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You're listening to a podcast by

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the Center for Action and

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Contemplation. To learn more, visit

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cac.org. Greetings. I'm

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Jim Finlay. And

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I'm Kirsten Oates. Welcome

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to Turning to the Mystics. Welcome

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everyone to Season 9 of Turning to

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the Mystics, where we've been

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turning to the way of a pilgrim

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by an anonymous author. And

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I'm here with Jim, and in this session, we're going

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to be going through the listener questions that have come

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in. So welcome, Jim. Yes.

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Glad we're doing this. I was touched

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by the questions because they're the kind

0:45

of questions that seekers ask. You

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know, they're real questions. So it's good

0:50

when these texts bring forth these dimensions

0:53

of ourselves like this. So lovely, you

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know. Yes. And just

0:57

a big thank you to everyone who sent in

0:59

a question because they're helpful to you and I,

1:02

Jim, in crafting the podcast

1:04

going forward. But also,

1:06

I know they'll be helpful to everyone who's

1:08

listening. So thank you for taking

1:10

the time. So ready to dive in?

1:13

Yes. Yes. The first

1:15

question comes from Mary Ann, and it's

1:19

after listening to session one. She

1:21

says, in session one,

1:24

you said, our effectiveness in

1:26

the world isn't dependent

1:28

upon the ways we are physically

1:30

present to and help others. It's

1:33

important to do that, but what really

1:35

matters is that we follow our vocation,

1:37

our interior vocation,

1:40

of being led by God into

1:42

ever deeper paths to union with

1:44

God. Could you say more

1:46

about that? It sounds to me like

1:48

you are setting a distinction between the two. Or

1:51

are you meaning that in following our

1:53

interior vocation to union, the service

1:55

to others will follow and free us up

1:57

from even the question or concern we have.

1:59

with effectiveness. Yes,

2:02

you know my sense of this in

2:04

the spirit of these contemplative traditions is

2:07

that the norm is that our deepening faith

2:11

in God and our deepening relationship with

2:13

God and prayer and so on. Quite

2:16

naturally, it transforms

2:18

our attitudinal stance towards

2:20

ourself, our behavior towards

2:22

other people and it translates

2:24

itself into being more Christ-like and more

2:26

loving and service to others and so

2:28

on. Another level

2:31

of this is that

2:33

while that's true, it's

2:36

also true that there's a dimension of

2:39

our deepening relationship with God that

2:41

touches the whole world in ways we

2:43

don't understand, that is not dependent

2:46

upon the physical contact, but

2:49

it rather permeates and touches the

2:51

world according to God's providential grace.

2:54

And the third level is that

2:56

it's a deepening union

2:58

with God that's infinite

3:00

and eternal, like

3:03

our eternal destiny and

3:05

like the hiddenness of

3:07

eternal life in us. So those

3:09

three quite naturally just flow together

3:13

according to the uniqueness of each person's

3:15

experience. Wonderful,

3:18

thank you, Jim. Another

3:22

question for Melisha. And

3:25

this, she's talking about vocation and

3:28

she says, I hope

3:30

you will see a kindred spirit in my

3:33

genuine wish to integrate the quickening that has

3:35

been tapping on my door for some time.

3:38

To that end, James, you have mentioned

3:40

that the pilgrim is called to solitude

3:42

as an example of any number of callings

3:44

that might be expressed. I feel

3:47

called to my profession and to bring

3:49

a mystical stance to my work as an IP

3:51

lawyer. However, I scarcely know how

3:53

to begin. Do you

3:55

have any thoughts or guidance for a stumbling soul

3:57

like me? Yes.

4:00

I would say this, and I would say this

4:02

about law, for example, and I

4:04

would say this also about teaching or different

4:06

careers, is that

4:08

there's something deeply spiritual about the

4:10

inherent value of helping people. So

4:14

when you're using your training in law to

4:17

be there for and with the

4:19

people in the midst of their

4:21

needs, there's an inherent spiritual value

4:23

to that. And the

4:25

spiritual depth of it might be implicit,

4:27

might not be explicitly stated at all.

4:30

It's just there. The next level I

4:32

think has to do with

4:35

people that we work this way as students

4:37

or law, whatever it is. I

4:40

just think I just had a talk

4:42

yesterday on the thing with my

4:44

cardiologist, my heart doctor. And

4:47

there's a genuine feeling of gratitude

4:49

that he's there. You

4:52

know, just that he's part of my life, that

4:54

he's there for me. And I think

4:57

that's another depth dimension of this. Then

4:59

there's another level of saying then that the

5:01

presence of God is the

5:04

infinity of those dimensions of value,

5:07

that there's something inherently holy about

5:09

the engagement and the process with

5:12

these sensitivities in mind this

5:15

way. And so I

5:17

think, yeah, that's how we grow, I guess.

5:22

Lovely. Okay,

5:25

next question, Jim, is from Michael.

