From an article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article here
Thirty-four years ago when I launched this column, I would never have said this: Restlessness is not something to be cultivated, no matter how romantic that might seem. Don’t get Jesus confused with Hamlet, peace with disquiet, depth with dissatisfaction, or genuine happiness with the existential anxiety of the artist. Restlessness inside us doesn’t need to be encouraged; it wreaks enough havoc all on its own.
But I’m a late convert to this view. From earliest childhood through mid-life, I courted a romance with restlessness, with stoicism, with being the lonely outsider, with being the one at the party who found it all too superficial to be real.  Maybe that contributed to my choosing seminary and priesthood; certainly it helps explain why I entitled this column, In Exile. For most of my life, I have equated restlessness with depth, as something to be cultivated,
This came naturally to me and all along the way I’ve found powerful mentors to help me carry my solitude in that way. During my high school years, I was intrigued with Shakespeare’s, Hamlet. I virtually memorized it. Hamlet represented depth, intensity, and romance; he wasn’t a beer-drinker.  For me, he was the lonely prophet, radiating depth beyond superficiality.
In my seminary years I graduated to Plato (“We are fired into life with a madness that comes from the gods and has us believe that we can achieve a great embrace, make ourselves immortal, and contemplate the divine”); to Augustine (“You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”); to John of the Cross (We go through life fired by love’s urgent longings); to Karl Rahner (“In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we learn that here in this life there is no finished symphony”). Reading these thinkers helped me put my youthful romanticism under a high symbolic hedge.
Alongside these spiritual writers, I was much influenced by a number of novelists who helped instill in me the notion that life is meant to be lived with such an inner intensity and high romanticism so as to preclude any simple satisfaction in life’s normal, everyday pleasures and domestic joys. For me, Nikos Kazantzakis’ characters radiated a passion that made them virtually godlike and irresistibly enviable, even as they struggled not to self-destruct; Iris Murdoch described loves that were so obsessive, and yet so attractive, as to make everything outside of them unreal; and Doris Lessing and Albert Camus seduced me with images of an inner disquiet that made ordinary life seem flat and not worthwhile. The idea grew in me that it was far nobler to die in unrequited longing than to live in anything else. Better dead in intensity that alive in domestic normalcy. Restlessness was to be encouraged.
And much in our culture, especially in the arts and the entertainment industry, foster that temptation, namely, to self-define as restless and to identify this disquiet with depth and with the angst of the artist. Once we define ourselves in this way, as complex, incurable romantics, we have an excuse for being difficult and we also have an excuse for betrayal and infidelity.  For now, in the words of a song by The Eagles, we are restless spirits on an endless flight. Understandably, then, we fly above the ordinary rules for life and happiness and our complexity is justification enough for whatever ways we act out.  As Amy Winehouse famously self-defines: “I told you I was troubled, and you know that I’m no good.” Why should anyone be mystified by our refusal of normal life and ordinary happiness?
There’s something inside us, particularly when we are young, that tempts us towards that kind of self-definition. And, for that time in our lives, when we’re young, I believe, it’s healthy. The young are supposed to overly-idealistic, incurably romantic, and distrustful of any lazy fall into settling for second-best. As Doris Lessing puts it, there’s only one real sin in life and that’s calling second-best by anything other than what it is, second-best!  My wish is that all young people would read Plato, Augustine, John of the Cross, Karl Rahner, Nikos Kazantzakis, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Jane Austin, and Albert Camus.
But, except for authors such as Plato, Augustine, John of the Cross and Karl Rahner, who integrate that insatiable restlessness and existential angst into a bigger, meaningful narrative, we should be weary of defining ourselves as restless and cultivating that. High romanticism will only serve us well if we eventually set it within a self-understanding that doesn’t make restlessness an end in itself. Just feeling noble won’t bring much peace into our lives and, as we age and mature, peace does become the prize.  Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet, Zorba the Greek, Doctor Zhivago, and the other such mega-romantic figures on our screens and in our novels can enflame our romantic imaginations, but they aren’t in the end images for the type of intimacy that makes for a permanent meeting of hearts inside the body of Christ.
                                                  

