Posted in archetypal psychology, Christic Haiku, faith, meditation, metaphors, mysticism, Practical Spirituality, tagged inspirational writing, mindfulness, poetry, practical mysticism, Practical Spirituality, sacred listening, sacred musings, spiritual poetics, spiritual practice, spirituality, spirituality in action on April 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »
with nothing owed me nor fever of gain,
I am as refreshed as after refreshing cool rain;
+
no thought of purpose, no hungry ambition,
I am totally open to hear Your commission;
+
to hear you is to love,
to love you is to hear;
I open myself up, so you can draw near.
© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Posted in Christic Haiku, metaphors, Practical Spirituality, sacred poetry, spirituality, thomas christians, zen, tagged Christic Mantra, Contemplative poetry, haiku, Practical Spirituality on April 14, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Quieting my head, unleashes my heart:
Silence.
© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Posted in archetypes, faith, jungian, meditation, metaphors, mysticism, Practical Spirituality, spirituality, Theurgy, thomas christians, tagged contemplative prayer, creative spirituality, inspirational writing, meditation, mindfulness, mysticism, natural theology, panentheism, practical mysticism, Practical Spirituality, sacred poetry on April 13, 2013| Leave a Comment »
A forgotten well, all veiled in vine,
Speaks in silence of ancient wine;
While nature’s cloak and a good night’s soak,
Turn back the bruise of time.
And the solitary daisy, yellow- sparkling in the Sun,
Whispers sweetly to the stone: ” We’ve only just begun!”
© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Posted in meditation, Practical Spirituality, spirituality, tagged creative spirituality, mindfulness, Practical Spirituality, sacred ordinary, spiritual living, spiritual practice, spirituality, spirituality in action on March 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Brother Lawrence, Franciscan Friar, exhorts us in his “Practice of the Presence” to find the sacred in the very mundane like washing dishes, sweeping, and doing the laundry.
We have the chance every morning, regardless of how busy we may be, to do precisely this when it comes to showering, combing hair, shaving and brushing teeth. In fact, this last activity, brushing, we are told by dentists, to not rush or skimp on. I find it very diagnostic to reflect on my impatience with waiting the requisite number of seconds to be sure I am thorough.
Enter the sonic toothbrush! The one I was given stops ever so briefly to let you know it is time to move from the top set of teeth on the front side to the under side, etc. Well, it seems simply interminable!
So, here’s a great practice in being present and emptying mind of all the rushing ahead. Stay in the moment and wait the full time as measured by the brush.
I’ve been adding the Jesus Prayer from the Philokalia as I do so: ” Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy.” Of course, you can add your own mantra.
Good for the soul and good for oral hygiene – a twofer!
Give it a try.
© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Posted in archetypal psychology, archetypes, geometry of spirit, jungian, meditation, metaphors, mysticism, Practical Spirituality, Theurgy, thomas christians, tagged creative spirituality, meditation, mindfulness, panentheism, Practical Spirituality, spirit, spiritual living, spiritual practice, spirituality, spirituality in action, theology of the world on March 13, 2013| Leave a Comment »
.
Imagine a theological Sherlock Holmes: Seeing details overlooked by most.
There is a spiritual lesson in really seeing more of what is happening around us. Clear sight, the skill of tracking, is deep meditation. It cannot be accomplished unless we quiet all of our inner leaping.
One useful practice is to try to draw what we are seeing. Almost immediately, we discover that we are not really seeing but recalling an image of what we think we are looking at. In the act of really examining our surround, we can catch a glimpse of things as they are. In doing so, we set the stage for breaking through to a new relationship.
Martin Buber referred to I – It vs. I – Thou relationships. I -It is seeing inner facsimiles of objects, whereas I -Thou is inter- subjective and intimate.
We are all artists. The real question is are we rendering what is or what we think we know. Biblical knowing is about seeing from the inside-out rather than outside in.
The good news is that all we need is a pad and pen or pencil and we are off on an adventure of discovery. Looking with intent to really see gets us beyond vague sketches to catching the wisdom of actual detail.
Cultivating an artist’s eye opens us up to first seeing what’s there and then seeing into and beyond mere appearances. It is instructive that artistic realism preceded impressionism and expressionism. A jump straight to impressionism is not an act of deep sight but a crass short-cut, a pretense and an affectation.
Happy sketching!
© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Posted in faith, meditation, mysticism, Practical Spirituality, spirituality, thomas christians, zen, tagged creative spirituality, inquiry, meditation, mindfulness, mysticism, Practical Spirituality, spiritual living, spiritual practice on March 13, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Will I make it into heaven? Will St. Peter smile on my admission to paradise? Is there a heaven?
This is all history wrapped in metaphor and has a certain poetic aesthetic. Problem is that for many it is the stuff of immutable belief.
It also is thinking that views human life as operating in an enormous “Skinner Box” with God playing the role of dispenser of the reinforcers ( akin to yummy Purina pellets for hungry souls, administered so long as we behave). Quaint but very much built around an adult – child model of our relationship with the Sacred.
