You are excused should you truly know

Photo taken at an Art Gallery in Vancouver, BC

Anyone who truly knows creatures
may be excused from listening to sermons,
for every creature is full of God,
and is a book.

~ Meister Eckhart

Each and every creature is a unique word of God, with its own message, its own metaphor, its own energetic style, its own way of showing forth goodness, beauty, and participation in the Great Mystery. Each creature has its own glow and its own unique glory. To be a contemplative is to be able to see each epiphany, to enjoy it, protect it, and draw upon it for the common good.  ~ Richard Rohr

No need to pretend

When you are a “holy fool” you’ve stopped trying to look like something more than you really are. That’s when you know, as you eventually have to know, that we are all naked underneath our clothes, and we don’t need to pretend to be better than we are.

I am who I am, who I am, who I am; and that creation, for some unbelievable reason, is who God loves, precisely in its uniqueness.

My true identity and my deepest freedom comes from God’s infinite love for me, not from what people think of me or say about me. Both the people who praise me and those who hate me are usually doing it for the wrong reasons.

Adapted from Franciscan Mysticism (an unpublished talk) Richard Rohr

Gateway to Silence:
I am who I am in the eyes of God, nothing more and nothing less.

Sitting, Waiting, Listening

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Prayer is largely just being silent: holding the tension instead of even talking it through, offering the moment instead of fixing it by words and ideas, loving reality as it is instead of understanding it fully. Prayer is commonly a … Continue reading →

Less is More

Let Go and Let God

The Spirituality of Subtraction

Meister Eckhart said, “The spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition.” All great spirituality is about letting go. But we have grown up with a capitalist worldview, and it has blinded our spiritual seeing. We tend to think at almost every level that more is better, even though, as E. F. Schumacher said years ago, “less is more.”

There is an alternative worldview. There is a worldview in which all of us can succeed. It isn’t a win/lose capitalist worldview where only a few win and most lose. It’s a win/win worldview—if we’re willing to let go and if we’re willing to recognize that this, right here, right now, is enough. This is all I need. But that can only be true if we move to the level of being and away from the levels of doing and acquiring.

True religion is always pointing us toward being. At that level we experience enoughness, abundance, more than enoughness. If we’ve never been introduced to that world, we will of course try to satisfy ourselves with possessions, accomplishments, important initials after our names, fancy cars, beautiful homes—none of which are bad in themselves. They’re only unable to satisfy; and that’s exactly why we need more and more of them. As the Twelve-Steppers say, “We need more and more of what does not work.” If it worked, we would not need more of it!

“Gateway to Silence: Let go and let God.”

Adapted from The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis
Meditation by: Richard Rohr

The Big Message of an Egg

This is no ordinary breakfast.

As you can see
how sorrowful the rest of the eggs are.

Sunny side up or
Over easy.

Sustenance
Food for the soul.

Cheer up!

The big message:
that there is something essential
that you only know by dying
to who you think you are!

You really don’t know
what life is
until you know
what death is.

” Death and life are two sides of one coin, and you cannot have one without the other.”  Transformative Dying

Image source: Julia Quinn

Start with yes

You Must Start With Yes ~ Richard Rohr’s meditation

By teaching “Do not judge”, the great teachers are saying that you cannot start seeing or understanding anything if you start with “no.” You have to start with a “yes” of basic acceptance, which means not too quickly labeling, analyzing, or categorizing things as in or out, good or bad, up or down. You have to leave the field open, a fie…ld in which God and grace can move. Ego leads with “no” whereas soul leads with “yes.”

The ego seems to strengthen itself by constriction, by being against things; and it feels loss or fear when it opens up. “No” always comes easier than “yes,” and a deep, conscious “yes” is the work of freedom and grace. So the soul lives by expansion instead of constriction. Spiritual teachers want you to live by positive action, an open field, and studied understanding, and not by resistance, knee-jerk reactions, or defensiveness, and so they always say something like “Do not judge,” as judging is merely a control mechanism.

Words and thoughts are invariably dualistic, but pure experience is always non-dualistic. You cannot really experience reality with the judgmental mind, because you are dividing the moment before you give yourself to it. The judgmental mind prevents you from being present to the full moment by trying to “divide and conquer.” Instead, you end up dividing yourself and being conquered.

Source:  Richard Rohr’s meditation adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics