What the Mystics Know E-Book

Richard Rohr

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 192

Beschreibung

Drawing from the best and most poetic of Richard Rohr's essays from nearly a quarter of a century, each chapter in this new collection examines one of the seven core mystical truths. Organized according to the mystical paths that every worshiper must follow, Rohr identifies the despair of everyday life, promotes opportunities for change even in the face of pain, thereby transforming one's deeper self into a beacon of light that aids in the perpetual metamorphosis of others. Illuminating these insights with reflections on Christian and Jewish scriptures while citing the greatest religious writers throughout the ages, Rohr offers an unparalleled window into the wisdom of the mystics, within a succinct volume that represents the best treasury of his vast library of writing.

Leseprobe

RICHARD ROHR

WHAT THE

MYSTICSKNOW

Seven Pathways to Your Deeper Self

A CROSSROAD BOOKThe Crossroad Publishing CompanyNew York

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ISBN: 9780824520397EPUB ISBN: 9780824520861MOBI ISBN: 9780824520878

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

One THE ENLIGHTENMENT YOU SEEK ALREADY DWELLS WITHIN YOU

How Do We Find What Is Already There?

A True Mirror

To Build Your Own House

Like a Mustard Seed

Dynamis, Our True Self

Discovering Self-Worth

Searching for What We Have Already Touched

When Faith Creates What It Desires

We Are Already Holy

Radical Responsibility

Telling Our Own Story

Awaking from Our Sleep

Julian of Norwich and the First Numinous Experience

God Is Choosing Us Now

Presence and Nonduality

Two GOD IS FOUND IN IMPERFECTION

Why the Journey Matters

The Wheat and the Weeds

Using Evil for Good

God Is an Earthquake

Spiritually Starving in the Midst of Plenty

Man Guards His Nothing

I Am Part of the Problem

The Cosmic Egg

Principles and Prayer

The Depths of Our Emptiness

Living in a Broken World

All New People

We Are the Masks of God

Revealing Our Neediness

Sin Is Something We Are

Worthy and Unworthy

A Child’s Total Faith

The Forgiveness Path of the Saints

Missing the Mark

A Favorite Vice

Our Gift Is Our Sin

Recognizing Our Passions

The Darkness Is a Part of Us

Beyond an All-or-Nothing Outlook

The Disguises of the False Self

Lasting Love

The Result of Excess

Contact with the Numinous

Stealing the Fire

The Center Cannot Hold

Jesus Built Circles, Not Pyramids

A Self Transformed

Anawim: The Poor

Acknowledging Your Fear

The Three Demons in the Wilderness

When Religion Cannot Kneel

We Must Love Them Both

Finding a Deep Yes

Joy in Imperfection

Three FROM PROFOUND SUFFERING COME GREAT WISDOM AND JOY

Suffering and Prayer: The Two Golden Paths

Whenever We See True Pain

You Must Drink of the Cup

God Gets Closer Blow by Blow

When You Have No Control

The Space of Nonanswer

Symbols That Heal

Resurrection Takes Care of Itself

When Someone Carries the Burden with Us

Sharing in Suffering

When You Cannot Forgive

The Story of the Two Sons (The Prodigal Son)

Soon We’ll All Be Gone

Spirituality and Pain

Letting Go of Emotions

Misery

Allowing the Dark Side

The Thin Line between Joy and Suffering

Joy and Pain: A Lesson from Merton’s Hermitage

God Is Participating with Us

Four THE MYSTICAL PATH IS A CELEBRATION OF PARADOX

God Is the Light That Dwells in Darkness

Perfectly Hidden and Perfectly Revealed

Paradoxes in Endless Embrace

Who You Think God Is, God Isn’t

Carrying the Dilemma

Words Become Flesh

Parables and Koans

Parable: A Call to Insight

A Quality of Mystery

Paradox and Authentic Spirituality

How to Win by Losing

We Are Christ’s Body

Conversion to the No-Me

Miracles Are Signs

Praying Out Loud

Limitless Presence

The Last Will Be First

Our Image of God

How God Comes to Us

Healing Physical and Spiritual

Beyond the Defended Ritual

Pontifex : The Bridge Builder

The Sign of Jonah

Five CONTEMPLATION MEANS PRACTICING HEAVEN NOW

Contemplation, The Divine Therapy

The Symbol of the Rising Sun

Einstein: The New Way of Knowing

Thérèse of Lisieux: How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything

A River Meditation

Meister Eckhart and the Reciprocal Gaze

Try to Love a Stone

It’s All a Matter of Seeing

What Really Is

The First Stages of Contemplative Prayer

Radical Contemplation

The Perfect Reflector

God Is Carrying Me

Contemplative Surrender

Our Inner Observer: Fair Witness

Different Forms of Prayer

Crawling up on the Cloud

Making a Place for Christ

Conceiving Christ

Called to a Deeper Place

Faith without Feelings

What’s Happening in Heaven

Mother Teresa: Living without Security

Falling in Love with God

Belonging to God

God Is a Verb or Being Known Through

Identifying with the Beloved

How the Mystics Know God

Six TO DISCOVER THE TRUTH, YOU MUST BECOME THE TRUTH

Truth Is a Person

Hearing the Deeper Voice

The Fruits of the Spirit

The Gift of Inner Authority

“To Dwell inside of Things”

An Invitation to Live with Him

The Discernment of Spirits

We Are Co-Creators

Jesus’ Authority

Salus: Inner Clarity

Learning How to Be Taught

First I Have to Act: The Mysterious Wisdom of Faith

Named by God

Larger than Life

Jesus’ Journey and Ours

Something New: Holy Fools

Ibn al-Arabi: Becoming Transparent

Seven WHEN YOU ARE TRANSFORMED, OTHERS WILL BE TRANSFORMED THROUGH YOU

“Dangerously Free”: Compassion from Contemplation

Plato’s Holy Madness

“Love Must Be Brought to Earth”

The Christ Mosaic

The Gospel Calls Us to Community

Community: Ideal and Real

Sacrifice Is Giving Ourselves to the Other

We Should Be the Leaven

Saints: Channeling God’s Power

You Are an Instrument

Speaking a Word That Is Truth

Truth and Humility

God’s First Liberation

Salvation Happens in Relationship

The School and the Lesson

The Reign of Heaven

The Center for Action and Contemplation

The Need for Wisdom in Action

Take a Step Backward

A New Way of Living

Protected Interiority

Announcing the Alternative

Radical Help

Calling Others to Heal

Trusting the Masculine Soul

Francis of Assisi: Warrior for Love

Spirituality Requires Accountability

Apocalyptic Prophets: The Absolute Stance

Reconstruction

Good over Evil: “The Beginning Is Always Happening”

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

I HOPE THAT THIS BOOK CAN INVITE YOU into the seemingly simple yet always profound realm of those who have found their way close to God and all of creation, and it can place the path of the mystic within your reach. We have failed our people profoundly by mystifying the very notion of mysticism.

Can seeing with the eyes of mystics really have relevance in our busy modern world? I think it is not only relevant but absolutely necessary to change our levels of consciousness, which many religious traditions might have also called growth in holiness or divine union. As Einstein said, but now in my own words, we have tried to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s software—which often caused the problem in the first place. Through a regular practice of contemplation we can awaken to the profound presence of the unitive Spirit, which then gives us the courage and capacity to face the paradox that everything is—ourselves included. Higher levels of consciousness always allow us to include and understand more. Deeper levels of divine union allow us to forgive and show compassion toward more and more, even those we are not naturally attracted to, or even our enemies.

Mystics have plumbed the depths of both suffering and love and emerged with depths of compassion for the world, and a learned capacity to recognize God within themselves, in others, and in all things. If we can read with an attitude of simple mindfulness, the insights and practices shared here can equip us with a deep and embracing peace, even in the presence of the many kinds of limitation and suffering that life offers us. From such contact with the deep rivers of grace, we can live our lives from a place of nonjudgment, forgiveness, love, and a quiet contentment with the ordinariness of our lives. Knowing now that it is not ordinary at all!

Through each of the seven pathways outlined in the book, we can discover, in the context of a mature Christianity, or any religion, the God who is “closer to me than I am to myself,” as St. Augustine puts it. Through the use of scriptures and both traditional and new metaphors, I want to give thoughtful guidance from classic sources, so you can know that your experience is not just your experience but the common domain of the perennial, or wisdom, traditions, which will always come to the surface in every age. How else can we distinguish the guidance of the Holy Spirit from our own egoic whims and fantasies?

Read a small passage from this book—all selected by others from a lifetime of speaking and writing—and carry it with you in your thoughts, hearts, and prayers throughout the day, and then notice what rises up within you. By applying what the mystics know to your momentary outlook, you will be able to bring open-heartedness into the life you lead and the work you do. Then you might just be able to recognize that the ordinary path can also be the way of the mystic. It is all a matter of the eyes and the heart.

I want to full-heartedly dedicate this book to the love, work, and memory of a dear friend, John Jones. He was more excited about making this book happen than I was! He used his own time, with the full support of Gwendolin Herder and Crossroad Press to make this book happen. John was able to see and deeply value things that I had said as I merely grasped for words that might express my own inner experience—things I often wrote only intuitively or haphazardly. It was he who had the wisdom and perception of the saints to know what I really wanted to say!

