PRESENTATION THREE Journey to the Inner Dwelling of Awakening Consciousness

Transcription

1 PRESENTATION THREE Journey to the Inner Dwelling of Awakening Consciousness Slide 1 no notes Slide 2 It is an honor to be with you in the mystery of your theme of transformation. This is what the universe has been doing all along in the 13.7 billion history of its unfolding, and all humankind has been part of that journey of transformation. Looking at this image, we can see part of a swirling galaxy that speaks of stillness at the center; there is dynamic energy tossing out what is no longer needed and taking in something new. Your theme of transformation witnesses to your consent to the life energy at the center of the universe. Some things make us afraid to live on that evolutionary edge where the universe continually recreates itself. But we cannot stop this. Slide 3 No, you cannot stop this evolutionary re-creation of the universe, nor your own journey of inner transformation, unless of course, you want to put yourself in total peril. It s like being on a roller coaster you can scream all you want, but it won t stop; it s going somewhere and you re not getting off. Me change? You mean I m not authentic??? I m perfect just the way I am, and that s enough! Where are we going in this journey of transformation? Ultimately, it can only be to our inner dwelling of awakening consciousness. Wait until we hear the words of Jesus tomorrow! Slide 4 OSF Tiffin Pre-Chapter Retreat 2014 Slide 5 1

2 The invitation in this journey is not simply to look for new ways of doing things based upon old beliefs, but to bring forth a total shift in consciousness... a cumulatively transformative process, in which something of the utmost importance is taking place... Tiffin February 2013 OSF Tiffin Pre-Chapter Retreat 2014 One year ago you were beginning to integrate your Chapter work with the Journey of Transformation. These quotes were found among your materials. These thoughts provided a context in which you would be making choices to inform your vision and action development, while deepening your awareness of how this might be done. Truly, this journey was to require a non-negotiable transfiguration of the heart so that you could communally develop communion with one another and be a community for the People of God. It s worth noting here, that for the Egyptians, the brain served no purpose in thinking. For them, all thinking took place in the heart that inner dwelling where all consciousness is awakened. Slide 6 NOW James Hollis So, here you are, in this mysterious now. With your history receding like the sound of a hunter s horn along the wind, with your future rushing toward you like the next season. Now is the moment, the only moment that exists, in which becoming can be and in which consciousness can make a difference. OSF Tiffin Pre-Chapter Retreat 2014 We need to move beyond the past, carry the tradition forward, and welcome every future moment. We cannot fix the past. It is finished. We must pay attention to the present. It is our time of Kairos when everything is at stake and it is a time for finding God in it. The Paschal Mystery always calls us to clothe ourselves in new life, whatever that means for the future as it beckons us. New life, all of life is connected on the fundamental level of oneness or unity... A contemplative stance is essentially the capacity to be aware of Love s presence everywhere. It requires engagement of our imagination and trust that this imagination is energized by the Spirit. Together in community we form a paradigm of ever-greater connectedness. We literally sit in one another s energy fields and make it possible to be transformed by the call to intentional growth in consciousness. Slide 7 From Gail Worcelo, Sister of the Green Mountain Monastery We live in a place that Karl Rahner describes as the loving acceptance of the mystery and it unpredictable disposal of us. Awakening to this consciousness is the prerequisite for the experience of 2

3 resurrection an exquisite knowing nothing but the love of the Holy One. Making no effort to sustain what has been, we free the Spirit to work in and through us, to face our darkest fears and to trust the Holy. We then are the Spirit s work itself. DANCE - Stand: All that surrounds me is sacred, (hands all around the body) from the earth, (shape a sphere with hands) to the heavens, (hand above head; wave back and forth) from the waters, (hands below waist with rippling motion) to the fire. (hands up and clap) I salute all, (bow profoundly) and all is one. (namaste gesture) 2 nd time repeat: All that surrounds me is sacred, rd time as Tai Chi What did we just do? We moved. This slow undeniable revelation that WE ARE MOVING affects how we understand ourselves and Religious Life; not only are we moving, but toward deeper expressions of relationality and love in an awakening consciousness at the center of our souls. Evolution is not an external event; it s not just an event in the outer world, but a deep interior evolutionary consciousness to itself. Evolution and we are moving what do they really mean? It s happening right now inside you, as a congregation, and as part of the tradition as well. It is a moment of grace, a one-time event in which something radically new is coming into existence. Remember the slide I showed you this morning about the 6 moments of grace that historicized the unfolding of Religious Life? Something had to be let go of for something new to emerge. The Christ event was the initiating and first moment of grace in our Christian tradition. It has unfolded into greater complexity and relationality through the centuries. Slide 8 Cosmos World Tribe Ego OSF Tiffin Pre-Chapter Retreat 2014 As the tradition unfolds, there is an inside to it that unfolds with the interior dimension. New moments of grace arise because of social, political, and cultural forces pressure tradition into ever deeper dimensions of love, justice, mercy, compassion as part of a whole cosmic context. Karl Rahner says that this internal dynamism is Christ pushing the tradition into greater active transcendence. When a new moment of grace comes into existence, the other moments have the weight and gravitas that propels us forward. The whole thing comes with us. This is not an isolated moment. When a new moment arises, the power of emergence is at work in the tradition; not only an improvement but the arising of something totally new. 3

