RICHARD ROHR - CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER - UNIVERSAL CHRIST

oh i know me too okay let's try to be here now the place where everything happens but the place that never seems like it's enough we always think the future is going to be better but all that is needed for wholeness for freedom is in the now so loving god we seek to accept this now this moment where you are and where we want to be we thank you for these sisters and brothers we come here today seeking wisdom we ask for your guidance and we ask that we can be good listeners we pray gratefully in jesus name amen okay as i told you a few days ago this talk is now the counterpart to the one we gave you on liberation theology but in many ways of the two talks this is really the more demanding or if you want to use the word the more radical i think the contemplative mind is the most absolute assault on the secular worldview that you can you can have because it really is a different mind and what we've been doing i think this has been the failure of so much of liberalism is it has been trying to critique uh from really the same mind and that'll make more sense uh later but it's still what i'm gonna call the calculative mind or the calculating mind it's the egocentric mind that reads everything in terms of personal advantage in terms of usually short-term effect in terms of what's in it for me and how will i look and how will i look good as long as you read reality from that small self and read everything calculatively i don't think you're going to see things in any really new way maybe you'll move along the political spectrum from left to right or right to left but uh what all the great religions have talked about is a different way of seeing that is actually a different perspective a different vantage point a different starting point i use uh often albert einstein's quote he said no problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it now what we're trying to do is solve our problems by the same consciousness that caused them which read everything in terms of cause and effect and and personal advantage the word contemplation really only became popular again through really thomas merton's writings in the 50s and 60s probably a lot of religions use the word meditation actually the word most christians are familiar with is simply the word prayer but the word prayer became unfortunately in the west like everything did in the west became something functional something you did again to achieve a desired effect which puts you back in charge as soon as you make prayer a way to get something and listen to most uh prayers that's what they are and it's okay i think god's used to it by now but it's really not any kind of new state or new consciousness it's the same old consciousness how can i get god to do what i want god to do you know and so maybe i'll talk to him about it you know cure my grandma you know well i guess if he gets enough he's probably counting or she's probably counting how many cure my grandmas do i get and if i get enough of them i'll do it that but that's where most people are at with prayer it's not really a change of consciousness it's the egocentric self deciding what it needs and what it wants and resorting to what we now call a higher power because you can't get any better than that to get on your side to get what you want so you can basically remain an untransformed egocentric person who's just now instead of manipulating everybody else which is all the ego can do is it now tries to manipulate god no now that's why i at least one reason i think religion is in such desperate straits today because it really isn't transforming people it's it's merely giving people some some pious and religious ways to again be in charge and to again be in control it's still the small self and what a genuine uh religion is talking about is a transformed self it's a different eye paul uses that wonderful phrase i live no longer not i live it's a different eye a different sense of self that's here i think until you've come to that you're not at the foundational transformation you might be pious you might be denominational you might be religious in the way the term is normally used you might belong to some some group but it's still what we'll call the small self let me use a quote i've been using now for the last three years i think from ken wilbur this is in his uh set of journal entries called one taste and he says religion has always performed two very important but very different functions first it acts as a way of creating meaning for the separate self it offers myths stories tales narratives rituals and revivals the taken together help the separate self to make sense of and to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that's okay that's how you got to get started as the psychologist would say you got to have an ego to let go of an ego you got to have a self to move beyond the self but what most religion does is it stops at that first function of simply giving you a positive self-image um that i'm a religious person or i'm a moral person or i'm a dedicated person or whatever it might be this function of religion does not usually or necessarily change the level of consciousness in a person it does not deliver radical transformation it does not deliver a shattering liberation from the separate self it consoles the self fortifies the self defends the self and promotes the self i talked to some mediators some years ago who work with major corporations and they said that they reserve their very best educated people in the work of mediation to work with churches because church people tend to be the most opinionated right hard to work with people they'd sooner work with the business world than with church people because church people are all convinced they're right i mean that's the whole point of religion to make sure you're right and once you start with that starting point to make sure i'm right it has disastrous effects religion is the worst thing in the world and it's the best thing in the world at the same time if it stops at the first function of religion which i think most religion does it's the worst thing in the world all it creates is highly egocentric people and they have the most clever cover for their egocentricity they're egocentric for god they're egocentric for morality or for the church or for piety or for uh you know flag and country or something like that they're used you can't touch them you know because the ego has is a hardened silo it's sure that it's right now he says as long as the separate self believes the miss performs the rituals mouths the prayers embraces the dogma then the self it is fervently believed will be saved we're not really sure what that's supposed to mean but everybody uses the word rather glibly being saved i suppose in most western christians mind it means going to heaven i'm going to get some reward later for doing this and the whole thing is i always call it a very bad reward punishment novel you know it's preposterous that anybody believes it but uh if you haven't really worked with it and i'm just lucky enough to have had time to work with it i you believe it because everybody else does and you think well this many people can't be wrong you know they must be right it's life is a giant reward punishment system and if you jump the hoops right uh you'll get the reward it's not about transformation can you feel the difference you don't have to be transformed you just have to play the game right and uh this is what we're dealing with today now he goes on and he says religion has also served in a usually very very small minority his analysis is pessimistic the function of radical transformation and liberation this function of religion does not fortify the separate self but utterly shatters it not consolation but devastation not entrenchment but emptiness this is why your great spiritual teachers will always talk about descent the way of the cross emptiness letting go not complacency but devastation not entrenchment but emptiness not complacency but explosion not comfort but revolution in short not a conventional bold string of consciousness but a radical transmutation and transformation of consciousness at its deepest level that is what we mean by religious conversion now how that normally happens is by what we call a god encounter where your natural egocentricity is undercut it doesn't work anymore it doesn't make sense anymore in other words you have to find a center outside of yourself that is in fact the center up to that point you're eccentric in the true you're off center and most people are eccentric you're you're not the center of the world at all but you act as if you are everything is do i like it do i want it do i do