From: Center for Action and Contemplation Meditations@cac.orgSubject: Richard Rohr Meditation: Losing Myself to Find Myself

Date: August 1, 2016 at 11:00 PMTo: Christine Hall christine@whidbey.net

Your false self is how you define yourself outside oflove, relationship, or divine union.

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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

True Self/False Self:Week 1

Losing Myself to Find MyselfTuesday, August 2, 2016

As much as I emphasize the importance of non-dual consciousness, you may beconfused or concerned that I use the terms True Self and false self. Butremember that wisdom teachers such as Jesus often use seemingly dualisticstatements to first ground us and from there draw us into non-dual thinking.Bear with me as I explore these two aspects of ourselves. You might not prefer

Bear with me as I explore these two aspects of ourselves. You might not preferthe term false self. If small self, relative self, provisional self, passing self, ormanufactured self help you understand the idea, by all means use theminstead. All words are metaphors, and all metaphors are incomplete.

Your “false” self is how you define yourself outside of love, relationship, ordivine union. After you have spent many years building this separate, egoicself, with all its labels and habits, you are very attached to it. And why wouldn’tyou be? It’s all you know. To move beyond this privately concocted identitynaturally feels like losing or dying. Perhaps you have noticed that masterteachers like Jesus and the Buddha, all the “Teresas” (Ávila, Lisieux, andCalcutta), and the mystical poets Hafiz, Kabir, and Rumi talk about dying muchmore than we are comfortable with. They all know that if you do not learn theart of dying and letting go early, you will miss out on the peace, contentment,and liberation of life lived in your Larger and Lasting Identity, which most ofus call God.

It was Thomas Merton, the Cistercian monk, who first suggested the use of theterm false self. He did this to clarify for many Christians the meaning of Jesus’central and oft-repeated teaching that we must die to ourselves, or “loseourselves to find ourselves” (Mark 8:35). Jesus’ admonition has caused muchhavoc and pushback in Christian history because it sounds negative andascetical, and it was usually interpreted as an appeal to deny the body. But thefull intent is personal liberation, not self-punishment. Centuries of Christiansfalsely assumed that if they could “die” to their body, their spirit would forsome reason miraculously arise. (Because of centuries of body rejection, andthe lack of a positive body theology, the West is now trapped in substanceaddiction, obesity, anorexia, bulimia, and an obsession with appearance andbody image.)

Paul made a most unfortunate choice of the word flesh as that which is opposedto Spirit (for example, Galatians 5:16-24). I would suggest that you use “ego” or“small self” every time you read the word “flesh” in the Pauline writings, as thiswould be much closer to his intended meaning.

Our poor bodies, which Jesus actually affirmed, have become the receptacle ofso much negative energy. Christians are much more disciples of Plato (body

so much negative energy. Christians are much more disciples of Plato (bodyand soul are at odds) than we are of Jesus in whom “the Word became flesh”(John 1:14), where body and soul are willing partners. Jesus even returned tothe “flesh” after the Resurrection, as all accounts make very clear, so fleshcannot be bad for us. Our bodies are, in fact, the hiding place for our divinity.(This is why I believe in the necessary physical resurrection of Jesus,admittedly in a new form of physicality.)

If Christianity is in any way anti-body, it is not authentic. Merton rightlyrecognized that it was not the body that had to “die” but the “false self” which isalways an imposter posing for “me.” It is no surprise that Buddhism is sayingthe exact same thing, and often with even greater clarity.

Gateway to Silence:You live in me; I live in you.

References:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, True Self/ False Self (Franciscan Media: 2003, 2013), disc 1(CD); andImmortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 36-39.

Incarnation means embodiment, enfleshment.The spiritual world is revealed in the material world.

I want to teach people to take Incarnation to its logical conclusions.—Richard Rohr

Are you ready to embody Love more fully in the world?

Embark on a two-year journey with other seekers and core faculty membersRichard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, and James Finley.

Admissions are now open for the 2017–2019 Living School program!

From: Center for Action and Contemplation Meditations@cac.orgSubject: Richard Rohr Meditation: In God's Eyes

Date: August 3, 2016 at 11:00 PMTo: Christine Hall christine@whidbey.net

Once accepted in yourself, the divine image is thenseen everywhere else too—and just as gratuitously.

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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

True Self/False Self:Week 1

In God's EyesThursday, August 4, 2016

Yesterday, we looked at Thomas Merton’s explanation of the false self. Whatfollows is part of his description of the True Self. Merton wrote this shortlyafter his transformative experience at the corner of Fourth and Walnut inLouisville (now Muhammad Ali Boulevard). At this intersection, Merton says,“I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people,

“I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people,that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another eventhough we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream ofseparateness. . . .” [1] This is an experience of universal love, which I woulddefine as recognizing one’s self in the other.

A bit further on, Merton writes, “Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secretbeauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desirenor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each oneis in God’s eyes.” [2]

Merton—as well as anyone deserving of the title mystic—believes that God isalways recognizing God’s Self in you and cannot not love it. This is God’s“steadfast love” (hesed) with humanity. That part of you has always loved Godand always will. You must learn how to consciously abide there. As MeisterEckhart says, “The eye with which I see God is the same one with which Godsees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge,and one love.” [3]

There is a part of you that has always said yes to God, and that is the AnointedOne, the Christ, the True Self that you already are. William McNamara calledcontemplative prayer “a long, loving look at the real.” [4] Within prayer youquite simply receive and return God’s gaze of love. God is recognizing God’sSelf in you, and you are recognizing yourself in God. Once the two-way mirrorbegins to reflect in both directions, it will gradually move you toward auniversal seeing. Once accepted in yourself, the divine image is then seeneverywhere else too—and just as gratuitously.

Merton continues:

If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could seeeach other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no morehatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . I suppose the big problem wouldbe that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen,only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift. [5]

This is the gift of a contemplative mind that has learned to “shed its thoughts

This is the gift of a contemplative mind that has learned to “shed its thoughtsabout itself” (how the Desert Fathers and Mothers put it) and which enjoys amuch broader, deeper, and more compassionate set of eyes.

Gateway to Silence:You live in me; I live in you.

References:

[1] Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image Books: 1968), 156.[2] Ibid., 158.[3] Johannes Eckhart, Meister Eckhart’s Sermons, Sermon IV, “True Hearing,”http://www.ccel.org/ccel/eckhart/sermons.vii.html, 32-33.[4] William McNamara as quoted by Walter J. Burghardt, “Contemplation: A Long, LovingLook at the Real,” Church, No. 5 (Winter 1989), 14-17.[5] Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image Books: 1968), 158.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, True Self/ False Self (Franciscan Media: 2003, 2013), disc 2(CD).

Incarnation means embodiment, enfleshment.The spiritual world is revealed in the material world.

I want to teach people to take Incarnation to its logical conclusions.—Richard Rohr

Are you ready to embody Love more fully in the world?

Embark on a two-year journey with other seekers and core faculty membersRichard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, and James Finley.

Admissions are now open for the 2017–2019 Living School program!

Visit cac.org/living-school to learn more.

The Living School application packet includes a variety of digital resources to support yourdiscernment process (a $65 value). Applications are available through September 16, 2016.

From: Center for Action and Contemplation Meditations@cac.orgSubject: Richard Rohr Meditation: A Point of Nothingness

Date: August 4, 2016 at 11:00 PMTo: Christine Hall christine@whidbey.net

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingnesswhich is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point ofpure truth.” —Thomas Merton

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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

True Self/False Self:Week 1

A Point of NothingnessFriday, August 5, 2016

Today we continue with Thomas Merton’s description of the True Self aswritten following his “conversion” at Fourth and Walnut. It is so inspired, Iwant to quote it at length:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched bysin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongsentirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes ofour lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or thebrutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolutepoverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak [God’s] name writtenin us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship[and daughtership]. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible lightof heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see thesebillions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun thatwould make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely . . . . I haveno program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven iseverywhere. [1]

Most people spend their entire lives living up to their false self, the mental self-images of who they think they are, instead of living in the primal “I” that isalready good in God’s eyes. But all I can “pay back” to God or others or myselfis who I really am. This is what Merton is describing above. It’s a place of uttersimplicity. Perhaps we don’t want to go back there because it is too simple andalmost too natural. It feels utterly unadorned. There’s nothing to congratulatemyself for. I can’t prove any worth, much less superiority. There I am nakedand poor. After years of posturing and projecting, it will at first feel likenothing.

