What Is the False Self?

Father Richard describes the false self in the CAC’s online course Immortal Diamond: 

The false self is all the things we pretend to be and think we are. It is the pride, arrogance, title, costume, role, and degree we take to be ourselves. It’s almost entirely created by our minds, our cultures, and our families. It is what’s passing and what’s going to die, and it is not who we are. For many people this is all they have—but all of it is going to die when we die.  

When we buy into the false self and overidentify with it, we have to keep overidentifying with it, defending it, and promoting it as “the best.” The false self is overidentified on a social level, a corporate level, a national level, an ethnic level. There is the Catholic false self, the Protestant false self, the American false self—we can pick on whatever group we want. 

Many people in the United States really think that God has shed unique grace on our country—but have they ever walked outside our borders? There’s plenty of grace to the North and the South, in Europe and Africa. Grace is everywhere! When I was growing up as a Catholic boy in Kansas, we viewed all Protestants as heretics who were going to hell, but then I grew up and met a few nice Methodists, and I found out they thought I was going to hell too! It’s just laughable.  

We have to undercut the illusion right at the beginning, and when we do that, we discover the True Self “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Our True Self in God becomes our touchstone and absolutely levels the playing field. It gives us a new set of eyes.  

We each have different faces and different colors of skin; some of us have hair, some of us don’t; some are tall, some are a little shorter. If we are living out of the false self, all we can do is measure, compare, evaluate, and label. That’s what I call dualistic thinking, and it’s where our world lives. Many people think that all they have are these external costumes—but when we put on the eyes and mind of Christ, we have a new pair of glasses. We can look around and know that the world is filled with infinite images of God. Isn’t that a nicer world to live in? It’s the ultimate political-social critique.  

I hope we’re all moving in the direction of knowing who we really are, letting go of our preoccupation with how we look or measure up. As we come to a deeper acceptance of our True Self, we know our identity comes from God’s love, not from what other people think or say about us. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to present our best face; in fact, my mother would be disappointed if she thought I were saying otherwise. We just can’t take any of it too seriously. 

What Is the False Self?

Father Richard describes the false self in the CAC’s online course Immortal Diamond: 

The false self is all the things we pretend to be and think we are. It is the pride, arrogance, title, costume, role, and degree we take to be ourselves. It’s almost entirely created by our minds, our cultures, and our families. It is what’s passing and what’s going to die, and it is not who we are. For many people this is all they have—but all of it is going to die when we die.  

When we buy into the false self and overidentify with it, we have to keep overidentifying with it, defending it, and promoting it as “the best.” The false self is overidentified on a social level, a corporate level, a national level, an ethnic level. There is the Catholic false self, the Protestant false self, the American false self—we can pick on whatever group we want. 

Many people in the United States really think that God has shed unique grace on our country—but have they ever walked outside our borders? There’s plenty of grace to the North and the South, in Europe and Africa. Grace is everywhere! When I was growing up as a Catholic boy in Kansas, we viewed all Protestants as heretics who were going to hell, but then I grew up and met a few nice Methodists, and I found out they thought I was going to hell too! It’s just laughable.  

We have to undercut the illusion right at the beginning, and when we do that, we discover the True Self “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Our True Self in God becomes our touchstone and absolutely levels the playing field. It gives us a new set of eyes.  

We each have different faces and different colors of skin; some of us have hair, some of us don’t; some are tall, some are a little shorter. If we are living out of the false self, all we can do is measure, compare, evaluate, and label. That’s what I call dualistic thinking, and it’s where our world lives. Many people think that all they have are these external costumes—but when we put on the eyes and mind of Christ, we have a new pair of glasses. We can look around and know that the world is filled with infinite images of God. Isn’t that a nicer world to live in? It’s the ultimate political-social critique.  

I hope we’re all moving in the direction of knowing who we really are, letting go of our preoccupation with how we look or measure up. As we come to a deeper acceptance of our True Self, we know our identity comes from God’s love, not from what other people think or say about us. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to present our best face; in fact, my mother would be disappointed if she thought I were saying otherwise. We just can’t take any of it too seriously. 