i look good is my name on it you know who cares but a lot of people do that's all they have you know it seems like someone took my markers here maybe they're in here now what i'm going to do is try to give you two different diagrams so so we can understand this it almost takes a a simple imaging of it some uh and it really is very simple maybe you'll even say simplistic but i'm going to call this the false self now this is i'm afraid what we're doing a lot of times is we're baptizing the false self we're ordaining the false self we're giving communion to the false self the false self is this little autonomous thing over here that tries to dress itself up fortify itself as we just make itself look christian or catholic or religious or whatever it wants to be or moral now people like jesus come along and in the presence of that they say unless the grain of wheat die it remains just a grain of wheat but if it dies it will bear much fruit or he'll say the branch cut off from the vine is useless that's a really strong statement it's useless he he goes even further he says you might as well um you know throw it into the fire it's a waste of time working with this thing and yet that's exactly what we're doing is largely working with this false self and the way we start we all start here is there probably and god certainly understands this is we gaze at our navel and see are we doing it right and the question always is how do i get over here now over here i guess you could call this god heaven eternity the truth the mystery and the question is what are the rules what are the rituals what are the practices that i can perform to get god to like me that's where in effect everybody starts they wouldn't put it in those words all right but everybody does and it's an okay starting place it's just not a good continuing place and it's a terrible ending place now i want to right away because we're going to jump back and forth to understand these because this is necessary by the way to understand contemplation and the contemplative mind we're going to draw the true self this is the only self that's ever existed it's the only self that exists right now the trouble is most people don't know it they really don't and the work of religion is to get you to know this religio the very word means to rebind to reconnect you came forth from god your deepest dna is divine you are not human beings trying to become spiritual that's how everybody starts you are already spiritual beings and the profound question is how to be human i believe that's why jesus came as a human being not to teach us how to go to heaven to teach us how to be a human being here on this earth can you imagine how different the history of western christianity would have been if we would have concentrated on teaching christians how to be human beings in this world instead of all this heaven talk you know all remember i said in the first prayer it's all about now but how you do it now we took all the power out of the now and we put all the power into the future everything was a reward punishment was going to happen later and so now was sort of a game or an obstacle course or a testing ground but you really didn't take it in itself seriously it's all play acting and hopefully playing it right so that you get the reward later so here i have the the small self and you can call it that if you want psychologically jung would call this the small self and call this the great self or the big ass when the small self knows that it has no meaning no foundation apart from who it is in god uh that's transformation when i live no longer not i you see that is a different experience of the cell just as you have a heart transplant this is an identity transplant just as you have a lung transplant or a liver transplant it is a i can't say it's strong enough it's a different sense of the eye a different sense of the self a different sense of the who that you are i always love to say excuse me we got to get the who right who are we who are we and most people don't know they think they are this private self this richard thing this ben thing this judy thing this susan thing all of which is fine but merten says it so well he says one thing for sure about heaven there won't be much of you there in other words the you that you think is you this little thing now this is secular consciousness this is the world we live in today this is what people that's all you have and so you have to dress it up you have to defend it you can make a pretty general statement whenever you're defensive it's always the false self this self is so secure it never has any reason it doesn't have any there's there's nothing to defend if you follow me there's nothing to be offended and i tell many people that's how you know you're living in the fall self at that moment if you take offense at anything if you took a fence in the kitchen at tepiac this morning because someone didn't clean up after themselves i mean i probably would have too but don't do it for more than 15 seconds you know because for more than 15 seconds that's just your little insecure self that needs to be pampered or needs to to define itself by cleanliness or whatever it might be or order you know this self is pretty unoffendable it really is it's just i can see why the bible said don't let the sun go down on your anger you'll get angry for a few minutes but you can't identify with it you can't feed it you don't let it possess you as i said last week now the the the the rules here are sort of the rules of what i'm going to call requirement religion it's always looking for what are the correct requirements and every religion is convinced that it has the correct requirements it forces you toward legalism and ritualism eventually here it's not about requirements it's about relationship the quality and your capacity for relatedness now i hope you can see how i'm laying on the foundation for contemplation because this self will say prayers but this self is a prayer just by being just by walking from here to there it is a prayer now that's why paul can say something like pray always he doesn't mean he can't mean walking around saying our fathers and hail mary's huh but when how you can pray always is when you live in conscious union with god it's really not this is the surprise for most people it's really not about being perfect this self will still make mistakes but it lives from a center ever other than its own now until and unless you've met a centered person a grounded person or you can tell their center is outside themselves it's almost hard to get the feel for this you have to have met a saint in fact my definition of christianity in recent years has been a christian is someone who's met one that this whole thing is contagious when you meet a person of a certain quality of maturity that's how you get maturity yeah you meet a patient person and you learn how to be patient you meet a loving person you learn how to be loving that's that's the way human beings operate you don't even know how to do it and it's the same way with this when you meet a really grounded happy free person you can just feel the water rise you become more like that because you'll be satisfied with nothing less that becomes the reference point or the criteria this whole thing spreads you know like a contagion really but it spreads through relationship by the quality of one's relationship now what we'd say is happening in prayer is you're experiencing that quality of relationship with god where you know you're not being manipulated you're not being used you're not being judged you're not being evaluated boy you wouldn't go there i mean that's just the place of ultimate freedom that's the state that every one of us wants to live in so that's why we tell people you know go pray a half an hour a day or whatever it might be because you live in this place you become this it's it's sort of that simple it it rubs off on you i don't know what other way to say it so i want to say as strongly as i can that all of the institutes of religion bible sacraments priesthood churches everything everything rosary way of the cross contemplative sit is to help you experience this self pure and simple that's all and if and if your religion isn't helping you experience this self then change it or get rid of it or do something different if it's maintaining you in this self then we got a problem and a lot of religion is this is the religion that fought jesus christ was all into to uh dogmatism and requirements and when jesus wasn't following their dogmas and requirements they had to get rid of him so if this is about requirement this is not just about relationship but it's about right relationship how do you how do you connect in a way that's really connection this