomas says Christ was eventually realized as something even more real to him than his own personality.

I want to begin wrapping up this account of Thomas’s experience by pointing out how very personal it was.  Not only did he have a direct and unmediated personal experience of the Presence, it was also personally authentic.  By ‘authentic,’ I mean that he was honest with himself in not succumbing to both internal and external pressure to conclude that the Presence was one and the same as the historical person of Jesus.  In other words, he didn’t allow his experience to be redefined or distorted by his religion, but instead allowed the experience to transform his religion in a very personal way. Thomas further demonstrated that he wasn’t too afraid or ashamed to admit it to himself and God when he even came to doubt the experience itself.  He trusted that an all-knowing and loving God must want his most honest expression of faith.  Thomas realized that if he had any pretensions at all added to his faith, it wouldn’t be God that he was fooling, but only himself and other human beings. So it was that Thomas bared his whole personhood not only to God but to himself, and in doing so he found a greater sense of acceptance, peace, and communion with God and with himself.

Finally, Thomas wants to make sure two things are clear.  First, just because he didn’t experience Jesus as immediately present to him in person, that doesn’t mean that he believes such a thing isn’t possible; it just wasn’t the gift God gave to him.  Second, he thinks it’s very important to acknowledge that other people have emptied themselves before God the way he did on the bed that day, and yet no new awareness of God has come to them.   He has no explanation for why that would happen to him and not others. He says he feels a lot of compassion and understanding for why some people might feel cheated or even abandoned by God.  He asks that we remember Jesus’ statement that “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”  Thomas says the very fact that we so deeply want to experience God more directly is itself evidence of God’s presence in our hearts.   To that, I would add only that Jesus teaches loving others is the most important way to love God, and that it follows such love is therefore a way to directly know and experience God in our lives.  It might not be the kind of ‘personal’ experience we want, but it is one that is always available to us.

Maranatha!

Agape

Sep 112012
 

September 11 seems like a fitting day to offer this prayer that has been on my heart for some time now.  I am very cautious about addressing politics in this blog.  When I do, I try to do so in a way that is free from partisan biases.  Public prayers are also something I am cautious about for a number of reasons.  I hope you can join this prayer without reservation, regardless of your specific political and economic beliefs.  There is nothing in it that isn’t among the teachings of Jesus, much of which can be found in the Sermon on the Mount.  More importantly, I hope we can each do our parts to serve its vision, and not simply wait for God to intervene like a parent imposing order on unruly children.  Let us be like the children who honor their parents by following their wise counsel.

Most Holy and Loving God, hear our prayer:

In our efforts to work out the ways we live together at all levels of society – neighborhood, city, state, nation, and world – help us overcome the temptations to be untrusting, deceitful, intolerant, self-righteous, and hostile.   Help free us from greed, gluttony, and the temptation to enjoy unjust gain, all of which Jesus called ‘Mammon.’  When we encounter such attitudes in others, help us remember that behind them are fears and hopes in connection with the natural desires for happiness and wellbeing that we all share.   Help us remember that, if we would love You fully, we must love our neighbors, even those we might call our enemies.   Help us be merciful, pure in heart, and peacemakers with all people.  Strengthen our courage to turn the other cheek while also standing bravely with the oppressed.   Magnify our compassion and our resolve to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to heal the sick, to serve those whom we might regard as the least among us, and to love them even as we would love Your Son who is the light within all born into this world.  Most Gracious One, help us remember in gratitude that You are ever with us, feeding us with the miraculous loaves of Your love, and that we are thereby empowered to manifest Your love on earth as it is in Heaven, if we will only let the light within us, which is Your light, shine unhidden.  Finally, Spirit of Wisdom, sharpen our discernment to uphold policies that will best serve these ethical principles and to elect leaders who will do likewise, assuming neither holiness among those who cry “Lord, Lord!” nor wickedness among those who do not.

In Your Ineffable Name we pray, amen.

Agape

Mar 092012
 

from Lenten meditations

Oh you who live the religious life,
if you persevere a time may come
when you finally realize
that all your performance of ritual,
all your prayer and meditation,
all your sacrifices and alms,
all your fasting and service,
have not of themselves
washed away your sinfulness,
made you a better person,
or endeared you more to God.
You will see that none of it
has brought more healing
to your wounded heart
or light to your searching mind,
let alone to the world around you.

If you do not fight or flee this realization,
you may yet come to see
why it is that others before you
have continued in these ways,
as if poets writing poems soon forgotten,
dancers dancing when no one else watches,
or whistlers whistling without thought.
Perhaps then will you begin to know
the true depths of cleansing,
virtue, endearment, healing, and illumination
that were there all along,
already flowing in and through you
and all the world.