But when we are nothing, we are in a fine position to receive everything fromGod. As Merton says above, our point of nothingness is “the pure glory of Godin us.” If we look at the great religious traditions, we see they all use similarwords to point in the same direction. The Franciscan word is “poverty.” TheCarmelite word is nada or “nothingness.” The Buddhists speak of “emptiness.”Jesus speaks of being “poor in spirit” in his very first beatitude.

The Bible as a whole prefers to talk in images, and the desert is a foundationalone. The desert is where we are voluntarily under-stimulated—no feedback, nonew data. Jesus says to go into the closet or the “inner room.” That’s where westop living out of other people’s response to us. We can then say, I am not whoyou think I am. Nor am I who you need me to be. I’m not even who I need

you think I am. Nor am I who you need me to be. I’m not even who I needmyself to be. I must be “nothing” in order to be open to all of reality and newreality. Merton’s reservoir of solitude and contemplation allowed him to see thegate of heaven everywhere, even on a common street corner.

A Zen master would call the True Self “the face we had before we were born.”Paul would call it who you are “in Christ, hidden in God” (Colossians 3:3). It iswho you are before having done anything right or anything wrong, who you arebefore having thought about who you are. Thinking creates the false self, theego self, the insecure self. The God-given contemplative mind, on the otherhand, recognizes the God Self, the Christ Self, the True Self of abundance anddeep inner security. We start with mere seeing; we end up with recognizing.

Gateway to Silence:You live in me; I live in you.

References:

[1] Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image Books: 1968), 158.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer(Crossroad Publishing: 1999, 2003), 76-78.

Incarnation means embodiment, enfleshment.The spiritual world is revealed in the material world.

I want to teach people to take Incarnation to its logical conclusions.—Richard Rohr

Are you ready to embody Love more fully in the world?

Embark on a two-year journey with other seekers and core faculty membersRichard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, and James Finley.

Admissions are now open for the 2017–2019 Living School program!

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�Toreador Fresco� (bull-leaping scene), Great Palace at Knossos, Crete, c. 1500 BC

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

I Am Who I Am

Surrendering to the Great I AM

Friday, December 19, 2014

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The first definition or name that God gives of God’s self in the Bible is “I

am who am” (Exodus 3:14). There it is: I am existence itself. I am pure

being. I am the deepest selfhood of all that exists. I’m convinced that when

we can surrender to the Great I AM, the Great Universal Being, the great

shared consciousness that we all are, God gives us courage to accept our

own I am in all of its eccentricity and in all of its brokenness. Your

participation in the Universal Being or I am-ness of God gives you the

courage to hand back to God the only life you’ll ever have. That will be the

most humbling and the most courageous act of faith you’ll ever live,

because what you hand back will always seem so tawdry and insignificant.

But it isn’t. It is precisely the handing back that makes it momentous.

I’m just this little Richard creature, this little moment of time that’s going to

be gone in a few years. I’m so aware of what I’m not and of how phony I

am and of how I say it so much better than I live it. I have a thousand

reasons to reject myself and hate myself, and you do too. It’s really not

enjoyable to grow in self-knowledge, because the more you know about

yourself, the more you are not impressed! But as long as you’re being held

and received by the Great I AM, all shame and unworthiness is taken away.

We realize that this little I am that I am is what God has always loved

anyway, even with all of its imperfections and silliness.

We participate in a universal, cosmic forgiveness for being who we are and

for all of reality being what it is: so utterly ordinary and so chosen as

beloved! “How can this be?” the ego shouts! That’s the entrance into what

the Buddhists call the Great Compassion. Once you find this compassion

toward your own little I am, tiny and broken and poor as it is, then you’re

able to share compassion with everyone and everything. The important

thing is the willingness to give back the gift that is you, not the perfection of

the gift itself. Can you feel the difference? If you find this difficult, imagine

that you love a little child. You do not want their perfect drawing or gift.