WHAT’S NEW AT NATIVITY: 10 THINGS HAPPENING NOW

These are just a few of the things that are happening at the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore, Maryland USA. The article is taken from the blog by Fr Michael White - the original blog can be found here
It’s been a while since I’ve shared a post about what’s new here at Nativity, but not for a lack of topics. So much is new and exciting around here, it’s hard to know where to start. Here’s the run down, in no particular order.
#1. New Invitations and Initiatives
This fall we’re looking to help more parishioners take their next steps. “Just for 10” is a small group program in which people commit to give a group a try for just 10 weeks. The weekend of November 5 & 6 we’re hosting ministry information sessions after all Masses to help people understand how they can serve. Nativity Missions announced last weekend their mission trips for 2017 and has begun taking applications. And, of course, we’ll be hosting our Annual Stewardship Sunday the weekend before Thanksgiving, inviting everyone to grow as givers.
#2. A New Book
We’re happy to announce the release of The Rebuilt Field Guide: Ten Steps for Getting Started (Ave Maria Press, 2016). Our Field Guide is a step-by-step manual for parish staffs and councils or any parishioner interested in helping their parish grow healthier. The Guide presents ten “go at your own pace” exercises that cover everything from music and ministry to evangelization and mission. Make sure to grab a copy for your parish through our wonderful publishers at Ave Maria Press or you can always find it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. We will be introducing here at Nativity at the end of this month.
#3. A New CD
This weekend we will be introducing a first ever CD from our student band. It’s titled “lift up,” I’ve listened to the entire CD and it is outstanding. It’s not just good for a student band, its good.
#4. A New Website
Just a couple weeks ago our new parish website went live. You can check it out here. So much time and hard work, not to mention creativity, went into this project by our staff- over a year in the making. It’s designed to be simple, elegant, and user friendly while providing all the resources and features parishioners, parents, and visitors need to participate in our church’s life and ministry.
#5. A New TV Show
The Rebuilt Show is now airing on CatholicTV. If you don’t get the channel you can also live stream it from CatholicTV’s website. Filmed right here on our Nativity campus, the show features members our staff sharing tips and strategies for effective ministry as well as personal stories of transformation from our parishioners in a segment called “View From the Pew.” We hope it’s both inspiring and practical for parishes. New episodes air Monday’s at 9:30pm and check listings for rebroadcasts throughout the week.
#6. A New Announcement Format
We are really pleased with our new format for video announcements before weekend Masses. We call it the “5 Be 4” and it’s where we count down the five most important things for people to know in any given week. The new format is intended to be fresher, more focused, and a much more engaging presentation. Check it out on our new website.
#7, 8, 9. A New Parking Lot, a New Shuttle and a New Path
In two weeks time, the weekend of October 22 & 23rd, we’re christening our new, and most beautiful parking lot. This is a most significant threshold for us, marking the completion of Phase One of our Vision Building Campaign. Along with all this new parking for visitors and guests we have two other opportunities for our parishioners when it comes to parking. The first is a shuttle service on Sunday morning from the Lutherville Light Rail Station. This is probably the easiest way to park at Nativity. Another option is to park at the former Mars Supermarket, just around the corner, and walk to church. To make that experience more attractive, in the next couple of months we’re upgrading the path from Mars.
#10. And…a New Church
Well…. not quite yet. But we’ve made a lot of progress. Since groundbreaking in April, our church campus has been one big construction site. This week marks a most auspicious milestone with the “pour” of the foundation. We are still on target for a completion date sometime in late fall of 2017