John Jones had the courage and clarity to perceive the seven underlying themes that became this small book. When the Crossroad staff quietly presented the first draft to me, after John had tragically passed over—so young—I could only sigh and weep, and recognize that he was still my friend, but now from the other side. I thank you, John, a truly good man! For that is what you are.

Part One THE ENLIGHTENMENT YOU SEEKALREADY DWELLS WITHIN YOU

We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living.We live ourselves into a new way of thinking.

HOW DO WE FIND WHAT IS ALREADY THERE?

How do you find what is supposedly already there? Why isn’t it obvious? How do you awaken the Center? By thinking about it? By praying and meditating? By more silence and solitude? Yes, perhaps, but mostly by living—and living consciously. The edges suffered and enjoyed lead us back to the Center. The street person feels cold and rejection and has to go to a deeper place for warmth. The hero pushes against his own self-interested edges and finds that they don’t matter. The alcoholic woman recognizes how she has hurt her family and breaks through to a compassion beyond her. In each case, the edges suffer, inform, partially self-destruct, and all are found to be unnecessary and even part of the problem. That which feels the pain also lets it go, and the Center stands revealed and sufficient! We do not find our own Center; it finds us. The body is in the soul. It is both the place of contact and the place of surrender.

We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into a new way of thinking. The journeys around the circumference lead us to life at the Center. Then by what is certainly a vicious and virtuous circle, the Center calls all the journeys at the circumference into question! The ruthless ambition of the businessman can lead him to the very failure and emptiness that is the point of his conversion. Is the ambition therefore good or evil? Do we really have to sin to know salvation? Call me a “sin mystic,” but that is exactly what I see happening in all my pastoral experience.

That does not mean that we should set out intentionally to sin. We only see the pattern after the fact. Julian of Norwich put it perfectly: “Commonly, first we fall and later we see it and both are the Mercy of God.” How did we ever lose that? It got hidden away in that least celebrated but central Easter Vigil service, when the deacon sings to the church about a felix culpa, the happy fault that precedes and necessitates the eternal Christ. Like all great mysteries of faith, it is hidden except to those who keep vigil and listen.

A TRUE MIRROR

From my first days as a Franciscan, we were told that we were “Christian humanists.” I glory in being a humanist. I have no problem seeing the goodness in people as a true mirror of the goodness in God. For me, there is a direct correlation….

We are reflections of the invisible God (Gen. 1:27). And our only way to know God is through this humanity. This is our only road to a little enlightenment…. We begin here. If I’m created in the image and likeness of God, then anthropology might be just as important as theology to understand the mystery of God….

We must never think we are building up God by putting humanity down. We would, instead, be insulting God, blaspheming, to set ourselves against God’s creation.

TO BUILD YOUR OWN HOUSE

To pray is to build your own house. To pray is to discover that Someone else is within your house. To pray is to recognize that it is not your house at all. To keep praying is to have no house to protect because there is only One House. And that One House is everybody’s Home. In other words, those who pray from the heart actually live in a very different and ultimately dangerous world. It is a world that makes the merely physical world seem anemic, illusory, and relative. The word “real” takes on a new meaning, and we find ourselves judging with utterly new scales, weights, and standards. Be careful of such house-builders, for their loyalties will lie in very different directions. They will be very different kinds of citizens, and the state will not so easily depend on their salute. That is the politics of prayer. And that is probably why truly spiritual people are always a threat to politicians of any sort. They want our allegiance, and we can no longer give it, our house is too big.

LIKE A MUSTARD SEED

Then Jesus asked, “What is thekingdom of God like? What shall Icompare it to? It is like a mustard seed,which a man took and planted in hisgarden. It grew and became a tree, andthe birds perched in its branches.

(Luke 13:18–19)

This parable is instructive for people who want the kingdom to happen right now—they want to be holy after their first year on the journey. For the kingdom to happen, however, we have to walk the entire journey. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. It starts small, but it keeps growing. So keep growing. As time goes on, you’ll sprout many branches, and you’ll look out at the end of your life and say, “God has done it. God has been faithful to the promise. God has made beauty out of my little life.”

DYNAMIS, OUR TRUE SELF

A biblical definition of the Holy Spirit is dynamis, which means “power” or “strength.” We are talking about the power that gives us the certainty that God is drawing us near and that we are associated with the Holy.

… If we “work our way through” our compulsion and emerge again on the other side, then we stand before the depths of our self. There we find a purified passion, a chastened power, our best and true self. Tradition has called this place the “soul,” the point where the human being and God meet, where unity is possible, and where religion consists not only of words, norms, dogmas, rituals, and visits to church, but becomes a genuine experience of encounter.