is about being correct do you see am i correct am i right i always say you'd think the first commandment was thou shalt be right it here's a it's not about being correct it's about being connected connected unless the the vine is connected or the branch is connected to the vine we have a problem now how does god achieve this this is the process of transformation what life will do to you anyway but most people don't have the the freedom to recognize it and to allow it what life will do to you and i'm going to use religious language and say god will do it to you god has to in the course of your years destabilize that private ego the word for that is suffering mental suffering emotional suffering physical suffering relational suffering things that you can't fix that you can't control that you can't explain you can't change there is no way and you got to be honest at this point your ego is not going to give up until it has to you know that you know that it's not as long as you're goody two shoes and looking good and feeling good and everybody's admiring you and you know you're the best catholic in oregon i mean why would you change you're feeling quite well without god thank you oh you're very pious you're very religious but you don't really need god you're admiring your own advancement to your own maturity so-called you see so god has to let you fail now i always say therefore there are two people who have a head start in the spiritual life or two groups of people sinners and mystics mystics are those who in this inner journey consciously let go of those ego boundaries and collapse back in to who they really were anyway but didn't know that you are this right now all right that's all you've ever been but hardly anybody knows it do you see and what you're doing in your contemplative sit is consciously experiencing that not knowing it through the head level experiencing through the body gut level it has to be experienced you can't teach people this even though i'm trying to tell you right now all right you won't believe me you will leave here and live just like you always did until you know this for yourself and then it's not a matter of belief i don't believe this i know this it's not people think religion is believing unbelievable things i it is believing unprovable things but these things can clearly be experienced where you know it it's the only thing that that finally makes make sense of of what's happening so the real task brothers and sisters is far different here we thought it was how to get this over here the real question is no is how to get from here to here where you were anyway but you didn't know it so it's all a matter of awakening it's all a matter of awareness now this self is capable of contemplation that's all it's that simple it will now read reality not from this egocentric position remember how i started a few minutes ago has to read everything in terms of personal advantage and how do i look and what what will this gain me this its center is over here to use religious language we'd say we don't look at things through our own eyes but through the eyes of god that's that's the truth now it's a more panoramic seeing it's a broader scene it it's uh it can read reality in the way of wisdom wisdom which is broad enough to absorb paradox and contradictions and inconsistencies if if this self is characterized by fragility and it is this self is very fragile and it well should be anything that doesn't exist should be fragile this is characterized by abundance that word has become very popular in recent years and i think with good reason and you feel that when you're around a grounded person a sense of inner abundance a sense of i've got plenty they're not grasping they're not protecting they're not always needing more and and counting how much did you get and how much did i get which is all this thing here can do i hope you're starting to see the linkage between this and your politics and economics i mean it's everything and that's why i don't believe much of liberal politics because the liberal over here just because he's put a liberal tag on himself he really isn't going to be any better we have all these limousine liberals you know who have a liberal politics but they're still into looking good having the best of everything um there's no great freedom in being a liberal false self do you follow me this is the freedom because here you don't have a lot to protect now that's why i said at the beginning this is the ultimate assault assault on the secular mind is religious transformation these people can't be bought off by any system they don't need its rewards they're drawing their life from within they don't need the perks and privileges and promotions power prestige and possessions as i used to call them always on my tapes and if you look at the teaching of jesus that's what his warnings are against power prestige and possessions not because those things are evil in themselves that's not the point the they're they're simply a giveaway that you're still living here in fact almost everything you call sin almost everything you call sin is really a symptom of sin the fact that you are grasping and jealous and impatient means at that moment you're living out of this self you follow me that's all it's not if you're grasping an impatient i'm not going to like you and that's what most people think inside of the reward punishment thing it's just you're not free yet and those the indications the things that we call sin are the indications that you're not living here now to to help you trust this a little more and to be fair about it i do want to say that life is a dance between the true self and the false self i don't know anybody including mother teresa who lives 24 hours a day over here she probably left 23 and a half over here you know but but i worked with her community in calcutta four years ago right after she died and and you know i became aware of her little faults too thank god it was such a relief to fight even mother teresa had little faults just like you and i do you know join the human race we're all in this together so she uh you know did this dance too it's okay to live in the false self just now listen closely just don't believe it follow me don't don't believe this thing don't offer it any incense don't kiss up to it and don't expect other people to or you'll you'll spend a life of of total uh you know upsetness which is what most people do just waiting to be upset because this thing is living on the edge of upsetness all the time in fact after you've lived here 40 years or so like when you're my age it's just this thing is so uh it knows it isn't there yet it feels that foundational ungroundedness or insecurity so you'll tend to see people dance faster and faster become more rigid become more demanding more controlling most people my age are control freaks almost all of them are because that's the only way you can feel that some way your your your in control is to take control this one doesn't there's nothing to take control of because someone else is much better in control and you know that experientially you know that experientially that someone else is in control anyway and here the rules are trust and letting go and surrender they're not about making it right you don't need to push the river over here you've got to push the river over there so in a certain sense i always say when i'm teaching this that even me standing here right now i'm living out of the false self in a certain way i've got my hat of teacher on and i'm fulfilling a role whenever you've got a role you you take yourself a little more seriously than you really need to and that's all right as long as when this session is over i can step off my podium and walk out the door and know who i am apart from being the teacher do you see and i don't need you to kiss up to this and i don't need to take my own pr too seriously now you've got to know that most people don't know how to do that now the spiritual word for that was attachment that you become attached to this thing because that's all you've got and if other people don't like it or talk about it or criticize it you fall apart or you become defensive or even violent toward them because that's all you've got is the defense of this thing that you've concocted and created and is going to die anyway it doesn't mean a hell of beans you know the first time i was invited to india they told me something they wanted me of all things to teach the anti-gram in fact next month they want me to again and i'm always surprised why would the indian people with their immense social problems want to learn about the enneagram you know they said because you and america you know everything about personality and you know almost nothing about essence