A CONTEMPLATIVE GROUP JOURNEY - Wisdom Way of...

“A Man’ s Life Journey” Acknowledgements & special th anks to:

An inner journey toward true self-awareness

A JOURNAL FROM xx/07/2008 TO 20/11/2008

A CONTEMPLATIVE GROUP JOURNEY

“It’s not so much what happens to us,

but what we do with what happens to

us that finally determines the way we

make our passage through life.”

My greatest wealth is the deep stillness in which I strive and grow and win what the world cannot take from me with fire or sword. ~ Goethe

My journey with the group of men shown (2 absent) began over a year and a half ago. These men chose to come together each week and discuss the things of life… of a man’s life journey, through their own hardships and victories; trusting that this journey is a journey into the soul. Into the Self. They believed, as I did, that the contemplative way was the way forward. They believe, as I do, that paradoxically we cannot know God unless we know ourselves, and we cannot know ourselves unless we know God.

Like Thomas Merton, we’ve spent much of our time together trying to figure out what is wrong with us as human beings that God alone can put right. In line with many other great Christian thinkers, Merton concluded that we, himself foremost, suffer from divided or compartmentalized selves. Our true, inner self is overshadowed by a false, external self, one that no longer sees things as they really are. How we can we hope to reach a point where our true, inner self rather than our false, external self controls what we do, we often wonder? Merton would encourage us to pray the prayer Augustine prayed following his conversion at age thirty-two: "Teach me to know myself. Teach me to know You."

As we do, and as we discuss our prayers, dreams, visions and desires, several things have happened.

WE HAVE EXPERIENCED God's ‘okaying’, and find ourselves experiencing freedom to look with new eyes at the people, the community, and the world around us. Amazing changes can and have happened as a result. When we 'center down'... when life is lived " with singleness of eye, from a holy Center where the breath and stillness of Eternity are heavy upon us and we are wholly yielded to [God]" as Kelly once said, we experience one another in amazing ways. In new ways. In more loving ways.

They believe, like me, that we are in the midst of exploring the path of self-transformation along which we learn to become the contemplative persons we deep down really are and have longed to be. This vision grounds itself in a faith in the revelatory nature of our moments of spontaneous contemplative experience as disclosing to us the inherently holy nature of the present moment.

As we learn to establish ourselves in this founding first principle of life's essential holiness, the second principle comes into view as our tendency not to see the divinity of the life we are living. As we learn to live with this awareness of our unawareness, we discover that the obstacle, contemplatively pondered, becomes the path along which we are transformed. For our awareness of our unawareness draws us into the third principle, which is that of the felt need to commit ourselves to a path of transformation along which we become more habitually aware of and responsive to the inherent holiness of life.

We all trust in the words of Merton when he wrote: “This path of self-transformation can be expressed and explored in three directives: Find your contemplative practice and practice it. Find your contemplative community and enter it. Find your contemplative teaching and follow it.” And so we embark on all three of these directives simultaneously, in community. We sought the first directive by planning and, with all due diligence, following the path which is depicted on page XX of this booklet. This journal is a collection of thoughts, notions, reflections, quotations of readings I’ve discovered on my journey, all which speak to my own growth and interactions with the men’s group.

I’m sold out on these blokes; each and every one of them, in their own right. I love them with “all my heart, my soul, and my strength”. They have become for me, true ‘brothers’ in the Lord. And that is the blessing I receive each time we meet...


I have learned that my contemplative practice is any act, habitually entered into with my whole heart, as a way of awakening, deepening, and sustaining a contemplative experience of the inherent holiness of the present moment. My practice may be to be alone, really alone, without any addictive props and diversions. Or my practice may be that of being with that person in whose presence you are called to a deeper place.

If I’m not careful, however, the demands of each day's events easily drown out the unassuming importance of fidelity to those simple acts that intimately awaken me to the ultimate meaning and value of those same daily events. Remaining faithful to my contemplative practices calls for the integrity of remaining faithful to a commitment that nobody sees; it consists of giving myself over with all my heart to simple acts which, on the surface, seem to be but the incidental passage of time. But if I’m faithful to this unassuming path of fidelity toward daily contemplative practices, the subtle awareness of the depths to which they grant access begins to permeate the very texture of my daily experience of living. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, fidelity to our contemplative practices evolves into an habitual awareness that does not miss the surprise appearance of God showing up… “Finding my contemplative practice is then an event that occurs in each and every granting of contemplative experience in which the divinity of the present moment is realized. Flowing out from each finding is the possibility of then learning to practice my contemplative practice by learning to "hang out in the neighborhood" where the granting of spontaneous contemplative experience of the moment occurred. One arena in which this has become a reality for me is in my marital life. Self-transformation clearly has its moments of spontaneous contemplative experience in which my wife and I both realize, in an intimate, intuitive, body-grounded manner, a oneness that never ends. The granting of this experience may occur in the naked embrace of sexual intercourse. When this is so, penetration and orgasm are realized to be not simply physiological processes, but, what is more, ways of yielding over their last defense against the free fall in which there is nothing for them to hold on to except one another. Or the contemplative experience of love's overflowing nature is more often than not granted in times of crisis; in which one is there for the other at a tremendous cost to oneself. As a couple, committed to deep intimacy; however, intimacy comes indeed at a great cost. This is especially so, as each one experiences daily pressures and the baggage of woundedness that we’ve brought into the marriage takes its toll on our intimacy. But, when all goes well, if we cooperate with love's ways, we’ve come to learn to recognize and faithfully give ourselves over to those acts, which we’ve discovered by experience inherently endowed with the capacity to awaken and deepen our love for one another. We might take long slow walks together, or sit sharing what most needs to be shared… or pray together, or simply sit in a mutual silence in which each gives witness to the other of love's ultimately unspeakable nature. We become, in short, faithful to those simple acts discovered by experience inherently endowed with the capacity to awaken, deepen, and sustain a contemplative aware ness of love's never ending ways.

This same self-transforming process observed in marital love can be observed as well in my religious walk, or even walking in the midst of nature, sitting in solitude, doing philosophical reflection, and through the healing of psychological wounds — and all other arenas of fundamental human experience. Each of these arenas form the context in which I am, from time to time… in moments of contemplative awakening; which then evolve into an habitual contemplative awareness of the divinity of daily living.

It is this “awakening” to all that is life, all that is precious, all that which draws me into the Divine presence; into authentic ‘comm(union)’.

.

Sitting in Silence

The purpose of contemplative prayer,

its teachers say, is not only to deepen one's

spiritual experience but also to help form

and embolden Christian communities.

Spiritual leaders in contemplative prayer say

that sitting in silence regularly, once or,

preferably, twice a day, is the key to breaking out of dualistic thought and into an inner space of peace, consciousness and awareness, a place to which the Spirit is

constantly inviting us, were we only to listen.

It is there one gains deeper contact with

God, a clearer perspective on self and the

great mysteries of life.

"Contemplation," Benedictine Fr.

Thomas Keating has written, "is basically the

predominance of the gifts of the Spirit over

our own activity during the time of prayer.

At the same time, it gradually works itself

into daily life through the active gifts of the

Spirit: counsel, prudence, fortitude and

knowledge." Christian contemplation is most

often achieved through stillness and silence,

allowing a place and time to open oneself to

the Spirit.

"We go into silence to listen to

messages from God," purports Rev. Cynthia

Bourgeault, an Anglican priest, teacher and

author of Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. "If we can get our own noise

down far enough, we can hear God speak to

us. God is always present. It's we who are

absent. We run away and hang out in our

noise and our ideas and our talking. So when

we are being silent we simply restore a

condition of 'is-ness' and we discover that

we are joined to God by a great umbilical

cord of love that never lets us down."

"Thoughts arise and each is an opportunity

to return to God," claims Bourgeault… "In centering prayer what we are doing is using our typically over-stimulated modern mind with

all its thoughts, and we are using these thoughts

as the raw material to practice this motion of letting go and opening up."

"When Jesus went out and prayed for 40

days," Rohr says, "he wasn't saying 'Hail Marys'

and 'Our Fathers.' He was looking out at life

with a different set of eyes. The contemplative prayer mind frames reality differently.... It

doesn't look at life in terms or either/or, all/

nothing, win/lose."

Breaking into an inner space of peace, consciousness and awareness

“CONTEMPLATION is the key to breaking out of dualistic thought… It is

there one gains deeper contact with God, a clearer perspective on self and the

great mysteries of life.”