True Self / Separate Self

This week the Daily Meditations focus on the fifth of CAC’s Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy: 

The “separate” self is the major problem, not the shadow self which only takes deeper forms of disguise. [1]  

Father Richard Rohr believes that growth in spirituality involves detaching from our separate or false self and living from our True Self. Richard explains: 

I learned the terms “True Self” and “false self” from Thomas Merton (1915–1968)—words he used to clarify what Jesus surely meant when he said that we must die to ourselves or we must “lose ourselves to find ourselves” (Mark 8:35). Merton rightly recognized that it was not the body self that had to “die” (which much of Christian history seemed to believe), but the “false self.”

The “separate” self is the major problem, not the shadow self which only takes deeper forms of disguise. [1]  

Thomas Merton memorably describes his mystical experience of the True Self: 

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut [now Fourth and Muhammad Ali Boulevard], in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness.… The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream…. 

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.… I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift…. 

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. [3]

Mining for an Immortal Diamond 

Richard Rohr invites us to the transformative process of discovering our True Selves: 

In the first ending to Mark’s Gospel—the oldest gospel—the text ends on a very disappointing, and thus likely truthful, note: “They ran away from the tomb frightened out of their wits. They said nothing to a soul, for they were afraid” (see Mark 16:5–8).  

Such running from resurrection has been a prophecy for Christianity and much of religion. I interpret this as the human temptation to run from and deny not just the divine presence, but our own True Selves—our souls, our inner destiny, our true identity. Our True Self is that part of us that knows who we are and whose we are, although largely unconsciously. Our false self is just who we think we are—but thinking doesn’t make it so.  

We are made for transcendence and endless horizons, but our small ego usually gets in the way until we become aware of its petty preoccupations and eventually seek a deeper truth. It is like mining for a diamond. We must dig deep; and yet we seem reluctant, even afraid, to do so.  

The question the three women ask in this first moment of would-be resurrection is still ours: “Who will roll away the rock?” (Mark 16:3). Who will help us in this mining operation for the True Self? What will it take to find my True Self? How do I even know there is an “immortal diamond” underneath and behind this rock of my ego, my specific life experience, my own culture? Up to now, it has been common to religiously believe that Jesus’ physical body could really “resurrect.” That was much easier than asking whether we could really change or resurrect. It got us off the hook—the hook of growing up, of taking the search for our True Selves seriously.  

Up to now, we have been more driven by outer authority than drawn in by the calm and loving inner authority (the in-dwelling Holy Spirit) of prayer, practice, and inner experience. This has a much better chance of allowing us to meet and know our True Self. For all practical purposes, this change of identity from the separate self to the connected and True Self is the major—almost seismic—shift in motivation and consciousness itself that mature religion rightly calls conversion. It is the very heart of all religious transformation (“changing forms”). Without it, religion is mostly a mere belonging system or a mere belief system, but it does not radically change our consciousness or motivation.  

The clarification and rediscovery of the True Self lays a solid foundation—and a clear initial goal—for all religion. We cannot build any serious spiritual house if we do not first find something solid and foundational to build on—inside our self! “Like knows like” is the principle. God-in-us already knows, loves, and serves God in everything else.  

For CAC teacher James Finley, mystical nonviolence reminds us of our deepest identity in God. 

God created you as God’s beloved, as someone to whom God could completely give the infinity of Godself away as the mystery of who you are in your nothingness without God. All that is true for stones, trees, and stars too. You’ve been endowed by God with the gift to realize it, the gift to taste that oneness.…  

Here, then, is the first taste of what I would call mystical nonviolence: that we will not do violence to the infinity of ourselves, that we will not do violence to the God-given, Godly nature of life itself, that I will not go around acting as if I’m nothing but the self to which things happen in the idolatry of conditioned states, the closed horizon of what my eyes can see, my hands can touch, and my mind can grasp. If I act out of that idolatry, I commit violence against the infinity and divinity of every breath and heartbeat—unexplainably so.  