                                                    
Paul and the Thessalonians
Over the next three weekends, on Sundays 31-33 of Year C in the lectionary, we will hear Second Readings taken from Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians. What do we know about the community to whom Paul was writing? Peter Edmonds SJ uses the Acts of the Apostles and the two letters that Paul wrote to the Thessalonians to introduce us to these early Christians who ‘received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit’.
This article is taken from the Thinking Faith website - the original article can be found here
If you mention the Letters to the Thessalonians to anyone with even a slight acquaintance with Paul’s letters, they will almost certainly think immediately of the Second Coming of Christ and the Day of the Lord. This is a good reason why extracts from these letters are read as Second Readings at the close of two of our liturgical years: on five Sundays at the end of Year A in the Catholic Sunday lectionary; and on three Sundays at the end of Year C. (The actual last Sunday of each year, the Feast of Christ the King, has its own readings.)
It is appropriate, then, at this time of year when we visit Thessalonica in our liturgy, tofamiliarise ourselves with the life of this community of Christians who practised our faith when it was young. There are three brief texts from which we can learn about them, and they teach us that worries about the Last Days were just part of the picture. These texts are 13 verses from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 17:1-13), the 89 verses (five chapters) of Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians and the 47 verses (three chapters) of Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians.

The Acts of the Apostles (Acts 17:1-13)

The passage from Acts is taken from the part of Luke’s book that relates Paul’s progress down the Roman road named the Via Egnatia, which linked various cities in Greece. Paul, with Silas, has crossed from Asia into Europe. His first stay was in Philippi, where Acts is in agreement with Paul’s own report that there he was ‘given rough treatment and grossly insulted’ (Acts 16:11-39; 1 Thessalonians 2:2). His next stay was at Thessalonica. This was an ancient city, founded by a general of Alexander the Great whose ambition was to spread Greek culture and civilisation far and wide. A hundred years before Paul arrived, it had come under the rule of Rome. It was typical of the cities where Christian communities would flourish.
Jason of Thessalonica
As was his custom on arriving in a new city, Paul went straight to the Jewish synagogue. There, for three successive Sabbaths, he argued how the Scriptures spoke about the suffering and rising of Christ. He had limited success, but he certainly caused a stir. He became the victim of a riot: the Jews assembled a crowd to bring him before the city authorities, putting him in great danger by charging him with trying to acclaim Christ as emperor. His opponents seized one called Jason who seems to have given Paul lodging. Obviously Paul had allies because they packed him off to the next town, but the Jews of Thessalonica pursued him and, though his new mission in Beroea made progress, he soon moved on. Perhaps he remembered the instruction of Jesus to the Twelve to leave a town which did not welcome them (Luke 9:5).
This passage is never read out on a Sunday; the readings from Acts after Easter cease after the account of the Council of Jerusalem (15:1-2, 22-29). However, on the fourth Sunday of Easter in Year C, we hear from Paul’s sermon to the Jews in the synagogue at Antioch which gives us a good idea of how Paul would employ scripture in preaching before a Jewish audience (Acts 13:14,43-52).
Acts is dated around AD 85, which means that its author is recounting events of forty years before. The advantage of reading Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, the earliest New Testament book, is that it was written soon after his missionary visit in 49. Paul was a busy man: his daily preoccupation was ‘his anxiety for all the churches’ (2 Corinthians 11:28). He probably wrote this letter during his eighteen month stay in Corinth (Acts 18:5).

Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians

Midway through the First Letter to the Thessalonians, Paul inserts a prayer which commentators recognise as a neat summary of the message he wanted to get across:
Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. (1 Thessalonians 3:11-13).
He wrote as a substitute for visiting, to increase the quality of love in the community, to strengthen them in holiness (probably an appeal for sexual purity) and to prepare them for the coming of the Lord Jesus. We note other themes, too. His first chapter is an attractive description of the qualities expected of a Christian community; his aim was to win over their good will and to encourage them, and this was his way of doing this. Their Christian life had brought them affliction and he wanted to help them to endure it. He also needed to help them explain himself, his work and his identity to their fellow citizens; this was the topic of his second chapter.
An ideal community (1:1-10) – ‘Their love for one another and for all’
In the Sunday Lectionary, the first chapter is given in two instalments. On the 29th Sunday of Year A, we hear Paul’s greeting. He refers to his companions, Silvanus and Timothy. He describes those he addressed as a ‘church’, despite their small numbers and their youthfulness in the faith. He emphasises the qualities of the faith, love and hope that marked their commitment and, surprisingly at such an early date in the Christian story, he refers to members of the Trinity: he names God as the Father who loves, Jesus as their Lord, and the Holy Spirit as the force and inspiration of the gospel he preached (1:1-5).
On Sunday 30A, he continues his description of the quality of their life together. The Thessalonians were people of joy who, having imitated Paul, had become examples to other communities in Achaia (Greece). He acknowledges the tribulations that they had to face and he congratulates them on their perseverance. The early date of the letter is confirmed by a mention of their expectation of the imminent return of Christ. Presiding over the whole scene is God: the God of these Christians is not a god of idols but a God who is living and active (1:5-10).
There are striking contrasts with what we learnt from Acts. Paul’s converts here are obviously Gentile rather than Jewish because they have turned aside from idols, and Paul makes no obvious appeal to Scripture in his argument. His words presuppose a longer stay than the three weeks reported in Acts.
Paul defends himself (2:7-9, 13) – ‘We abound in love for you’
On Sunday 31A, we read verses from the second chapter of the letter. These are selected from Paul’s response to critics who were telling his converts that he had flattered and deceived them; that, like other wandering teachers of the time, he was a charlatan, out for their money and little else. In answer, Paul describes himself as an apostle of Christ; his care for them was that of a mother; he took great care to make no financial or other demands on them. His commitment was total; he regarded them as his brothers and sisters: theirs was truly a family of God. The gospel he preached was no personal invention, but came from God and derived its power from God. Paul speaks in the powerful tones of a defendant in a secular court. If in the first chapter of the letter, we are offered a model of a Christian community, in this second we gaze at a portrait of a devoted pastor.
Comfort one another (4:13-18) – ‘The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ’
On Sunday 32A, we hear the part of the letter that is best known, partly because it is frequently read at funeral Masses. Paul has heard about a particular problem that had come up in this community with its high expectations of an early return of Christ. They were concerned about their members who had died: would they miss out on this return? Paul’s habit was to approach pastoral problems theologically, and he does so here. He reminds his converts of his basic gospel: that ‘Jesus died and rose again’. What God had done for and with his Son, he would do for them, too. They too would share in the resurrection. This is the start of Paul’s argument. His conclusion is equally relevant: their destiny was to be with the Lord forever, and this was a truth they were to repeat for mutual comfort and encouragement.
If the beginning and end of Paul’s paragraph are easy to assimilate, the same is not true of its centre, because here Paul uses the language of apocalyptic, a way of speaking familiar in his time but not in ours. This is a poetic way of speaking which is not to be taken literally, as it often is by biblical fundamentalists. If we are to meet Christ after being taken up in the clouds, it means that we will share with Christ the same sort of heavenly journey which the apostles saw Jesus take on Ascension Day (Acts 1:9). In a modern scientific age, we do not take such language at its face value, but look for the theological truth that it expresses.
The Day of the Lord (5:1-6) – ‘Blameless before our God and Father’
Our final passage from the first letter on Sunday 33A is on a related topic, the ‘Day of the Lord’. This was a topic treated in prophets like Amos who warned that this would mean ‘darkness, not light’ (5:18). For Paul, this has become the Day of Christ, to be welcomed by his converts who were ‘children of light and children of the day’. The imagery was suggested by the visit of the Roman Emperor to a particular city, a day of joy and celebration. We note that Paul does not commit himself to any date. In this he echoes Jesus in the gospel who tells his disciples that only the Father knows the date of ‘that day or that hour’ (Mark 13:32). He also echoes gospel language in speaking of a thief in the night (Matthew 24:43-44).

