Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Image Credit: The Incredulity of St. Thomas (detail), by Caravaggio, 1601-1602, Sanssouci, Potsdam.
"Nondual Consciousness"
"The Sacrament of the Present Moment"
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Only unitive, nondual consciousness can open our hearts, minds, and bodies to actually experience God. Ultimate Reality cannot be seen with any dualistic operation of the mind, where we divide the field of the moment and eliminate anything mysterious, confusing, unfamiliar, or outside our comfort zone. Dualistic thinking is highly controlled and limited seeing. It protects the status quo and allows the ego to feel like it's in control. This way of filtering reality is the opposite of naked presence to Presence.
We learn the dualistic pattern of thinking at an early age, and it helps us survive and succeed in practical ways. But it can get us only so far, that's why all religions at the more mature levels have discovered another "software" for processing the really big questions like death, love, infinity, suffering, and God. Many of us call this access "contemplation" or "prayer." It is a nondualistic way of seeing the moment.
Nondual knowing is living in the naked now, the "sacrament of the present moment." This consciousness will teach us how to actually experience our experiences, whether good, bad, or ugly, and how to let them transform us. Words by themselves will invariably divide and judge the moment; pure presence lets it be what it is, as it is. Words and thoughts are invariably dualistic; but pure experience is always nondualistic.
As long as you can deal with life as a set of universal abstractions, you can pretend that the binary system is true. But once you deal with concrete reality--with yourself, with someone you love, with actual moments--you find that reality is always a mixture of good and bad, dark and light, life and death. Reality requires more a both/and approach than either/or differentiation. The nondual mind is open to everything. It is capable of listening to the other, to the body, to the heart, to all the senses. It begins with a radical yes to each moment.
When you can be present in this way, you will know the Real Presence. I promise you this is true. You will still need and use your dualistic mind, but now it is in service to the greater whole rather than just the small self.
Gateway to Silence: Be here now.
References:Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 12, 50, 56, 74; and
A New Way of Seeing . . . A New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul (CAC: 2007), disc 1 (CD, MP3 download).
The contemplative-active journey can be a lonely one. CAC offers self-paced, online courses to connect seekers from around the world with Father Richard Rohr's teachings.
Join our community in virtual space and explore these timeless themes through guided study:
Immortal Diamond: A Study in Search of the True Self
September 21-November 29, 2016
The Franciscan Way: Beyond the Bird Bath
October 5-November 22, 2016
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Scholarships are available! Please apply for financial assistance prior to registering for an online course.-------
Richard Rohr's Meditation: Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Saturday, 13 August 2016 "True Self/False Self: Week 2 Summary"
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"True Self/False Self: Week 2"
Summary: Sunday, August 7-Friday, August 12, 2016
Contemplation helps us to rest in God's love; as we gradually take on the likeness of love, we will see love over there too.What you see is what you are. (Sunday)
Some form of suffering or death--psychological, spiritual, relational, or physical--is the only way we will loosen our ties to our small and separate false self. (Monday)
Longing for God and longing for our True Self are the same longing. The mystics would say it is God who is even doing the longing in us and through us. (Tuesday)
This Wednesday we paused the Daily Meditations to share a special opportunity. Click here to donate or see below for more information.
When you are living in conscious connection with this Loving Inner Presence, you are in your True Self. God is forever united to this love within you. (Thursday)
You did not find the Great Love except by finding yourself too, and you cannot find your True Self without falling into the Great Love. (Friday)
"Practice: The Song of True Self"Within us there is an inner, natural dignity. (You often see it in older folks.)
An inherent worthiness that already knows and enjoys. (You see it in children.)
It is an immortal diamond waiting to be mined and is never discovered undesired.
It is a reverence humming within us that must be honored.
Call it the True Self, the soul, the unconscious, deep consciousness, or the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Call it nothing.
It does not need the right name or right religion to show itself.
It does not even need to be understood. It is usually wordless.
It just is, and it shows itself best when we are silent, or in love, or both.
It is God-in-All-Things yet not circumscribed by any one thing.
It is enjoyed only when each part is in union with all other parts, because only then does it stand in the full truth.