In the Gospels, they asked Jesus, “What is the greatest commandment?” (Mark 12:28). That is to say, “Of all these beautiful things you say about God, about life, what is it that, if we would ground ourselves in that, everything that you say would fall into place?” Jesus didn’t respond with a doctrine…. Jesus said, “The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. That’s the greatest commandment” (see Mark 12:30).…  

But there’s a catch to this: our wayward ways. We’re exiled from the generosity of God pouring God’s self out as life itself. We know it’s true, but we’re estranged from it. This is the meaning of “original sin,” but not as a blight against the soul. Rather, it means we’re exiled from the divinity of every breath and heartbeat, because to taste the divinity of every breath and heartbeat means fear has no foundations.…  

So, we ask: “How can I learn, Lord? How can I learn to be free from the tyranny of fear in the midst of my fears? How can I learn to be free from the tyranny of my brokenness in the midst of my brokenness?”…  

God is the presence that spares us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things. God depends on us to protect ourselves and each other, to be nurturing, loving, protective people. When suffering is there, God depends on us to reach out and touch the suffering with love that it might dissolve in love.  

But here’s the thing: To be present to suffering and to touch the suffering with love, that it might dissolve in love, means to be grounded in the peace that is not dependent on the outcome of the effort because, regardless of how it turns out, God is unexplainably taking us to God, breath by breath, moment by moment. That’s mystical nonviolence. 

_______________________________________

Sarah Young; Jesus Listens.

Jesus, my good Shepherd, I want You to be my primary Focus. You are all around me—constantly aware of me—taking note of every thought and prayer. Many, many things vie for my attention, but I must not let them crowd You out. Directing my mind toward You requires very little energy, yet it blesses me immensely. The more I focus on You, the more fully You live in me and work through me. Help me remember that You are with me each moment of my life, watching over me with perfect Love. Your Word teaches that Your unfailing Love surrounds the one who trusts in You. You’ve been training me to be increasingly aware of Your loving Presence, even when other things demand my attention. Lord, You are the constant in my life that provides stability and direction in an unpredictable environment. You are the same yesterday, today, and forever. So You’re the perfect fixed point for me to focus on while making my way through this ever-changing world. As I keep redirecting my thoughts to You, please show me the way forward—and give me Your Peace. In Your steadfast Name, Amen

JOHN 10:11; “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

PSALM 32:10; Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord’s unfailing love. surrounds the one who trusts in him.

HEBREWS 13:8 NKJV; Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.

JOHN 14:27 NKJV; Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 227). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Nonviolence educator Kazu Haga writes that a commitment to nonviolence requires us to heal any division between ourselves and those we consider “other”: 

When we talk about building a world where all people can achieve justice and fulfill our potential as human beings, we really mean all people. That is Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s vision of “Beloved Community,” where all people can live in peace. Beloved Community is an acknowledgment that the only way for a peace to ever be sustainable, the only way that our people can always be safe, is if all people are free.… 

Building Beloved Community is not about loving the people who are easy to love. It is about cultivating love for those that are difficult to love. Those people over there. The others. Those who root for the Los Angeles Lakers [DM team: Haga is a passionate Boston Celtics fan]. The people who voted for that guy. The people who work in the very systems that are destroying our communities. The corrupt corporate CEO. The foreign dictator responsible for countless deaths.  

If you are not struggling to love people, if you are not trying to build understanding with those you disagree with, then you are not really doing the work of building Beloved Community. The work of building Beloved Community is understanding that we’re not trying to win over people, but to win people over. Historically, winning a war has meant defeating the opponent. There is a clear winner and a clear loser…. But in nonviolence, there is no real victory until everyone is on the same side.  

