"The Beauty of Beginner’s Mind" by Jack Kornfield
The wisdom of uncertainty frees us from what Buddhist psychology calls the thicket of views and opinions. “Seeing misery in those who cling to views, a wise person should not adopt any of them. A wise person does not by opinions become arrogant. How could anyone bother those who are free, who do not grasp at any views? But those who grasp after views and opinions wander about the world annoying people.” I like to think that the Buddha said this last sentence with a laugh. Ajahn Chah used to shake his head and smile, “You have so many opinions. And you suffer so much from them. Why not let them go?”
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“Life is like a Jigsaw Puzzle” by Father Seán ÓLaoire
…“Life is like a Jigsaw Puzzle”. If you were to scatter all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on a table, the first thing you would do is identify the four corner pieces and put those in place. Next you would identify the straight lines and put those in place. Then you have three clues for the rest of the pieces: contours, colors and the picture on the box.
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"The Realization of Beauty" Chapter 7 - Sadhana - A Book on Spirituality by Rabindranath Tagore (PART 7)
The greater part of this world is to us as if it were nothing. But we cannot allow it to remain so, for thus it belittles our own self. The entire world is given to us, and all our powers have their final meaning in the faith that by their help we are to take possession of our patrimony.
But what is the function of our sense of beauty in this process of the extension of our consciousness? Is it there to separate truth into strong lights and shadows, and bring it before us in its uncompromising distinction of beauty and ugliness? If that were so, then we would have had to admit that this sense of beauty creates a dissension in our universe and sets up a wall of hindrance across the highway of communication that leads from everything to all things.
But that cannot be true. As long as our realization is incomplete a division necessarily remains between things known and unknown, pleasant and unpleasant. But in spite of the dictum of some philosophers man does not accept any arbitrary and absolute limit to his knowable world. Every day his science is penetrating into the region formerly marked in his map as unexplored or inexplorable. Our sense of beauty is similarly engaged in ever pushing on its conquests. Truth is everywhere, therefore everything is the object of our knowledge. Beauty is omnipresent, therefore everything is capable of giving us joy.
"The Relation of the Individual to the Universe" - (chapter 1) Sadhana – The Realization of Life - A Book on Spirituality by Rabindranath Tagore PART 1 (of 8 part series)
The civilization of ancient Greece was nurtured within city walls. In fact, all the modern civilizations have their cradles of brick and mortar.
These walls leave their mark deep in the minds of men. They set up a principle of "divide and rule" in our mental outlook, which begets in us a habit of securing all our conquests by fortifying them and separating them from one another. We divide nation and nation, knowledge and knowledge, man and nature. It breeds in us a strong suspicion of whatever is beyond the barriers we have built, and everything has to fight hard for its entrance into our recognition.
When the first Aryan invaders appeared in India it was a vast land of forests, and the new-comers rapidly took advantage of them. These forests afforded them shelter from the fierce heat of the sun and the ravages of tropical storms, pastures for cattle, fuel for sacrificial fire, and materials for building cottages. And the different Aryan clans with their patriarchal heads settled in the different forest tracts which had some special advantage of natural protection, and food and water in plenty.
"I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" by Father Seán ÓLaoire
In early 1995, I was invited to give a series of seven lectures at the Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto. I titled the series, “Will the real Jesus please stand up?” During the preparation period for the series, while I was meditating one day, I had a very powerful vision of Jesus. Before the meditation began, I had been reading the famous passage in John’s Gospel where Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the father except through me.” So, now that I had him “in person”, I asked him, “Did you really say that?” He replied, “Yes, I did. Because the only way is love; the deepest truth is love; and the whole point of life is love. Anybody who wants to find the father needs to walk only in love.” And then, without any prompting from me, he went on to say, “And the Buddha is the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the father except through the Buddha. Because the only way is compassion; the deepest truth is compassion; and the whole point of life is compassion. Anybody who wants to find the father needs to walk only in compassion.”
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A Rocking Horse Catholic - comments by Contemplative Catholic — Caryll Houselander
Just read Caryll Houselanders book, "A Rocking horse Catholic." Interesting 20th Catholic 'mystic.' Some parallels with Thomas Merton, especially the following passages . . . . .
"I was in an underground train, a crowded train in which all sorts of people jostled together, sitting and strap-hanging—workers of every description going home at the end of the day. Quite suddenly I saw with my mind, but as vividly as a wonderful picture, Christ in them all. But I saw more than that; not only was Christ in every one of them, living in them, dying in them, rejoicing in them, sorrowing in them—but because He was in them, and because they were here, the whole world was here too, here in this underground train; not only the world as it was at that moment, not only all the people in all the countries of the world, but all those people who had lived in the past, and all those yet to come.