they said but we know a lot about essence but we don't know much about personality now i just tell you that to show they are the the indian culture which is so ancient there's such a profound sense of this being united you find it in most native spiritualities too that we're a part of something my life is not about me i'm about life and i'm an instance of this great big life but what happened especially after the immense intellectual achievements of the west the renaissance the enlightenment the scientific technological revolution is we absolutely exploded the individual self nowhere has the individual self been so developed as in north america and europe europe even more than here and um in a certain sense and so i think that's why contemplative teaching is so important here and also so very very difficult for us because we just can't imagine letting go of this because this is all we have anymore you see and what most uh self-help programs are today are giving you ways to teach this thing here how to cope and coping mechanisms survival mechanisms for the false self as we say rearranging deck chairs on the titanic you know i mean the whole thing is going down it's a useless project now as impatient and angry as i get at religion why i can't give up on religion is because religion healthy religion is the only thing prepared to describe the movement from here to here if you don't use god talk i mean why would you give up control if there was not someone you trusted that you could give up control too the secular mind is burdened with creating control freaks that's all you can produce in secular society in fact i always say you'd be irresponsible not to be wouldn't you i mean you know you have to see that everything's working and everything's right and everything's fixed and you're better because no one else is going to do it there's no sense that the universe is on my side as some saying that that i'm already in the flow that i don't have to push the river i'm in the river i don't have to create the story the story is happening and i'm now you know the sixth billionth one on the planet right now to be living this story and what is the story it's death and resurrection every religion is saying that in one sense or another it's all about death and resurrection and trusting it now jesus came to live that in a very living icon christ has died christ is risen trust the death and that breaks you through to the resurrection now this if you've lived over here listen closely if you've lived over here for 40 years or 50 years and and you and this starts being destabilized right you get your first big suffering at 50. a death in the family or something like that uh you're going to fight it with everything you can you're going to look for somebody to blame you're going to look for somebody to attack and it's going to feel like dying it's going to feel like dying you if you haven't had training in dying if you don't have any training and letting go and entrusting a bigger mystery a bigger process a bigger benevolence a bigger pattern use whatever word you want you you won't surrender to this you will try even harder to to be back in control and that i'm afraid is an awful lot of older people trying even more to stabilize the whole thing and to solidify the whole thing so this movement back to who you already were it will feel like letting go it will feel like losing some have said that what christianity is really about is how to lose graciously that's the meaning of the cross what else would that be a symbol of how to lose graciously and uh if someone hadn't told you how to do that why would you know it's not even your fault brothers and sisters that's what we're up against though in this western society and why i think we're going to see a lot of violence a lot of people on the attack in various ways because because they don't have any language of of dying available to them of letting go and so when the letting go is demanded of them most people are going to look for somebody to blame and going to look for somebody to attack or someone else to change it'll always be someone else's fault so now maybe you can understand this passage from john in a whole new way john 15 whoever remains in me as i and them will bear much fruit that's what he's talking about in fact that's the language of all of the mystics is the language of union it's not the language of union don't in fact don't trust it so as i said before it's all about getting the who right and once you have the right who who are you that's the who are you and just every day ask it of yourself again who am i you're a daughter of god would be the the religious language huh a son of god this is really my geometric way of imaging that that that religious language that we've grown up with it's not so much what we do but the who that is acting is what liberates and brings life to the world i really believe that mother teresa said that also she said a person consciously filling a vase with water out of union and love with of god is giving more glory to god than a priest at the altar who's standing there in a state of anger or resentment or separateness it's all about the who not the what and we spend all of our time concentrating on what should i do which remember was the question of the rich young man what must i do to inherit eternal life i often have said to people i don't think it matters what you do it really you see how the whole secular is sacred thing absolutely breaks down there is no such thing as a secular job you could be a ceo of a secular institution and if you're doing it out of conscious chosen union with god you you will bring more of god's energy and life into the world than a formerly professional religious person who's doing it out of a state of anger judgment or separation that's why the contemplative mind really has little to do with being pious or religious or churchy in any in any classic sense and how the whole thing breaks down between the secular and the sacred so the autonomous false self can do objectively good things and i believe god will still use them but they will not bear nearly as much fruit as even simple things done in union with god out of what we'd call the true self that is about as traditional and conservative and old-fashioned teaching as i could i mean you if you were raised religious you were taught that way back when that that just doesn't change yet it's utterly radical even today and the thing is that even though this is who we are it's hard for us to consciously live there mertens has so many good things to illustrate this he says i would sooner have the sins of this person than the virtues of this person have you ever met someone who's very virtuous and you want to say if that's virtue i don't want it if that's holiness it feels so stuffy and priggish and self-conscious and and so forth and this person over here i mean if you're living in the true self at least an hour a day you'll still make mistakes you'll still do stupid things as i say isn't that being a morally perfect person i know i'm not but but you'd know it when you're doing it tenders you see it you're not satisfied with it you you can you can apologize you can admit you're wrong this self has a pretty hard time admitting it's wrong because that's all it has is it's righteousness do you see this when paul says i have no righteousness of my own but only the righteousness that comes from union with christ jesus my lord there it is it's a different righteousness doesn't go up and down it doesn't depend upon feelings that's that's why they spoke of god being your rock your savior your deliverer this person is utterly solid and grounded their feelings don't go up and down each day depending upon who likes them they're not to use our contemporary term they're not co-dependent this self is very very codependent needs constant feedback affirmation approval incense offer me some incense you know yes this can get by with less and less because it's drawing its life from within happiness is an inside job do you see this will need more and more outside money clothes cars right place to live status symbols it's just you know it's like the alcoholics say you need more and more of what doesn't work and you can see that i remember i said you dance faster and faster over there you just uh you know a more elaborate vacation a bigger house a uh a fancier car just you can just see every five years in america sophistication just goes higher and higher i need this to be happy and then i need that to be happy and once you reach that level you can never go back whereas the saints they need less and less to make them happy it's really that simple they're the their contentment is from within they're not expecting the future to be any different