DISCOVERING SELF-WORTH

Self-worth is not created; it is discovered.

SEARCHING FOR WHATWE HAVE ALREADY TOUCHED

You can only miss something that you have searched for and partially experienced. In fact, you do not even search for it until you have already touched it.

WHEN FAITH CREATES WHAT IT DESIRES

Faith is not a means to something further. It is not what we do in order to get into heaven. Mutual perfect faith would be heaven! Faith is its own end. To have faith is already to have come alive. “Your faith has saved you” is the way Jesus put it to the blind man (Luke 18:42).

Faith is the opposite of resentment, cynicism, and negativity. Faith is always, finally, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faith actually begins to create what it desires. Faith always recreates the good world. Without faith, you sink into the bad world that you most feared. With faith, you keep trusting, hoping, believing, and calling forth life from stones, which is exactly what Jesus intimates in the chapter that follows his healing of the blind man (Luke 19:40). You can call life forth from anything if you already possess life. You can make a stone breathe, make it live for you, make it shout out in praise of God. As has been so often said, faith is a matter of having new eyes, seeing everything through and even with the eyes of God.

WE ARE ALREADY HOLY

“How can I be more holy?” We don’t have to make ourselves holy. We already are, and we just don’t know it. In Christian terminology it is called the Divine Indwelling or the free gift of the Holy Spirit. That proclamation, and all that proceeds from it, is the essential, foundational, and primary task of all religion. Thus, authentic religion is more about subtraction than addition, more letting go of the false self than any attempt at engineering a true self. You can’t create what you already have.

RADICAL RESPONSIBILITY

How can we really be liberated? How can we pass on this freedom to the world? I would like to clarify this question on the basis of a story (from Luke 8) about a miraculous cure.

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. And as Jesus stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons; for a long time he had worn no clothes, and he lived not in a house but among the tombs.

This is a picture of a man who lives among the dead and isn’t quite civilized, because he runs around naked. We shall soon see that the city is comfortable with the fact that this man lives out there, and so is he. Because when Jesus comes to him, we are told:

When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, and said in a loud voice: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beseech you, do not torment me.” The man did not know whether he wanted what Jesus had. His unfreedom was the only world he knew.

We feel much more comfortable with our slavery than with freedom. Freedom means that we have to assume radical responsibility for what we are. To be enslaved means that we always have somebody else to blame for our problems. An evil spirit had already possessed this man for a long time: “He was bound with chains and fetters.” In this way people tried to keep him under control. Although they kept him chained, they said the evil spirit was holding him captive. When we project the darkness in us onto another person or other groups, then these people or groups end up accepting our projection. Sooner or later we all believe the world’s version of who we are.

TELLING OUR OWN STORY

Why does a story have such power? Because most of us don’t think abstractly. We live in a world of images and symbols; that’s what moves us…. Each of us is a story. We were created by God as a story waiting to be told, and each of us has to find a way to tell our story. In the telling of it we come to recognize and own ourselves. People without a place to tell their story and a person to listen to it never come into possession of themselves…. For many people, “myth” means something that isn’t true. Please put aside that understanding. Myth is, in fact, something that is so true that it can be adequately expressed only in story, symbol, and ritual. It can’t be abstracted and objectified. Its meaning and mystery are so deep and broad that they can be presented only in story form. When you step into a story, you find it is without limits and you can walk around with it and inside it. It is natural to sing, dance, and reenact a story. It is too big and too deep to be merely “understood” or taught.

AWAKING FROM OUR SLEEP

We long for distant absolutes, perhaps seeking a confirmation of the absolute we already intuit within ourselves. Like Jacob we eventually awake from our sleep and say, “God was in this place, and I never knew it!” (Gen. 28:16).

JULIAN OF NORWICH ANDTHE FIRST NUMINOUS EXPERIENCE

There is the first numinous experience that opens our eyes. It only needs to happen once. It happened to Julian of Norwich, the English mystic, one May 8, and she lived off of it for the rest of her life. She tried to describe it in her writings, which she called “Showings.” That night, God showed her his heart. Nothing more happened. People such as Angela Merici, who founded the Ursulines, and Junipero Serra had religious experiences at seventeen and eighteen that told them what they were going to do, and neither of them did it until they were fifty-five.

From eighteen to fifty-five was the unfolding. Then, when it happened at fifty-five, they knew what they were born for. When that moment comes, it is great and it is all synchronicity. We know then that grace is at work and we are not manufacturing our own lives.

GOD IS CHOOSING US NOW