The Second Letter to the Thessalonians

As well as being much shorter than the First Letter to the Thessalonians, the Second Letter is less personal. The writer is a more distant figure; the style is more formal, the tone more authoritarian. Most Pauline experts date the letter much later, perhaps of similar vintage to theLetters to Timothy and Titus. They recognise a writer appealing to the authority of Paul years later.
The letter deals with three major topics. The first chapter concentrates on the persecution that the community was enduring. The second chapter instructs about the Second Coming of Christ. This is nothing to be excited about; certain events must occur before it happens, and these things have not happened. The third chapter concentrates on moral behaviour, warning in particular against the dangers of idleness.
The Sunday lectionary provides one passage from each chapter for the Second Readings of the three last Sundays of the entire three year cycle, but they are brief. We only hear 17 of the 47 verses of the letter and some would argue that, in their brevity, these do not include the liveliest and most interesting.
A first prayer (1:11-2:2) – ‘Worthy of your call’
Our first extract on Sunday 31C falls into two parts. The first is an attractive prayer which we can make our own. Its tone is very different from the verses that go before it, which contain some of the fiercest words in Pauline literature; they threaten eternal loss to all who fail to acknowledge God and the gospel of Christ. Its second part introduces an account of the signs which will mark the second coming of Christ. Its message is gentle, telling us not to be alarmed about these events; again this contrasts with the dramatic description that follows of what will happen before Christ comes again.
More prayers (2:16-3:5) – ‘Pray for us’
Our second extract, on Sunday 32C, has prayer as a key word. It begins and ends with a petition to the Lord Jesus Christ as well as God the Father for comfort and strength, that the hearers may turn their hearts towards the love of God and the fortitude of Christ. They were to keep the traditions they have been taught. Enclosed by these prayers is an appeal for prayer for Paul and his mission. Such prayer is to be confident because it is directed to a Lord who is faithful. The ‘bigoted and evil people’, so prominent at the beginning of the letter, are hardly mentioned.
Daily living (3:7-12) – ‘We worked night and day’
The passage appointed for Sunday 33C indicates practical problems that arose in early Christian communities. Paul appeals to his own example of working day and night in order that he should be no burden on them. It could be that certain leaders, and others in the community, were idle and expecting other church members to take care of them. The prayers quoted in previous passages from this letter should have ensured that everybody got on quietly with their work and earned their keep. In these final lines, Paul uses unusually strong language of command; he much prefers to request than to order. The whole passage is bracketed by the words, ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ’, words that also occur in the first and last verses of the letter.
The Church at Thessalonica continues to this day in Thessaloniki, the second city of modern Greece; the letters that Paul wrote to their predecessors in the faith live on in our Bibles and our liturgies. Paul wrote, ‘My orders, in the Lord’s name, are that this letter be read to all the brothers and sisters’ (1 Thessalonians 5:27). His hearers heeded this order and kept the letter for posterity, so that Paul’s praise for their ‘work of faith, labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Thessalonians 1:3) was not forgotten. May we become imitators of them, as they became imitators of Paul and the Lord (1 Thessalonians 1:6).
Peter Edmonds SJ is a member of the Jesuit community in Stamford Hill, north London.
                                             

Nondual Consciousness

Taken from the daily email from Fr Richard Rohr - you can subscribe to the email here

The Sacrament of the Present Moment
Only unitive, nondual consciousness can open our hearts, minds, and bodies to actually experience God. Ultimate Reality cannot be seen with any dualistic operation of the mind, where we divide the field of the moment and eliminate anything mysterious, confusing, unfamiliar, or outside our comfort zone. Dualistic thinking is highly controlled and limited seeing. It protects the status quo and allows the ego to feel like it’s in control. This way of filtering reality is the opposite of naked presence to Presence.

We learn the dualistic pattern of thinking at an early age, and it helps us survive and succeed in practical ways. But it can get us only so far, that’s why all religions at the more mature levels have discovered another “software” for processing the really big questions like death, love, infinity, suffering, and God. Many of us call this access “contemplation” or “prayer.” It is a nondualistic way of seeing the moment.