5:29

And he says that he

5:32

teaches drumming to kids. So

5:34

he says, I continue drumming with

5:37

kids and adults in many

5:39

different venues, now with

5:41

a strong sense of sharing God's

5:43

presence without mentioning God. Often

5:46

I will share, it's difficult to play a rhythm on

5:48

a drum and think at the same time. I

5:51

believe this is similar to practicing the Jesus

5:53

prayer. What are your thoughts on this? Yes.

5:59

Let's say first of all, So by

6:01

thinking we typically mean kind of

6:03

linear thinking, like figuring something out,

6:05

concluding something. And I think that's

6:07

really true when we're in the rhythm of

6:10

music. It's

6:12

nonlinear. You know, it's a

6:14

flow. But also when you think about it,

6:16

also walking is nonlinear. Breathing

6:20

is nonlinear. You

6:22

know, our heart beats nonlinear. So

6:24

somehow when we get into the stream,

6:26

like the Tao, like the

6:28

flow of things, but then what's also true

6:30

is this. There's a

6:33

certain kind of thinking. There's

6:35

like the musicality of the words. So

6:38

the teachings of these mystics, they're not

6:40

defining or explaining anything. But

6:42

there's a certain musical, it's like the words of

6:44

Jesus are in the Psalms. There's

6:47

a certain, we're in the flow

6:50

of using language in a way

6:52

that expresses the

6:54

spiritual divine dimensions of our lives.

6:56

That doesn't mean that the linear

6:59

explanatory modes of thinking aren't important also

7:01

because they are. But

7:04

the qualitative depth of things is in

7:06

the flowing dimension.

7:09

And so yeah, that's true.

7:12

So for Michael, Jim, the way he says

7:14

that he shares the drumming with a strong

7:16

sense of sharing God's presence,

7:19

that sense of drumming might catch fire

7:21

with others. There's something deep about it,

7:23

something. That's right. Beautiful and true.

7:25

There's a famous jazz singer, I can't think of

7:27

it, a musician, I can't think of his name

7:29

right now. He's so famous.

7:32

And he was known for practicing the scales

7:34

every day. For years,

7:36

he was still did every day over and over.

7:39

And they asked him why he did it, and he said to

7:41

become a saint. And

7:44

there is something about the deepening presence

7:46

of the artist in the act of

7:49

sharing. They're moved,

7:51

and they were moved to be in the presence

7:53

that touches places in us.

7:56

What's also interesting though too is

7:59

that the way of the pilgrim, then the

8:01

Jesus Prayer moves into the flow. But

8:04

notice in his talks with the star, the star

8:06

sheds light on the meaning of what's happening to

8:08

him in the flow. So

8:11

I think there's another example of these two

8:13

modes kind of interface each

8:15

other. Yes, yes,

8:18

lovely. A question from Saskia.

8:21

In the story of the pilgrim, I recognize

8:23

the longing to be alone. I

8:26

also recognize his growing ability to meet

8:28

and be meaningful to others on a

8:30

deeper level. I find

8:32

it difficult to navigate between the two,

8:34

alone time and sharing time with others. Every

8:37

so often I end up being irritated

8:39

towards others or towards myself. I

8:42

wonder what would help me find my way in this? What

8:44

would the Russian pilgrim say? It's

8:47

so personal. I mean, I think some parameters

8:49

would be, it's a gift

8:52

to appreciate and desire

8:55

solitude. But

8:57

time is never less alone than when alone, and

8:59

the intimacy of solitude. It's

9:02

also a gift when there's one or two

9:04

or three people in our life that we

9:06

can share with them

9:08

substantial things about the interior life, whether

9:10

just have somebody like we're doing right

9:12

now. It's like there is someone that

9:14

you can talk with. But

9:17

a lot of times the people that are like

9:19

family members, whatever it is, we

9:21

can't talk about this with them. But

9:23

they're living their life. So

9:27

I think it's natural that we, one,

9:29

don't have, it can be kind of an impatience

9:32

with chatter or small talk. Like a little

9:34

of it goes a long way. And how

9:37

to politely listen because their life

9:39

matters. That's their life. And how

9:42

about those Yankees? I mean, whatever. But

9:45

then you're polite, but you're

9:47

politely true to yourself. You

9:49

kind of keep the edges to it and

9:52

so on. I also think with these kind

9:54

of day by day chats with people, there's

9:56

little moments where you can look for openings.

10:00

or they're more self-disclosing, where

10:02

there's like a moment where there's a more

10:04

substantive kind of connection. And just

10:06

kind of roll with

10:08

it and be patient with yourself with

10:11

it, because it's, you know, a pattern.

10:15

Do you feel, Jim, too, that that

10:17

sense of irritation is always

10:19

an opportunity to bring more of God's

10:21

love and compassion into yourself, to

10:24

notice the ways you fatigue, the

10:26

ways you get irritated as

10:28

a human being, to invite God's

10:30

love and compassion into that? It's

10:32

really true. I mean, at one level, there's just someone

10:36

who's annoying is annoying. You're

10:38

just being real. But there's another way

10:40

of, say, someone is talking on a

10:42

certain level. So you could

10:44

say to yourself, you know, it's important. God's infinitely

10:47

in love with this person. And

10:49

the value of our life is not dependent

10:51

on the degree to which we're able to

10:53

reach, experientially, the depth of our life. The

10:56

depths are always there, because they're a

10:58

person this way. And so

11:00

I can listen and join them in

11:03

it, because the most casual conversation matters.

11:06

If I listen to it at that level, like

11:09

where it's a real encounter with

11:12

the person, and then see you

11:14

next time. Yeah, and if I can't listen

11:16

at that level, I can connect

11:18

into God's compassion for my inability to

11:20

listen at that level. That's exactly

11:22

right. Maureen and I, because we were

11:24

both therapists, think about

11:27

therapy. Therapy is like

11:29

spiritual direction. The dialogue

11:31

is substantive. And

11:34

therefore, you don't really engage much in

11:36

superficial talk. You just don't

11:38

this way. And so I think it's

11:40

a matter of being grounded

11:42

within ourself in silence and with God,

11:45

with the people, with the mystics, whatever,

11:47

and then just being in the flow

11:49

of appreciating people as people, like Jesus,

11:52

walked the earth. He didn't say, only

11:54

mystics need apply. Or, you know,

11:56

if you're not deep enough, don't bother me. He

11:59

walked the streets. of the world. God so loved

12:01

the world, He sent His only begotten Son,

12:03

and the world's us. And

12:05

so we can ask God for the grace to be

12:09

sensitized along those lines. So

12:13

a question from Melanie about session

12:15

two. I

12:17

was intrigued by this statement Jim made. Capture

12:20

the mother and you will find the children,

12:22

and the mother is prayer. Once you

12:25

find the mother, the children, they're not far

12:27

off because the mother never lets

12:29

the children get far off. It

12:31

almost sounds as if one could catch the mother like

12:33

a fish in a net or some kind of bird.

12:36

What do you mean by capture? And what do

12:38

you mean by finding the children? Is this

12:41

like finding our spiritual brothers and sisters?

12:43

Your statement, the mother is prayer so

12:46

warms my heart, reminds me of Elizabeth,

12:48

a mother of seven children who

12:50

told me she is like the tabernacle of her

12:52

family. Very good. You

12:54

know, first of all, I think when we're

12:57

reading the works of the mystics, it's

13:00

like reading scripture. We

13:02

always want to have a sense that

13:04

the intended meaning of the word is

13:07

true to the spirit of the lineage

13:10

itself. So surely to

13:12

capture the mother, prayer is the mother, it

13:14

surely doesn't mean to capture prayer, I gotcha.

13:16

You know, like you hold on to it

13:19

and you have it. It just

13:21

doesn't mean that. So clearly they don't mean that. I

13:23

think more to capture means

13:25

really is that the beauty of prayer has

13:27

captured you. Or you

13:30

have really learned that it's infidelity

13:32

through the quiet times with God

13:34

in prayer, that your deepening awareness

13:36

of God's love for you is

13:38

growing day by day. It's clearly

13:40

along those, along those lines. And

13:44

then the children then refer to the

13:46

gifts of God and the providential

13:48

unfolding of things that flow

13:50

out of your fidelity to

13:52

prayer. You know, the unfoldings of the

13:54

day, that in your

13:56

quiet time with God, you're more able

13:59

to recognize. like the

14:01

more interior levels of incidental

14:03

things, this way that

14:05

everything has a certain graced dimension to

14:07

it, yeah. That was really

14:09

big in the way of a

14:12

pilgrim, that this idea of, like

14:15

you said, that being

14:17

captured by the prayer rather than the way

14:19

a lot of churches were teaching

14:21

and that the pilgrim felt like wasn't

14:24

what he was looking for, this way

14:26

of praying out of duty or praying

14:28

as the first thing, yeah. Yeah,

14:31

you're exactly right. So in the beginning,

14:33

when his heart is touched by that word to

14:36

pray always, then he

14:38

sees the discontent where people

14:40

were talking around it, but no one was

14:42

speaking out of it. That's really true. And

14:45

that's why I think the contemplative traditions,

14:47

like Thomas Merton in the monastery, he

14:49

said, you know, when we go to pray, we

14:52

start by reminding ourselves that we belong to God.

14:55

And he said that to know

14:57

that spiritually speaking, to understand is

14:59

to realize you're deeply understood and

15:02

you trust that you're infinitely understood.

15:04

So there's something about this contemplative

15:06

language that's so heartfelt, you

15:08

know, that kind of goes to that deep

15:10

place, you know. Yeah,

15:12

beautiful. Thank you for that question, Melanie.