Thomas Merton (1968)

Contemplation and Invitation Judy Cannato (2002) speaks of the importance of prayerful contemplation in this way:

“Only when we have become still can we contemplate our life's journey, find fresh meaning in what we thought were detours, name illusions for what they are, reclaim lost parts of ourselves, or discover new potential that we never dreamed was there. Contemplative awareness is essential: integration and integrity demand it. The process of contemplation is not simply the act of making a detailed analysis of strengths and weaknesses, illusions, values, and goals. It is rather a non-judgmental gaze at the whole of our life, a gaze that affirms our gifts and is truthful about how they have been used and misused. In contemplation we examine… the elements of the shadow – those parts of the self that cause us to reject our truth and project our illusions onto others. Non-judgmental is the key word, since judgement and blame will bring up our defenses and will be counterproductive. Contemplation is essentially the growing recognition that our lives are intertwined with divine mystery, that meaning comes not from proving ourselves to be successful or good but from allowing the truth and love of the Spirit to penetrate and transform our hearts, The light of God's loving presence first illuminates our darkness, allowing us to recognize what is false and futile, then invites us to yield to a clearing out that renders us transparent. Contemplation will allow us, if we are courageous and open, to see the truth. And the truth will set us free-free from the “darkened crisis” to “look once more upon the stars”– free to live the rest of our life in unimagined beauty and light’.”

Centering Prayer “In working with the importance of interior silence and the need for an inner sanctuary deep within our own clay, we focus on a form of silent prayer – called Centering Prayer. The beauty of this form of prayer is that it takes us away from a preoccupation with our thoughts and therefore from our illusions. The simplest description would be, coming with an intention to sit in a loving relationship with the source of Love and the Creator and sustainer of life without thought and in the absence of self-judgement. In this space, which might last from 20-30 minutes daily, we loosen our attachment to ourselves. We abandon ourselves to God so that God ‘can get at us’. Centering Prayer is simply to sit in the presence of God with intention, but without needing thoughts or words (apart from a simple “love word”). It is very much a companioning space – being with the Divine Companion. And as such, it can be a very healing place.”

TAKEN FROM “THE HUMAN STORY” BY CHRIS BROWN (2005)

Cannato, Judy (2002). Midlife Darkness. Weavings, 17(1), p.13

Rohr, Richard (1993). Near Occasions of Grace. New York: Orbis, p. 19.


THE ‘CONTEMPLATIVE WAY’

In this rendering of the Sermon on the Mount, we see that the poor in spirit are those who are cut off from the normal symbols of security in society have the ideal disposition for the reign of God because they have nothing to lose. One who has nothing to lose obviously is much more willing to allow God into one's life. Jesus’ teachings suggest that the healing of our security centre comes when we trust God completely. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus elaborates on what he means by letting go of the anxious search for more and more possessions to assuage our feelings of insecurity. [Matt. 6:25-30]

"Blest are the sorrowing; they shall be consoled." Love distorted by selfishness

wants to cling to ephemeral or illusory projects for happiness: When we let such things go, we are bound to feel loss and the corresponding emotion of sorrow. This sorrow is not the same as that which comes from the unwillingness to let go of what is being asked or taken from us and which may give rise to discouragement, depression and even despair. We have to allow for the grieving period to run its course and not run away from it. The willingness to let go and bear the loss of what we love gives rise to a new inner freedom that enables us to live without what we previously thought was so essential. That freedom with its accompanying peace is the consolation that is promised in this beatitude. In actual fact, we never lose anything that truly deserves to be loved; we simply enter into a more mature relationship with it.

"Blest are the meek; they shall inherit the land." The meek are: those who do not get angry in the face of insult or injury those who have begun to dismantle their need or demand to control other people, events, and their own lives. When they experience an insult or humiliation, they do not feel it as a loss of power. Hence, they are free to continue to show love those who refuse to injure others regardless of the provocation. They are not judgmental. They may not approve of someone's conduct or principles, but they refuse to make a moral judgment about the person in question. Rather, their freedom from their power/control centre enables them to have great compassion for those who are still imprisoned in the straightjacket of power needs that never rest and that can never be fulfilled.

Mahatma Gandhi taught abimsa (loosely translated as "the practice of non-violence"), pointing to a new kind of consciousness in which, instead of returning an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, one goes on showing love. Abimsa is not a passive attitude but one that actively shows love no matter what happens. The love is so delicate and sincere that it refuses to take advantage of one's persecutor when s/he is vulnerable.

A New Kind of Consciousness

Jesus then came down with his apostles and stopped on some level ground. A large group of his disciples, besides a great many people from all over the Jewish country, including Jerusalem and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, had come to hear him and be cured of their diseases. Everybody in the crowd endeavoured to come and touch him and power was going out from him and healing everyone. It was then that he raised his eyes and fixed them upon his disciples and spoke as follows: "How blest are the poor in spirit; the reign of God is theirs. Blest are the meek; they shall in-herit the land. Blest are the sorrowing; they shall be consoled."

[Luke 6:17-20; Matt. 5:3-5]

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The meekness proposed in the Beatitudes is not passivity but the firm determination to go on loving no matter what evil another person does to us. It believes that to show love is the true nature of being human. This behaviour undercuts violence at its roots. Violence tends to beget violence. When people feel attacked, they defend themselves. There is no end to the chain of violence until one of the contenders refuses to respond in kind. The determination to go on loving in spite of immense hurt is the only way to achieve peace (peace within ourselves, with God, amongst our families, communities, and nations). It presupposes and manifests the inner freedom to which the Gospel invites us.

SO HOW DO WE COME TO KNOW SUCH MEEKNESS (HUMILITY)?

CONTEMPLATION & LEVELS OF (LOVE) CONSCIOUSNESS

THE ANALOGY OF THE TELL AND THE ARCHEOLOGICAL DIG

Detailed enlargement of the Tell

Archaeologists routinely gather together some graduate students from some big university, raise money from some philanthropic foundation, and hunt around for “digs” to unearth. The process often takes many years. Level by level, the archaeologists work down, culture by culture, all the way down to the stone age. I suggest that the Holy Spirit, as the divine archaeologist, works in a somewhat similar mode. S/he picks us up where we are now, whatever our chronological age. The first thing is to heal the most destructive aspects of our present relationships and addictive behaviours. As a result, we enjoy a certain freedom in practicing virtue and humility toward others.

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The Spirit decides to dig down to the next

level. Actually, the Spirit intends to investigate our

whole life history, layer by layer, throwing out the

junk and preserving the values that were appropriate

to each stage of our human development. Without

following an exact chronology, the Spirit seems to

work back through the successive stages of our

lives: old age (if we have arrived there), mid-life

crisis, early adult life, late adolescence, early

adolescence, puberty, late childhood, early

childhood; infancy, birth, and even prebirth.

The sequence corresponds in general to the

emotional chronology of our psyche, in which the deepest and earliest wounds tend to be

the most tightly repressed. Eventually the Spirit begins to dig into the bedrock of our

earliest emotional life, where the feelings of rejection, insecurity, lack of affection, or

actual physical trauma were first experienced. The most primitive emotions arise to

consciousness because raw anger, fear, and grief were our only possible responses at

that time. Hence, as we progress toward the ‘Centre’, where God actually is waiting

for us, we are naturally going to feel that we are getting worse. This warns us that

the spiritual journey is a series of humiliations of the false self. It is experienced

as diminutions of the false self with the value system and worldview that we built up so

painstakingly as defences to cope with the emotional pain of early life.

As the ’true’ self is encountered with more frequency, our personal relationship

with Christ deepens. Irene Alexander (2007, p. 24) warns us:

“As we learn to notice what helps us to stay in the true self, it is helpful also to be conscious of those things that draw us back into the false self. These may be requirements from without or needs from within. The requirements of our jobs or other re sponsibilities often make us feel as though we must put on the false self with its right way of doing things. We are aware of other people's expectations of us and so assume our old patterns of living up to expectations, whether real or imagined.

The inner needs may also drive us back to following our old scripts. Pen nington simply summarizes these as being what we do, what we have and what others think of us. Another way to look at them is to see them as the need for security, esteem and power and control. For some people, this need for security is a core need that drives them back to behaving in 'proper' ways because then they feel secure, they feel as though the world will be a safe place. This reaction is often deeper than conscious thought, a well-entrenched script to which they default whenever they are threatened. A conscious choice must be made to trust that living with God is the safest way to live.”

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EMPTYING OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

Diagram 7: THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE

Transforming Union Purity of love

Purity of heart

Transforming Union

At this point, most of the blokes in the group complained

the initial graces that were given to rational faculties and emotions are withdrawn -- a classic

experience in the spiritual journey known as "the dark night of sense." Our enthusiasm for

various devotional practices and activities seemed to disappear… God, too, seemed to withdraw,

to our great distress or consternation. Instead of being present during our time of prayer, God

seemed not to show up anymore; it felt as if He could not care less. This is especially painful as

the former relationship was very satisfying, exciting, or consoling. The thought arises, "God has

abandoned me!" When the dryness is extreme, I suspect our tendency is to project onto God the

way we would feel in a similar deteriorating relationship with another human being, namely,

hopeless.

At this point many people, primarily myself, want to throw in the towel and say things

like, "The spiritual journey is not for me." The real question here is: “What does one do next”?

I think it was at this point that I began to re-experience the Men’s Rights-of-Passage, which

spoke to me deeply of the transformation required to move beyond this seeming impasse. I

realized also the truth that “You can’t go back” once the descent journey has begun… like the

Abrahamic Journey, there is no going back to what was...