than it is right now because how you do the now now we're going to tie into contemplative practice how you do anything is how you do everything and if you're accessing the now god being consciousness what is use whatever word you're comfortable with it doesn't really matter if you're accessing that right now then you're going to have found the wellsprings of joy right now and then you'll carry that into the future too uh if not i can tell you can be on a beach in hawaii all right picture your perfect beach and i'll promise you when you're there you're gonna your mind is gonna be doing the same things on that beach that it's doing right now judging if that's what you're doing critiquing negating because that's who you are and you've all been there i mean i've been there haven't you been on the perfect vacation you look forward to for weeks and you get things i'm really not happy you don't not supposed to be happy this is all for because you're still upset you're still angry you're still fearful you're whatever you are so contemplation is saying change it right here or don't expect the future to be any different than the now it isn't nothing's going to change and if you can't believe that god is here right now when you go to mass or church tomorrow god isn't going to be there either because you won't know how to access that moment any differently so i always say that presence and that's that's the key word now presence is a relational term and you can offer people the real presence in the eucharist perhaps but if you don't know how to be present to presence there is no presence now what we're doing in contemplation this is you're learning how to be present that's that's really it you're learning how to access what is now the reason most people run from it is because you know what comes up first the garbage remember when it says the spirit drove jesus into the wilderness and it says there he met the wild beasts this is mark 1 13-15 the spirit drove him into the wilderness there he met the wild beasts and angels ministered to him i'm afraid first what comes up is the garbage that's why most teachers insist on at least 20 minutes because you can assume that the first well sometimes my whole 20 minutes is the just the garbage but you can assume certainly the first half of any set sit is just letting go of those thoughts that want to impose themselves on you those judgments those fears those negations that discomfort that unprocessed conversation at breakfast whatever it might be all of that just keeps attacking you and assaulting you so what you have to do is you have to become the watcher where you step back from it and you see that judgment now that might sound you at first like that's an intellectual game it isn't do you see what's happening there is you're separating from it and you're letting it be over there so now you know that feeling is not me i'm over here watching it over there which means it isn't me most people never do that the feeling has them all the time they never separate from it and that's what it means to be possessed by a demon the feeling has them they feel they've got to have it no i don't have to have it so thomas keating teaches this beautiful and almost simple boat exercise where he says you sit on the bank of a stream you observe each of your thoughts coming along saying think me think me feeling saying feel me feel me acknowledge you're having the feeling acknowledge that you're having a thought don't hate it don't judge it don't critique it don't don't in any way move against it but simply name it resentment toward so and so thought about so-and-so admit that you're having it he says place it on a boat and let it go down the river the river is your stream of consciousness now that's what you're doing in the first stages of contemplation this self can't do it because all it has is its own thoughts most people think they are their thinking most people think they are their thinking they don't have a clue who they are apart from their thoughts what you're doing in contemplation is moving to a level beneath your thoughts at the level of pure being the level of of really what we call pure consciousness which is not consciousness of anything in particular it's simply awareness and now as soon as you think i am doing this well or i am aware that's a boat or as soon as you think oh i'm doing this terribly if he knew what i'm thinking about this terrible thought i'm having that's about to let go of that that's the ego trying to judge itself and we'll always do that trying to ju and the only way the ego knows to do anything is up or down either i'm better or i'm worse then it's always up or down critiquing men tend to compete women tend to compare but it's the same ego game trying to see whether i'm up or whether i'm down we just in pure being there's no up and down there just is there's no evaluation it's just a a delighting and a kind of spaciousness a kind of freedom now those thoughts that come back for round two and round three and sometimes round four and five those are your compulsive patterns of thinking some of you are going to see that you have paranoid patterns of fearing what might go wrong some of you are going to have attack patterns of wanting to blame change fix make things right that's the the type i am and then there are some of you who are going to be the co-dependent types who are always how am i looking how am i feeling how does everybody relate to me and like me and and so forth you know and uh they're all ego games they really are because you're a value without any of those but there's when you've played those mental uh games for many years you you really don't know how not to do it so remember i'm not saying attack the way we used to do dirty thoughts remember oh i had dirty thoughts i just heard two hours of children's confessions this morning uh you know and it's all attacked these bad things no i'm not telling you i'm saying observant that's all the observing is actually more effective than the attacking did you know that to attack something actually engages it in a negative way it's the the attraction of forbidden fruit the generations of teenage boys we condemn to you know by attacking their so-called dirty thoughts that only engaged them in a deeper law no you observe it and you see what you're doing and you have to stand over here and see it and see that it's sort of useless it's on a mental trip but if you can't see that you will be trapped by it so that's early stage contemplation now at that point that doesn't sound very religious does it here is my point that if god wants to get at you and my assumption is god does if god wants to get at you if god wants to get through your barriers and your blockages at that point god has the best chance of doing it quite simply because finally you're out of the way with your ego your judgments your fears your angers your attachment to your own self-image and it will have a lot to do with attachments attachments to feelings attachments to thoughts attachments to to self-image and you won't know how you attached you are to those things normally until they're taken from you that's that's why the mystics and saints talk so much about the necessity of suffering that when things are taken from you let's say just your dignity is taken from you not one of the interns spoke to you this morning and so you walk down the street chafing you know just chafing why don't they like me and i knew they all think they're better than i you know and the mind just goes on and that's all your false self trying to protect yourself but you you'll actually be able to thank god for that when you recognize that you would never have seen how much your false self is in control today if not for that humiliation so basically and i got this from thomas keating although i totally believe it he says he now charts the path of conversion as a series of necessary humiliations to the false self it's that simple that's what conversion is a series of necessary humiliations to the false self now i know why my father francis and so many of the saints prayed for humiliations because because you you will live here until this thing is humiliated is taken from you and then you'll see it for the silliness it is so like when i take offense or i'm upset i try to ask myself anymore richard what part of you is upset now what part of you is humiliated what part of you is angry what part of you wants to get him back and it is never my true self i said that this at the national aids conference a few years ago when i spoke at him who you are in god has never been hurt this self can't be hurt it's unheard-able now when you see what we have a victim culture today everybody act in fact trying to prove that they're more hurt than other people