15:16

So the next question is from Jasmine

15:18

and it's about dialogue three. In

15:21

dialogue three, I wanna thank you for saying

15:23

those beautiful words. I think for

15:25

all of us, there are moments when we are

15:27

graced with the sense of God's presence in our

15:29

lives. I know this is true

15:31

to my experience. The question

15:33

I would like to ask you is how to

15:36

forgive myself when I keep getting in the way

15:38

of my efforts and my longing to be home

15:40

with God. I keep falling off

15:42

the path and I know I'm a hypocrite

15:45

to my deepest desire to be more with

15:47

God. I want to act

15:49

from my center, which is held in

15:51

power by God's love, so I can

15:53

embrace the wounds and brokenness of my

15:55

life. From a source

15:57

of compassion, openheartedness, myself

16:01

and towards my father and husband who

16:03

hurt me so that I am healed

16:05

and can let that go." I

16:07

remember we touched on this in

16:09

the session, but very briefly, really.

16:12

See, well, I think it's key. Notice when the star,

16:15

it tells him to say that Jesus prayed like 3,000

16:17

times a day than 6,000 times

16:20

a day. And he said, be

16:22

very careful not intentionally do

16:24

one more or one less. This

16:27

is key. Don't do it. Because this is obedience

16:29

to the will of God, like you're surrendering your

16:31

will over to the will of God. But here's

16:33

the key. An actual

16:36

practice, because the pilgrim is just a

16:38

human being who will lose count a

16:40

lot. It is

16:42

like, oh my God, I hope I don't lose count.

16:44

I'm going to be one off. The whole thing's worthless.

16:47

It isn't like that at all. So actually,

16:49

the essence of the prayer is

16:52

realizing the mercy of God is

16:54

coming back around every time you lose

16:56

count. Knowing

16:58

that with God, the deep acceptance

17:00

of yourself and your inability to

17:02

keep the count is an echo

17:04

of God's deep acceptance of you

17:06

is infinitely precious in your wayward

17:08

ways. And that's the mercy of

17:10

God. And

17:12

so, what we're really trying to do, another

17:15

way I put it, sometimes we catch ourselves

17:17

being punitive toward the aspects of

17:19

ourselves that need to be loved the most. And

17:22

really, that's what's so beautiful about

17:25

the Jesus Spirit is this oceanic

17:27

mercy that holy pervades and transcends

17:29

brokenness in all directions. So

17:32

I would think it asks for

17:34

the grace to be kind of

17:36

experientially sensitive, because this

17:38

is kind of what the essence of it is.

17:40

This is experiential salvation, I

17:43

think. And these parts

17:45

that have been hurt, as

17:47

Jasmine talks about, have been hurt by people

17:49

that were close to her. These

17:51

are often the parts that you

17:54

find it difficult to really believe that

17:56

God loves them because they've been treated

17:58

badly. That's exactly right. And that's

18:00

the whole thing in itself too, because one,

18:03

if it's things in the past where

18:07

the spouse is no longer doing the hurtful things

18:09

but you can't let go of the resentment, then

18:12

you're asking for the grace to let go of the resentment

18:15

if they mellowed. If they're

18:17

still doing it, part of loving the person

18:19

is the courage with God's grace to set

18:21

boundaries. You know, we need to talk

18:23

about this. And

18:25

so how do you stay honest with

18:27

the person in a

18:30

loving, real, engaged way? And

18:32

I think where spiritual direction touches

18:35

psychotherapy, they're about boundary setting

18:37

and staying real. Because

18:39

sometimes our resentment is actually the

18:41

truth. We resent it

18:43

because it's resentful. You

18:46

know, I don't deserve to be treated that

18:48

way. And

18:50

so it's a matter of discerning that. And

18:53

the rendezvous with God in prayer can give us

18:55

the courage and the light. And sometimes we might

18:58

need some help to learn to do that. But

19:01

I think that's where these

19:03

things all touch each other, I think. A

19:06

question from Justin about session four.

19:10

The recent episode, session four, included a

19:12

part where the teacher in the book

19:14

is talking about the powers of darkness,

19:16

trying to interrupt the pilgrims' practice. James

19:19

touched briefly on two possible lenses to

19:22

look at this through. Darkness

19:24

in terms of our own limited understanding

19:26

and darkness in terms of spiritual entities.

19:29

This brought a question to mind. I

19:31

have had for some time since reading Richard Rawls'

19:34

work. Why is it that

19:36

the mystics seem to spend so little time discussing

19:38

concepts like heaven, hell or entities

19:40

such as angels and demons? They

19:43

seem to spend very little time on the concept of

19:45

evil at all. This

19:47

is my sense of it. You

19:49

know, the trees of Avilus, as in the interior, are a castle.