Dr. King once wrote, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.” [1] While violence may be effective in temporarily keeping us safe from harm, it can never create relationships. Violence can never heal the harm that has been done. Violence can never bring about reconciliation. Violence can never create Beloved Community. Only love can do that. [2] 

Father Thomas Keating (1923–2018) saw love and peacemaking as inextricable from one another and from God.  

We’re all like localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence. Love is our very nature. Love is our first, middle, and last name. Love is all; not [love as] sentimentality, but love that is self-forgetful and free of self-interest.  This is also marvelously exemplified in Gandhi’s life and work. He never tried to win anything. He just tried to show love, and that’s what ahimsa really means. It’s not just a negative. Nonviolence doesn’t capture its meaning. It means to show love tirelessly, no matter what happens. That’s the meaning of turning the other cheek. Once in a while you have to defend somebody, but it means you’re always willing to suffer first for the cause—that is to say, for communion with your enemies. If you overcome your enemies, you’ve failed. If you make your enemies your partners, God has succeeded.

_________________________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Listens

Precious Savior, You’ve been helping me understand that Joy is a choice. I don’t have much control over my circumstances, but I can still choose to be joyful. You created me a little lower than the heavenly beings, and You gave me an amazing mind—with the ability to think things through and make decisions. I’ve learned that my thoughts are extremely important because they strongly influence my emotions and behavior. So endeavoring to make good thought-choices is well worth my efforts. Whenever I’m feeling joyless, I need to pause and remember that You are with me—watching over me continuously. Thank You, Lord, for loving me with unfailing Love and for giving me Your Spirit. This Holy One within me helps me line up my thinking with the glorious truths of Scripture. Your continual Presence is a biblical promise, and I long to find You in the midst of my circumstances. As I’m seeking You, at first I can see only my problems. But if I keep on looking, eventually I’ll see the Light of Your Presence shining upon my difficulties—reflecting sparkles of Joy back to me! In Your brilliant, joyful Name, Jesus, Amen

PSALM 8:5 ESV; 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings[ a] and crowned him with glory and honor.

GENESIS 28:15; I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”.

PSALM 107:8; Let them give thanks to the LORD for His loving devotion and His wonders to the sons of men. Let them praise the LORD for his great love and for the wonderful things he has done for them. Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!

ROMANS 15:13; May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 226). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

The Beloved Community

Nonviolence educator Kazu Haga writes that a commitment to nonviolence requires us to heal any division between ourselves and those we consider “other”: 

When we talk about building a world where all people can achieve justice and fulfill our potential as human beings, we really mean all people. That is Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s vision of “Beloved Community,” where all people can live in peace. Beloved Community is an acknowledgment that the only way for a peace to ever be sustainable, the only way that our people can always be safe, is if all people are free.… 

Building Beloved Community is not about loving the people who are easy to love. It is about cultivating love for those that are difficult to love. Those people over there. The others. Those who root for the Los Angeles Lakers [DM team: Haga is a passionate Boston Celtics fan]. The people who voted for that guy. The people who work in the very systems that are destroying our communities. The corrupt corporate CEO. The foreign dictator responsible for countless deaths.  

If you are not struggling to love people, if you are not trying to build understanding with those you disagree with, then you are not really doing the work of building Beloved Community. The work of building Beloved Community is understanding that we’re not trying to win over people, but to win people over. Historically, winning a war has meant defeating the opponent. There is a clear winner and a clear loser…. But in nonviolence, there is no real victory until everyone is on the same side.  

Dr. King once wrote, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.” [1] While violence may be effective in temporarily keeping us safe from harm, it can never create relationships. Violence can never heal the harm that has been done. Violence can never bring about reconciliation. Violence can never create Beloved Community. Only love can do that. [2] 

Father Thomas Keating (1923–2018) saw love and peacemaking as inextricable from one another and from God.  

We’re all like localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence. Love is our very nature. Love is our first, middle, and last name. Love is all; not [love as] sentimentality, but love that is self-forgetful and free of self-interest. 