4 Emergence is a vertical leap. The system is pushing toward something new; some of us will take a path of regression, some will take a path of coasting, some will move with it. We can view the various moments of grace as periods of: Ego-centrism all about me Ethno-centrism about me and my tribe World centrism me, my tribe, and the world Cosmo-centrism me, my tribe, the world, and the cosmos Now we are in the midst of a leap into the cosmocentric. Some observers of evolutionary grace would say that only 1-5% of humanity is ready to take the leap. Even the spiral seems an inadequate symbol. Maybe the flatter image of unfolding concentric movements is better. Or the SLINKY! Or an expanding sphere. Slide 9 According to Cynthia Bourgeault in Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God, we live in the embodying fullness of the source of grace, what our tradition defines as the initiating event of Christ. She calls this grace the Mercy, which is the length and breadth and height and depth of what we know of God. In the First or Old Testament tradition as well as the Islamic tradition, mercy is foremost among the names of God. We hear it over and over scripture. For I desire mercy, not sacrifice. (Hosea 6:6) What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (Michah 6:8) God redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness. (Ps. 103:4) His mercy is everlasting. (Ps. 100:4) In the name of God, the merciful, the all compassionate... (beginning of all Islamic prayer) Mercy means some kind of exchange or transaction. It is a connection word. Insofar as we are able to open our hearts and entrust ourselves to it, the Mercy is able to move us steadily toward that final letting go and movement into the whole. Thomas Merton noted that mercy in English is chesed in the original Semitic, which means a fierce bonding love. Chesed is fidelity, it is also strength, it is the power that binds one person to another in a covenant of hearts... Or an infallible link of love that holds the created and uncreated reality together. (Loc ) In another book by Bourgeault: The Wisdom Jesus (p ), she develops this further: Jesus taught love your neighbor AS yourself as a continuation of your very own being. In this teaching then, your neighbor is you. There are not two individuals, one seeking to better herself at the price of the other, or to extend charity to the other. There are simply two cells of the one great Life. When we experience that one Life from the inside, then laying down one s life for another is not a loss of one s self but a vast expansion of it because the indivisible reality of love is the only True Self. Thus, Jesus is the master and teacher of non-dual consciousness. Slide 10 Leaning Back Into the Heart of Christ: A Sacred Gesture Posted October 4, 2011 on Christ is part of both internal and external dimensions in our tradition, and thus we are moving toward greater moments of grace. We are talking about advancing the whole of the tradition at each moment of grace. How do we do this? That answer is that we must break our hearts open for God. 4