19:52

If heaven is the word we give where

19:54

God lives, and in

19:56

the eminence of God, if God lives within you, the

19:58

kingdom of heaven is within you. then your

20:01

soul is God's heaven. So

20:03

heaven is really the

20:05

realized oneness with God's oneness with

20:07

us. That

20:09

is heaven. So it isn't so much

20:12

heaven then as a place. The

20:14

heaven is the divinity of the oneness

20:16

itself with God that is heaven this

20:18

way. And likewise hell isn't

20:21

so much a place. Hell

20:23

is the state of being exiled or estranged

20:25

from this infinite love of God

20:27

that's infinitely in love with you and your

20:29

estrangement from it this way. So I think

20:31

that's why they don't speak of it so much as

20:34

a place, but really as

20:36

grace and foldings of our soul, you

20:38

know, in every greater state. So when Jesus said, I

20:41

came to you, might have life, have

20:43

it more abundantly. It's a

20:45

deepening awareness that the life he was speaking

20:47

of was at once God's in our own.

20:51

Realizing the oneness of that is heaven. It's

20:54

celestial. And not to realize

20:56

it. It's sorrow. You

20:58

know, it's hell. So, you know. Jim,

21:00

this is where the Christian worldview over

21:03

time kind of diverted from this worldview

21:05

of the mystics and was

21:08

taught about heaven and hell as places

21:10

we might go. But that's

21:12

not really true to this original interpretation

21:15

of Jesus. No, you

21:17

can see why because it's

21:20

so natural to think of it as a

21:23

place because Jesus sometimes talks about it as

21:25

a place. So I think when a

21:27

person just listens, it's so natural to kind of

21:30

do that. But I think the more

21:32

in prayer and reflection and

21:34

so on, the more able to see

21:36

more the interiority or the unit of

21:38

nature, of the metaphorical

21:40

nature of this language. Yeah.

21:44

And they're really about helping people find that

21:46

so that the concept of evil is

21:49

really the way you describe it about this

21:51

sense of being exiled and what

21:53

arises in that state. The

21:56

evil is being exiled, but

21:58

also the evil has to

22:00

do in believing that

22:02

the exile is possible with

22:04

God. Because no matter how

22:07

many times the thread of oneness with God

22:09

breaks from here and it never breaks from

22:11

God's end. So

22:14

the evil is really attributing authority

22:16

to the brokenness as having the power to name who

22:19

we are instead of the

22:21

love that loves us so in our brokenness. Yes,

22:25

yeah. A question from

22:27

Jenny. I have a question from

22:29

Dialogue 4. I am taken with the

22:32

phrase, the graced metamorphosis of

22:35

our very subjectivity. That's the

22:37

phrase you said in our dialogue. I'll

22:39

read it again. The graced metamorphosis of

22:41

our very subjectivity. I

22:43

really wish you could delve into that more.

22:46

Is achieving this only something that is a gift

22:48

from God? As I am

22:50

trying to praise you describe and carry the

22:53

thread of inner peace through the day, will

22:55

this bring about freedom from our own passions,

22:57

passions and instincts? Is my

22:59

subjectivity, I guess my ego,

23:01

that is slowly falling away? As

23:04

much as my old wants and needs have

23:07

fallen away, I still struggle to know how

23:09

to let go of some old friendships or

23:11

social engagements which do not seem to have

23:13

much of a place in my heart anymore.

23:16

A couple of things came to me as I was sitting

23:18

with this. One you know, Piaget,

23:20

a person talked

23:22

about early stages of early childhood development.

23:27

He has a film of

23:29

a mother sitting on the floor with her little child,

23:31

a very small child. She's

23:34

rolling a ball around the child just developing

23:36

motor skills to touch the ball. There's a

23:38

blanket there. She rolls

23:41

the ball under the blanket and the baby

23:43

starts to cry because

23:45

it doesn't yet have object constancy. The

23:48

baby thinks the ball is gone. This

23:50

is why little children never retire a

23:52

peekaboo. They can't figure out how you

23:54

do that. It's endlessly funny to them. Same

23:58

child on the floor. A

24:00

year later, she rolls the ball under the blanket,

24:02

and the baby pulls the blanket off the ball.

24:05

And Piaget says, this child

24:07

lives in a qualitatively different

24:09

universe, or their very subjectivity

24:11

is metamorphosized into a

24:14

higher developmental state. So we

24:16

can think of that process happening over and over and

24:18

over again at deeper levels. Another way to look at

24:20

it is this. That when we

24:22

deeply love someone, a

24:24

child, a beloved, or a

24:26

solid, whatever, the years of

24:29

deepening love metamorphosizes our very

24:31

subjectivity. It's

24:33

not just a sentiment or anything,

24:36

but the very depth of the very subjectivity

24:38

of our very cell is

24:40

being metamorphosized by the love and

24:43

the solitude. So then you think, well, then

24:45

that goes on endlessly, because

24:48

what happens is the

24:50

self-metamorphosizing process rolls

24:52

over. It's where you

24:54

and God mutually disappear as dualistically other

24:56

than each other. So that

24:59

the infinite subjectivity of God is

25:01

realized to be accessing

25:04

you and giving itself to

25:06

you as the gift of your very

25:08

subjectivity, which is the mystical experience, the

25:12

transsubjective communion of the eternal

25:14

oneness with the eternal and

25:16

your eternal nothingness without God.