What gives you joy is that they want to give it to you—and the expectant

smile on their face as they hand you their scribbles, largely outside the

lines!

Adapted from True Self/False Self, disc 5 (CD)

Gateway to Silence:I am who I am in the eyes of God, nothing more and nothing less.

Immortal Diamond: A Study in Search of the True Self

January 21-April 1, 2015

Self-paced, 10-week, in-depth study of Fr. Richard's book, Immortal Diamond.

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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Trust

Trust Your Own Experience Tuesday, October 28, 2014

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The most unfortunate thing about the concept of mysticism is that the word

itself has become mystified—and relegated to a “misty” and distant realm

that implies it is only available to a very few. For me, the word simply

means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, as opposed to book

knowledge, secondhand knowledge, or even church knowledge.

Most of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us

from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer

authority, Scripture, tradition, or various kinds of experts (what I call the

“containers”)—instead of telling us the value and importance of inner

experience itself (which is the actual “content” the containers were made to

hold). In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting

ourselves. Roman Catholics were told to trust the church hierarchy first and

last, while mainline Protestants were often warned that inner experience

was dangerous, unscriptural, or even unnecessary.

Both were ways of discouraging actual experience of God and often created

passive (and passive aggressive) people and, more sadly, a lot of people

who concluded that there was no God to be experienced. We were taught to

mistrust our own souls—and thus the Holy Spirit! Contrast that with Jesus’

common phrase, “Go in peace, your faith has made you whole!” He said

this to people who had made no dogmatic affirmations, did not think he was

“God,” did not pass any moral checklist, and often did not belong to the

“correct” group! They were simply people who trustfully affirmed, with openhearts, the grace of their own hungry experience—in that moment—and thatGod could or would even care about it!

Adapted from Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi,pp. 1-2

Gateway to Silence:Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.

St. Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic

From: Center for Action and Contemplation no-reply@cac.orgSubject: Richard Rohr's Meditation: You Are Being Guided

Date: October 25, 2014 at 11:20 PMTo: christine@whidbey.net

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Swinging on Santa Monica Beach by bogaert

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Trust

You Are Being Guided Sunday, October 26, 2014

The full life of faith becomes a life of deep joy and rest. Once you are

“grafted to the Vine,” to use Jesus’ words (John 15:4-5), you really don’t

have to be anxious about many things (Luke 10:40). You really don’t have

to be worried about the next moment or about tomorrow (Matthew 6:34).

What you can trust is that you are being guided; in fact, almost everything is

seen as guidance. It’s your ability to trust that there is guidance available

which allows it to become guidance! You realize that God is letting this

happen to you now to teach you something, to show you something, or to

love you in a new way. Basically you switch from the fixing, fully

understanding, and controlling mode to the trusting, listening, and allowing

understanding, and controlling mode to the trusting, listening, and allowing

mode. Then you start allowing the Divine Flow instead of stopping it with a

no and a question mark.

The Spirit in you allows you to trust that there’s a reason for this; God is

even in this. That does not mean you can’t finally work to change things or

to improve things, in fact, quite the contrary. But I’m saying that when a yes

and not a no first comes to your soul and to your heart, then you can see

God in the moment and see guidance in this event being given to you by the

provident hand of God. You can trust that nothing is wasted. If there are

changes and fixes that have to be made, you can now do it in an appropriate,

calm, and positive way. That is what characterizes a mature believer in any

religion.

Faith, as we see in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jesus’ usage of the same, is

much closer to our words “trust” or “confidence” than it is about believing

doctrines to be true (which demands almost no ego surrender or real change

of the small self). We have wasted too many centuries now defending such

an intellectual notion of Biblical faith. Real faith people are, quite simply,

usable for larger purposes because they live in and listen to a much Larger

Self.

Adapted from The Divine Dance: Exploring the Mystery of Trinity, disc 1(CD, MP3 download);

and What Difference Does Trinity Make? (MP3 download)

Gateway to Silence:Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.

St. Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic

In this brief talk Fr. Richard introduces us to the real Paul, the writer whose transformative encounter with Christ

led him to view everything through eyes of faith.

Listen to a short excerpt and order the CD or MP3 download at store.cac.org