5 IN THE old path of formation, much of it patterned after Dom Jean Le Clerc s teaching (a scholar of Medieval Mysticism, and a French Benedictine Monk of Clairvaux Abbey in Luxemburg), You come to the monastery to be... De-formed So as to be Re-formed So as to be Con-formed So as to be Trans-formed into Christ! He was expounding on the classical penitential process, understood in many religious traditions, that the spiritual path of disintegration was necessary before we could walk the path of reintegration. Slide 12 Jesus, the TEACHER John 13:23 OSF Tiffin Pre-Chapter Retreat 2014 We learned that the real monastery is the cave of the heart and that is where the TEACHER dwells. The transmission of God Consciousness from Teacher to Disciple is a mysterious process. It is sometimes likened to catching fire from what is already burning or falling into step with an already existing rhythm. Coming to the monastery within, the heart monastery, is coming to live near the TEACHER, to catch from him his rhythm, his fire, his freedom and union with the Divine source! As Teacher, Jesus accepts disciples, he expects to make others like himself. The disciple is to grow into the full stature of the Master and indeed this is a potent image of the heart. He reminded us of the scene, in the Gospel of John where John the Beloved disciple leans back into the heart of Jesus at the last supper. We do the same in our relationship to the TEACHER. In order to move closer to Jesus, we lean back into his heart by traversing into the Center of our Being, and each deeper level brings us closer to the Center of Christ, our own center, the burning fire of LOVE at the heart of the Cosmos. Do not look at him or face him (turns him into an object and one sees only the outside) but rather lean into Him, into his heart and enter into his own True Awareness. Gestures such as this one, of leaning back into the heart of Christ, contain a great amount of spiritual information that cannot be found anywhere else but in the sacred gesture itself. Karl Rahner makes reference to primordial images. They have enduring resonance signifying a piece of reality in which a door is mysteriously opened for us into the unfathomable depths of Mystery. Primordial images are thick with meaning. They carry with them not only the articulated meaning of the present but also all the meanings that have accrued to them over the centuries, as well as new meanings pressing to emerge. The heart, in Christian Tradition, is one such image. Slide 12 In her Dialogues, Catherine of Siena, shared her mystical gifts, one of which included an exchange of hearts with Christ. In prayer (of the imaginal realm), Christ appears, opens her left side and takes out her heart. A few days later Christ appears again with another heart and says, Dearest Daughter, a few days ago I took your 5

6 heart from you, now in the same way I give you my own heart. For the future, it is by this heart that you must live and act in the world. In a similar experience of heart exchange, Margaret Mary Alacoque wrote: the sacred heart of Christ is an inexhaustible fountain and its sole desire is to pour itself out. In our Franciscan tradition, there is the similar experience of Francis receiving the stigmata. Slide 13 What does it mean then, to experience this heart exchange in the 21 st century? How do we lean back into the Heart of Christ at the Heart of the Cosmos? Teilhard de Chardin, whose spiritual vision was contoured by his loving gaze upon the Sacred Heart as well as by his scientific training spoke of this reality in his book The Heart of Matter. He said, It would be difficult for me to convey, how deeply and forcefully my life developed under the sign of the Heart of Jesus. At that time, the more I prayed, the more deeply did God materialize for me in a reality that was at once spiritual and tangible. For Teilhard, through the symbol of the Sacred Heart, the Divine took on the consistency of an energy, of a fire, insinuating itself everywhere and thus amortizing the Cosmic Milieu. When Teilhard died, there was a picture on his desk of the Radiant Heart of Christ, personally inscribed with the words- My Litany on the front/back which read in part: Sacred Heart Motor of evolution Heart of Matter World Zest Heart of the World s Heart Focus of ultimate and Universal energy Center of the Cosmic Sphere of Cosmogenesis Heart of Jesus, Heart of Evolution, unite me to yourself. The heart of Christ was a fire with the capacity to penetrate all things, the ultimate force of attraction for the universe, drawing the universe FORWARD toward intensification of complexity, new creation and LOVE. The way the Heart of Christ draws the universe forward, according to Teilhard is through creative unions. In his view, all of evolution has progressed through a series of creative unions - sub atomic particles unite to form atoms, which unite to form molecules, cells, organisms and so on. This is the pattern by which the universe creates something new, more complex and conscious. Each time a new creative union emerges, there is an exchange of characteristic energy among the uniting elements. The characteristic energy of atoms, for example, is electrical energy. But for us humans to unite with each other, to form the next creative union, we need to share with each other our characteristic energy, which is the energy of Love. The new Christic Being, according to Teilhard will come about only if we freely consent to form it by redirecting our old egocentric energy currents into new patterns of linking and sharing. Thomas Berry, in formulating his idea of the New Story, was much indebted to the thought of Teilhard de Chardin. Thomas, in his characteristic style, the universe he said, is a single, unified, multi-form, sequential energy event held together in profound intimacy. It is the primary Revelation of the Divine. Might we say that we tumble into the Radiant Heart of Christ with an awareness that it was a heart beating in and through 13.7 billion years of universe unfolding. We are literally the (blood) vessels through which this heart will beat into the future; pulsing with this tremendous evolutionary process and responsible for directing its energies forward. 6