This is also marvelously exemplified in Gandhi’s life and work. He never tried to win anything. He just tried to show love, and that’s what ahimsa really means. It’s not just a negative. Nonviolence doesn’t capture its meaning. It means to show love tirelessly, no matter what happens. That’s the meaning of turning the other cheek. Once in a while you have to defend somebody, but it means you’re always willing to suffer first for the cause—that is to say, for communion with your enemies. If you overcome your enemies, you’ve failed. If you make your enemies your partners, God has succeeded. [3] 

This is from a book that might be helpful

This movement is bold, red, spray-painted letters prophetically confronting the Church’s infatuation with separation and retribution, a beautifully obnoxious sign declaring, “Wake up! Wake up to the image and likeness of God with us, God within us. Repent!” We are in the midst of a great repentance, a re-forming, a de-, and re-construction, a changing of the way we think, a re-aligning with the kindness of God revealed through Christ’s reconciling work of the cross. This movement is a messy, passionate, obnoxious, authentic search for certainty; for the Greater Love Cornerstone so many within the church have rejected. It’s a crude, impudent, and offensive declaration that there is no death love hasn’t defeated, no hell love hasn’t invaded, no delusion love hasn’t infiltrated, no darkness love hasn’t illuminated—there is nothing that separates us from reconciling love. Dear church, this 2000-year-old Deconstruction Movement is part of the reformation we’ve longed for, the revival we’ve prayed for, the billion-soul harvest the church has prophesied, a people in search of Kindness. It’s a repentance movement full of sons and daughters growing sure in love—and fathers and mothers growing confident in reconciliation. Dear church, welcome to the revolution.

Clark, Jason. Leaving and Finding Jesus (p. 65). A Family Story. Kindle Edition.

Inclusive Love Heals All

Franciscan sister Nancy Schreck locates Jesus’ commitment to nonviolence in God’s unconditional and inclusive love. 

The starting place is Jesus’ vision of and commitment to the inclusive love of God that welcomes all to the one table and creates a worldview that critiques any kind of exclusion as a form of violence. One of the radical nonviolent actions of Jesus therefore is to eat with “sinners” and “tax collectors” and all those others which the society of that time excluded. Sharing a common table is nonviolent resistance to the violence of division. In Jesus’ vision, we are all part of one body held in God’s all embracing love. This embrace makes each one a sister and brother and thus makes nonviolence possible. One might say therefore that nonviolence is only possible in community.  

True community creates an aversion to the roots of violence which define another person as “other,” that is, as outside the circle of care. True community roots out violence by dismantling the motive behind so much violence, that the other is not valued…. The person convicted of a crime as well as the victim of that crime are both members of the one body embraced by God’s inclusive love. This kind of love rescues and heals the enemy from violence and hatred [and] … incorporates as a member of the community the one from whom we might be experiencing violence.  

Schreck points to healing as a natural consequence of belonging:  

If the starting place for exploring the nonviolence of Jesus is in his vison of the all embracing love of God, our reflection is furthered by his vision of universal healing. This approach to life includes hope for the basic well-being of the other. This was Jesus’ deepest wish for each person he encountered. In the gospel we see him moving among so many kept outside the circle of well-being by institutional violence which claimed that healing and well-being belonged to some and not to others. Jesus always found those who had been pushed outside the circle of care and invited them back into the community through the door of healing. He taught the community that its well-being was tied to the well-being of each member.  

Jesus also taught that illness is not the result or fault of personal sin. Rather, the focus should be on the sinful assertion that healing is available to some and not to others—with these “others” most often being poor people and those excluded from the one table. Jesus extends healing, holy power, to the rejected and untouchable of the world. In so doing he demonstrates that no one is outside the circle of well-being. In the life of Jesus bodily healing functions as a social metaphor for another kind of healing….  

The kind of radical love Jesus knows in God creates an awareness that human life is not about appeasing a vengeful God, but about responding in love. This is a spirituality purified of violence at its very roots. 