i've been hurt the most now even white rich men are trying to prove that they're victims you know because that's the ultimate way for the ego to find power you know to prove that you've been hurt and you're a victim there this thing doesn't whine you know there's nothing to whine about it's too satisfied it's too content it's too happy jesus says this is the peace the world cannot give this is the joy the world cannot take from you this is what every one of you in this room wants i can say that with without any doubt this is what we want and we don't know it the most common verb by the way used by the mystics is rest this self can rest because it's home free there's nothing to prove there's nothing to protect i don't have to pretend there's nothing to live up to i i've already you understand i've already got the conclusion there's not i'm not going to go to heaven it's heaven all the way to heaven i don't i don't have to prove heaven to people you can tell who is in heaven and you can tell who's in hell right now and all god's going to do is say i'll give you what you want and you could have heaven now so it's not a reward punishment system for if you play the game right a giant s-a-t test all reward you later but i'm going to show you a way to live in the fullness of being now i i think an experience of god and i mean this is not just because i'm a priest i mean it's why i had time to learn it i suppose but uh i think an experience of god although you might not use those words is necessary for mental and emotional health i really do is necessary for mental and emotional health you basically don't belong in the universe until you're connected to the center and our word for the center is god you're eccentric in this position you're off center you're and and you're trying to make something the center that is not the center it'll never work it'll never never never work uh this just a little more continuation the false self as you'll see here maintains itself by performance the performance principle paul calls it the law by requirements by hierarchical assurance the true self and maybe this is why we clergy haven't taught it an awful lot i i don't want to be too cynical but the true self doesn't need a lot of middle management it doesn't need a lot of uh priest craft it doesn't need a lot of got to do this gotta do that we'll do it for you you know i tried with all these little kids this morning making their first confessions to try to at least give them a first positive experience you know but you can tell someone we're just all in i gotta do this absolutely right or it won't work and i know i guess we all start there but yeah you just hope they don't stay there that's all so i would call the false self a relative identity i would call the true self your absolute identity the true self will be a prayer the true self can contemplate the relative identity is not bad the false self is not the bad self it's simply now listen closely it's simply not the true self got it it's not the bad self the this is not bad it's simply not this now the trouble is when you think this is all you have and that's what most people this is all they have so they never knew they had access to this they never knew they were spiritual beings trying to become human they think they're human beings trying to become spiritual all right that this is the only thing worthy of being called the good news what else would be good news this is good news this really is bad news it's terrible news because all you can do is live by the performance principle here and you know what paul says in romans the law will always kill you the law is his word for the performance principle if you create any performance principle i don't care what it is you're going to be the perfect mother or the perfect housewife or you sooner or later you won't live up to it and you're gonna hate yourself any external thing that you're gonna do perfectly and therefore you are validated this is the ultimate validation and it has nothing to do with you it's given to you now this is what makes you fall in love with god it's all gift it's all you want to weep you want to kiss anything i always say this this is everything it's all it's all foundationally radically okay and and it has nothing to do with you having done this or not having done that which is the performance principle where everybody operates so this mind looks out at reality in a calm spacious way it doesn't need to win anymore it doesn't need to be better than anybody else this self is capable of compassion therefore because it's not into competition and comparison this self racism wouldn't make any sense because you see here here's the big connection once you recognize the divine indwelling in you and it has nothing to do with you it's all pure gift you know what yeah maybe this is why people don't want to be converted you got to recognize it in jews and hindus and black people and protestants and whoever you decided not to like i don't know you know this is the great leveling of the playing field you know that's the meaning of pentecost the spirit poured out on all languages all nations every one of us in this room are absolute equals before god we all carry the divine indwelling and once you recognize that it's unearned in you to understand then know that it's unearned in everybody else too and we're all in this thing together you have just found the basis for universal compassion and for universal forgiveness and for universal patience for what we call love for what we call communion that changes your politics the idea of upper class and lower class just doesn't mean much anymore you know it's a it's a social construct and nothing more or the color of one's skin you know that's a complete externalization of this marvelous mystery that we all carry inside and now that's why teachers like jesus push that seeing all the way to the edge to just try to see the divine image especially in those people that you wouldn't be naturally attracted to maybe people who are a little smelly or a little ugly or dying or not so physically attractive or handicapped or something like that or you know not in your group the spiritual teacher has to push you to the edge because once you can see it there then the seeing has been achieved once you can recognize the divine image where you don't want to see the divine image then then you've learned how to see it's really that simple and here's the rub it's not you that's doing the scene there it's like there's another pair of eyes inside of you seeing through you seeing with you seeing in you notice for example the very final prepositions of the great eucharistic prayer through him with him in him great stuff it recognizes that this isn't anything i can generate or concoct or engineer by myself it is done to me not i not i but the wind that blows through me it is being done to me and all you can do is get out of the way now that's what you're doing at your 20-minute sit you're getting out of the way and the main thing you got to get out of the way is your mind i i it took me years to recognize that at first to people it seems like an overstatement like putting too much blame on the mind but in fact it's it is the mind that keeps defining the self engineering and manufacturing futures and and worrying about past mistakes replaying uh past wounds and and so forth over and over again uh we we now think that 90 of human thought although some say 96 percent i don't know that matters a great deal is repetitive and useless it just keeps thinking the same things over and over again that's something and by the time you're my age it's even worse because you've got two or three neural grooves that you've grown used to and you just replay every event through those same three responses that's why a lot of old people frankly i mean i love old people but if they haven't done their inner work most old people are not much fun to be around and you know that because they've got four staid responses and those are the same responses to everything what you see in the contemplative mind is a freshness of response an originality of response an originality of seeing barbara's going to be teaching you how to see i guess later this afternoon and i must really be a failure because i can't draw at all but it's it really is and she'll teach it better than i is a way of of seeing it differently which i guess means you have to incorporate some of the right brain the reason i can stand here and talk the way i do is because i'm so dang left brain and that's probably why i recognize the need for the the limiting of this left brain although both of them can be equally problematic in terms of defining the self it's especially the left brain whereby we keep trying to make life