7 Slide 14 Ron Rolheiser 2011 The last supper account in John's gospel gives us a wonderful mystical image. The evangelist describes the beloved disciple as reclining on the breast of Jesus. What's contained in this image? A number of things: First, when you put your head upon someone else's chest, your ear is just above that person's heart and you are able to hear his or her heartbeat. Hence, in John's image, we see the beloved disciple with his ear on Jesus' heart, hearing Jesus' heartbeat, and from that perspective looking out into the world. This is John's ultimate image for discipleship: The ideal disciple is the one who is attuned to Christ's heartbeat and sees the world with that sound in his or her ear. Then there is a second level to the image: It is an icon of peace, a child at its mother's breast, contented, satiated, calm, free of tension, not wanting to be anywhere else. This is an image of primal intimacy, of symbiotic oneness, a connection deeper than romantic love. And for John, it is also a Eucharistic image. What we see in this image of a person with his ear on Jesus' heart, is how John wants us to imagine ourselves when we are at Eucharist because, ultimately, that is what the Eucharist is, a physical reclining on the breast of Christ. In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us, physically, a breast to lean on, to nurture at, to feel safe and secure at, and from which to see the world. Finally, this is also an image of how we should touch God and be sustained by him in solitude. Henri Nouwen once said: "By touching the center of our solitude, we sense that we have been touched by loving hands." Deep inside each of us, like a brand, there is a place where God has touched, caressed, and kissed us. Long before memory, long before we ever remember touching or loving or kissing anyone or anything, or being touched by anything or anybody in this world, there is a different kind of memory, the memory of being gently touched by loving presence. When our ear is pressed to God's heart - to all that is good, true, and beautiful - we hear a certain heartbeat and we remember - remember in some inchoate place - at a level beyond thought - that we were from the beginning held in the Presence of the One who created us. Slide 15 Teilhard suggested that the Earth in its evolutionary unfolding, was growing a new organ of consciousness, called the noosphere. The noosphere is a "planetary thinking network" -- an interlinked system of consciousness and information, a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication. In these precious moments, the planet is emerging into self-conscious awakening. Chardin said: as we move into the noosphere, it is in union with each other that we must unite and the cosmic energy is shared. Close your eyes; get in touch with your own essence; the greatness you have to give; Cynthia Bourgeault calls it tincture. What s your tincture? Your potency. Name your tincture, your purest gift to the world? Your characteristic energy? Take a moment to access it. Were you able to access it? One more image: LEANING BACK HEART EXCHANGE CREATIVE UNIONS SHARING TINCTURE When we find ourselves exchanging hearts in inter-christic fields from the place of essence to essence and begin to experience a dissolution of our hard wired self, a capacity to connect with each other, and an a-livening, something new emerges. We move beyond separation consciousness; after 20, 30, 40, 50 years of this kind of separation spiritual work, we are reaching the limits of this work as we move into the future through connectivity with one another. Our transformation will happen in the collective, in 7

8 the field of connectivity; it will be the field of mutual awakening; Christ is no longer an individual attainment, but an awakening within the communal WE shared in a field we are participating in together. Slide 16 Behold! We are a band of angels twirling, swirling, an infectious, joyous murmuration, we are the noosphere, fueling a tsunami of love, sweeping through the universe. This convergence however, though it was predicted to occur through a global information network, was not a convergence of merely minds or bodies -- but of heart, a point that Teilhard made most fervently. "It is not our heads or our bodies which we must bring together, but our hearts.... Humanity... is building its composite brain. May it be that tomorrow, through the logical and biological deepening of the movement drawing it together, it will find its heart, without which the ultimate wholeness of its power can never be achieved?" Slide 17 We experience the world. Inside is the heart of Christ; the field of emergence is manifesting in the many and the many as a whole is giving witness collectively. Each point reflects the Christ consciousness and calls each other to illumination, an evolution of where we re going; deeper relationship, mutuality, for truth, for greater healing. It s our task at this moment to be with each; the conditions for this are: 1) to want it to happen; desire it 2) to want be influenced by it; right here in the room you are feeling it and are contributing to it or not; you feel the weight of responsibility. 3) capacity to influence others 4) engagement; to be mutually engaged in it (sign of peace and the person never looks at you); when we re not fully there, it s harsh to be with someone who is not present to you; you can t hide this; you re with someone or not; like eating but not getting nourished; can t spend time in false relationships; call to deeper mutuality with each other 5) commitment to stay inside, to being in it together; the first thing we are tempted to do if we are not committed to staying inside, is to judge then we see look what she is doing! ; 6) mutual love of the truth; wake up to a desire to know what is true in any given moment 8