Center for Action and Contemplation - Tuesday, 25 February 2014 - Richard Rohr's Meditation "Splitting from Others"

Center for Action and Contemplation - Tuesday, 25 February 2014 - Richard Rohr's Meditation "Splitting from Others"

We have to leave the Garden . . . . We begin the process of individuation, which includes at least four major splits.

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

"Leaving the Garden"

"Splitting from Others"

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Ideally we begin life as “holy innocents” in the Garden, with a primal connection to Being and parents whose loving eyes mirror us as the beloved. Good mothers give us a primal experience of life as union. But we have to leave the Garden. We can’t stay there, letting mother gaze at us forever. We begin the process of individuation, which includes at least four major splits. They are four ways that the mental ego starts taking control and engineering life. Spirituality, pure and simple, is overcoming these four splits.

The first split is very understandable. We split ourselves from other selves. We see our mommy and our daddy, and they’re over there, and we’re over here. I start looking out at life with myself as the center point. It’s the beginning of egocentricity. My ego is the center; what I like, what I want, what I need is what matters. And I’m going to let Mama know what I want! It is so nice to have a personal slave for a few years, but some never get over it.

These are the “highchair tyrants,” the two-year-olds who are totally egocentric. So God made them cute and adorable so we would put up with them and feed their “narcissistic fix” (just enough so they are indeed fixed!). Still, they have begun a terrible lie: I’m separate from the rest of the world. But they have to do it. It’s a necessary splitting so they can form an appropriate ego identity. This continues and even builds through the early twenties, or until we love one person or thing more than ourselves. During this time life is all about me and searching out what makes me look good and feel good. Hopefully you have moved beyond this by the second half of life, but sadly, many never do.

Adapted from Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, page 68, and Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking (CD, MP3 download)

Gateway to Silence: Life is one good thing!

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