{"id":17325,"date":"2018-10-08T10:23:19","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T14:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17325"},"modified":"2018-10-08T10:47:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T14:47:49","slug":"dying-by-brightness-knowing-that-we-dont-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17325","title":{"rendered":"Dying by Brightness &#038; Knowing that We Don\u2019t Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Unknowing: Week 2<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Dying by Brightness<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Sunday, October 7, 2018<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7X9d4ubvWH4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nI die by brightness and the Holy Spirit. \u2014Thomas Merton (1915-1968) [1]<br \/>\nFor most of us, growth is a long process of being drawn \u201cby brightness and the Holy Spirit,\u201d as Merton says. I interpret this brightness as being overwhelmed and undone by Immense Mystery and Goodness. Yet the Holy Spirit leads and must direct this undoing. We cannot take control, and this is our \u201cdying\u201d as we have to gradually let go of our need for control, our small self-serving worldviews, and our comforting certitudes about which we are really not certain at all. It is a dying that we must both allow from our side and also allow to be done to us\u2014in other words, both an active and a receptive surrender.<br \/>\nFor example, Jesus said, \u201cWhen you pray, do not babble on like the pagans do\u201d (Matthew 6:7). Contemplation instead waits for the moments, accepts the moments, and trusts the moments that come like a \u201ccreation out of nothing\u201d instead of filling the silence with our own words and ideas. Contemplation is essentially a nondual consciousness that overcomes the gap between being and doing. It allows us to live trustfully in our naked being-in-God, without dressing it up with performance of any kind.<br \/>\nThe reason why the true contemplative-in-action is still somewhat rare is that most of us, even and often in religion, are largely educated in dualistic thinking (quick, certain, and smug judgments). Judgmentalism and dismissiveness does not overcome distinctions but actually magnifies them. When we try to use this limited tool of differentiation and critique in prayer and relationships, we quickly see its limitations. The fatal mistake of ego \u201cconsciousness\u201d is that it excludes and eliminates the unconscious (where both deep goodness and deep badness lie hidden)\u2014which ironically means our common consciousness is actually not conscious at all! But the human ego prefers knowing and being certain over being honest. \u201cDon\u2019t bother me with the truth, I want to be in control,\u201d it invariably says. Most people who think they are fully conscious or \u201csmart\u201d and in control, have a big iron manhole cover over their unconscious. It does give them a sense of being right and in charge, but it seldom yields compassion, community, or wisdom.<br \/>\nWe are led forward by brightness, a larger force field, that is willing to include the negative, the problematic, the difficult, the unknown\u2014all of which I do not fully understand. \u201cTake the log out of your own eye first and then you will see clearly,\u201d Jesus says (Luke 6:42). By the log, I think he is referring to the big thing we do not want to see, which many of us call \u201cthe shadow self.\u201d God\u2019s brightness does not exclude or deny anything. Divine perfection is precisely the ability to include imperfection; whereas we think we must exclude, deny, and even punish it! The flow of grace is an increasing ability to forgive reality for being what it is\u2014instead of what we want it to be!<br \/>\nThe beauty of the unconscious, whether personal or collective, is that it knows a great deal, but it also knows that it does not know, cannot say, dare not try to prove or assert too strongly. What it does know is that there is always more\u2014and all words will fall short and all concepts will be incomplete. The contemplative is precisely the person who agrees to live in that kind of blinding brightness. The paradox, of course, is that it does not feel like brightness at all, but what John of the Cross (1542-1591) called a \u201cluminous darkness\u201d and others identify as \u201clearned ignorance.\u201d<br \/>\nWe cannot grow in the integrative dance of action and contemplation without a strong tolerance for ambiguity, an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety, and a willingness not to know\u2014and not even to need to know. What else would give us peace and contentment?<\/p>\n<p>_________________________<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unknowing: Week 2<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Knowing that We Don\u2019t Know<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Monday, October 8, 2018<\/strong><br \/>\nI encourage you, then, to make experience, not knowledge, your aim. Knowledge often leads to arrogance, but this humble feeling never lies to you. \u2014Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing [1]<br \/>\nIn meditation, we move beyond doctrines and dogmas to inner experience. When we move to the level of experience, we see that this self, which is primarily a \u201cradio receiver,\u201d is not to be taken too seriously, for it is always changing stations and is filled with static and interference. When I am faithful to meditation, I quickly overcome the illusion that my correct thinking, or thinking more about something, can ever get me there. If that were so, every good PhD would be a saint!