Based on the gospel song of the same name by Rev. Dr. Charles Albert Tindley, one of the most influential African American ministers of the turn of the 20th century, “We Shall Overcome” became synonymous with the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. The song was originally said to be sung by tobacco workers striking in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1945. By 1950, however, the song became a favorite among activist singers like Pete Seeger. By 1963, Joan Baez was leading a crowd of 300,000 protestors at the Lincoln Memorial in the song, and in 1968 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted the lyrics in his last sermon before he was assassinated.

Nonviolence Begins Within

This week’s Daily Meditations begin with Richard Rohr’s teaching that our ability to choose nonviolence is inextricably tied to our own inner healing. 

There is always a linkage between the inner journey of contemplation and our ability to work against violence in the world, in our culture, and in ourselves. As long as we bring to our actions a violence that primarily exists within ourselves, nothing really changes. The future is always the same as the present. That’s why we have to change the present.   

We have to begin within and allow ourselves to be transformed. Then the future can be different than the present. Otherwise, we have no evidence that we’re going to do anything different tomorrow, next week, or next year. We’re going to react next week to the violence that emerges in our wider culture, in our institutions, and in our families just as we react right now. And so we always have to return to what I have often called “cleaning the lens.” Authentic spirituality is always on the first level about us—as individuals. It always is. We want it to be about our partners, our coworkers, or our pastors. We want to use spirituality to change other people, but true spirituality always changes us.  

We founded the CAC to give activists a grounded spirituality so they could work for social change from a place other than anger, ideology, or mere willpower. Many people intellectually accept Gandhi’s or Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings on nonviolence and try to execute it by willpower, but that’s not what I call a “mystery of participation.” Such people aren’t participating in a qualitatively new and different life in themselves. They have changed their minds but not their hearts. In real moments of tension and trial, such people are as much a part of the problem as the people they oppose. Their will and egos are still totally in control with their need to be right, to win, and to have success, which almost always leads to violence of some kind.  

I think that was the great disappointment with political activism and even many of the nonviolent movements of the 1960s and 70s in the U.S. It was not really transformation. It wasn’t really coming from what we would call—to use a very old-fashioned, religious word—holiness. Such action was often not coming from holiness, but simply the intellect and will, which are not the transformed self.  

What we’re seeking is pure or clear action. When we find inside ourselves the positive place of communion and holiness, there’s nothing to react to. Such action can be very firm, because it comes from that place where we know what’s real, what’s good, what’s true, and what’s beautiful. The giveaway is that the energy at that point is entirely positive. That’s when we know it’s prayer energy and that is what I think it means to be a person of true nonviolence.  

A Loving Inner Witness

Richard continues to explain how contemplation heals us from the judgments and thoughts that so often lead to violence against ourselves and others.  

We each carry a certain amount of pain from our very birth. If that pain is not healed and transformed, it actually increases as we grow older, and we transmit it to people around us. We can become violent in our attitudes, gestures, words, and actions. 

We must nip this process in the bud by acknowledging and owning our own pain, rather than projecting it elsewhere. For myself, I can’t pretend to be loving when inside I’m not, when I know I’ve had cruel, judgmental, and harsh thoughts about others. At the moment the thought arises, I have to catch myself and hand over the annoyance or anger to God. Contemplative practice helps me develop this capacity to watch myself, to let go of the thought, and to connect with my loving Inner Witness. Let me explain why this is so effective and so important. 

If we can simply observe the negative pattern in ourselves, we have already begun to separate from it. The watcher is now over here, observing ourselves thinking that thought—over there. Unless we can become the watcher, we’ll almost always identify with our feelings and our judgments. They feel like real and objective truth. 

Most people I know are overly identified with their own thoughts and feelings. They don’t really have feelings; their feelings have them. That may be what earlier Christians meant by being “possessed” by a demon. That’s why so many of Jesus’ miracles are the exorcism of devils. Most of us don’t take that literally anymore, but the devil is still a powerful metaphor, and it demands that we take it quite seriously. Everyone has a few devils. I know I’m “possessed” at least once or twice a day, even if just for a few minutes! 