Keating shows us a diagram which

helped me to better understand

this stage of my journey ‘toward

the centre’. The spiral staircase

is a combination of the horizontal

and vertical diagrams. The top of

the staircase corresponds to our

first conversion, the time when

we first commit ourselves to

follow Jesus. Soon afterwards

we usually have to deal with some

particular set of temptations,

f a i l u res , add i c t i ons , o r

compulsions. The movement into

the real work of the spiritual

journey takes place not on our

initiative, because we probably

would stay in our first fervour

forever if we could. The Spirit as

our loving therapist invites us to

look at the next level of our life

and to see if that, too, can be

rescued from its limitations.

What are Rites of Passage?

Liminality, Transitions, and the

Journey into Adulthood

Underpinning these queries is the acknowledgement of “father wounding” and the resultant need for men to belong and the drive to become a ‘real man’ and have adult respect. In the absence of sanctioned processes of transition, and effective role models to acknowledge and support a man’s journey, blokes seek out their own initiations, often through dangerous and risky behaviours. The other option open to them is to become spiritless and collapse their being into a state of compliance. In this way they do not grow into responsible and respectful men with a strong sense of self. Those that survive the turbulence of the hazardous trials, grow into men who exhibit strong tendencies towards aggression, intolerance (prejudice), and addictive behaviours. Either way, the true soul of the male spirit is dead in these men.

The Need

For males, young and old alike, the driving force is the pressure to conform, perform and win respect. Adolescence is a time when young men begin to experience the tension between independence and belonging. Identities are being formed in the emerging adult, and boundaries of social groups and communities are making their demands on these boys. The move to separate from parental control begins to intensify. With its current lack of understanding, society tends to increase it’s drive to control or suppress the emergent energy surfacing in young men. This is evident in our school systems, justice systems, and family and community relationships. The trend has been to favour punitive and restrictive initiatives of social control.

Understanding Rites of Passage

The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by anthropologist Mircea Eliade, defines rites of passage as follows:

Rites of passage are a category of rituals that mark the passage of a person through the life cycle, from one stage to another over time, from one role or social position to another, integrating the human and cultural experiences with biological destiny: birth, reproduction, and death. These ceremonies make the basic distinctions, observed in all groups, between young and old, male and female, living and dead.

Grof, C. [1996]. Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage, Chicago, Illinois: Open Court, 5.

Joseph Campbell once said:

Boys everywhere have a need for rituals Marking their passage to manhood. If society does not provide them They will inevitably invent their own.

Pinnock, D. [1997]. Gangs, rituals & rites of passage. Cape Town: African Sun Press

The definition of Rites of Passage above, may engage us in an intellectual way, but how do we embody and grasp the full significance of these times of transition? In Western society, the practice and meaning of formal sanctioned Rites of Passage has all but disappeared. Men stumble and fall and wander around in a grey area of not knowing how to respond to a deep psychic calling. This calling is pervasive and persists beyond adolescence -- even throughout our lives. It is like gnawing sensations in the gut that lives in emptiness and hungers for the un-known, and simply will not go away. In traditional cultures (i.e. pre industrial times), older men [and women] with experience, knowledge, and particularly wisdom, would sit with the young people of the community and listen to them and talk to them of the stories of their lives. Today, in the absence of wise elders, young people are largely left to their own devices to sat-isfy their insatiable hunger for belonging and to be re-spected. How do young people in our world mark their journey from childhood to teenager and then to adult-hood? Is this being done in a healthy and supportive way? Are the young people of today (and even the older ones) undergoing some sort of initiation, and how are they be-ing honoured for enduring this trial? And by whom?

THE NEED FOR RIGHTS-OF-PASSAGE

Community / Group Reflections When we consider this, it becomes self-evident that it is not the young man that’s the problem -- but it is the problem that’s the problem. This means that when we look at the environment, the socio political, and economic circumstance surrounding the individual, a different picture emerges.

Therefore the solution must also be located in that community (group). In this way the responsibility for the occurrence and the resolution is shared by the individual and by the community.

This approach requires a shift in the way we think. A fundamental change is to move from a punitive base to an affirming or restorative base. A restorative stance means that the task of the ‘wise elder’ is to help a man to: (a) find his rightful place in the cosmos; (b) find the deeper meaning to his life, (c) seek recognition by respected elders, and (d) seek support through sanctioned rites of passage.

All evidence points to the benefits of sanctioned Rites of Passage, historically speaking. Don Pinnock (1997, p. 9) refers to Mircea Eliade’s reports of initiation experiences in different cultures. Eliade mentioned that “initiation of boys begins with two events: the first is a clean break with the parents, after which the novice goes to the forest, desert, or wilderness”. Pinnock goes on to emphasise the innate drive in males to experience their trial by ordeal, “… their need to test their mettle, to become heroes and to be accepted by their peers is paramount. For this reason elaborate rituals have developed around the heroic deed.”

‘Ritual is so basic to our creation of society that to lose ritual is to lose the way’ writes Pinnock

(1997, p. 13). Ritual can be understood as a conscious ceremonial marking in time of an event that usually has transforming properties associated with it. At this point, the men’s group began to understand more completely the need for the experiential rites to move through the transitional stages of: (a) separation. (b) liminality and, finally, (c) Incorporation, which for us, is the eternal union in Christ.

Bion made the distinction between two types of groups: (a) work groups; roughly speaking, groups which were getting on with their appointed tasks,

and what he called, (b) ‘basic assumption’ groups; groups in the grip of a primitive unconscious phantasy. As facilitator, I can only assume our men’s group falls in this the latter group type.

The first basic assumption is dependency: 'that the group is met in order to be sustained by a leader on whom it depends for nourishment, material and spiritual, and protection' (p. 444). The second basic assumption — of pairing —

involves a Messianic hope that something or someone as-yet unborn, not-yet present or not yet in role will save the group 'from feelings of hatred, destructiveness

and despair, of its own or of another group, but in order to do this, obviously the Messianic hope must never be fulfilled' (pp. 446-8). The third basic assumption is fight or flight: - 'that the group has met to fight something or run away from it' (p. 448); the emotions appropriate to the physiological emergency response of the sympathetic nervous system, energised by adrenaline. He contends that 'panic flight and uncontrolled attack are really the same' (p. 469).

Bion stressed that these are in no way voluntary or conscious reactions: 'Participation in basic assumption activity requires no training, experience or mental development. It is instantaneous, inevitable and instinctive...' (Bion, 1955, p. 449; cf. p. 458). All of the basic assumptions involve a leader, but this need not be a person; it could be an idea or inanimate object (p. 450). When the 'leader' is a person, he or she 'is as much the creature of the basic assumption as any other member of the group... The "loss of individual distinctiveness" applies to the leader of the group as much as to anyone else — a fact which probably accounts for some of the posturing to which leading figures are prone' (p. 467).

Bion, WR. (1952). “Group dynamics: a review.” Reprinted in M. Klein, P. Heimann & R. Money-Kyrle (eds.) New Directions in Psychoanalysis,

London: Tavistock Publications, pp.440-477.

Pinnock, D. (1997). Gangs, Rituals & Rites of Passage. Cape Town, S. Africa: African Sun Press & University of Cape Town.

The story of Lazarus is a preview of Jesus' approaching death and resurrection. Lazarus stands for the fallen humanity about to be raised from the death of sin to life in God through Christ's passion, death, and resurrection. The illness which Jesus

allows Lazarus to undergo is the symbol of our false self with all its weakness, ignorance, and pride, together with all the damage lying in the unconscious from earliest childhood to the present moment. To raise Lazarus from this illness to life in the Spirit is the most profound meaning of the event. Lazarus' resurrection manifests the full significance of Christ's resurrection, which restores sinful humanity, not only to the divine life, but to its super-abounding fullness.

Jesus hints at the special character of Lazarus' illness in these words: "This illness will not result in death, but will promote the glory of God."

Lazarus represents in a special way those who seek to penetrate the mystery of Christ to its depths. The disposition is manifested by a willingness to die to the false self and to wait in patience for the inner resurrection that can only come from Christ.

I’ve often pondered what Lazarus thought when Jesus didn’t come right away? Or the sisters, as they watched Lazarus slowly wasting away? They had sent Jesus a message about the seriousness of his illness. They knew that Jesus loved Lazarus he truly loved them. He had made their home a stopping-off place on his many journeys to Jerusalem and a place of rest after teaching in the Temple during the day.

John himself, in describing this event, seems astonished that Jesus did not hasten to come at once. He writes, half apologetically, "He tarried, it is true" as if to say, "I must admit" two extra days after receiving the information. He apparently ignored his friend's request and the anguish of the sisters. By staying away two more days, he not only allowed the illness to get worse, but allowed Lazarus to undergo death and even corruption. Lazarus was in the tomb four days before Jesus finally arrived.

But what is this mysterious illness that comes upon we whom Jesus loves in a special way? Was Lazarus' illness a special kind of illness that God sends to his friends, I wonder?

