Only contemplative prayer touches the deep unconscious, where all of our real hurts, motivations, and deepest visions lie. Without it, we have what is even worse—religious egoic consciousness, which is even more defensive and offensive than usual! Now it has God on its side and is surely what Jesus means by the unforgivable “sin against the Holy Spirit.” It cannot be forgiven because this small self would never imagine it needs forgiveness. It is smug and self-satisfied.
You need to learn and practice this new mind or there will be no lasting initiation, no real change, no authentic encounter with yourself, God, or anybody else. Find your own practice, and learn a new mind. Contemplation really is the change that changes everything.
~Adapted from Richard Rohr, “The Change that Changes Everything,” from The Drumbeat (free monthly e-newsletter from Men As Learners and Elders, October 2011)
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Contemplation develops an entirely different operating system, different software where the private self is not the center of attention and interpretation. This is the “grain of wheat” that Jesus says must die “or it remains just a grain of wheat.” But if it dies, “it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). Mature and contemplative religion has always known that we need a new way of thinking, which Paul called “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16) or a “spiritual revolution of the mind” (Ephesians 4:23).
Only with this new mind can we also develop a new heart too, and a new emotional response to the moment. When it is not all about me, we can see from a new, much deeper, and broader set of eyes.
~Adapted from Richard Rohr, “The Change that Changes Everything,” from The Drumbeat (free monthly e-newsletter from Men As Learners and Elders, October 2011)
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Mystical moments are experiences of enlargement and connectedness or union. Suddenly you’re bigger. You don’t feel a need to condemn, exclude, divide or separate. Unfortunately, most of us were sent on private paths of perfection which none of us could achieve.
The path of union is different than the path of perfection. Perfection gives the impression that by effort or more knowing I can achieve wholeness separate from God, from anyone else, or from connection to the whole. It appeals to our individualism and our ego. It’s amazing how much of Christian history sent us on a self-defeating course toward private perfection.
As a result, many people just give up—even many clergy and religious—when they see it isn’t working. They end up practical agnostics or practical atheists. They keep up the form, keep up the words, continue going to church, but there is no longer the inner desire and expectation that is possible with the path of union. It’s not mysticism that defeats the soul; it’s moralism that does.
~From Richard Rohr, Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate: Seeing God in All Things (CD)