Authentic spiritual practice, on the other hand, expects nothing. We show compassion because we are not separate. We need each other. We worship because we sense the Presence all around us. We invest in spiritual disciplines so as to be more truly who we are beyond illusions, delusions and allusions.
To expect nothing is to simply be children of the Loving-Living God seeking intimacy with the Heart of the Universe: to act in the moment without agenda.
The simple practice before and after action: check in with driving motives. Ask: What am I expecting? As the story of the Dalai Lama goes, on receiving a gift-wrapped box containing nothing: ” Thank you. It’s what I always wanted! ”
Luke 6: 32-36
“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”
© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Posted in meditation, mysticism, Practical Spirituality, spiritual healing, spirituality, teilhard de chardin, Theurgy, thomas christians, tagged contemplative prayer, creative spirituality, inquiry, meditation, mindfulness, mysticism, natural theology, panentheism, practical mysticism, Practical Spirituality, sacred musings, soul, spirit, spiritual living, spiritual practice, spirituality, spirituality in action, spirituality in nature on March 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »
So said St. Francis: a koan of christendom that invites meditation.
Francis saw fraternity and sorority everywhere.
Creatures ( living and nonliving) are brothers and sisters in the Order of Creation. Adjusting the statement slightly we may pose the challenge this way: ‘Who we are looking for is who is looking.’ Yet, our ordinary conscious experience is of separation, difference and individual expression.
What experience inspires this insight on the part of Francis?
His vision was penetrating and went beneath the surface of form and function, speciation and diversity. The entire Cosmos was personal. In the eyes of wolves, he caught a glimpse of ein sof, the unknowable One. In Sun and Moon, he saw the illumined face of love.
All the exquisite forms and variety formed a choir chanting in unison of the passionate Heart tuning the music of the spheres. Going well beyond expectation and learning, labeling and categorizing, Francis discerned essences.
Doing so requires letting go of our clinging to unique and divided identity.
It means examining oneself and seeing the degree to which we imprison the mind and soul in ideas about self and other.
We each weave clever and elaborate fictions designed around a history of experiences and language, strokes and slaps delivered by the environment through which we travel. We embody the mandate to separate and judge and build a system of dichotomies – good & bad, beautiful and not, right and left, right and wrong, valuable and not, worthy and unworthy, intelligent and not, ad infinitum.
As Francis knew intuitively, contemporary research is likewise showing how wrong we have been about assumptions of the comparative intelligence of nonhuman beings.
One case in point is the wisdom of crows: their capacity to use tools and problem solve equal to the capacity of young children. Elsewhere, there was a recent study of the dance of bees and how they compete in their dancing to democratically choose the best next site at which to build a hive. Once decided, after feverish “debate through dance,” they all lift as one body and move together to the new site. All of this is further impetus for our grappling with what Francis saw empirically without the lenses of science as support.
How, then, do we cultivate the sense of the grander truth that lies within appearances and divergences?
It begins by practicing the “via negativa”, systematically dwelling in the tensions forged by our false dichotomies and dissolving them.
The challenge is to annihilate limiting paradigms by rising up to a third position neutrally suspended above them. Each time we do so, we open our aperture wider and see a bit more clearly what is really there. We lift the veil that our thinking manufactures and throws over the real like a heavy cloak that obscures it.
This is a Western expression of jñāna yoga or “knowledge of the absolute”: discerning the difference between the real and the unreal.
One example: we pose the dichotomy of sentient – non-sentient. We see rocks as non-sentient, trees as sentient yet less so than birds and mammals. We create taxonomies of like and unlike that, while convenient for study, fuel our perception of difference as primary.
Using thought differently, we can confront our convenient divisions and resolve them in a higher sense of unity.
How?
One meditative stream of thought: Dispensing with sentience as the frame altogether, rocks and trees, insects, birds, mammals and human beings are Presence, amalgams of earth, air, fire and water. All were hewn from the same stuff.
I celebrate the variety and I see their unity. We are all sons and daughters of the Sun/Son. We are energy enlivened with purpose, ordained by first cause and evolving along lines laid down before the first micro-second of the universe. We are Light, mineral, Mind, Heart, and a vastness emerges among us.
We can learn much by incorporating this Christic jñāna yoga into our contemplative round.
What/ who we are looking for is already and always is with us.
“interior intimo meo et superior summo meo” (“higher than my highest and more inward than my innermost self”) (St. Augustine, Confessions III, 6, 11)
© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Posted in archetypal psychology, archetypes, faith, jungian, meditation, metaphors, mysticism, Phenomenology, Practical Spirituality, spiritual healing, spirituality, Theurgy, tagged active imagination, archetypes, creative spirituality, inspirational writing, meditation, mysticism, natural theology, poetry, practical mysticism, Practical Spirituality, sacred listening, sacred musings, sacred ordinary, soul, spirit, spiritual living, spiritual poetics, spiritual practice, spirituality, Theurgy on March 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »
life’s breath, the wind of heaven, cleanses the dusty surface of my soul,
timeless Presence making everything new.
