The Evolution of Consciousness
Monday, September 25, 2017 (Richard Rohr)

Let’s take a look at the history of mysticism to find our roots and see how we had it, how and why we largely lost it, and to recognize that now we are in the midst of a rediscovery and new appreciation for the mystical, nondual, or contemplative mind (use whichever word you prefer; they are all pointing in the same direction).
Before 800 BC, it seems most people experienced their union with the Divine and Reality through myth, poetry, dance, music, fertility, and nature. Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) called this Pre-axial Consciousness. Although living in an often-violent world and focusing on survival, people still knew that they belonged to something cosmic and meaningful. They inherently participated in an utterly enchanted universe where the “supernatural” was everywhere. This was the pre-existent “church that existed since Abel,” spoken of by St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, and the Second Vatican Council. Owen Barfield (1898-1997) called this state of mind “original participation.” [1] It is reflected in most of the indigenous religions to this day. As Pope John Paul II said, Native Americans have known from the beginning what it’s taking us Catholics a long time to realize: that the Great Spirit has always been available and loveable in the natural world. [2]
What Jaspers calls Axial Consciousness [3] emerged worldwide with the Eastern sages, the Jewish prophets, and the Greek philosophers, all coalescing around 500 BC. This consciousness laid the foundations of all the world’s religions and major philosophies. It was the birth of systematic and conceptual thought. In the East, it often took the form of holistic thinking—found in Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism—which allowed people to experience forms of participation with reality, themselves, and the divine. In the West, the Greek genius gave us a kind of mediated participation through thought, reason, and philosophy. Many people seemed to have enjoyed very real unity with the Divine on many levels. “The Presence” has been with us since “the Spirit hovered over the void” (Genesis 1:1). There is little evidence that God took a vacation from Creation anytime afterward.
Among the people called Israel there was a growing and dramatic realization, perhaps as early as 1200 BC, of intimate union and even group participation with God. They recognized enlightened persons like Moses or Isaiah, but they did something more. Many Hebrew prophets widened the notion of participation to the Jewish group and beyond. The people as a whole were being drawn into this “Divine Espousal”; participation was historical and communal, not just individual. Only the whole could hold and maintain the realization of union with the divine. It is, and always has been, too much for an isolated individual. Yet during recent centuries, we have constricted God and ourselves to a path for personal salvation, with tragic results.
Both the Hebrew Scriptures and experience created a matrix into which a new awareness could be communicated. Jesus soon offered the world full and final participation: union with God, union with neighbor, union with creation, union with oneself, and even union with enemy. The net and sweep of participation was total. Given this, it is so sad and strange that we created a Christian religion with many separate denominations; we are too often known for elitism, boundary-keeping, shaming, and exclusion. We have not been well practiced in union, yet it was meant to be our art form!

Gateway to Silence:
Practice being present.

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The “Go” of Relationship
By Oswald Chambers

Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. —Matthew 5:41
Our Lord’s teaching can be summed up in this: the relationship that He demands for us is an impossible one unless He has done a supernatural work in us. Jesus Christ demands that His disciple does not allow even the slightest trace of resentment in his heart when faced with tyranny and injustice. No amount of enthusiasm will ever stand up to the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His servant. Only one thing will bear the strain, and that is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ Himself— a relationship that has been examined, purified, and tested until only one purpose remains and I can truly say, “I am here for God to send me where He will.” Everything else may become blurred, but this relationship with Jesus Christ must never be.
The Sermon on the Mount is not some unattainable goal; it is a statement of what will happen in me when Jesus Christ has changed my nature by putting His own nature in me. Jesus Christ is the only One who can fulfill the Sermon on the Mount.
If we are to be disciples of Jesus, we must be made disciples supernaturally. And as long as we consciously maintain the determined purpose to be His disciples, we can be sure that we are not disciples. Jesus says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you…” (John 15:16). That is the way the grace of God begins. It is a constraint we can never escape; we can disobey it, but we can never start it or produce it ourselves. We are drawn to God by a work of His supernatural grace, and we can never trace back to find where the work began. Our Lord’s making of a disciple is supernatural. He does not build on any natural capacity of ours at all. God does not ask us to do the things that are naturally easy for us— He only asks us to do the things that we are perfectly fit to do through His grace, and that is where the cross we must bear will always come.

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