{"id":16387,"date":"2018-01-29T09:51:29","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T14:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16387"},"modified":"2018-01-29T10:02:47","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T15:02:47","slug":"16387","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16387","title":{"rendered":"<strong>The Wisdom Tradition<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PWeb79W8EqQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Wisdom Tradition<\/strong><br \/>\nSunday, January 28, 2018<\/p>\n<p>As we explored over the past two weeks, Jesus reveals the divine image clearly, in a personal face we can relate to and love. The incarnation in Jesus tells us that there is no absolute distinction between matter and spirit, sacred and secular. They both reveal the image of God. Jesus also taught and modeled a path for growing into a living human likeness of that image. In particular, his Sermon on the Mount describes the qualities of those who are living truly and fully in the realm of God. (Later this week and next we\u2019ll take a closer look at this classic teaching.)<\/p>\n<p>My friend and Center for Action and Contemplation faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault writes about the power and depth of Jesus\u2019 teaching:<\/p>\n<p>[Jesus was] a wisdom teacher, a person who . . . clearly emerges out of and works within an ancient tradition called \u201cwisdom,\u201d sometimes known as sophia perennis, which is in fact at the headwaters of all the great religious traditions of the world today. It\u2019s concerned with the transformation of the whole human being. Transformation from what to what? Well, for a starter, from our animal instincts and egocentricity into love and compassion; from a judgmental and dualistic worldview into a nondual acceptingness. This was the message that Jesus, apparently out of nowhere, came preaching and teaching, a message that was radical in its own time and remains equally radical today.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m mindful here of one of my favorite quotes, attributed to the British writer G.K. Chesterton, who reportedly said, \u201cChristianity isn\u2019t a failure; it just hasn\u2019t been tried yet.\u201d [1] In this great cultural monolith that we call Christianity, which has guided the course of western history for more than two thousand years, have we really yet unlocked the power to deeply understand and follow this Jesus along the radical path he is calling us to? . . . .<\/p>\n<p>From [my] wider immersion [in the worldwide wisdom tradition] I\u2019ve been reaffirmed in my sense that Jesus came first and foremost as a teacher of the path of inner transformation. That doesn\u2019t take away the Jesus you may be more familiar with\u2014the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity\u2014but it does add a renewed emphasis on paying attention to what he actually taught and seeing how we can begin to walk it authentically from the inside. It also suggests that he did not really come out of nowhere, but rather that he belongs to a stream of living wisdom that has been flowing through the human condition for at least five thousand years.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Discovering Our Inner Divine Spark<\/strong><br \/>\nMonday, January 29, 2018<\/p>\n<p>Jesus was a remarkable teacher of the Wisdom or Perennial Tradition, a philosophy that has been taught \u201cfrom age to age in culture after culture,\u201d in the words of Eknath Easwaran (1910-1999). Easwaran was an Indian born spiritual teacher and author, as well as a translator and interpreter of early Hindu texts such as the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. I was personally introduced to him during a visit with Henri Nouwen in the late 1980s. Today I\u2019ll share his description of the Perennial Philosophy so you can see for yourself how East meets West in Wisdom teaching. It\u2019s important to recognize that deep truth is true everywhere and that the historical Jesus was, after all, a teacher from the Near East. Even for those who are not Christian, Jesus\u2019 universal wisdom resonates at the non-dual level. As we look at the Sermon on the Mount, I\u2019ll share a few of Easwaran\u2019s own insights and applications from his reading of the Gospel texts.<br \/>\nIn his commentary on Jesus\u2019 Beatitudes [1], Easwaran shares four perennial principles taught by Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) that echo this year\u2019s Daily Meditation theme, \u201cImage and Likeness\u201d:<br \/>\nFirst, there is a \u201clight in the soul that is uncreated and uncreatable\u201d [2]: unconditioned, universal, deathless; in religious language, a core of personality which cannot be separated from God. Eckhart is precise: this is not what the English language calls the \u201csoul,\u201d but some essence in the soul that lies at the very center of consciousness. As Saint Catherine of Genoa put it, \u201cMy me is God: nor do I know my selfhood except in God.\u201d [3] In Indian mysticism this divine core is simply called atman, \u201cthe Self.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Second, this divine essence can be realized. It is not an abstraction, and it need not\u2014Eckhart would say must not\u2014remain hidden under the covering of our everyday personality. It can and should be discovered, so that its presence becomes a reality in daily life.<\/p>\n<p>Third, this discovery is life\u2019s real and highest goal. Our supreme purpose in life is not to make a fortune, nor to pursue pleasure, nor to write our name on history, but to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts.<\/p>\n<p>Last, when we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all\u2014all individuals, all creatures, all of life.<br \/>\nEaswaran\u2019s description is so good and so clear, in my opinion. Fr. Henri Nouwen, surely no light-weight Christian, told me about this wise man when most Christians were not yet free to see these very common threads within other faiths.<\/p>\n<p>Gateway to Presence:<br \/>\nIf you want to go deeper with today\u2019s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.<\/p>\n<p>=======================<\/p>\n<p><strong>How Could Someone Be So Ignorant!<\/strong><br \/>\nBy Oswald Chambers<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Who are You, Lord? \u2014Acts 26:15<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cThe Lord spoke thus to me with a strong hand\u2026\u201d (Isaiah 8:11). There is no escape when our Lord speaks. He always comes using His authority and taking hold of our understanding. Has the voice of God come to you directly? If it has, you cannot mistake the intimate insistence with which it has spoken to you. God speaks in the language you know best\u2014 not through your ears, but through your circumstances.<br \/>\nGod has to destroy our determined confidence in our own convictions. We say, \u201cI know that this is what I should do\u201d \u2014 and suddenly the voice of God speaks in a way that overwhelms us by revealing the depths of our ignorance. We show our ignorance of Him in the very way we decide to serve Him. We serve Jesus in a spirit that is not His, and hurt Him by our defense of Him. We push His claims in the spirit of the devil; our words sound all right, but the spirit is that of an enemy. \u201cHe\u2026rebuked them, and said, \u2018You do not know what manner of spirit you are of\u2019 \u201d (Luke 9:55). The spirit of our Lord in His followers is described in 1 Corinthians 13.<br \/>\nHave I been persecuting Jesus by an eager determination to serve Him in my own way? If I feel I have done my duty, yet have hurt Him in the process, I can be sure that this was not my duty. My way will not be to foster a meek and quiet spirit, only the spirit of self-satisfaction. We presume that whatever is unpleasant is our duty! Is that anything like the spirit of our Lord\u2014 \u201cI delight to do Your will, O my God\u2026\u201d (Psalm 40:8).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Wisdom Tradition Sunday, January 28, 2018 As we explored over the past two weeks, Jesus reveals the divine image clearly, in a personal face we can relate to and love. The incarnation in Jesus tells us that there is no absolute distinction between matter and spirit, sacred and secular. They both reveal the image [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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\/16387"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16387"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16390,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16387\/revisions\/16390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}