25:19

So it has these unfolding layers. One's

25:22

very self and

25:24

nothing less than one's self. Wow,

25:27

that's a helpful explanation. Thank you, Jim. A

25:30

question from Aaron. In

25:32

session five, when discussing the star,

25:34

its direction to pray the Jesus

25:36

prayer 3,000 times, you

25:39

comment that the practice was intended to help the

25:41

pilgrim die to his own will. I

25:43

felt a pang of fear with these words that I

25:45

heard a lot growing up. I often

25:48

still worry whether I'm actually following Jesus.

25:51

For most of my life, I have

25:53

distrusted myself and have a difficult

25:55

time discerning God's direction. I

25:58

generally assume that anything I want to pray, I can't

26:00

help it. or desire is wrong. I'm

26:02

not suggesting that that was the intention

26:04

of the commentary, in fact the gracious

26:06

discussion that followed, helped me start to

26:08

see things differently. Later

26:11

in your discussion you mentioned that in

26:13

our practice we should be sure we're

26:15

practicing in concert with what rings true

26:17

with our identity, to listen

26:20

deeply to our experience. This

26:22

feels true to me but I'm wondering

26:24

about the nuance and balance of self-denial

26:26

and trust in my own identity. I

26:29

feel in my soul that this isn't contrary.

26:32

I also fear and shame that I

26:34

am not following Jesus and simultaneously a

26:36

fear of what God will take from

26:39

me. I think this

26:41

has often led to me

26:43

to feel like I'm only following God

26:45

if I'm miserable. I

26:47

often think of Merton's prayer that the

26:50

desire to please God pleases God. Most

26:52

of the time I'm lucky to have that

26:54

desire, for the desire. I

26:57

don't know if there's a word for

26:59

this but how might you explain these

27:01

tensions between self-denial and self-acceptance?

27:04

Yes, you know I would say first of all that I

27:08

think each of us in our own way lives

27:11

with internalized beliefs

27:13

about ourself and

27:16

childhood experiences of trauma and abandonment,

27:18

intended and unintended. And

27:21

they get triggered in different ways like

27:23

they flare up and we're dealing with

27:25

it. And then sometimes those get projected

27:27

onto God this way, like dying

27:30

to our own will and how do I know and

27:32

how am I... So I

27:34

think one is just to know that's

27:36

so normal and to know

27:38

what your patterns are. But also the very

27:40

tone of the person's question is you know

27:42

it's not true. You

27:45

know it's troubling to think

27:47

that because you're caught like getting

27:49

hypnotized by... you're caught in

27:51

it. So you're asking for the grace to

27:54

see in the light of the truth what in that

27:56

is not true. It's not true. So

27:59

with God then... And I'd put it this

28:01

way, how this comes with God. This is like,

28:03

say, that I'll be God. And

28:06

so if you're telling me that you're confused, you're not,

28:08

and I'll be God, and I'll say, I think you

28:10

are confused. Seriously.

28:14

But I don't know if you notice this or not, I

28:16

think everybody is. Everyone's walking around

28:18

confused. But here's the thing to remember, I'm

28:20

not confused about you. And

28:24

what I want you to do is

28:26

have more faith in me

28:28

as being infinitely in love with you and

28:30

not to be confused about that. Don't

28:34

attribute authority to your confusion

28:38

over my love for you in the midst

28:40

of your confusion. And ask

28:42

for the grace, this is to be surrendered

28:44

over this way, in love.

28:47

And to sift this out. Like Saint

28:50

Paul, I have a thorn in the

28:52

flesh. I ask God

28:54

to remove it. God said, leave it there,

28:56

it's where you depend on my mercy. So

28:59

sometimes these persistent patterns that we know from

29:01

our own, I know what mine are. We

29:03

all have a different one. They're

29:05

really, if we let them, they're our teacher. Because

29:08

it's a tripping place into what we know isn't

29:10

true. And so

29:13

there's part of us in prayer, we know it's not

29:15

true. But there's still a part that doesn't know it

29:17

yet that it's not true. Because we still

29:19

get reactive. And so we're

29:21

being endlessly tender hearted toward the part of ourself

29:23

that doesn't know it yet. And

29:26

that gentleness towards ourself is an

29:28

echo of God's gentleness towards us.