Once in a while, this True Self becomes radiant and highly visible in one lovely place or person.
Superbly so, and for all to see, in the body of the Risen Christ.
And note that I did say "body." It begins here and now in our embodied state in this world. Thus the Christ Mystery travels the roads of time.
Once you have encountered this True Self--and once is more than enough--the false self will begin to fall away on its own.
This will take most of your life, just as it did in Jesus.
What ballad or poem would you write about your True Self, telling its story, sharing its beauty?
Gateway to Silence: God in me loves God in everything.
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
Richard Rohr, True Self/ False Self (CD)
A special message from Father Richard:We've heard from many readers that they wish the meditations were in print, so we've decided to put the 2014 messages into a book: A Spring Within Us. We want to make sure that anyone who wants a copy of this book receives one. That is why, for a donation of any amount, made at any time in August 2016, the Center for Action and Contemplation will send you a copy of A Spring Within Us (with free shipping)!
Donate securely online by clicking here.
The CAC will send one copy of A Spring Within Us: A Book of Daily Meditations to each person who donates in the month of August 2016 (limit one book per person).
If your resources allow, we appreciate your mindfulness regarding the cost of shipping when you make a donation; we suggest an onlinedonation of $20 or more for international supporters.
While we gratefully accept international donations online, please be aware we'll be unable to process checks drawn on non-US banks during the month of August. Please accept our sincere apologies for whatever inconvenience this may cause you.
Visit cac.org/support-cac to learn more about charitable giving, including additional ways of donating.
If you've already donated this month, the book will be on its way to you in 2-5 weeks (please allow additional time for international addresses)!
Donations above $19.95 (the resale value of the book) are tax-deductible within the United States.
If you'd like to receive multiple copies of the book, note that A Spring Within Us will be available for purchase, exclusively from CAC's bookstore, by October 2016.
The Epic of Evolution is a story of the story.
It is compelling, it is gripping, it is moving, and it has potentially unitive power.[Mary Evelyn Tucker]
Join Dr. Tucker for a live webcast:
Living Cosmology: Dwelling Within the Journey of the Universe
Thursday, August 25, 2016
12:30-2:00 p.m. U.S. Mountain Daylight Time
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Webcast registration includes access to the replay through September 25, 2016. Register online to participate in the live webcast and/or to view the replay.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Friday, 12 August 2016 "Beginning with Yes"
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"True Self/False Self: Week 2"
"Beginning with Yes"
Friday, August 12, 2016
The great wisdom teachers and mystics say in various ways that you cannot truly see or understand anything if you begin with a no. You have to start with a yes of basic acceptance, which means you do not too quickly label, analyze, or categorize things in or out, good or bad. This is Contemplation 101. You have to be taught how to leave the field open. The ego or false self strengthens itself by constriction, by being against, or by re-action; it feels loss or fear when it opens up to subtlety and Mystery. Living out of the True Self involves positive choice, inner spaciousness, and conscious understanding rather than resistance, knee-jerk reactions, or defensiveness. It is not easy to live this way. It often takes a lifetime of prayer and honest self-observation to stop judging and starting with no.
We see what we are ready to see, expect to see, and even desire to see. If you start with no, you usually get some form ofno in return. If you start with yes, you are much more likely to get a yes back. Once you have learned how to say a fundamental yes, later no's can be very helpful and are surely necessary. Beginning with yes is the foundation of mature nonviolence and compassionate action.
The Risen Christ is a great big yes to everything (see 2 Corinthians 1:19), even early, incomplete stages. "Transcend and include" is an important principle here. The final, stupendous gift is that your false self becomes the raw material for your unique version of True Self. This is the wonderful metamorphosis we call Resurrection. The Risen Christ is still and forever the wounded Jesus--and yet now so much more. Your ordinary life and temperament is not destroyed or rejected. It is "not ended but merely changed," as the Preface of the funeral liturgy puts it. "This perishable nature will put on imperishability, and this mortal body will put on immortality" (1 Corinthians 15: 52-54)--one including the other, not one in place of the other. Picture the nesting dolls that keep including smaller dolls inside of ever larger ones.