There are all kinds of demons. In other words, there are lots of times when we cannot not think a certain way. When we see certain people, we get afraid. When we see other people, we get angry. For example, numerous studies show that many white Americans have an implicit, unacknowledged fear of Black men. Most of us are not consciously or explicitly racist, but many of us have an implicit and totally denied racial bias. This is why all healing and prayer must descend into the unconscious where the lies we’ve believed are hidden in our wounds and embedded in the social reality of our cultures. 

During contemplation, forgotten painful experiences may arise. In such cases, it helps to meet with a spiritual director or therapist to process old wounds and trauma in healthy ways. Over a lifetime of practice, contemplation gradually helps us detach from who we think we are and rest in our authentic identity as Love. At first this may feel like an “identity transplant” until we learn how to permanently rest in God. 

Evening

Slowly evening takes on the garments held for it by a line of ancient trees. You look, and the world recedes from you. Part of it moves heavenward, the rest falls away. And you are left, belonging to neither fully, not quite so dark as the silent house, not quite so sure of eternity as that shining now in the night sky, a point of light. You are left, for reasons you can’t explain, with a life that is anxious and huge, so that, at times confined, at times expanding, it becomes in you now stone, now star.

Book of Images

A Year with Rilke (p. 203). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I say, “I am here, I am here” to people who do not even invoke my name.
—Isaiah 65:1  

Richard affirms each moment as an opportunity to see things as they are and receive the gift of divine presence.  

The real gift of contemplative practice is to be happy and content, even while we are just sitting on the porch, looking at a rock; or when we are doing the “nothingness” of prayer or benevolently gazing at anything in its ordinariness; or when we can see, accept, and say that every single act of creation is “just this” and thus allow it to work its wonder on us.  

So go learn, enjoy, and rest in inner contentment and positivity—a full reservoir of fresh water, both before success and after failure. Then we have the treasure that no one can take from us or give to us. We will be ready to be captured by many moments of awe—and we will be capable of the surrender that brings both foundational union and joy.  

Remember, the whole process most often begins by one, long, relished moment of awe, one fully sincere moment of seeing and saying, “Just this!” And, as Isaiah promised, we will know that every moment is shouting, “I am here! I am here!” [1] 

Spiritual teacher Paula D’Arcy spent an extended time in contemplative observation of nature. She writes:  

I rest and notice the trees rising out of the water. I look into the water and see how the trees have bonded with the algae and plant life. Aren’t I out here to learn how to bond to God? Nature bonds, but it does not cling….  

I look at the river. If I were to cling to it, I’d have to pick it up in a bucket and take some of it with me. I’d separate it from itself. If I were to cling to a tree, I’d have to break a part of it off, or uproot it. If I were to cling to a rock, I’d have to remove it from its home. This is worse: if I were to cling to the red bird, I’d have to cage him.  

Maybe when I cling to people, I dim them, too. I separate them from their own inner roots. I help them to believe that they are dependent on me, or that the hunger in their bellies is a cry for me. I convince us both. And then we never hear the cry of hunger which is for God. Until this moment I have not understood that. I am hungry for God…. Now as I am eating and drinking (taking in) God’s creation, I feel satisfied. I am letting myself live in its beauty without needing to own it or control it or secure it for tomorrow. I am seeing it as it is … really seeing it. And that is enough, to really see. I am present to this moment. That brings joy. [2] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Listens 

Compassionate Jesus, I come to You, feeling weak and weary, seeking to rest in Your refreshing Presence. I know that You are always by my side, but sometimes I’m forgetful of Your nearness. I confess that I’m easily distracted by the expectations of other people. If their demands on me are too numerous and weighty, eventually I feel as if I’m carrying a crushing load. Today I find myself sinking under heavy burdens, so I’m coming to You for help. I ask You to lift the weights from my shoulders and carry them for me. As I talk with You about the matters that concern me, please shine the Light of Your Presence on each one—showing me the way forward. May this same Light that illuminates my path soak into the depths of my being, soothing and strengthening me. Lord, I open my heart to Your healing, holy Presence. I lift up my hands in joyful adoration, eager for Your abundance to flow freely into me. I desire You above all else, for My soul finds rest in You alone. I’m grateful that You give strength to Your people and bless Your people with Peace. In Your peaceful, holy Name, Amen

MATTHEW 11:28 NLT; Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

PSALM 134:2; Lift up your hands in the sanctuary. and praise the Lord. 

