Time out for a lazy, shut-in day---and Mancala.
Gotta be well for 1st grade.
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Osmosis, perhaps?
I know this is a long one, but it is where I'm living these days--
just trying to "get IT".
I grew up on all these familiar words,
so it's mind-boggling and refreshing to hear them with this new twist.
Overcoming Our Separation
~R. Rohr
Let’s turn to the great Christian nondual teacher, Jesus himself. Jesus teaches and fully lives what I call four “moral equivalencies,” which can only truly be understood by the nondual mind. These moral equivalencies do away with the various walls we’ve built to separate human from divine, self from other, self from God.
- There’s a moral equivalency between Jesus himself and other people. Jesus says, “Whatever you do to others, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40). Logically, that’s not true: there’s Jesus and there are other people. Yet he makes them the same. How you treat other human beings is how you treat Jesus. This teaching is at a high level of consciousness that is not rational or logical; it cannot be proven. Many Christians would read this statement and firmly say, “This is the Word of the Lord.” But it isn’t their actual experience. As long as they remain at the dualistic level, they can go to church and worship Jesus and be racist an hour later, not seeing any conflict with that at all. (Me...racist? Of course not! but what about...and...and...and...resistance to anyone, "justified" or not.)
- The second moral equivalency is between Jesus himself and God. This is Jesus’ ultimate nondual teaching: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). From this unitive knowing and experience Jesus says, “Follow me.” Jesus doesn’t tell us that he and the Father are one so that we’ll worship him. No, it’s to lead us to have the same experience—that you and the Father are also one. But until we’ve experienced radical union with God, we won’t think like Jesus, we won’t behave like Jesus. And in fact, most of the teaching of Jesus won’t make a bit of sense. We’ll read it, but we haven’t tapped into the power to live it. And it’s not because we’re bad-willed people. We just don’t process our experience at the unitive level yet. (What does/would that look like? Oh my, it looks like Jesus doing all that "crazy", radical loving and taking it to the limit. Ugh...)
- The third equivalency Jesus makes is between any person and God. For example, “The Spirit is within you” (John 14:17 and throughout the Gospels). Jesus has overcome the great gap between God and the individual. He’s saying human and divine, matter and spirit, are operating together. It is the principle of incarnation, the heart of Christianity, but it takes a new pair of nondual glasses to begin to see that. (This is huge...it means it is actually possible to love like this, not because I can do it...but because I already have a "Superpower", a "Force" within me that enables this kind of love. All I have to do is trust this and "use the force". It won't feel "normal" because it's truly beyond ME. It's truly beyond this(black/white) world. Out of this world!)
- Finally, Jesus teaches there’s a moral equivalency between any person and every other person. For example: “In everything you do, treat others exactly as you would have them treat you” (Matthew 7:12). At the nondual level, there’s a recognition that how you treat one person is how you treat another. How you love anybody is how you love everybody. How you love yourself is how you love every other self. Love is of one piece. (So, LOVE shown to one is LOVE shown to all; LOVE reserved from one is LOVE reserved from all; LOVE denied myself is LOVE denied all; LOVE denied all is LOVE denied myself. So how I LOVE myself really is a determiner of how I LOVE the world.)
Once you fall into this ocean of love,
you realize that divine love
is loving in a quite unrestricted way.
It’s a different kind of love,
without qualifications, criteria, or judgments
that are determined by the worthiness of the object.
Our imperfect, human love
is dependent upon our preferences.
If we find someone
attractive,
nonthreatening,
belonging to our race and our religion,
and with a compatible temperament,
we say, “I love you.”
Well, as Jesus says,
“If you love those who love you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners love those who love them”
(Luke 6:32).
Like Jesus,
we are to love others
not because of who they are,
but because of who we are—
all and equally
the beloved of God.
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Why we do what we do...
CASA Case Closure Spotlight of the Month
Advocate Stu Childre was assigned to the case of a child for over 9 years. Stu was there for this child through failed adoptions, drug use, and times on the run. Their bond is so strong that while the child was on the run, Stu was the only person he would maintain contact with, refusing to come back into foster care until or continue contact with the Department until he was ready. This child recently aged out after spending nearly 15 years in foster care. At his last hearing before his 18th birthday, he stated that Stu was the best thing to ever come out of his situation and he still wants to have a relationship with Stu. While this child never truly achieved permanency, he gained a permanent support system through Stu.
The One Way
I am aware that I am resisting the only WAY to really live in love.
It is definitely a narrow way.
And it would mean sacrificing my ego/thinker for my soul/presence.
(for just a few minutes each day...)
No wonder the rich young ruler said no thanks.
(At least I am aware.)
What does it mean when Jesus says you should love God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, with your whole mind (not just your dualistic mind), with your whole strength?
What does it mean, as the first commandment instructs us, to love God more than anything else? The only way I know how to love God and to teach you how to love God is to love what God loves. To love God means to love everything . . . no exceptions.
Of course, that can only be done with divine love flowing through us. And we can only allow divine love to flow by way of contemplative, nondualistic consciousness, where we stop eliminating and choosing. This is the transformed mind (Romans 12:2) that allows you to see God in everything, and empowers your behavior to almost naturally change.
Religion, from the root religio, means to reconnect, to bind back together. I would describe mystical moments as those attention grabbing events that overcome the gap between you and other people, events, or objects, and even God. The work of spirituality is to look with a different pair of eyes (nondual eyes) beyond what Merton calls "the shadow and the disguise" of things until you can see them in their connectedness and wholeness. In a very real sense, the word God is just a synonym for everything. So if you do not want to get involved with everything, stay away from God.
~R. Rohr
Gateway to Silence:
Be here now.
John Wesley's Prayer
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
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