Importantly, the Risen Christ is beyond any limits of space and time, as revealed in his bilocation (Luke 24:32-39); passing through doors (John 20:19); and shape-shifting into a gardener (John 20:14-18), a passer-by (Luke 24:13-35), and a wounded man that can only be recognized when Thomas touches the wounds (John 20:27f). The Risen Christ reveals a universal presence that is truly intimate with and connected to everything. The one and the many have become One in him. He reveals that we can operate as a part of the biggest ecosystem or force field possible. Paul's metaphor for this is "The Body of Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12ff), where even the "weakest members are the most indispensable ones . . . and are clothed with the greatest care" (12:22f). This is an utterly new and upside-down universe that is revealed in the Risen Christ!
For the True Self, there is nothing to hate, reject, deny, or judge as unworthy or unnecessary. It has "been forgiven much and so it loves much" (Luke 7:47). Compassion and mercy come easily once you live from inside the Big Body of Love. The detours of the false self were all just delaying tactics, bumps in the road, pressure points that created something new in the long run, as pressure does to carbon deep beneath the earth. God uses everything to construct this hard and immortal diamond, our core of love.
Diamonds are the hardest substance on earth. The strong diamond of love will always be stronger than death. Diamonds, once soft black carbon, become beautiful and radiant white lightning under pressure. The true pattern, the big secret, has now been revealed and exposed, "like a treasure hidden in a field." You did not find the Great Love except by finding yourself too, and you cannot find your True Self without falling into the Great Love.
Gateway to Silence: God in me loves God in everything.
References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 49-51; and
Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 183-185.
A special message from Father Richard:
We've heard from many readers that they wish the meditations were in print, so we've decided to put the 2014 messages into a book: A Spring Within Us. We want to make sure that anyone who wants a copy of this book receives one. That is why, for a donation of any amount, made at any time in August 2016, the Center for Action and Contemplation will send you a copy of A Spring Within Us (with free shipping)!
Donate securely online by clicking here.
The CAC will send one copy of A Spring Within Us: A Book of Daily Meditations to each person who donates in the month of August 2016 (limit one book per person).
If your resources allow, we appreciate your mindfulness regarding the cost of shipping when you make a donation; we suggest an onlinedonation of $20 or more for international supporters.
While we gratefully accept international donations online, please be aware we'll be unable to process checks drawn on non-US banks during the month of August. Please accept our sincere apologies for whatever inconvenience this may cause you.
Visit cac.org/support-cac to learn more about charitable giving, including additional ways of donating.
If you've already donated this month, the book will be on its way to you in 2-5 weeks (please allow additional time for international addresses)!
Donations above $19.95 (the resale value of the book) are tax-deductible within the United States.
If you'd like to receive multiple copies of the book, note that A Spring Within Us will be available for purchase, exclusively from CAC's bookstore, by October 2016.
The Epic of Evolution is a story of the story.
It is compelling, it is gripping, it is moving, and it has potentially unitive power.[Mary Evelyn Tucker]
Join Dr. Tucker for a live webcast:
Living Cosmology: Dwelling Within the Journey of the Universe
Thursday, August 25, 2016
12:30-2:00 p.m. U.S. Mountain Daylight Time
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Webcast registration includes access to the replay through September 25, 2016. Register online to participate in the live webcast and/or to view the replay.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Thursday, 11 August 2016 "Love Is Who You Are"
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"True Self/False Self: Week 2"
"Love Is Who You Are"
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Love is not really an action that you do. Love is what and who you are, in your deepest essence. Love is a place that already exists inside of you, but is also greater than you. That's the paradox. It's within you and yet beyond you. This creates a sense of abundance and more-than-enoughness, which is precisely the satisfaction and deep peace of the True Self. You know you've found a well that will never go dry, as Jesus says (see John 4:13-14). Your True Self, God's Love in you, cannot be exhausted.
Material gifts decrease when you give them away. Spiritual gifts, by contrast, increase the more you use them. Yes! You get more love by letting it flow through you, just as modeled by the Trinity. If you love, you will become more loving. If you practice patience, you will become more patient. If you stop the Divine Flow, you will be stopped up ("sin").