29:31

So I found these kind of approaches to

29:33

be helpful. With this,

29:36

it's always deeply personal with each

29:38

person. Yes. It's

29:42

always touching to me when you take

29:45

on the voice of God. I think,

29:47

a little teary. That

29:49

was beautiful, thank you. Turning

29:58

to the mystics, we'll continue on. in

30:00

a moment. Hope

30:30

can feel beyond our grasp when we're stuck in

30:32

cycles of trauma. Our online course, Mystical

30:48

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30:50

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30:57

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30:59

at cac.org. That's cac.org. So we

31:01

had quite a few questions about

31:03

the Jesus

31:13

Prayer, so we'll just go through those now.

31:16

Yeah, yeah, good. So Jim,

31:18

we have a voicemail to listen to

31:20

with a question from Elise. This

31:23

was another

31:25

incredible and beautiful,

31:28

sensitive podcast.

31:32

I'm interested in

31:34

knowing the practice

31:37

that you mentioned here, and you

31:39

keep mentioning it. How does

31:42

it relate to the

31:44

other practice which you taught

31:46

us where you breathe

31:48

in, I love you, and then you

31:50

breathe out, I love you too. I

31:53

think in this instance that you're

31:56

suggesting that you breathe

31:58

in, just breathe in. the

32:00

love of God, and then when

32:02

you breathe out, you breathe out the

32:05

Jesus Prayer. So

32:07

it's beautiful. I've tried it both

32:09

ways, but I just

32:11

wondered, you know, how, I mean,

32:14

what are the similarities and differences?

32:17

Are they to achieve the same end,

32:19

different ends? Beautiful

32:21

question. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. Do

32:24

you want to start, Jim? Yeah, sure. This is

32:27

my sense of it. You

32:29

know, I think that what really matters

32:31

in these different ways to pray is

32:35

sincerity. Thomas

32:37

Burton once said, with God, a little sincerity goes

32:39

a long, long way. And

32:41

it's the sincerity of the

32:43

rendezvous with God in prayer, that

32:46

through our prayer, God might help us

32:48

to deepen our experience, understanding, and response

32:50

to God's oneness in life

32:52

itself. That's the essence of it. It's

32:55

the sincerity. Next,

32:58

this sincerity, though, is

33:00

grounded in a specific way to

33:02

embody the sincerity. You

33:04

know, it's not an abstract idea. It's

33:07

a concrete way that

33:10

embodies that sincerity. So

33:13

what we basically have then in prayer,

33:15

this sincerity, this rendezvous with God in

33:18

prayer, is that, and we

33:20

saw this in an earlier session on a ladder

33:22

to heaven, is it

33:24

starts out first with modes

33:26

of Lectio Divina meditation and

33:28

prayer. So in the

33:30

Lectio Divina, it's a stained receptivity to

33:32

a beauty not yet thought about. You

33:34

take in the word and

33:37

you recognize right away that the word

33:39

is beautiful. It's beautiful because it's true.

33:41

And you believe that God is personally

33:43

saying that to you as

33:45

you sit there in prayer. You take it

33:48

in, and that's the Lectio. The

33:50

meditation then that initiates a

33:52

dialogue with God about what God just

33:54

said to you. You might journal, process

33:58

this, and then the prayer. So notice, And the

34:00

prayer like, help me with this, is a cry from the

34:02

heart this way. So

34:04

notice that it's a reflective process. You're

34:07

taking in words, you're taking

34:09

the truth of the words, you reflect

34:11

on the words, and then from the

34:13

heart center, help me with, efficacious unto

34:16

holiness is prayer. Then

34:18

what happens is

34:20

that this prayer can move toward

34:22

wordlessness, that it can

34:24

move toward a state of kind of

34:27

resting wordlessly in God, resting wordlessly in

34:29

you. And it

34:31

comes at first as an experience,

34:33

like contemplation, like it touches you.

34:36

So then when it touches you, you

34:38

look for a way that embodies that touch.

34:42

And then these are modes of contemplative prayer.

34:45

See, there's like this awakening event, this is what

34:47

happened to the pilgrim in

34:49

the church on 24 Sunday after Pentecost.

34:52

So you're quickened. So then there

34:54

are ways of being

34:56

in the presence of God

34:58

that transcend words, that transcend

35:00

emotions, transcend this way. And

35:02

so when I do, we've talked

35:05

about the I love you prayer, it's

35:07

a form of contemplative prayer because

35:10

it's passing beyond reflection, passing beyond

35:12

this way. So when we

35:14

inhale, we listen to God's silent I love

35:16

you, because God's exhaling, the infinity of God

35:18

into us is our very life. Martin

35:21

says it beats in our very blood, whether we want it

35:23

to or not. And then

35:25

when we exhale, we exhale our I

35:27

love you to God. So

35:30

we exhale ourself in

35:32

love to the love that

35:34

with the next inhalation is gonna inhale itself

35:36

into us. So in the

35:38

reciprocity of love, it's deep into this

35:40

way. And then we said

35:42

that as we sit this way, different things arise

35:45

in our ego, like fear,

35:47

confusion, whatever. So if we're

35:49

afraid of something, then

35:51

the essence of the contemplative prayer is

35:54

that in the fear, when we

35:56

inhale, we inhale God, giving the

35:58

infinity of love. of God to

36:01

us through and through and through and through,

36:03

fear and all, finding no

36:05

hindrance in our fear to being infinitely in

36:07

love with us. And when

36:09

we exhale ourself in love, we exhale

36:11

ourself in love, fear and all, to

36:14

the love that loves us, fear

36:16

and all. So too with confusion, so too

36:18

with shape, so too with whatever it is.