linear and make life logical and make a tit-for-tat and quid pro quo instead of simply bearing the mystery of it once you bear the mystery of it which is what the contemplative mind does it's not looking for logic it's not looking for quid pro quo uh two plus two equals four it that isn't important anymore it's just to hold it in the death and in the resurrection and to allow them to somehow coexist so contemplation let's just draw together on this is is meeting reality in its most simple and immediate form now to meet reality in its most simple and immediate form the only way you can do that is you've got to get rid of your mental grids your mental ways of judging critiquing computing everything that's why the mind has to be somehow placed to the side so i'm going to say that every major religion at its more mature levels is trying to give you some kind of massive method to compartmentalize the mind to put the mind to the side now what they found out is things like mantras chants anything you repeat has that effect uh also be moving into the body that's why things like breathing or pilgrimage can also stop the mind or runners say running too but prayer beads are not unique to the rosary in catholicism if you've been to asia you found them all over asia if you go to the islamic world you'll see people on the streets with their prayer beads all over every religion has discovered that only protestantism which came along far too late in history when we were really getting into the head and the sermons and words and bible quotes and everything he didn't understand that anymore it's probably the only major world religion that doesn't have something like prayer beads or chants to to break you and free you from this addictive pattern of thinking so isn't it funny that you know i mean descartes probably is the nader of western philosophy and he says the french philosopher you know i think therefore i am and here we would come along now and say it's precisely i think therefore i'm not we'd say just the it's your thinking that keeps you in this it's your non-thinking at the level of pure presence and presence cannot be thought try it i i think this is probably the reason god called most people to to loving sexual relationships because that's one place where you can't think it you have to experience it you have to be present to another person you can't have sex with your head to my knowledge some men try i think to mentally compute the whole thing won't work you have to move to the level of simply being in communion with being and i cannot process that through the head if you don't have any training and giving up the head i don't think you'll ever experience being you know i think my first hints of this i was a little old catholic church altar boy back in the 1950s and we used to have you catholics remember uh 40 hours devotion where the eucharist was kept exposed the whole weekend in the church through the night and we altered boys or had to sign up for the the half-hour stints in the middle of the night between 2 30 and 3 and 3 30 and 4 when no one else would sign up i can't imagine getting altar boys to do that today but back in the 50s we were still very obedient in those ways i guess but i can remember getting up in the middle of the night riding my little bike to the parish church putting on my cassock and surplus and kneeling you had to kneel for your whole half hour and i think that's where this first happened to me where it all became real there's nobody to talk to there do you understand no ideas there's nothing to process mentally it's three o'clock you know in the middle of the night the whole world is asleep and it's simply you and what for us was the image of the presence of god the host as we called it and um i mean there were experiences there where it just all connected it was all real or was all okay it was all enough it's probably why i became a priest it was just i knew that the way most people were seeing was not it that most people are not seeing the true picture and once you know that once the veil parts you know it you can't unknow it ever again in fact to try to unknow it again would that would be sin i think what's what makes you want to weep is that so many people today don't seem to know that they really take the work a day world and all its clever disguises as if their absolute foundational reality when all they are to use mertens phrases shadow and disguise or simply images they're there that allow you to break their manifest things as the eastern religions say that allow you to break through to the unmanifest but when you stay on the level of the manifest and you never let it lead you to the unmanifest underneath it you just don't know now that's contemplation and it becomes a way of life so i don't like to think of it so much as something you do as something you are and so i often use the phrase the contemplative stance it's a stance it's a way of living and moving and walking and being in this world even though i fully admit that we don't live all our 24 hours there i certainly don't the world keeps pulling you back into the false self put on this hat put on this identity take on this hurt put on this self-importance and we all do it and it's all right as long as you know how to take it back off you follow me and don't wear it too long any any image and the more positive one you have the more dangerous it is that's why i can't wear my franciscan habit or or priest clothes uh too much it's just it's too strong a self-image that then you have to live up to but you can all have those let's say some of you have a high degree or you're a mother of six children or you know the more grandiose it is the more glorious it is the more dangerous it is or if you're well known or anything like that then then you get you tend to get more attached to it but what we found out and this is surprise of surprises is that the ego is equally attached to a negative self-image it took us a long time to recognize what we called scrupulous people people who would come to confession almost every saturday afternoon we're actually egocentric people that they're very they have to feel worthy or unworthy to i have to have some definition rather than to just be just nothingness just emptiness just i am who i am who i am in god nothing more and nothing less and that's everything that is a hard place to live you have to be taught how to live here because there's no positive or negative way you can dress yourself up and we know now people would sooner think of themselves as sinners or bad or inferior that gives them something to fight do you understand something to oppose so rather than to to live in the emptiness so that's the language buddhists use emptiness franciscans we use the word poverty carmelites use the word nothingness the new testament jesus word is the desert it's all about going to a place that at first feels like no thing nothing there's nothing just that's why it's so hard to sell it's hard for me to talk about it even here it it it's it's unprovable it's unmeasurable it's unpredictable it's just pure being and and and if you can't live at that level of pure being if you constantly need a product or a performance or or some kind of test uh you won't know how to live there that is the language of the mystics i just gave you the key you can open up any mystic now and they'll make sense to you that's why the way they're talking all the time and if you're living at the level of capitalist consumerism where everything is product and achievement and performance and who am i and what shingle can i hang you know on my forehead or what name can i give myself uh you won't know how to go there so all great spirituality certainly contemplative spirituality is about letting go letting go of what you don't need don't need this don't need that and in that normally you collapse back into this and it only needs to happen once once you know this you'll never be satisfied with anything less this is what you were created for because this is who you are and and and and you know you found it then and you don't spend the rest of your life thinking that your life is out in front of you that it's going to happen 10 years from now when we get all the bills paid and when my husband starts doing this or that now it it might as well happen right now right now and then the future ironically will be different because you're going to bring a different self a transformed self a contemplative self to those those new situations so this more than anything else brothers and sisters is why we founded the center 15 years ago that my first 15 years on the road i just met so many social activists who had all the right politics the right social analysis the correct critique of this or that or whatever