CRISIS OF FAITH—CRISIS OF LOVE

Lazarus: Symbol of Christian Awakening

John 11:1 A man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, in the same town that Mary lived with her sister Martha. 2 This was the same Mary who massaged the Lord's feet with aromatic oils and then wiped them with her hair. It was her brother Lazarus who was sick. 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Master, the one you love so very much is sick." 4When Jesus got the message, he said, "This sickness is not fatal. It will become an occasion to show God's glory by glorifying God's Son." 5 Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 but oddly, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed on where he was for two more days. 7 After the two days, he said to his disciples, "Let's go back to Judea." 8 They said, "Rabbi, you can't do that. The Jews are out to kill you, and you're going back?" 9 Jesus replied, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in daylight doesn't stumble because there's plenty of light from the sun. 10 Walking at night, he might very well stumble because he can't see where he's going." 11 He said these things, and then announced, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen

asleep. I'm going to wake him up." (The Message)

Perhaps the most poignant of all the aspects of this experience is the confrontation between the majesty of God and the dire spiritual poverty of the person who is becoming aware of how sick he really is. Jonah experienced this as rejection as he prayed in the belly of the whale: "Here in the depths of the sea's heart you would cast me away, all the flood of your waves are sweeping over me, till it seems as if I were shut out from your regard." Jonah 2:4-5

Another characteristic symptom of his illness is the conviction of being punished, imprisoned, abandoned, and that God is refusing to hear one's desperate cries for help. To quote Jeremiah, the Prophet: "Ah, what straits have I not known, under the avenging rod! I asked for light and into ever deeper shadows the Lord's guidance led me. Bitterness of despair fills my prospect, walled in on every side. Buried in darkness and like the dead, interminable. Closely he fences me in, beyond hope of rescue; loads me with fetters. Cry out for mercy as I will, prayer of mine wins no audience. Climb these smooth walls I may not; every way of escape he has undone.” Lamentations

3:1-9

This is what Lazarus was feeling when he realized that Jesus could have come and healed him, yet did not come. The illness had to run its course in order to accomplish its purpose, for there is no way it can be accomplished except by going through it. That is why, having heard how ill Lazarus was, "Jesus tarried for two days more in the place where he was."

Lazarus, laid in the tomb and starting to corrupt is a most vivid image of the spiritual experience of those who suffer this inward transformation (purification), apparently forgotten and abandoned by God.

More Personal Reflections

I’ve arrived at the notion that this may be the recognition of my false self, which comprises all the maledictions that have been woven into our personality from our earliest memories. This mass of human misery is a significant part of the sufferings of the illness. They include:

the emotional damage that may have come from our upbringing and environment all the harm that other people have done to us, knowingly or unknowingly, at an age when we could not defend ourselves all the methods we acquired, many of them now unconscious, to ward off the pain of unbearable situations.

I’ve also wondered if his illness consisted of his becoming more aware that he was unwell and in having the illness run its full course, ending in the death of his false self? Only then could God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, raise him to the fullness of life, which is the fruit (heretofore anticipated) of Christ's death and resurrection.

Then, anyone who feels he has been great friends with God, may begin to wonder whether he has ever heard of God. Job described his experience in these words: "Why do you stay hidden and silent? Why treat me like I'm your enemy? Why kick me around like an old tin can? Why beat a dead horse? You compile a long list of mean things about me, even hold me accountable for the sins of my youth. You hobble me so I can't move about. You watch every move I make, and brand me as a dangerous character. Like something rotten, human life fast decomposes, like a moth-eaten shirt or a mildewed blouse. “ Job 13:24-28

Two extremes meet in this (st)illness: the divine light and human misery. The soul

melts away in the presence of God. It feels its spiritual substance demolished and cries out in the words of Psalmist: "O God, save me; see how the waters close about me, threatening my life. I am like one who sticks in the deep mire, no ground under his feet; hoarse, my throat with crying wearily for help. My eyes ache looking for the mercy of God." Psalm 69:4-5

‘WAKING UP’ TO OURSELVES

The contemplative journey is too hard and too dangerous to do alone. It’s too counter-cultural to sustain, too much of an upstream swim to make it if we have to do it on our own. St. John of the Cross says that everyone who seeks to go deep into their souls needs a travel companion. David Benner, in his book Sacred Companions, puts it very bluntly: “If you are making significant progress on the transformational journey of Christian spirituality, you have one more friendships that support that journey. If you do not, you are not. It is that simple.” (Benner, 1999, 16).

So I know I need to have companions that walk with me, listen carefully to me, care for me with compassion and tenderness at the times that is needed. They also call me to honesty about my own life – the good and the bad – and they help me to live out of my deepest truth. This is the very heart of contemplative companionship or ‘spiritual friendship’. David Benner says further, “A soul friendship is a relationship to which I bring my whole self, especially my inner self. And the care that I offer for the other person in a soul friendship is a care for his or her whole self, especially the inner self.” (Ibid, 1999, 15).

Discovering God in the Ordinary We are all called to discern the movement of God in us in our family life, our vocational experience, our recreation, and in our moments alone. In the introduction to another great book (Holy Listening by Margaret Guenther) Alan Jones says, “the art of spiritual discernment lies in our uncovering the obvious in our lives and in realizing that everyday events are the means by which God tries to reach us.” Have you ever heard anyone say this? “Well, I don’t go to church! There’s no point to it! And I don’t pray much, either. I don’t seem to have much of an intimate relationship with God.” Instead of looking for God in all the places I think I should find him and feeling like a failure because I don’t go there very often, I’m tempted to look into the experience of life as I’m living it and see where God might be coming to me and offering relationship with me in my life. God shows up in the obvious and I could look for the ways God is showing up rather than looking for the ways that I think I’m improving my own spirituality.

SACRED COMPANIONS

Opening Up to Love I wonder if I live with so many difficult and destructive images of God, images that shame me and intimidate me. It is a true delight to watch a person begin to experience and to trust God’s ongoing and faithful love for them that will never leave or diminish (as I see weekly in my men’s groups). The light begins to dawn and life begins to flow in a whole new way. Fear begins to recede into the background and we begin to breathe the fresh air of new beginnings and new possibilities. Both in society and in the church, I’ve often been seduced into believing that it is all up to ME. I have to perform, achieve, produce, control and preserve in order to make sure I have ‘life to the fullest’. TALK ABOUT NARCISSISM!!! And instead, it becomes a tremendously burdensome life. Finally, something in my experience – some crisis, some growing hunger – helps me see that this illusion isn’t working any more. I’m left longing for acceptance, an identity that is given and cannot be achieved, and a presence that will stick with me through thick and thin. What method of prayer I choose to use, or what Scriptures I read last week will be of interest only in the way that they begin to tell the unfolding story of God’s active presence in my life and my response to that presence. The first great movement in contemplation is to open up to God’s tender and persistently offered love for me, regardless of how well or how poorly I seem to be doing. God’s love is the very heart of my life, the very breath of my existence both physically and spiritually. This is precisely what God’s loving presence is all about. And it is the first part of the wisdom journey. God is already at work in my life. And God is willing to go to my deepest, darkest places and stay with me and offer me the love that gives living hope in those dark and often shame-filled places. Opening up to God’s intimate love for me gives me the ground and the strength I need to face and find healing for my wounds, my illusions, my compulsions, and the ways I block or distort God’s life in mine. Thomas Merton once wrote, “the whole purpose of the wisdom journey is to penetrate beneath the surface of a person’s life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.” This has my become my most fervent prayer.

The Beatitudes & Contemplative Living

Self-Knowledge & Repentance

Self-knowledge …characterises the state of what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God. I make sense of the process of discovering the Self with the help of the great religious traditions, their themes and archetypes. It offers today a new kind of recognition of the fundamental unity of all paths of human growth and self-transcendence. It may well be that, at least for some people, the mutual enrichment of differing traditions will be necessary in order to fully understand the subtler stages of the path to true Selfhood.1 One of the stages of self-knowledge which all traditions recognise, although by different terms, is repentance. This is a precondition for any spirituality. Jesus began his preaching with the call to repentance. Some more negative styles of Christian spirituality in the past interpreted this as a call to fixate upon one's personal sinfulness and then develop an abiding sense of guilt. The guiltier you felt the more repentant you were. Nothing could be more inconsistent with Jesus' words. A call to repentance is a release from the psychological disorder of guilt. Jesus urged repentance, not to instill a fear of punishment but because the kingdom of heaven is imminent. Time is short. I have to get ready for a long, arduous journey. Guilt wastes time, even a lifetime, if it lingers for more than a few seconds. It can become unhealthy. Repentance is nothing to do with guilt. It is all to do with seeing myself unclouded by self-deception.

Self-knowledge clarifies the need for repentance precisely because it confronts me with my own emptiness and impermanence. It leads to an open space of the spirit that is uncluttered by institutional and psychological props. This naked self-awareness is the stage in us on which the great biblical theme of repentance is enacted.

Matthew 7:13 "Don't look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with

surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in

your spare time. Don't fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people

do. 14 The way to life--to God!--is vigorous and requires total attention.

John 12:24 "Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the

ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat.

But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. 25

In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that

life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real

and eternal.”

2 Peter 1:19 “All this confirms for us the message of the prophets, to which

you will do well to attend; it will go on shining like a lamp in a murky

place, until day breaks and the morning star rises to illuminate your

minds.”

