{"id":16342,"date":"2018-01-08T09:34:51","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T14:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16342"},"modified":"2018-01-08T09:43:35","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T14:43:35","slug":"contemplative-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16342","title":{"rendered":"Contemplative Consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Contemplative Consciousness<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/divinization-2018-01-08\/\"><strong>Divinization<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Monday, January 8, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>By God\u2019s divine power, God has given us all the things we need for life and for true devotion that allow us to know God, who has called us by God\u2019s own glory and goodness. In this gift, God has given us a guarantee of something very great and wonderful. Through this gift, you are sharers in the divine nature itself. <\/em>\u20142 Peter 1:3-4<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9KIhYZQ_ovw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nSpirituality is primarily about human transformation in this life, not just salvation in a future realm. While Western Christianity lost much of this emphasis, and became rather practical and often superficial, the Eastern church taught <em>theosis<\/em> or divinization as the very real process of growing in union and likeness with God in this world. [1] This is one of the many losses Christianity experienced in the Great Schism of 1054, when the popes of East and West mutually excommunicated one another. The later Protestant Reformation, while needed, did not reclaim this wisdom and further split the church, each side losing something of value.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, most of Judeo-Christian history reflects a split from depth and interiority (which some identify with the feminine). This led us to rely on dualistic thinking, which is incapable of comprehending, much less experiencing, the mystical, nonviolent, or non-dual level. With the rational mind, we literally could not imagine God and humanity being one, or being one with our neighbor, because the dualistic mind always splits things apart and takes sides. The contemplative mind or non-dual thinking allows us to see things in wholes instead of in parts.<\/p>\n<p>Lest any Catholics or Protestants think I am dredging up some old condemned heresy, consider these words from Pope John Paul II: \u201cThe venerable and ancient tradition of the Eastern Churches, that is the teaching of the Cappadocian Fathers on divinization (<em>theosis<\/em>), passed into the tradition of all the Eastern Churches and is part of their common heritage. This can be summarized in the thought already expressed by St. Irenaeus at the end of the second century: God passed into man so that man might pass over to God.\u201d [2]<\/p>\n<p>Popes do not quote such statements unless they know they are part of the Perennial Tradition and go back to the early <em>undivided church<\/em>. Pope John Paul II was acknowledging that the Western church had largely lost its foundational belief in divinization, and in the practical order had even denied its possibility. Instead, we were just \u201csinners in the hands of an angry God\u201d and even \u201ctotally depraved.\u201d No wonder humans suffer from such lack of self-esteem today. We haven\u2019t told them the central and foundational Good News! I believe this is the source of a lot of the anger and disillusionment with Christianity today.<\/p>\n<p>Contemplation allows us to experience the reality of our participation in God\u2019s nature for ourselves. Once we plug into the Divine consciousness, God can work through us for the good of the world.<\/p>\n<p>__________________________________________________<\/p>\n<div class=\"row title-row\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"utmost-devo-title col col-sm-12 col-xs-12\">\n<h2 class=\"entry-title\">Worship<\/h2>\n<h4>By <a href=\"https:\/\/utmost.org\/oswald-chambers-bio\">Oswald Chambers<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><strong>He moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. \u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?version=31&amp;search=Genesis+12%3A8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Genesis 12:8<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<div class=\"row entry-meta\">\n<div class=\"col-sm-4\">\n<div class=\"top-sharing\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"top-rule\"><\/div>\n<section class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love-gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard it for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded (see\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Exodus+16:20\">Exodus 16:20<\/a>). God will never allow you to keep a spiritual blessing completely for yourself. It must be given back to Him so that He can make it a blessing to others.<\/p>\n<p>Bethel is the symbol of fellowship with God; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abram \u201cpitched his tent\u201d between the two. The lasting value of our public service for God is measured by the depth of the intimacy of our private times of fellowship and oneness with Him. Rushing in and out of worship is wrong every time\u2014 there is always plenty of time to worship God. Days set apart for quiet can be a trap, detracting from the need to have daily quiet time with God. That is why we must \u201cpitch our tents\u201d where we will always have quiet times with Him, however noisy our times with the world may be. There are not three levels of spiritual life\u2014 worship, waiting, and work. Yet some of us seem to jump like spiritual frogs from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God\u2019s idea is that the three should go together as one. They were always together in the life of our Lord and in perfect harmony. It is a discipline that must be developed; it will not happen overnight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Contemplative Consciousness Divinization Monday, January 8, 2018 By God\u2019s divine power, God has given us all the things we need for life and for true devotion that allow us to know God, who has called us by God\u2019s own glory and goodness. In this gift, God has given us a guarantee of something very great [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16342"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16345,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16342\/revisions\/16345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}