Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States - Center for Action and Contemplation - Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation "Both are Necessary for Thursday, 20 March 2014

Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States - Center for Action and Contemplation - Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation "Both are Necessary for Thursday, 20 March 2014
It is true that we need first to clarify and distinguish before we can then subtly discriminate. 
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Dualistic Thinking"
"Both Are Necessary"
Thursday, 20 March 2014
It is true that we need first to clarify and distinguish before we can subtly discriminate. Utterly clear dualistic thinking gets you into the right ballpark. “You cannot serve both God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). But non-dualistic wisdom, or what many of us call contemplation, is necessary once you actually get in the right ballpark! “Now that I have chosen to serve God instead of ‘mammon,’ what does that really mean?”
Such discrimination will take the rest of your life. Non-dualistic thinking presumes that you have first mastered dualistic clarity, but also found it insufficient for the really big issues like love, suffering, death, God, and any notion of infinity. In short, we need both. If I said any differently, I would be dualistic myself.
Unless you let the truth of life teach you on its own terms, unless you develop some concrete practice for recognizing and overcoming your dualistic mind, you will remain in the first half of life forever, as much of humanity has up to now. In the first half of life, you cannot work with the imperfect, nor can you accept the tragic sense of life, which finally means that you cannot love anything or anyone at any depth.
Nothing is going to change in history as long as most people are merely dualistic, either-or thinkers. Such splitting and denying leaves us at the level of information, data, facts, and endlessly arguing about the same. “My facts are better than your facts,” we yell at ever-higher volume and with ever-stronger ego attachment. This is getting us nowhere, and creating a very unhappy world on all sides.
Adapted from Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, page 150
Gateway to Silence: Be not afraid 
-------
Center for Action and Contemplation
1705 Five Points Rd SW
Albuquerque, NM 87105 United States (physical)
PO Box 12464
Albuquerque, NM 87195-2464 United States (mailing)
(505) 242-9588
cac.org
-------