Nondual knowing is living in the naked now, the “sacrament of the present moment.” This consciousness will teach us how to actually experience our experiences, whether good, bad, or ugly, and how to let them transform us. Words by themselves will invariably divide and judge the moment; pure presence lets it be what it is, as it is. Words and thoughts are invariably dualistic; but pure experience is always nondualistic.

As long as you can deal with life as a set of universal abstractions, you can pretend that the binary system is true. But once you deal with concrete reality—with yourself, with someone you love, with actual moments—you find that reality is always a mixture of good and bad, dark and light, life and death. Reality requires more a both/and approach than either/or differentiation. The nondual mind is open to everything. It is capable of listening to the other, to the body, to the heart, to all the senses. It begins with a radical yes to each moment.

When you can be present in this way, you will know the Real Presence. I promise you this is true. You will still need and use your dualistic mind, but now it is in service to the greater whole rather than just the small self.

References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 12, 50, 56, 74; and
A New Way of Seeing . . . A New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul (CAC: 2007), disc 1 (CD, MP3 download).

Experiential Knowing
The brilliant word “non-duality” (advaita in Sanskrit) was used by many in different traditions in the East to distinguish any notion of union from total absorption or enmeshment: "Not entirely one, but not two either." Facing some of the same challenges of modern-day ecology and quantum physics, they did not want to say that all things were metaphysically or physically identical, nor did they want to separate and disconnect everything in any absolute sense. In effect, the contemplative mind withholds from labeling or categorizing things too quickly (i.e., judging), so it can come to see things in themselves and as themselves, in their uniqueness—apart from the words or concepts that become their substitutes.

Humans tend to think that because they agree or disagree with the idea of a thing, they have realistically encountered the thing itself. Not at all true, says the contemplative. To know something you must encounter the thing in itself. “Presence” is my word for this encounter, a different way of knowing and touching the moment. It is a much more vulnerable way of knowing; it leaves us without a sense of full control. The Apostle Thomas had his idea of Jesus, but had to trustfully put his finger into his side before he could know the true Jesus (John 20:27). Such nondual, panoramic, and deeper seeing requires a lot of practice, but the rewards are superb and, I believe, necessary for both joy and truth in this world.

Presence is experienced in a participative way, not by thinking about it. The mind, by nature, is intent on judging, controlling, and analyzing instead of seeing, tasting, and loving. This is exactly why the mind cannot be present or live in the naked now. The mind wants a job and believes that its job is to process things by its own criteria. The key to stopping this obsessive game is, quite simply, peace, silence, or stillness. Silence is God’s primary language; “everything else is a poor translation,” as Fr. Thomas Keating wisely observes. [1] Please think about that and how it is true.

References:
[1] Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation (Bloomsbury Publishing: 2012), 105.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 35, 54.

Dividing the Field of the Moment
Most of us tend to cut every new idea or situation in half and eliminate that which we do not understand or things that are beyond our present experience. Not only do we divide the field of the moment, but we almost immediately judge one half to be superior and one half to be inferior! Watch yourself do this almost automatically. We compare, and as soon as we compare, we compete. Then, as some have said, we also crucify. This is the mental basis of much racism, sexism, war, homophobia, and prejudice.

The Eastern traditions have called this mind game dualistic thinking: where you divide, separate, and conclude what’s up or down, in or out, with me or against me, right or wrong. Pick your category: Catholic or Protestant, black or white, gay or straight. Everyone’s going to find some categories whereby they can divide the world to their liking. And isn’t it convenient that our particular group always happens to be on the up side?! You’d think we would see the inherent narcissism and blindness in this. It leads to some very false and untested assumptions, such as the problematic belief that people who are not in my religion don’t know God or that God doesn’t really love or care about them. Without this foundational insight about our minds (we might call it conversion), much of the world is trapped at this level of "stinking thinking."