TRUE SELF — FALSE SELF & THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

1 Smith, H. (1991). The World Religions: Our Great Traditions. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Self-knowledge and the False Self

Repentance …drives me to seek a more interior and demanding spiritual practice. It lightens the burden of the past and breaks the shackles of sin. Like truth, it sets me free. Only by the light of …the guiding question of Jesus “And who do you say I am?” we can see repentance as a liberating, redemptive insight into what we are not. If this experience of

emptiness seems at first to be destructive or nihilistic, it is not for long. In fact, it precedes the discovery and full affirmation of who we are.

With repentance there ensues a process of detachment, one by one, from all the interwoven false identities to which we cling with such passion and fearful desperation.

Each interweaving is a knot we must untie, a death to die. Poverty of spirit is another term for this. Quite naturally, we dread the poverty that brings self-knowledge. It seems horrible to imagine we might discover a void of nonbeing, an eternal anonymity at the core of our being. So we cling to anything, however superficial, which seems to give substance to the claim 1 am this or I am that'. Our fear of emptiness and our evasion of repentance can be so intense that it blocks us from hearing any redemptive question in our life at all. This fear of nonexistence, the fear of death, costs us many opportunities. The desperate need for identity can be so great that mere self-expression or

an egocentric search for self-fulfillment can get enshrined as the ruling value of life. The emotional exploitation of others quickly replaces compassion and love. We drop others when they no longer seem to fulfill us. Without the clarity of repentance, in other words, we try to make the ego fit the Self. We are deluded by self-ignorance, the selfishness which is sin.

What’s Your View of Sin (the ‘Dog’)?

We cannot understand grace without understanding sin. Do we not say that sin

is only what we choose to do? Sin is what is actually not what we think it is.2 It arises

from ignorance, our fallen state. It is a further state of disharmony and suffering

that we fall into when we miss the target we should be aiming at (hamartia trans as sin =

literally ‘missing the mark’) or when our attention fails and we get lost in fantasy .

Sin includes all attempts to avoid the truth of emptiness. It

evades the repentance from which all authentic spiritual practice derives. The badness

of sin lies not in the fact we are breaking rules, failing to conform as we should, but

that it creates suffering for ourselves and for others.


Suffering & ‘Self’

I beginning to believe that all suffering arises from the sinful, false identification of the ego with the true Self. I fall into this trap

time after time when I forget that the Self I seek to know is not different from the

person who is seeking to know it. The true Self is not something anyone can objectify

in mental concepts or contain in ritual actions. Self-knowledge is really the state of

self-knowing rather than the possession of knowledge about something. The Self …is

self-evident and it does not become an object of perception.

Seeing how repentance, the Kingdom of Heaven and the true Self are related is an integral insight [for Christian faith]. These are interdependent aspects of the human spiritual journey. They become

clarified and embodied in that form of relationship with Jesus that is discipleship.

Thus, through discipleship, as all traditions affirm, we learn saving truths. I’m learning

that the Kingdom is the experience of God in the non-duality of the Spirit. No one can

know God except by sharing in God's own self-knowledge, as St Irenaeus said in the

3rd century. I’ve learnt that there is no way to the true Self except the narrow way of renouncing all the false selves of the ego-system. What is left when I have let go everything that I am not is who I truly am. It is who I have been all along but without recognising it.

I think illusion breeds disunity and the excessive individualism of our modern

culture. Ignorance and self-deception are aspects of sin that need to give way to truth

before the light of the Self can shine. Ultimately only the light of truth can dispel

falsehood. The mystery is where the light comes from. It takes time for the light of

dawn to grow strong enough for us to see clearly.

The quest for self-knowledge entails the shedding of false personas. Listening to Jesus' question “And who do you say I am?” leaves us

in the end with no image of him at all, only real presence. All the false messiahs in our imagination, forms of projection, must be exposed and toppled before the truth of the Messiah can be recognized. The Zen

practitioner is told that if he meets the Buddha on the road he should kill him. When

two disciples met Jesus on the road to Emmaus, after the Resurrection, they failed to

recognise him until he broke bread with them. Then, in the Eucharist, their eyes were

opened and they recognised him. So, in meeting Jesus, the Christian disciple does not

need to kill him. He has already been killed. In any case, for the original to be

recognised — all other images must go!


Suffering and Giftedness Thomas Merton, OTM

When suffering comes to put the question: "Who are you?" we must

be able to answer distinctly, and give our own name. By that I mean

we must express the very depths of what we are, what we have

desired to be, what we have become. All these things are sifted out

of us by pain, and they are too often found to be in contradiction

with one another. But if we have lived as Christians, our name and

our work and our personality will fit the pattern stamped in our

souls by the sacramental character we wear. …the depths of our

soul are stamped, by that holy sacrament, with a su pernatural

identification which will eternally tell us who we were meant to be…

If, therefore, we desire to be what we are meant to be, and if we

become what we are supposed to be come, the interrogation of

suffering will call forth from us both our own name and the name of

Jesus. And we will find that we have begun to work out our destiny

which is to be at once ourselves and Christ.

Suffering, therefore, must make sense to us not as a vague

universal necessity, but as something de manded by our own

personal destiny. When I see my trials not as the collision of my life

with a blind ma chine called fate, but as the sacramental gift of

Christ's love, given to me by God the Father along with my identity

and my very name, then I can con secrate them and myself with

them to God. For then I realize that my suffering is not my own. It

is the Passion of Christ, stretching out its tendrils into my life in

order to bear rich clusters of grapes, making my soul dizzy with the

wine of Christ's love, and pouring that wine as strong as fire upon

the whole world.

No Man is an Island (2005, pp. 84-86)

Because of the damage resulting from our fallen human condition, we are not normally in touch with our spiritual nature. Our actual psychological consciousness on a day-to-day level consists of our homemade self manifesting itself and not God. The spiritual journey is initiated when I become more aware that my ordinary psychological consciousness is dominated by the false self with its programs for happiness and over identification with our cultural conditioning. The spiritual journey involves an inner change of attitude beginning with the recognition of being out of contact with our spiritual nature and our true self, and taking means to return. Only then can my true self and the potentiality that God has given me to live the divine life be manifested. Contemplative service is action coming from the true self, from my inmost being.

Centering Prayer is completely at the service of this program. It would be a mistake to think of it as a mere rest period or a period of relaxation, although it sometimes provides these things. Neither is it a journey to bliss. You might get a little bliss along the way, but you will also have to endure the wear and tear of the discipline of cultivating interior silence. Thinking our usual thoughts is the chief way that human nature has devised to hide from the unconscious.

So when our minds begin to quiet down in Centering Prayer, up comes the emotional debris of a lifetime in the form of gradual and sometimes dramatic realizations of what the false self is, and how this homemade self that we constructed in early childhood to deal with unbearable pain became misdirected from genuine human values into seeking substitutes for God Images that don't really have any existence except in our imagination are projected on other people instead of facing head-on their source in ourselves.

When I emerge from Centering Prayer, the present moment is what happens when I first open my eyes. I’m in the present moment of prayer when I’m completely open to the divine life and action within me. Now I get up out of the chair and I continue

daily life. This is where attentiveness to the content of the present moment is a way of putting order into the myriad occupations, thoughts and events of daily life. Attention to this context simply means to do what I’m doing. This was one of the principal

recommendations of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth century. The disciple would come for instruction and say, "I’m interested in finding the true self and becoming a contemplative. What should I do?" The Desert guides would reply in the most prosaic language. "Do what you're doing”… which means, bring your attention to the present moment and to whatever is its immediate content and keep it there.

Desert apatheia has a

daughter whose name is

love. — Evagrius of Pontus

FRUITS OF THE DARK NIGHT OF SENSES

1. MOVEMENT INTO A DEEPER REST 2. DISMANTLES THE “FALSE SELF” SYSTEM 3. RELAXES OUR HABITUAL ROUTINES 4. OPENING UP OUR DEFENSE MECHANISMS 5. RELEASING THE ENERGY OF THE UNCON-

SCIOUS (INTO THE CONSCIOUS) 6. IT ALERTS US TO THE DAMAGE THE “FALSE

SELF” IS DOING 7. TO THE PRESUMPTION THAT WE HAVE EXER-

CISED IN DEALING WITH GOD

IT DEEPENS OUR TRUST IN HIM BY ENDURING THE TRI-ALS OF THIS NIGHT AND EXPERIENCING THE NOURISH-MENT FROM THE NEW FOOD THAT GOD GIVES US INTO PURE FAITH (CONTEMPLATIVE STANCE)

AS THE “FALSE SELF” DIMINSHES (AS IT IS HEALED BY THE DARK NIGHT) AND AS TRUST IN GOD DEVELOPS FUR-

THER, THEN PSYCHIC ENERGY IS RELEASED (MADE AVAIL-

ABLE FOR OTHER PURPOSES). THIS ENERGY MAY BEGIN

TO ARISE INTO THE CONSCIOUSNESS IN VARIOUS WAYS:

SPIRITUAL CONSOLATION FEELINGS OF EXHALTATION PROFOUND NEGATIVE FEELINGS

Desert Spirituality — the Dark Night of Senses

LIBERATING THE TRUE SELF

AGAPE AS THE FRUIT OF ATTENTIVENESS &

INDIFFERENCE

The desert as metaphor is that uncharted terrain

beyond the edges of the seemingly secure and structured world in which we take such confidence, a world of affluence and order we cannot imagine ever ending. Yet it does. And at the point where the world

begins to crack, where brokenness and disorientation suddenly overtake us, there we step into the wide, silent plains of a desert I had never known existed.

