{"id":22668,"date":"2023-07-24T09:29:43","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T13:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22668"},"modified":"2023-07-24T11:05:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T15:05:21","slug":"22668","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22668","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><br><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Peter Mayer &quot;Holy Now&quot;  (with lyrics in captions)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KiypaURysz4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">From Fear to Connection<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>When leading morning sit for the CAC staff, Father Richard often turns to&nbsp;<\/em>Just This<em>, his small book on contemplative seeing and practice. This week the Daily Meditations share wisdom that arises from focusing on \u201cjust this.\u201d Richard begins:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Contemplation is a panoramic, receptive awareness whereby we take in all that the situation, moment, or person offers without judging, eliminating, or labeling anything. It is pure and positive gazing that abandons all negative pushback so it can recognize inherent dignity. That takes much practice and a lot of unlearning of habitual responses.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have to work at it and develop practices whereby we recognize our compulsive and repetitive patterns. In doing so, we allow ourselves to be freed from the need to \u201ctake control of the situation\u201d\u2014as if we ever really could anyway!&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It seems we are <strong>addicted to our need to make distinctions and judgments, which we mistake for thinking.<\/strong> Most of us\u00a0<em><strong>think we are our thinking<\/strong><\/em>, yet almost all thinking is compulsive, repetitive, and habitual. We are forever writing our inner commentaries on everything, commentaries that always reach the same practiced conclusions. That is why<strong> all forms of meditation and contemplation teach a way of quieting this compulsively driven and unconsciously programmed mind.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Desert Fathers and Mothers wisely called this process \u201cthe shedding of thoughts.\u201d We don\u2019t fight, repress, deny, identify with, or even judge them, but merely<em>&nbsp;shed<\/em>&nbsp;them.&nbsp;<em>We are so much more than our thoughts about things,&nbsp;<\/em>and we will feel this more as an&nbsp;<em>unlearning&nbsp;<\/em>than a learning of any new content<em>.&nbsp;<\/em>[1]&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we meditate consistently, a sense of our autonomy and private self-importance\u2014what we think of as our \u201cself\u201d\u2014falls away, little by little, as unnecessary, unimportant, and even unhelpful. <strong>The imperial \u201cI,\u201d the self that we likely think of as our only self, reveals itself as largely a creation of our mind.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through a regular practice of contemplation, we become less and less interested in protecting this self-created, relative identity. We don\u2019t have to attack it; it calmly falls away of its own accord and we experience a kind of natural humility.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If our prayer goes deep, \u201cinvading\u201d our unconscious, as it were, <strong>our whole view of the world will change from fear to connection. <\/strong>We don\u2019t live inside our fragile and encapsulated self anymore, nor do we feel any need to protect it.<strong> In meditation, we move from ego consciousness to soul awareness,\u00a0<em>from being fear-driven to being love-drawn<\/em>.<\/strong> That\u2019s it in a few words!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, we only have the courage to do this if Someone Else is holding us, taking away our fear, doing the knowing, and satisfying our desire for a Great Lover. If we can allow that Someone Else to lead us in this dance, we will live with new vitality, a natural gracefulness, and inside of a Flow that we did not create. It is the Life of the Trinity, spinning through us. [2]&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Surrendering to the Present Moment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard invites us to remain with and surrender to the present moment:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we watch our minds, we will see that we live most of our life in the past or in the future. The present always seems boring and not enough. To get ourselves engaged, we will often \u201ccreate a problem\u201d to resolve, and then another, and another. The <strong>only way many of us know how to motivate ourselves is to create problems or to need to \u201cfix\u201d something, someone else, or ourselves.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we can\u2019t be&nbsp;<em>positively present&nbsp;<\/em>right now without creating a problem, nothing new is ever going to happen. We will only experience what we already agree with and what does not threaten us and our preferred mode of being. We will never experience the unexpected depth and contentment that is always being offered to us.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Notice that the Scriptures present God as a thief, or a master who returns before being expected (see Matthew 24:42\u201346), who even \u201cputs on an apron, sits them at table and waits on them\u201d (see Luke 12:35\u201338)! Do we even realize what an extraordinary notion of God Jesus must have had to talk that way? <strong>God waiting on us! No problem to solve\u2014just an immediate intimacy to enjoy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is just such a moment that can elicit both awe and surrender from within us: awe before the utterly undeserved and unexpected\u2014and some sweet surrender to the fact that it might just be true. [1]&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The spiritual journey is a <strong>constant interplay between moments of\u00a0<em>awe\u00a0<\/em>followed by a process of\u00a0<em>surrender\u00a0<\/em>to that moment. <\/strong>We must <strong>first allow ourselves to be captured by the goodness, truth, or beauty of something beyond and outside ourselves. Then we universalize from that moment to the goodness, truth, and beauty of the rest of reality, until our realization eventually ricochets back to include ourselves!<\/strong> This is the great inner dialogue we call prayer. Yet <strong>we humans resist both the awe and, even more, the surrender. Both together are vital, and so we must practice.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The way to any universal idea is to proceed through a concrete encounter. The one is the way to the many; the specific is the way to the spacious; the now is the way to the always; the here is the way to the everywhere; the material is the way to the spiritual; the visible is the way to the invisible<\/strong>. When we see contemplatively, <strong>we know that we live in a fully sacramental universe, where everything is an epiphany. While philosophers tend toward universals and poets love particulars, mystics and contemplative practice teach us how to encompass both. <\/strong>[2]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Transforming Dragons <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have no reason to distrust our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has an abyss, it is ours. If dangers are there, we must try to love them. And if we would live with faith in the value of what is challenging, then what now appears to us as most alien will become our truest, most trustworthy friend. Let us not forget the ancient myths at the outset of humanity\u2019s journey, the myths about dragons that at the last moment transform into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps every terror is, in its deepest essence, something that needs our recognition or help. Borgeby g\u00e4rd, Sweden, August 12, 1904<br>Letters to a Young Poet<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Barrows, Anita; Macy, Joanna. A Year with Rilke (p. 192). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Fear to Connection When leading morning sit for the CAC staff, Father Richard often turns to&nbsp;Just This, his small book on contemplative seeing and practice. This week the Daily Meditations share wisdom that arises from focusing on \u201cjust this.\u201d Richard begins:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Contemplation is a panoramic, receptive awareness whereby we take in all that the [&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":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22668"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22673,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22668\/revisions\/22673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}