Love is not something you can bargain for, nor is it something you can attain or work up to--because love is your very structural and essential identity--created in the image of the Trinity. When you are living in conscious connection with this Loving Inner Presence, you are in your True Self. God is forever united to this love within you; it is your soul, the part of you that always says yes to God. God always sees God in you--and "cannot disown God's own self" (2 Timothy 2:13).
Many Christians live with a terrible sense of being rejected, because their religion is basically a worthiness game where no one really wins. That's precisely not the Good News. It's bad news. The Gospel will always be misinterpreted by the false self in terms of some kind of climbing or achieving. Since the false self can't even understand the command to love one's enemies, it has to disregard the message as naive, which is exactly what most of Christian history has done. Jesus' rather clear teaching on love of enemies has been consistently ignored by all the mainline churches. Christians have been fighting one war after another, and excluding, torturing, and killing enemies right and left because the false self can never understand the Gospel. Yet we have been baptizing, confirming, giving communion to, and even ordaining false selves throughout our history. It is probably unavoidable, and God surely must be patient.
Once, after I gave an anti-war sermon, a businessman came up to me and said, "Well, Father, maybe in an ideal world. . . ." I know he meant well, but that's what we've done with most of the teaching of Jesus. We interpret his meaning for some ideal world. Of course, the ideal world is never going to come so we can just ignore 99% of the actual teaching of Jesus, as the institutional church (and I too!) have usually done. We concentrate instead on things that Jesus never once talked about, like birth control, homosexuality, and abortion--bodily "sins" because the body can most easily carry shame. We shouldn't disregard bodily shame or addictions, but they are not the core problem. Jesus focused on issues of power, prestige, and possession--which all of us have largely ignored. I don't think the church has had intentional bad will. It has simply tried to get the false self to live the Gospel, and that will never work. In other words, we've tried to have a church without fundamental transformation. Thus we whittle down the whole Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus' direct teaching that "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword" (Matthew 26:52); and we look for absolutes in ever new secular places--like the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution which allows us to carry weapons. And this is done by a vast majority of Bible-quoting Christians.
Gateway to Silence: God in me loves God in everything.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, True Self/ False Self (Franciscan Media: 2003), disc 2 (CD).
A special message from Father Richard:
We've heard from many readers that they wish the meditations were in print, so we've decided to put the 2014 messages into a book: A Spring Within Us. We want to make sure that anyone who wants a copy of this book receives one. That is why, for a donation of any amount, made at any time in August 2016, the Center for Action and Contemplation will send you a copy of A Spring Within Us (with free shipping)!
Donate securely online by clicking here.
The CAC will send one copy of A Spring Within Us: A Book of Daily Meditations to each person who donates in the month of August 2016 (limit one book per person).
If your resources allow, we appreciate your mindfulness regarding the cost of shipping when you make a donation; we suggest an onlinedonation of $20 or more for international supporters.
While we gratefully accept international donations online, please be aware we'll be unable to process checks drawn on non-US banks during the month of August. Please accept our sincere apologies for whatever inconvenience this may cause you.
Visit cac.org/support-cac to learn more about charitable giving, including additional ways of donating.
If you've already donated this month, the book will be on its way to you in 2-5 weeks (please allow additional time for international addresses)!
Donations above $19.95 (the resale value of the book) are tax-deductible within the United States.
If you'd like to receive multiple copies of the book, note that A Spring Within Us will be available for purchase, exclusively from CAC's bookstore, by October 2016.
The Epic of Evolution is a story of the story.
It is compelling, it is gripping, it is moving,
and it has potentially unitive power.[Mary Evelyn Tucker]
Join Dr. Tucker for a live webcast:
Living Cosmology: Dwelling Within the Journey of the Universe
Thursday, August 25, 2016
12:30-2:00 p.m. U.S. Mountain Daylight Time
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
Webcast registration includes access to the replay through September 25, 2016. Register online to participate in the live webcast and/or to view the replay.-------
Center for Action and Contemplation
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