In that place, I discover that I’m no longer alone. In

the wilderness, I’ve meet other wizened souls who have weathered sun and heat, all of them healed of the same wound. There is a wildness in their eyes. They hardly give a damn for things they used to find so terribly important. Scarcely fit for polite company, they nonetheless love with a fierceness ...what the

Church has been summoned to be; a community of broken people, painfully honest, undomesticated, rid of the pretense and suffocating niceness to which "religion" is so often prone. They love, inexplicably and unflinchingly, because of having been so loved themselves.

In my desert experiences, unquestionably, it is a hard place. Its discipline is harsh and unrelenting. Through all its stern lessons in attentiveness and indifference, however, the desert points to a beauty and wholeness found only on the far side of emptiness. In desert wildness I’ve met an untamed God who upsets every expectation, destroys all order as I call it.

The desert kills. But it also gives life—robust and insistent life. Everything is lost. Never have I been so alone or so empty. But in the clarity of that moment, in the reckless wilderness beyond all hope, I’m somehow at peace, inexplicably and without reason. I discover something worth paying attention to, something more beautiful than I’ve had ever imagined in all my life. In this austere place, I realize how very little everything else matters by comparison. In absolute nothingness, I’m loved unreservedly by a God on whom I have no claim.

‘DESERT INDIFFERENCE’—WHAT CAN THIS

MEAN?

The indifference practiced by the desert colony of believers took shape in response to the social and political preoccupations of a compulsive world. In their reading of the gospel, they knew that a person's worth could never be measured by reference to any contemporary cult of success. The esteem with which they were held by others remained a matter of utter inconsequence. They came to regard glib praise as swift cause for distrust.

Becoming equally indifferent to the praise (and

blame) of the world was one of the primary goals of spiritual discipline in the desert. Learning not to care was a matter of utmost importance. Yet the desert masters were careful to distinguish between "true" and "false" indifference. True indifference was a fruit of contem plation, a direct result of disciplined attentiveness. The "no" of desert apatheia could emerge only out of deep certainty about the "yes" of the gospel. Detachment from the world and its values required informed, deliberate choices about what does and does not matter in light of Jesus and the in-breaking of his Kingdom. True indifference is rooted in a very conscious caring.

False indifference, by contrast, was seen as an easy,

casual matter of choosing haphazardly by neglect. False indifference is the scourge of domesticated Christianity, tired and worn out, readily accommodating itself to its culture, bowing to the social pressures of the status quo. It remains so tame as to fear nothing so much as the disdain of sophisticated unbelief. This is the indifference that allows the church to abandon its call to radical obedience to Christ in the world. It becomes the driving force behind every injustice, allowing dominant cultural forms to remain un challenged by people too indifferent to care.

Desert Spirituality (CONTINUED)

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF THE DESERT

Indifference properly understood can become a

source of profoundly liberating power. Adopted as

a discipline of ignoring what is not important, in

light of the truth of the gospel, it becomes a

countercultural influence of great significance.

People who pay attention to what matters most in

their lives, and who learn to ignore everything

else, assume a freedom that is highly creative as

well as potentially dangerous in contemporary

society. Having abandoned everything of

insignificance, they have nothing to lose. Apart

from being faithful to their God, they no longer

care what happens to them.

Were Christians (and others) to practice this

stubborn desert discipline today, they would find a

freedom that is refreshing and contagious to

some, but also threatening and intolerable to

others. Unjust societal structures and people

addicted to power will not tolerate being ignored.

They are profoundly threatened by those not

subject to their influence, those no longer playing

by the accepted rules. To cease to be driven by

the fear of what other people think is to become a

threat to the world as we know it. Only at great

personal risk does one become indifferent to the

accepted standards and expectations of the

dominant culture. People willing to assume this

risk, the ones who find the center of their

existence outside the cultural milieu, are those

who model for us today the vitality of Christian

faith.

In the Wilderness -- Michael Card (Exodus, 1994)

Chorus:In the wilderness, In the wilderness, He calls his sons and daughters, To the wilderness, But he gives grace sufficient , to survive any test, And that's the painful purpose of the wilderness.

In the wilderness we wander, In the wilderness we weep, In the wasteland of our wanting, Where the darkness seems so deep, We search for the beginning, for an exodus to hold,We find that those who follow him, must often walk alone.

Chorus

In the wilderness we're wondering, For a way to understand. In the wilderness there's not a way, for the way to become a man. And the man becomes the exodus, the way to holy ground,But wandering in the wilderness, is the best way to be found.

Chorus

Groaning and growing, Amidst the desert days, The windy winter wilderness, Can blow the self away…

Chorus

And that's the painful promise of the wilderness…

Desert Spirituality (CONTINUED)

IGNORING WHAT DOESN’T MATTER

Desert Spirituality II— Night of the Spirit

Personal Reflections on My

Shadow

William Miller in his book Make Friends with your Shadow writes:

Substantially more harm has done by denying and repressing the shadow than by coming to grips with it. Those who deny their shadows only project their evil onto others, and see it in them. Those who repress their shadows to maintain their purity and innocence are sometimes overcome by them and swept away in their very own evil…I am not a complete person until I incorporate into my conscious self that dark side of my person which is every bit as much part of me as is that bright side which I parade for the world.

Miller mentions the process of projection. This is what happens when we assign to other people those aspects of our own character that we find difficult to accept. An interesting exercise is to ask people to think of someone they know whom they don’t like, and invite them to write a list of what it is about the person that brings about feelings of dislike. Very often what emerges is a list of aspects of our own character that we find difficult to cope with and which we therefore “project” on to someone else. What it is I dislike in certain persons is not their stuff but mine, which I’ve projected onto them because I’ve failed to acknowledges it in myself. Projection is a self-deceptive process, harming not only the person we have projected onto but also ourselves. The gospel story of seeing a speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye while ignoring the plank in our own is an illustration of projection.

For many years I was aware, intellectually, of the need to approach God with a sense of brokenness… Contemplative prayer and reflection has made me slowly but inevitably more aware of the fact that, when I say I want to offer my all to God, this must include those parts of my being which I’ve spent such a long-time burying, hiding, ignoring, and denying. My journey to God really is one of being stripped down and approaching Him in my vulnerability and weakness, in my embarrassment, and disgrace (lack of grace).

Many people protect themselves so well, for so long, it becomes difficult to know the “real person”. Their unconscious contains not only negative aspects, but also much that is positive and attractive aspects which, if it was allowed to develop, would enable them to become much more than they could ever dream of.

It is likely that, because we’re not ultimately in control of our shadow in the way that we are in control of a conscious self, there is a greater opportunity for God to use it to break through into our lives. That is one reason why we so often read in scripture of God speaking to people in dreams, for when we are asleep we relax our control and allow other things to happen. Seen this way, it then becomes essential to pay attention to this aspect of my personality. It will probably be a long and doubtless painful journey I’ll need to embark on, but one full of surprises and abounding in opportunities for growth and rewards.

The important thing to understand is that, when we feel “in control” we are inevitably putting up barriers, making it more difficult for us to be aware of graciousness of God. This is why Paul discovered that our strength in God ultimately rests in weakness. It is when we are conscious of our own shortcomings and fragility, not a morbid self-pitying way but consciously acknowledging the totality of our personality, that we tend to be mostly receptive to the promptings and presence of God’s spirit

Coming to terms with my shadow has not been an easy or comfortable process. It involved stripping down concepts, constructs, ideas, and beliefs I’ve carefully built up over the years, and which I cling to in order to give meaning, a context, and security to my life.

I’ve had to learn to suspend all those patterns of thinking which I’ve developed to carry me through life. That’s really difficult for people like me who pride themselves on their power of rational thought, who have developed their critical faculties in to have grown to trust their reasonable, coherent, and commonsense approach to life.

Perhaps for Five’s on the Enneagram (like me) this is the greatest pride, the pride that I cling to, and seem to need above all else: my ability to think rationally & logically — to formulate and to make sense of all of my surroundings.

SPIRITUALITY AND THE “SHADOW”

Recall from my last entry, in the night of Sense, I discovered that God is “feeding me” mysteriously from within instead of coming to me from the outside through my external senses, or even through my memories, imagination or reflections.

In Contemplative prayer, all of my sentient faculties are “quieted” (at rest, or ‘turned off’ temporarily), so that my longing or openness to God is heightened, so that I might access the ‘still point’ which is the ‘place’ in which our consciousness and identity is rooted in God through Divine Union.

The monumental illusion of the human condition is the thought that I’ve been ‘disconnected’ from my rooted-ness in God; and which the spiritual journey is trying to heal.