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"Why is Spiritual Awakening So Painful?" by Nuno Alves, Akashic Records Reader
Spiritual awakening can be painful emotionally, because we shed away many of the constructs, beliefs, patterns - inner and outer - that we had surrounded ourselves with, and accumulated over the course of many lifetimes.
Many of these constructs are not aligned with our true spiritual nature and do us more harm than good. But we were convinced otherwise. We were absolutely positively sure we needed them to survive, to thrive, and to feel good. We identified with them. They deal with anything and everything in our lives, big and small, and are often things we hold very dear.
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"A Church of Non-Christians" by Peter Rollins
One of the signs of a world-historical movement is that it spills over from its particular interests and unites previously separate groups. In other words, an influential movement speaks beyond the confines of its origin, crosses tribal boundaries and touches people who might otherwise have no connection with each other. For instance, the French Revolution and the Arab Spring both began in a particular place with a particular people but ended up having world transforming significance through impacting the lives of millions who had nothing to do with either.
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"Tasting Teilhard" by Brie Stoner
After a million years of reflection, there is a dynamic meeting in the consciousness of man between heaven and earth at last endowed with motion, and from it there emerges not simply a world that manages to survive but a world that kindles into fire! ~ Teilhard de Chardin, Activation of Energy, 280
I remember first coming across the name Teilhard de Chardin five years ago in a Foundations of Christian Mysticism course that the Dominican Center hosted in Grand Rapids, MI. His name sounded mystical in and of itself, like an exotic French 50 year old bottle of wine, the subtleties of which my un-refined Bota-Box palate would never differentiate. Like all things French, I immediately assumed I wouldn’t “get it,” and so a couple of his works sat untouched collecting dust in my study for several years. However, during my first year in the Living School at the Center for Action and Contemplation, I experienced Teilhard as the critical key that unlocked all that was theologically tangled and seemingly unresolvable for me between Christianity and its relevance to my peers and future generations.
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Tao Te Ching – Chapter 64 (Part 1 and 2) by Galen Pearl
This uncharacteristically long chapter comprises several parts that may at one time have been separate. It reminds me of the book of Proverbs in the Bible, which contains many pearls of wisdom that can be considered as stand alone verses. Because of its length, I’m going to break discussion of this chapter into two posts.
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The Bodhisattva’s Path by Jack Kornfield
Bodhisattva is the Sanskrit word for a being who is devoted to awakening and to acting for the benefit of all that lives. The way of the bodhisattva is one of the most radical and powerful of all Buddhist forms of practice. It is radical because it states that the deep fulfillment of happiness comes from serving the welfare of others as well as ourself. Our highest happiness is connected with the wellbeing of others.
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Richard Rohr’s Levels of Spiritual Development (Part 1-4) by Wes Eades
This morning at St. Paul’s I’ll begin to raise questions about what we mean by “spiritual formation,” which is the fancy term we now use rather than the older term “discipleship.” Anyone raised in a religious setting is familiar with the concept of “spiritual growth.” This concept is all over scripture, especially in the writings of the Apostle Paul:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me (1st Corinthians 13:11).
There have been many, many attempts to describe, in more detail, what this process of growth looks like. Rohr does an excellent job of integrating many of these attempts into the following “levels.” He presents this material in his book The Naked Now. I’ve relied very heavily on the summary is from this site in presenting this material.
I’ll open the conversation this morning with my elaboration on Ken Wilber’s metaphor of the warehouse, and then get into Rohr’s material.
Here’s the basic list of the stages:
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"What Did Jesus Know?" by Father Sean ÓLaoire
For a few years in the 1970’s, I was the headmaster of Kipchimchim Harambee Secondary School at the western end of the great Rift Valley of Kenya. I also taught math, physics and Scripture. At one stage we were studying Luke’s gospel and we came upon the story of the boy Jesus being ‘lost’ in the Jerusalem temple. Chastened by an upset mother, we are told that he returned to Nazareth with his parents and was obedient to them. Then Luke adds, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” In an earlier story, the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple some 12 years before, we read, again in Luke, “And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.”
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“10 Spiritual Lessons for a New World” by Amoda Maa Jeevan
Amidst intensely turbulent times, so many of us today are feeling the urgent call to make changes that will create a brighter future for us all. Yet, however much we may want to save the world or fix what’s wrong, the truth remains that we can only change the world by changing ourselves. Inner transformation is the key to outer change.
Only by having the courage to walk through the darkness of fear, doubt and uncertainty towards the light of our true inner radiance can we transform our lives from suffering to joy and can we transform our world from terror to peace. The activation of this inner light is a radical shift in consciousness that awakens us to the miracle of our own power. It’s a shift from seeing through the myopic lens of ego to seeing through the unbounded clarity of an open heart.