<br \/>\nYou see, information is not the same as transformation. Even good and correct thinking is trapped inside my little mind, my particular culture, my form of education, my parental conditioning\u2014all of which are good and all of which are bad. Great mysteries are naturally experienced and known within our small and limited contexts, so we should be much more humble about our own opinions and thoughts. How could the Infinite ever be fully or rightly received by the mere finite?<br \/>\nAlongside all our knowing must be the equal and remaining \u201cknowing that I do not know.\u201d That\u2019s why the classic schools of prayer spoke of both kataphatic knowing\u2014through images and words\u2014and apophatic knowing\u2014through silence, symbols, and beyond words. Apophatic knowing is the empty space around the words, allowing God to fill in all the gaps in an \u201cunspeakable\u201d way. The apophatic way of knowing was largely lost to the West by the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, and Western Christianity has suffered because of it. We wanted to match the new rationalism with what felt like solid knowing, and we mimicked the secular mind instead of what Paul calls \u201cknowing spiritual things in a spiritual way\u201d (1 Corinthians 2:13). We lost the unique access point of the mystics, the poets, artists, and saints (who usually did not even know they were using this alternative consciousness).<br \/>\nStrangely enough, this unknowing is a new kind of understanding. We do have a word for it: the old word faith. Faith is a kind of knowing that doesn\u2019t need to know for certain and yet doesn\u2019t dismiss knowledge either. With faith, we don\u2019t need to obtain or hold all knowledge because we know that we are being held inside a Much Larger Frame and Perspective. As Paul puts it, \u201cFor now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known myself\u201d (1 Corinthians 13:12). It is a knowing by participation with\u2014instead of an observation of from a position of separation. It is knowing subject to subject instead of subject to object.<br \/>\nIt took me years to understand this, even though this is straight from the Franciscan school of philosophy. Love must always precede knowledge. The mind alone cannot get us there (which is the great arrogance of most Western religion). Prayer in my later years has become letting myself be nakedly known, exactly as I am, in all my ordinariness and shadow, face to face, without any masks or religious makeup. Such nakedness is a falling into the unified field underneath reality, what Thomas Merton called \u201ca hidden wholeness,\u201d [2] where we know in a different way and from a different source. This is the contemplative\u2019s unique access point: knowing by union with a thing, where we can enjoy an intuitive grasp of wholeness, a truth beyond words, beyond any need or capacity to prove anything right or wrong. This is the contemplative mind which religion should have directly taught, but which it largely lost.<\/p>\n<p>______________________________________________<\/p>\n<p>Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling<\/p>\n<p>October 8, 2018<\/p>\n<p>I LOVE YOU WITH an everlasting Love. The human mind cannot comprehend My constancy. Your emotions flicker and falter in the face of varying circumstances, and you tend to project your fickle feelings onto Me. Thus you do not benefit fully from My unfailing Love. You need to look beyond the flux of circumstances and discover Me gazing lovingly back at you. This awareness of My Presence\u00a0strengthens you as you receive and respond to My Love. I am the same yesterday, today, and forever! Let My Love flow into you continually. Your need for Me is as constant as the outflow of My Love to you.<\/p>\n<p><strong> JEREMIAH 31: 3; The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: &#8220;I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>EXODUS 15: 13; In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>HEBREWS 13: 8;\u00a0Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unknowing: Week 2 Dying by Brightness Sunday, October 7, 2018 I die by brightness and the Holy Spirit. \u2014Thomas Merton (1915-1968) [1] For most of us, growth is a long process of being drawn \u201cby brightness and the Holy Spirit,\u201d as Merton says. I interpret this brightness as being overwhelmed and undone by Immense Mystery [&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\/17325"}],"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=17325"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17329,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17325\/revisions\/17329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}