Dryness in prayer, this place of seeming absence of the divine — once one concedes to it and consents to the notion that God is trying to communicate with me at a deeper level than ever before; that he is trying to “whisper to me” as lovers might do, or speak meaningfully to me in His own language, which is SILENCE, I can then accept the invitation of the night of the Spirit.

A SPONTANEOUS, EXISTENTIAL INVITATION

In order to hear this first language of God, I need to be still (silent), which is really the fruit of the night of Sense. Even though I might not find satisfaction when I’m first there, I have a calling, an attraction springing up from within. A marvellous “food of pure faith” is perceived, not by the senses, not to my reason, but by my intuitive faculties (vaguely perceived as ‘dry’ food which is still OK).

I recall Fr. Keating spoke of the four “graces of spiritual transformation” first described by St. Theresa of Avila in her spiritual classic “The Interior Castle”:

The first grace is like mysterious awakening, manifested by the sense of the presence of God without any preparation (by nothing we do from the dryness of our prayer life). This she calls INFUSED RECOLLECTION -- the presence of God’s grace is felt in the Ground Unconscious at the deepest most level of our being. When this prayer deepens, it moves into the PRAYER OF QUIET, where the will is absorbed into God, but the other faculties are free to roam around. At times the imagination and memories persecute the will. We can be bombarded by unwanted thoughts and at the same time be completely absorbed in the undifferentiated presence of God. This grace is more transformative than the previous one.

If we move to the next level, imagination and memory are suspended, and here the will can enjoy deeper communion with God without bombardment of external thoughts… called “pure consciousness (awareness)” -- Theresa coined this the PRAYER OF UNION. When the faculties are completely still and there is no other movement and the will is totally resting in God and absorbed by Him, there is no self reflection… here we enter the PRAYER OF FULL UNION

My ultimate goal is the night of Spirit; or the TRANSFORMING UNION; which is the fruit of dismantling the false self completely… as soon as that is accomplished, true transformation occurs. This true encounter with God inevitably leads to an experience of the restructuring of consciousness, not as a set of experiences, per se. The gift of Centering Prayer is not experienced in the prayer time itself, but in the activity of daily life where we notice the grace of the relationship. As I grow in confidence in my relationship with God, I’m more inclined to offer myself to God without conditions. If God calls, I’m listening and ready to respond with a YES. This can be compared to receiving a call from a loved one. I might be busy doing something, but I’ll drop it in favor of a loving response. I must consent to the desire of the other. Centering Prayer is such a prayer of consent. This consent then forms a continuous flow of consent and gradually moves me into the fullest surrender to the will of God.

‘…The more I am able to affirm others, to say ‘yes’ to them in myself, by discovering them in

myself and myself in them, the more real I am. I am fully real if my own heart says yes to everyone.’

Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: Essential Writings

Desert Spirituality II — (CONTINUED)

SILENCE IS GOD’S FIRST LANGUAGE

“There is an ancient tradition of stillness; it is the way

of Hesychia. The word simply means "stillness." This way of stillness is based upon the example of Christ himself. Jesus first went to the desert to prepare for his ministry. He went to the place of deafening silence to hear the most profound word. But this way is no mere escape into fantasy of illusion. In fact, it is the way to the greatest confrontation of all; the confrontation with the devil who lurks within the self centered hearts of us all. Even as Jesus had to confront this devil in the deserts of Palestine, so did the early monks, and all who followed after them, have to confront these demons within their own heart and soul. Solitude and silence are wonderful alternatives to the noise and chaos of this modern world. But anyone who has spent more than just a few hours or days in its womb knows that the process of rebirth from this death to self is often only found through great travail. Only then do we know the joys of the newborn child of the Spirit of God.

Come To Rest (hesychia) — Blindside (“The Great Depression”, 2005)

Sit down in the carousel

Up front like a brave boy

Don't scream like a little girl

Shut up — big boys don't cry.

Come to a rest that flows

From a spring unseen

‘Cause honestly you're scaring me...

Keep up with the schedule

Shape up, have to perform

Hold out for everyone

Dont fail, not now.



‘Cause honestly you're scaring me

Failure is not a option

Have to keep on trying...

So much to live up to

So many expectations

Trying so hard to be a approved.

A straight ‘A’ student, with yet another ‘F’

Oh no, gotta make daddy proud now.



‘Cause honestly you're scaring me,

Failure is not a option

Have to keep on trying...

To use the analogy of the pond: The waters are usually agitated in the winds of this world. This stirs up the waters so that they become muddy, and unclear. Where once they could reflect an image of God and his wonderful creation like a fine mirror, now they are unable to reflect any image purely.

All that remains is a distortion of the original image. It is only when the waters settle for a great time that they finally are calm and still. Then we can really see what is within the pond of our soul. Then we can reflect all life around us, and the very image of God. This is why it took Jesus forty days and nights of fasting and prayer in the Judean desert. It is why it takes most serious monks a lifetime.

But this is not the end. This is really just the beginning. Once we can really see within the pond of our soul, we discover that there are all kinds of trash that has been tossed into our life over many years of false patterns of senses, emotions, and thinking. The deepest bottom of our soul has become a collection place of all kinds of garbage. All of this can now be cleaned out as well.

Cleaning out the garbage from our soul is a long process. It took years to collect. It can sometimes take years to clean out as well. It is usually just plain hard discipline and work. Furthermore, it usually stirs the waters of our soul again. Sometimes it seems that after we begin the process of spiritual rebirth, all hell breaks loose. In a sense it has. All the discarded and negative and destructive stuff of our life is now coming to the surface as we haul it out. Our pond may seem downright ugly for a while. But this is just temporary. Compared to living in a continual state of agitation and unclarity, this is preferrable.. So what about us? Do we take the time to enter into the tradition of Hesychia stillness for ourselves, or do we just read about it, and fantasize about maybe doing it someday?

If we need the rest from the burdens of this noisy and chaotic world, if we’re tired of living in constant agitation, unclarity, and distortion, we need simply come to the waters of life, and still the waters of our soul. This is the way of Jesus. It is the way of the mystics and the saints…

It can be our way as well. It may be the temporary respite we need, and may be the beginning of a whole new way of living that stills and purifies the waters of souls throughout creation for all eternity.”

Excerpts from ‘Reflections’ by John Michael Talbot (2004)

http://www.johnmichaeltalbot.com/Reflections/index.asp?id=142

Desert Spirituality II (CONTINUED)

HESYCHIA — cleaning out my soul’s rubbish

�

��

Centring Prayer is a contemporary name for the

practice that Jesus described as “prayer in secret”

in his Sermon on the Mount. When you pray, he

teaches, “Enter your inner room, close the door,

pray to your Father in secret and your Father who

sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6).

Jesus’ teaching has roots in the Old Testament. For example, Elijah’s experience of

God on Mount Horeb as “sheer silence” and the exhortation of Psalm 46:10, which

reads, “Be still and know that I am God”. In the New Testament we hear of the

overshadowing of Mary at the moment of the Incarnation; the cloud that overshadowed

the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration; the silent attentiveness of Mary of

Bethany at the feet of Jesus in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus; and the darkness

that covered the earth at the crucifixion of Jesus. Attached is a page of Old & New

Testament references for your perusal.

Christian tradition, especially the Desert Fathers of the fourth century interpreted this

wisdom saying of Jesus as referring to the movement away from ordinary

psychological awareness to the interior silence of the spiritual level of our being and

beyond that, to the secrecy of union with the Divine Indwelling within us.

This tradition became known as Apophatic contemplation. It is not in opposition to so-

called Kataphatic contemplation, which draws on the exercise of our rational faculties

to reach divine union. In actual fact, Kataphatic contemplation is normally necessary as

a preparation for the Apophatic experience which passes beyond the exercise of the

human faculties to rest in God. This is the same rest Jesus invited his disciples to when

he said, “Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart and you will find rest for your

souls.”

Centring Prayer puts into effect the first two recommendations of Jesus’ formula in

Matthew 6:6 by leaving behind all external concerns and by discontinuing, at least in

intention, the interior dialogue that usually accompanies ordinary psychological

awareness (the latter consists of commentaries and emotional reactions to events,

people, and sense perceptions entering or leaving our day to day lives). Jesus’ third

recommendation - to pray in secret - seems to be the practice that later became known

in the Christian tradition as contemplative prayer (John of the Cross described this state

“infused contemplation”).

The result is then a profound ability to experience God more fully

as the source of your Centring prayer practice, your active

practices, the activities of your daily life, and your humanity. This

goes even further. As prayer and life become more integrated, our

“divine” nature -- created in God’s image -- and our “human”

nature -- created in God’s likeness -- are also brought together. All

contemplative practices can be prayed within the grace of Christ’s

life within. Christ’s Incarnation transformed the possibilities of

our human condition. Our wonderous human life, broken and

dependent upon God -- our bodies, emotions and minds -- are gifts

to be freed and used in greater service of others.

