The Sacred Attitude

The basic and most fundamental problem in the spiritual life is this acceptance of our hidden and dark self, with which we tend to identify all the evil that is in us.

We must learn by discernment to separate the evil growth of our actions from the good ground of the soul.

And we must prepare that ground so that a new life can grow up from it within us, beyond our knowledge and beyond our conscious control.

The sacred attitude is then one of reverence, awe and silence before the mystery that begins to take place within us when we become aware of our inmost self.

In silence, hope, expectation, and unknowing, the man of faith abandons himself to the divine will: not as to an arbitrary and magic power whose decrees must be spelled out from cryptic ciphers, but as to the stream of reality and of life itself.

Thomas Merton.
The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation.

 

~~ @@ ~~

 

Hope

Most of us have seen death close up. We have known the kind of suffering that wrenches the bones. But we have also known the sort of hope that makes the heart sing. . . . If you are a problem drinker, you already know about pain and loneliness.  We'd like you to find some of the peace and joy we have found in meeting the reality of life's ups and downs with a clear and steady heart.

Living Sober, p. 86

 

The soul would have no rainbow
if the eyes had no tears.

 

H O P E = Heart Open; Please Enter.

 

~~ @@ ~~

Ordinariness

In a world of tension and breakdown it is necessary for there to be those who seek to integrate their inner lives not by avoiding anguish and running away from problems, but by facing them in their naked reality and in their ordinariness.
Thomas Merton

शिप्व्रेक्केद इन साउथ कैरोलाइना

Seek Reality, Seek God

Spiritual Reading puts us in contact not just with words, with ideas, but with reality-with God.

To seek God is to seek reality.
And this must be something more than a flight from images to ideas.
The interior life is not merely what is not exterior.

Thomas Merton

A Search for Solitude

#@#@#@#

The Physical & The Spiritual

“There aren’t two worlds – the physical and the spiritual -- there is only one: God’s Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven. Many of us pray, ‘Our Father who art in Heaven,’ thinking that God is up there, which creates the duality of the two worlds. A lot of people in the West like to keep matter and the spirit very comfortably and conveniently apart. All truth is one, all reality is one. As soon as we take the enfleshment of God, the incarnation which, for Christians, is represented by the person of Jesus Christ, then we start taking things seriously.” – Father Bert White

-- from Mother Teresa – A Simple Path

Living In Today

I have a new philosophy.

I'm only going to dread one day at a time.

-- Charles Schulz

Living in today helps keep my life balanced and simple.
At first, I may need to practice staying in the present.
I may find that I need to keep bringing myself back to today from yesterday or tomorrow.

There is nothing that will happen today that I can't, with God's help, manage.

Today let me keep my feet firmly planted in the bedrock of the present, my only reality.

Fear Is Only An Illusion

Fear is only an illusion.

It is the illusion that creates
the feeling of separateness -

the false sense of isolation
that exists only in your imagination.

--Jeraldine Sounders

I am only alone in my mind.
Freedom from fear is a decision I can choose to make at any time.
I can simply give it up and replace it with my understanding of equality with all persons.
Taking responsibility for my fear, or my freedom from it, is the first step to a perspective promising healthier emotional development.
If I am fearful today, it's because I have forgotten the reality of my existence.
I am equal to all the people in my world, and we are necessary to one another.