The prevalence of such thinking tells me that religion has not been doing its job. The contemplative mind—nondual consciousness—should be religion’s unique gift to society. Way back in the fourth century, Augustine said, “The church consists of the communion of the whole world.” [1] In other words, wherever there is communion, that’s the church. Wherever there is love, that’s where God is. Even though an official "doctor of the church" said this, most Catholics and Evangelicals would disagree. They’d say the church is comprised of people who belong to our tribe or group, who have been baptized and follow all the proper rituals and believe the right things. This is one of the sad results of dualistic thinking; the mind loves to exclude, eliminate, and constrict inside its supposed certitudes.

One of the signs of nondual consciousness is that you can actually understand and be patient with dualistic thinkers, even though you can no longer return to that straight jacket yourself. The many individuals who have charted the development of consciousness all agree that the lower levels are dualistic and the higher levels become more and more nondual. As we advance in consciousness, we understand reality less in terms of win/lose, either/or, absolute right and absolute wrong. Higher stages of consciousness (or perhaps we should say deeper levels of consciousness) always skillfully include the previous stages. That is what makes them whole and holy.

References:
[1] Augustine, On the Unity of the Church: Against the Donatists, 20, 56; PL 43:434.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Exploring and Experiencing the Naked Now (CAC: 2010), disc 2 (CD, DVD, MP3 download);
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass: 2011), 118;
A New Way of Seeing . . . A New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul (CAC: 2007), disc 1 (CD, MP3 download).

The Meaning of Spiritual Love
When I teach nondual consciousness, I often use the phrase “not one, but not two either.” Nondual consciousness heals our splits and sense of separation. Think of how a truly loving, faithful relationship has helped you be fully and wholly yourself. John of the Cross describes this relationship in his “Spiritual Canticle,” and this is my paraphrase:
When you regarded me
Your eyes imprinted your grace in me,
In this, you loved me again,
And thus my eyes merited
To also love what you see in me. . . .
Let us go forth together to see ourselves in your beauty. [1]

When we read poetry as beautiful and profound as this verse, we can see why John of the Cross was far ahead of his time in the spiritual and psychological understanding of how love works and how true love changes us at a deep level. He consistently speaks of divine love as the template and model for all human love, and human love as the necessary school and preparation for any transcendent encounter. If you have never experienced any human love, it will be very hard for you to access God as Love (although grace overcomes this barrier). If you have never let God love you, you will not know how to love other people or things as they deserve.

In this surely inspired passage, John describes the very process of love at its best: You give a piece of yourself to the other. You see a piece of yourself in the other (usually unconsciously). This allows the other to do the same in return. You do not need or demand anything back from them, because you know that you are both participating in a single, Bigger Gazing and Loving—one that fully satisfies and creates an immense Inner Aliveness. Simply to love is its own reward. You accept being accepted—for no reason and by no criteria whatsoever! This is the key that unlocks everything in me, for others, and toward God, so much so that we call it “salvation.”

To put it another way, what I let God see and accept in me also becomes what I can see and accept in myself. And even more, it becomes that whereby I see everything else. This is why it is crucial to allow God, and at least one other person, to see us in our imperfection and nakedness, as we are—rather than as we ideally wish to be. It is also why we must give others this same experience of being looked upon in their imperfection; otherwise, they will never know the essential and utterly transformative mystery of grace. This is the glue that binds the universe of persons together.

Such utterly free and gratuitous love is the only love that validates, transforms, and changes us at the deepest levels of consciousness. It is what we all desire and what we were created for. Once you allow and accept God’s love for yourself, you will almost naturally become a conduit of the same for others.

Can you let God “look upon you in your lowliness,” as Mary put it (Luke 1:48), without waiting for some future moment when you believe you are worthy? Remember the words of John of the Cross: “Love what God sees in you.” Many of us never go there, because to be loved in this way is to live in the naked now, and it is indeed a quite naked moment.

References:
[1] St. John of the Cross, “Spiritual Canticle,” 32, 36.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 140-142.