��

When we are resting in God during contemplative prayer, our everyday busy life often

feels very separate from sacred experience. However, because God is in everything, at

every time, in every moment, there is ultimately never any separation between prayer

and life. We can use our contemplative practice to help us bring that realization to

fulfilment. All the activities of everyday life -- working, preparing a meal, caring for

children, commuting -- do not have to be separate from the life we are discovering in

prayer. In fact, they are all invitations to greater awareness, remembrance, and surrender

to God. Freedom in life comes when we learn to see things from God’s perspective --

this includes everything!

The process of moving from ‘beginner’ to

seeing things through “God’s spectacles” is

not always so clear, making it difficult for

the ordinary seeker to ‘clean the lenses well

enough’ to negotiate the treacherous journey.

The purgative and unitive ways are well

differentiated, but the path from one to the

other does not seem to adequately address

the physical, psychological, and spiritual

obstacles that hinder the process, especially

unconscious motivation and habits of

negative behaviour.

Centring Prayer was conceived as a crucial pathway to move from the beginning to the

ultimate goal of inner transformation. This was interpreted by the Desert Fathers to

mean letting go of all personal agendas, expectations for divine consolation,

psychological breakthroughs, and self-reflections of any kind. In Centring Prayer a

sacred symbol, such as a word from scripture, an inward glance toward God, or

noticing our breath, helps to maintain the intent and consent of our will toward God’s

presence and action within us.

It suggests a practical method of entering what Jesus

called “the inner room” by deliberately letting go of

external concerns symbolized by sitting comfortably,

closing our eyes and consenting to the presence and

action of God within. As this disposition of alert

receptivity stabilizes through regular practice, we are

gradually prepared by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to

pray, or more exactly, to relate to our Father in

secret.

��

��

��

��

��

� ��

�� Thomas Keating, Heart of the World�

The Indigenous People of Australia have a depth of spirituality that can enrich our Non-Indigenous spirits in so many ways. One of these spiritual gifts is Dadirri. Take a little time to reflectively read the following article and message from a remarkable, spirit-filledAboriginal woman from Daly River, Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann. Having grasped a sense of this rich Indigenous gift, consider providing regular opportunities for your children to experience this for themselves. Refer to the suggestions following this article.

Dadirri - A Reflection By Miriam - Rose Ungunmerr- Baumann

NGANGIKURUNGKURR means 'Deep Water Sounds'. Ngangikurungkurr is the name of my tribe. The word can be broken up into three parts: Ngangi means word or sound, Kurimeans water, and kurr means deep. So the name of my people means 'the Deep Water Sounds' or 'Sounds of the Deep'. This talk is about tapping into that deep spring that is within us.

Many Australians understand that Aboriginal people have a special respect for Nature. The identity we have with the land is sacred and unique. Many people are beginning to understand this more. Also there are many Australians who appreciate that Aboriginal people have a very strong sense of community. All persons matter. All of us belong. And there are many more Australians now, who understand that we are a people who celebrate together.

What I want to talk about is another special quality of my people. I believe it is the most important. It is our most unique gift. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. In our language this quality is called dadirri. It is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness.

Dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call "contemplation".

When I experience dadirri, I am made whole again. I can sit on the riverbank or walk through the trees; even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find my peace in this silent awareness. There is no need of words. A big part of dadirri is listening. Through the years, we have listened to our stories. They are told and sung, over and over, as the seasons go by. Today we still gather around the campfires and together we hear the sacred stories.

As we grow older, we ourselves become the storytellers. We pass on to the young ones all they must know. The stories and songs sink quietly into our minds and we hold them deep inside. In the ceremonies we celebrate the awareness of our lives as sacred.

The contemplative way of dadirri spreads over our whole life. It renews us and brings us peace. It makes us feel whole again…

In our Aboriginal way, we learnt to listen from our earliest days. We could not live good and useful lives unless we listened. This was the normal way for us to learn - not by asking questions. We learnt by watching and listening, waiting and then acting. Our people have passed on this way of listening for over 40,000 years…

There is no need to reflect too much and to do a lot of thinking. It is just being aware.

My people are not threatened by silence. They are completely at home in it. They have lived for thousands of years with Nature's quietness. My people today, recognise and experience in this quietness, the great Life-Giving Spirit, the Father of us all. It is easy for me to experience God's presence. When I am out hunting, when I am in the bush, among the trees, on a hill or by a billabong; these are the times when I can simply be in God's presence. My people have been so aware of Nature. It is natural that we will feel close to the Creator.

Dr Stanner, the anthropologist who did much of his work among the Daly River tribes, wrote this: "Aboriginal religion was probably one of the least material minded, and most life-minded of any of which we have knowledge"…

And now I would like to talk about the other part of dadirri which is the quiet stillness and the waiting.

Our Aboriginal culture has taught us to be still and to wait. We do not try to hurry things up. We let them follow their natural course - like the seasons. We watch the moon in each of its phases. We wait for the rain to fill our rivers and water the thirsty earth… When twilight comes, we prepare for the night. At dawn we rise with the sun.

We watch the bush foods and wait for them to ripen before we gather them. We wait for our young people as they grow, stage by stage, through their initiation ceremonies. When a relation dies, we wait a long time with the sorrow. We own our grief and allow it to heal slowly.

We wait for the right time for our ceremonies and our meetings. The right people must be present. Everything must be done in the proper way. Careful preparations must be made. We don't mind waiting, because we want things to be done with care. Sometimes many hours will be spent on painting the body before an important ceremony.

We don't like to hurry. There is nothing more important than what we are attending to. There is nothing more urgent that we must hurry away for.

We wait on God, too. His time is the right time. We wait for him to make his Word clear to us. We don't worry. We know that in time and in the spirit of dadirri (that deep listening and quiet stillness) his way will be clear.

We are River people. We cannot hurry the river. We have to move with its current and understand its ways.

We hope that the people of Australia will wait. Not so much waiting for us - to catch up -but waiting with us, as we find our pace in this world.

There is much pain and struggle as we wait. The Holy Father understood this patient struggle when he said to us:

"If you stay closely united, you are like a tree, standing in the middle of a bushfire sweeping through the timber. The leaves are scorched and the tough bark is scarred and burnt; but inside the tree the sap is still flowing, and under the ground the roots are still strong. Like that tree, you have endured the flames, and you still have the power to be reborn".

My people are used to the struggle, and the long waiting. We still wait for the white people to understand us better. We ourselves had to spend many years learning about the white man's ways. Some of the learning was forced; but in many cases people tried hard over a long time, to learn the new ways.

We have learned to speak the white man's language. We have listened to what he had to say. This learning and listening should go both ways. We would like people in Australia to take time to listen to us. We are hoping people will come closer. We keep on longing for the things that we have always hoped for - respect and understanding…

To be still brings peace - and it brings understanding. When we are really still in the bush, we concentrate. We are aware of the anthills and the turtles and the water lilies. Our culture is different. We are asking our fellow Australians to take time to know us; to be still and to listen to us…

Life is very hard for many of my people. Good and bad things came with the years of contact - and with the years following. People often absorbed the bad things and not the good. It was easier to do the bad things than to try a bit harder to achieve what we really hoped for…

I would like to conclude…by saying again that there are deep springs within each of us. Within this deep spring, which is the very Spirit of God, is a sound. The sound of Deep calling to Deep. The sound is the word of God - Jesus.

Today, I am beginning to hear the Gospel at the very level of my identity. I am beginning to feel the great need we have of Jesus - to protect and strengthen our identity; and to make us whole and new again.

"The time for re-birth is now," said the Holy Father to us. Jesus comes to fulfil, not to destroy.

If our culture is alive and strong and respected, it will grow. It will not die.

And our spirit will not die.

And I believe that the spirit of dadirri that we have to offer will blossom and grow, not justwithin ourselves, but in our whole nation.

Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann is an artist, a tribal elder and Principal of St Francis Xavier School, Nauiyu, Daly River, N.T.© Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann. All Rights Reserved.

Experiencing Dadirri

Clear a space regularly for about five minutes, at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day, to take your students outside into the surrounding school grounds and direct them to simply sit and look at and listen to the earth and environment that surrounds them.

• Have them focus on something specific, such as a bird, a blade of grass, a clump of soil, cracked earth, a flower, bush or leaf, a cloud in the sky or a body of water (sea, river, lake…) whatever they can see. Or just let something find them, be it a leaf, the sound of a bird, the feel of the breeze, the light on a tree trunk. No need to try. Encourage them to just wait a while and let something find them, and spend time with them. Invite them to be still and silent, to listen…

Following this quiet time, there may be, on occasion, value in allowing the students to give expression in some way to their experience of this quiet, still listening. They may wish to talk about the experience or journal, write poetry, draw, paint or sing… This needs to be held in balance - the key to Dadirri is in simply being, rather than in outcomes and activity. While being sensitively aware of this it may, nevertheless, be helpful for the students to reflect on their experience of Dadirri.

© 2002 Emmaus Productions

A JOURNAL FROM xx/07/2008 TO 20/11/2008

WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO:

MTM Australia, and especially Rob Jones, for the awesome opportunity to be

part of this excellent experience… and my loving prayers to:

Mike Wren

Marty Ruigrok

Joseph Thorley

Larry Cooke

Bill ???

Gerard Fraher

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