Liberate the True Self

Wednesday of the Second Week in Lent

Psalm 31:4-5

Take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for, you are my refuge.
Into your hand I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God

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 we become aware that our 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 our true self and the potentiality that God has given us to live the divine life be manifested. Contemplative service is action coming from the true self, from our inmost being.

To liberate our true self is an enormous undertaking and a program that takes time. Centering Prayer is completely at the service of this program. It would be a mistake to think of Centering Prayer 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.

Just think of the beatitudes that Jesus proclaims. The capacity to practice them is within us as part of the patrimony of Baptism. Similarly, the Seven Gifts of the Spirit and the Fruits of the Spirit enumerated by Paul in Galatians 5 are vibrating within us all the time. But they are mediated through the various levels of the psyche; we don't experience their power until they are awakened through the discipline of deep prayer.

When you emerge from Centering Prayer, the present moment is what happens when you open your eyes. You have been in the present moment of prayer when you were completely open to the divine life and action within you. Now you get up out of the chair and you 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 you are 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 am 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.

~Contemplative Outreach News, Spring, 1996

Prayer

Creator Spirit, through Your Gift of Wisdom, 
may we come to know our true Self and its 
source in Your unconditional Love.

Solidarity with the Poor

Thursday of the Second Week in Lent

Luke 16:19-21

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and, fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.

In this parable, the sudden reversal of roles and expectations so characteristic of Jesus' teaching is once again manifested. Two extreme situations are juxtaposed. A rich man dressed in purple, symbol of the upper classes and power, feasted not just well, but sumptuously--and not just on feast days, but every day. At the gate to his estate lay Lazarus the beggar. In the popular mindset of the time beggars were considered responsible for their miserable plight. Poverty was looked upon as a punishment for sin and for that reason, the hearers would be thinking, "It's his own fault."

The sin of the rich man could not have been his wealth as such, since Abraham too was a rich man and found favor with God, as the book of Genesis attests. The rich man's the beggar. The parable attacks the complacency of our divisions between rich and poor, the socially acceptable and the socially outcast. The gate symbolizes the grace that enables us to love our neighbor--everyone--as ourselves. The rich man stayed in his enclosure. His failure to go through the gate and to enter into solidarity with the one in need was the particular cause of his undoing.

Gates can be barriers or passageways into solidarity with others. In whatever way the rich man obtained his goods, whether through junk bonds or other means of getting rich quick, he failed to pass through the gate of his private interests and concerns to identify with someone whose situation was desperate and whom he could easily have helped. In the next life things will be reversed. If the rich man had gone through the gate to reach out to the beggar and had not simply used it as a barrier to protect himself and his property, his fate would have been quite different. God does not set up barriers. We do. Our relationship to our local community and to the human family as a whole determines whether we are in the kingdom or out of it, both now and in the next life.

To be in the kingdom is to participate in God's solidarity with the poor by sharing with them the good things that have been given to us. In the New Testament the great sin is to be deaf to the cry of the poor whether that cry springs from emotional, material, or spiritual need. Although we cannot help but partake in some degree in social injustice because we live in this world, we must constantly reach out in concrete and practical ways to those in need. Divine love is not a feeling, but a choice. It is to show mercy. The rich man; although he saw the beggar starving at his doorstep and could easily have reached out to him, just went on eating, drinking, and reading his Wall Street Journal.

~The Kingdom of God Is Like . . .

Prayer

Holy Spirit of God, grant us an ever deepening
relationship with the living Christ and the practical 
caring for others that, flows from that union.

Joy in Hardship

Friday of the Second Week in Lent

Matthew 21:42

The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord's doing
    and it is amazing in our eyes.

Paul tells us to look to Christ, "who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame" (Hebrews 12:2). This is an important insight in trying to understand suffering. What is normally experienced as painful at one level of our evolving consciousness is not necessarily experienced as painful when we move to a higher level on the ladder of consciousness. It is obvious among the saints of all religions that, although they led incredibly difficult and arduous lives, they experienced joy in those very hardships. Hardship itself seems to have become joy. The same kind of life would have meant intolerable suffering for the average person.

Thus, we have to understand first of all what is meant by "suffering," and then relate it to the person who is undergoing it before making a judgment. It is misleading to think that all aches and pains are going to disappear as one climbs the ladder of consciousness. On the other hand, one's attitude toward suffering is going to change. It may change to such a degree that the experience itself becomes a joy, not for its own sake, but because it is perceived to be a participation in the mystery of Christ's passion--a way of sacrificing oneself in order to express, to the utmost degree, one's dedication to God. As one comes to know God more intimately, the heart expands, and the desire for union with him tends to put all obstacles and hardships into the shade; to make them seem, while nonetheless real, not worth thinking about.

~The Heart of the World

Prayer

Creator Spirit, breathe into our wounded 
hearts and minds Your healing Gifts of 
forgiveness, understanding and wisdom.

~~~~~