PSALM 62:1; Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him.

PSALM 29:11; The Lord will give strength unto his people; the Lord will bless his people with peace. 

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 219). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Richard describes contemplation as a practice by which we come to more accurate “seeing”:  

Contemplation is a kind of seeing that is much more than mere looking because it also includes recognizing and thus appreciating. The contemplative mind does not tell us what to see but teaches us how to see what we behold.  

But how do we learn this contemplative mind, this deep, mysterious, and life-giving way of seeing and of being with reality? Why does it not come naturally to us? Actually, it does come momentarily in states of great love and great suffering, but such wide-eyed seeing normally does not last. We return quickly to dualistic analysis and use our judgments to retake control. A prayer practice—contemplation—is simply a way of maintaining the fruits of great love and great suffering over the long haul and in different situations. And that takes a lot of practice—in fact, our whole life becomes one continual practice.  

To begin to see with new eyes, we must observe, and usually be humiliated by, the habitual way we encounter each and every moment. It is humiliating because we will see that we are well-practiced in just a few predictable responses. Few of our responses are original, fresh, or naturally respectful of what is right in front of us. The most common human responses to a new moment are mistrust, cynicism, fear, knee-jerk reactions, a spirit of dismissal, and overriding judgmentalism. It is so dis-couraging when we have the courage to finally see that these are the common ways the ego tries to be in control of the data—instead of allowing the moment to get some control over us and teach us something new! 

To let the moment teach us, we must allow ourselves to be at least slightly stunned by it until it draws us inward and upward toward a subtle experience of wonder. We normally need a single moment of gratuitous awe to get us started. [1] 

In her book on spirituality and parenting, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg emphasizes the special awe that arises from paying attention to our ordinary lives:  

The twentieth-century rabbi and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel [1907–1972] wrote a lot about “radical amazement,” [2] that sense of “wow” about the world, which he claimed is the root of spirituality. It’s the kind of thing that people often experience in nature—at the proverbial mountaintop, when walking in the woods, seeing a gorgeous view of the ocean. But it’s also, I think, about bringing that sense of awe into the little things we often take for granted, or consider part of the background of our lives. This includes the flowers on the side of the road; the taste of ice cream in our mouths; … or to find a really, really good stick on the ground. And it also includes things we generally don’t even think of as pleasures, like the warm soapy water on our hands as we wash dishes. [3] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Listens

Wonderful Savior, How thankful I am to be a child of God! Someday I will see You as You are: I’ll be face to Face with You in Glory! Now, however, I am in training—putting on the new self and being made new in the attitude of my mind. Although my new self is being conformed to Your image, I’m thankful that this process doesn’t erase the essence of who I am. On the contrary, the more I become like You, the more I develop into the unique person You created me to be. Ever since I trusted in You as my Savior, I’ve been a member of Your royal family. Moreover, I’m a fellow heir with You—sharing Your magnificent inheritance. Yet Your Word tells me I must suffer with You so that I may be glorified with You. When I go through hard times, help me turn to You and find You lovingly present with Me in my trouble. Please enable me to suffer well, in a manner worthy of Your royal household. I realize that everything I endure can train me to become more like You. The psalmist describes my ultimate goal superbly: I will see Your Face in righteousness—and be satisfied! In Your regal Name, Jesus, Amen

1 JOHN 3:2 NKJV; Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

EPHESIANS 4:22–2 4;

That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

ROMANS 8:17 NASB; 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

PSALM 17:15 NKJV; As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 218). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.