Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator.

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.

Try to say that: “I don't know anything”. We used to call it “tabula rasa” in Latin. Maybe you could think of yourself as an erased blackboard, ready to be written on. For by and large, what blocks spiritual teaching is the assumption that we already know, or that we don't need to know. We have to pray for the grace of beginner's mind. We need to say with the blind man, “I want to see”.

The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right but by doing it wrong!

In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.

I believe contemplation shows us that nothing inside us is as bad as our hatred and denial of the bad. Hating and denying it only complicates our problems. All of life is grist for the mill. Paula D’Arcy puts it, “God comes to us disguised as our life.” Everything belongs; God uses everything. There are no dead-ends. There is no wasted energy. Everything

Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Let

If your prayer is not enticing you outside your comfort zones, if your Christ is not an occasional “threat,” you probably need to do some growing up and learning to love.

Our first experience of life is primarily felt in the *body.* ... We know ourselves in the security of those who hold us and gaze upon us. It's not heard or seen or thought it's felt. That's the original knowing.

Know that things are okay as they are. This moment is as perfect as it can be. The saints called this the “sacrament of the present moment.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are.

That is true for both liberals and conservatives: the liberals deny the vertical arm of the cross (transcendence and tradition); the conservatives deny the horizontal (breadth and inclusivity).

God can most easily be lost by being thought found.

That’s what happens in the early stages of contemplation. We wait in silence. In silence all our usual patterns assault us. Our patterns of control, addiction, negativity, tension, anger, and fear assert themselves. That’s why most people give up rather quickly. When Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the first things that show up are wild beasts (Mark 1:13). Contemplation is not first of all consoling. It’s only real.

Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be.

Some say that FEAR is merely an acronym for “false evidence appearing real.

For many secular people today we live in a disenchanted universe without meaning, purpose, or direction. We are aware only of what it is not. Seldom do we enjoy what it is. Probably it is only healthy religion that is prepared to answer that question. Healthy religion is an enthusiasm about what is, not an anger about what isn’t.

When we get rid of our kinesthetic knowing, we are more efficient. We can keep pushing feelings down and move ahead with what we have to do in the next hour. There are times when that is quite appropriate, and even helpful and necessary. But not always. As soul, we don’t really act. We just are. As ego, we cope with the world. We change it. We rearrange and constantly try to improve it. As contemplatives, we first stand in vigil, and then we act from that more spacious place, although sometimes we choose not to act, or not to act now.

Religious energy is in the dark questions, seldom in the answers.

No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it.

Religions should be understood as only the fingers that point to the moon, not the moon itself.

God is a lover who receives and forgives everything. The Gospel says “you will know the mystery of salvation through the forgiveness of sin” (Luke 1:77). “Fore-given” means being given to beforehand — before you earned it, were worthy of it, or maybe even asked for it. So forgiveness breaks down the entire world of meritocracy and the notion of deservedness. Our logic of quid pro quo is useless in the realm of Spirit. Instead, if we are open to it, we will be led into the realm of mercy and grace — the unique world of God.

Faith is the only way of knowing that is patient with also not knowing.

The spiritual world is hidden and perfectly revealed in the physical world.

Therefore, we are led to the conclusion that growth in the spiritual life (and this is surprising to capitalists) takes place not by acquisition of something new. It isn’t like the acquisition of new information, which some call “spiritual capitalism.” In reality our growth is hidden. It is accomplished by the release of our current defense postures, by the letting go of fear and our attachment to self-image. Thus, we grow by subtraction much more than by addition. It’s not a matter of more and better information. The wisdom traditions say that information itself is not the key. Once our defenses are out of the way and we are humble and poor, truth is allowed to show itself. It is not acquired. It shows itself when we are free from ideology, fear, and anger. “I know” won’t get us anywhere. The truth is, I don’t know anything. Our real hero is Forrest Gump! Perhaps he was a metaphor for beginner’s mind. Only nonknowing is spacious enough to hold and not distort the knowing that is possible.

the Greek word meta-noia, which literally means to move “beyond the mind,” is usually translated “repentance” and no longer points to its much deeper meaning.

The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.

This may seem odd, coming from a Center of Action and Contemplation that works to improve people’s lives and is committed to social change, but after eight years at the center I’m convinced that I must primarily teach contemplation. I’ve seen far too many activists who are not the answer. Their head answer is largely correct but the energy, the style, and the soul are not. So if they bring about the so-called revolution they are working for, I don’t want to be part of it (especially if they’re in charge). They might have the answer, but they are not themselves the answer. In fact, they are often part of the problem. That’s one reason that most revolutions fail. They self-destruct from within. Jesus and the great spiritual teachers primarily emphasized transformation of consciousness and soul. Unless that happens, there is no revolution. When leftists take over, they become as power-seeking and controlling and dominating as their oppressors because the demon of power has never been exorcised. We’ve seen this in social reforms and in many grassroots and feminist movements. You want to support them and you agree with many of their ideas, but too often they disappoint. I wonder if Jesus was not referring to this phenomenon when he spoke of throwing out the demons (leaving the place “swept and tidy”) and then seven other demons returned making it worse than before (Matt. 12:45). Overly zealous reforms tend to corrupt the reformers, while they remain incapable of seeing themselves as unreformed. We need less reformation and more transformation

Life is not about me; it is about God, and God is about love. When we don’t know love, when we don’t experience love, when we experience only the insecurity and fragility of the small self, we become restless.