+
my loving tether to now and then, to here and infinite,
I reach so wide that time and distance have no measure.
+
I hear the pulse of the longing Heart of space,
and tune to the beat that fills my lungs with silence.
+
no fear, no self, no desperate need to prove or get,
all is well in the deep, and music to my joyful ears.
© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Posted in Advent, archetypal psychology, archetypes, Gnostic, gnosticism, holidays, Lectio Divina, Practical Spirituality, spiritual psychotherapy, spirituality, theology, thomas christians, tagged active imagination, inquiry, meditation, mysticism, Practical Spirituality, theology on December 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »
In my recent post, I focused on the myth of the “one” true and destined love and the importance instead of choice and commitment.
Further reflection at the opening of Advent 2012 leads me to consider the Christian dogma of the “one” and “only begotten Son”. It is a matter of orthodox theology that Christ stands apart from all others as the true Soter or savior of the World: an exclusivity, the embodiment on Earth of the Father whose Presence is mediated by the Holy Spirit.
How do we make sense of this within the context of Faith with reason? Is the notion of the “One” equally mythic with that of the single destined lover for whom we are meant to be joined: the one who completes us? Is there an alternative way of thinking that protects the deep sense of mystery and special character of the One who Luke makes reference in ascribing to the Father the words: ” You are my Beloved Son. In you I am well pleased.”
In reply to the question, my meditation stumbles on a framing error implicit in the questions themselves. In their construction, they are dualistic, (i.e., either/or).
A better question is:
In what way is the “Son of God” both inimical and yet non-exclusive?
After all, Jesus says elsewhere:
“Timeless truth, I tell you: ‘whoever believes in me, those works which I have done he will also do, and he will do greater works than these, because I am going to the presence of my Father.’ ” Aramaic Bible in Plain English
or ” Otherwise believe for the very works’ sake. Amen, amen I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do, he also shall do; and greater than these shall he do.” Douay-Rheims Bible
Jesus was fulfillment of prophecy. As it came to pass in the unfolding of time and history, the Christ nature was a charism bestowed to a babe in Galilee & it was once and for all. And – beyond space and time, in the timeless space of the Sacred, this emblematic and iconic moment was a call to all: an invitation to the next significant advance in human consciousness.
As so beautifully stated in the Gregorian chant, Ubi Caritas: ” Where Beauty and Love are there also is God.”
Spiritual transformation is the yearning of the Divine Heart for Humanity to emerge into full “Sonship” wherein love defines us and we integrate in ourselves the Shadow and the Light and act with authentic compassion. In this sense, living sacramentally involves learning to be able and willing reflectors of the Divine Light and to help restore the State of Eden: to be “christ” for one another.
© The Harried Mystic, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Posted in Moral politics, Political Psychology, Practical Spirituality, tagged political psychology, Practical Spirituality, spirituality and political behavior, spirituality in action on October 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »
This year, regardless of political persuasion, we are jolted week to week by seeming reversals of fortune as the tracking polls nationally and in so called battle ground states depict the state of the race. One debate performance by our President that many thought fell flat and the narrative shifts with mind numbing speed. In fact, it is a function of numbness, a consequence of being too easily persuaded by superficial matters. We are, regrettably, an ahistorical society and largely an anti-intellectual one. This renders our democracy fragile .
Given stressful economic circumstances, fear makes a fool of the majority and accords too much authority to extreme, hyper-emotional views. It becomes susceptible to deceit, manipulation, negative ads, and rhetoric.
What is the connection between political sentiments and living the spiritual life?
In a word ” authenticity,” along with rational discourse and clear thinking. Much is being said about the importance of the ” independents” this year. My question is simply this: how independent are they really when only rhetorical shifts apparently lead to sentiment 180 degrees from reaction to an earlier rhetorical flourish?
A spiritual life is a commitment to the pursuit of what is real. It is an investment in being who we really are with others who we similarly encourage to be themselves. It is a life beyond masks and a love of genuine service to humanity. The marks of spiritual living are communion, not divisiveness, clear speech, not obfuscation, and dialogue that aims to explore mystery and dig deeper beyond the surface appearances.
Over the last week in the U.S., I have been struck by the incessant chasing after poll numbers and the feeding frenzy around every little event that defines the narrative on the airways. I have come to believe that it is spiritually healthy to avoid the pundits entirely, though the status of the Presidential race is of keen interest to me, and focus on the issues that really matter, real track record and behavior, and approach political choices with spirituality and ultimate meaning kept firmly in mind.
It is too easy to over- compartmentalize our lives: to think “spiritual things” in the time set apart for it while concentrating on tasks and other matters separately.
The real meaning of integrity is that our spirituality is manifest in our thinking, our actions, the choices we make and the words we speak. It is a profound unity ( or at least, it should be). The degree to which this is not the case is diagnostic of the path we need to travel to reach that state of coherent being in the world. Such lived integrity is the example of the true avatars, prophets, soters and saints.
It is the heart of the Call.
© The Harried Mystic, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
The Harried Mystic 