but you could tell that there was still the need to win the need to look good the attachment to a superior politically correct self-image i'm a vegetarian or i'm a you know i'm for the poor or i'm even contemplative any of those can just be new ways to uh to concoct an ego concoct an identity for the self and i knew if we were going to have truly prophetic people who are going gonna be beyond the categories of liberal and conservative we were gonna have to teach them some way to integrate their activism with this contemplative stance in the early years of the center i think we our first programs were first internships were about 50 percent social analysis and and social critique and 50 contemplation as the time has gone on we've tended to make much much more of the emphasis contemplation and convinced that once you learn how to look out at life from this pair of eyes of the true self that i i just know your politics and economics are going to change i don't need to teach you anything about don't think this way a few little helps like the bias from the bottom and so forth but people will change and then they don't feel like you're changing them they've been changed from within so you'll you'll find it it really is i believe the most radical thing you can teach is contemplation the most radical thing uh and it's therefore the thing that a lot of people will deem the most useless because it appears to be so harmless at first you know just oh a little pious way of praying but no it's not a way of praying it's a way of being in the world that is absolutely different absolutely different it's way of walking in the world seeing the world that is absolutely different so i mentioned you before that mystics and sinners have the head start mystics consciously let go of these these boundaries some sinners have them grabbed from them i'm afraid i was the jail chaplain here at the at the city county jail for over 14 years and you know you'd see the prostitutes and the drug addicts and you know and they know they're not great you know they know they've muffed up life and you can talk to them i i would give sermons at the jail sometimes especially the women they're just tears with strength they just want it so bad because this thing hasn't worked for them do you understand they haven't been able to dress this up and be the best catholic in oregon you know or in new mexico for that it hasn't worked so that this might be true it's just joy of joys oh my god because they long and thirst for this salvation whereas we who are sort of you know nice people like you and i are we can sometimes be the hardest to preach the gospel to and that seems to have been jesus experience it was the church going folks who didn't need his transformative language because they confused membership in an organization with transformation follow me most people have confused attendance with transformation i mean even a bunch of the little kids confessions this morning that they didn't attend mass on sunday forgive me that is that is not in the realm of evil that trivializes the nature of the evil really we've got to learn what evil means and there's a lot of it in this world true evil and when we keep training people to say i didn't go to mass on sunday is evil i think that's evil to teach people that because it takes away from them the real notion of what evil is it's not evil but when you've defined religion as attendance and a service or membership in a group which is what an awful lot of our denominations have done you stay right there everything is about group identity group membership it's simply this this ego thing here glorified that's all and now put on to the level of group yes you know i think what i said to several of them was in some ways what you say here isn't really so important it's the fact that you wanted to say it the fact that you walked through that door and you wanted to come here and talk to me and all i am is is i can't be god but i'll try to think of maybe what god would want to say back to you and that you would want to to share your weaknesses with god that much and let him now you give me a chance to say back to you that you're good you know so you just try to contextualize it you know you can't dismiss what they've just said and trivialize that and they're too young i mean these were mostly seven to 11 year olds they're too young to have a mature notion of good and evil yet but i i try to pull them into the relational level to say the important thing was that you walk through that door yeah what you say when you get in is all it's work it's accidental who cares what you say it's just that you wanted to say it yeah yeah any other questions you asked at the right time we're just about endings yes what is evil oh god the big one uh [Music] you know it might fit in connection with this a number of the scholastic philosophers and theologians said evil is an absence of being so it's a deficit it's not a bad action this is participation in being so in your contemplation don't so much think of god as a being think of god as being itself right not a being but being itself what you're doing here is collapsing back into this pure being to live separate from being in your own engineered reality that is evil that person will do evil and not call it evil so connected as much as possible with separateness autonomy self-sufficiency you know the very word diabolical from two greek words diablang which means to throw apart to separate the diabolical is always the isolated separated life you never find a a mass murderer who's a strong community person they're always loners they're always people who don't know how to be in communion who don't know how to connect who don't know how to be in relationship so that's as good a definition as any it's an it's a disconnectedness from being itself and that person will do actions that you and i would call evil hopefully you and i are tethered enough that's probably a good image we'll still do little things that flirt with evil you understand but we're tethered enough that we know that we said god that was stupid why did i speak to her that way she didn't deserve that you know and that's the pure being pulling you back into connection but when you're when you completely cut the strings and you're no longer connected to being you will do evil and not call it evil and that's evil yeah maybe one more yes very much a cosmic level yeah not just an individual thank you that's right so i know i came to contemplation in a roundabout way but i know you're getting more practical specific teaching i did give you the boat exercise but but it's more understanding for me the big picture of what's happening inside uh and then maybe you can trust the specific contemplative practice in the church or in the chapel or in your own living room because it seems that if you don't collapse back into this at least every 24-hour period you start getting addicted over here this is very addictive to understand to stay inside of this false self so contemplation is any means you use walking meditation rosary mass a 20-minute sit any means you use to experience this self is for me contemplation and don't get hung up on the posture or the program or the procedure because i think as as there are so many different personalities there's going to be many ways to experience it i look good that's right good for you good for you see we we've got to go in that direction or we're going to keep thinking that you've got to go off to monasteries to be contemplative and as merten said he says here i am in a trappist monastery and half of these guys don't know how to contemplate i think god had to make a way for us to be in union with god that allowed a very busy life a very busy world but if you can find a way to clean the lens each day move into consciously choosing that state i think you can live a very busy life with a crowded group of people and still keep the touchstones and live out of that conscious communion i think women learn that in breastfeeding i'm convinced there's and we men don't have that access point again of pure communion that is not experienced through the head and in fact through activity through activity it's probably why women have a head start thank you good and you had a great few days i hear we always say it's the piece to resistance the trip down to juarez hey fellow ragamuffins thanks for watching the video please hit like or subscribe to join the tribe if you'd like access to some of our premium content you can visit ragamuffintv.com and leave a comment below to get to know some of the community members see you next time

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Id: G8gkinUgtDo

Length: 93min 42sec (5622 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021