36:21

So what we're doing is we're

36:24

realizing that only this oneness is

36:26

the substantiality that's true, that

36:28

permeates the variations of our life.

36:30

And the contemplative prayer embodies that.

36:34

So the Jesus prayer is the same

36:36

thing, but it's a different historical, it's

36:38

a form of contemplative prayer, passing

36:41

beyond reflection, beyond this way.

36:43

And so when you inhale, you're

36:46

inhaling the presence of Jesus, you're

36:48

inhaling, or really, you're asking God

36:50

to deepen your awareness that the

36:52

presence of Jesus is already within

36:54

you. So when we

36:56

ask, Lord Jesus Christ had mercy on me,

36:58

we're asking for mercy that's already there, because

37:01

the mercy is oceanic. And

37:04

so what we're really asking for is a

37:06

grace to be quickened by the experiential of

37:08

the mercy, awareness of the love that's already

37:11

there. So then when we

37:13

exhale, then we exhale the

37:15

Jesus prayer, the power of the name of

37:17

Jesus and the sincerity. And

37:19

notice that in the Jesus prayer, it's a mantra,

37:22

that as you say it in the constancy,

37:25

but it's a relaxed constancy, similar

37:27

to the monks chanting the Psalms

37:29

in the monastic choir. It's

37:32

a flow of words to

37:34

transcend words this way, and

37:36

that's the prayer. Notice the cloud

37:38

of unknowing, however, it's not

37:40

a mantra. For you sit in the presence

37:42

of God, but you use the

37:45

word only as needed. Use

37:47

it only as needed. And

37:49

he said, take any word you want, or phrase,

37:52

the shorter, the better, and you use it to

37:54

ground the taproot of your heart in

37:57

this oneness with God beyond the gifts of God,

37:59

like very God. He says, God

38:01

naked as God is in himself, just

38:03

as God is this way. So

38:05

that's really—so in a

38:07

way, then, there are variations,

38:09

like modalities of the same—essentially

38:12

the same thing, a contemplative

38:14

prayer that establishes us

38:16

in an ever more habitual state

38:18

of resting in God, resting in

38:20

us beyond words. And we could

38:22

also look at similarities in the

38:24

non-Christian contemplative traditions, like deep

38:26

yoga, the deep dharma of the Buddha, Sufism,

38:29

mystical Islam. You see the

38:31

same patterns of

38:33

mystical dimensions of faith, realized

38:37

states of oneness and living that

38:39

oneness day by day. So I

38:41

would answer that way. That's how I see it

38:43

relates. That's really

38:45

helpful, Jim. This idea

38:48

of these prayers is more a surrender

38:51

over into the love of

38:54

God versus conversing with

38:57

God as almost like a separate

38:59

entity, but we're surrendering ourselves into

39:01

God's presence that's

39:04

in us and all around us. That's

39:06

exactly right. You know what's interesting too in

39:08

the Catholic tradition of the Rosary? Yeah. When

39:11

you say the Rosary, you meditate on a

39:13

mystery in Christ's life, like say the Annunciation,

39:16

the angel coming to Mary, and we

39:18

meditate on our angelic visitations. But how

39:20

do we do it? We do it

39:22

by counting the Hail Mary. So

39:24

what the Hail Mary does, the first

39:26

half is words from heaven. It's the

39:29

angel, Hail Mary full of grace, is

39:31

our response. Mother God, have

39:33

mercy on us now at the hour of our death, amen. So

39:35

by the use of the

39:38

Hail Mary, it dislodges us when getting

39:40

caught up in thinking about it and

39:43

frees us up to resting in the mystery of it.

39:45

So it shows you there's a kind of a mystical

39:48

quality to the devotional practice of the

39:50

Rosary. And notice in the Jesus prayer, the

39:52

use of Rosary. Muslims also

39:54

be as a sacramental of

39:57

a oneness beyond sequential thought. Yes,

40:00

yeah, beautiful. What I took away

40:02

too from this season about the

40:04

discipline of committing to a

40:06

particular lineage or method

40:09

of prayer is this sense of

40:11

I'm not only kind of surrendering

40:13

my thoughts, emotions, sensations, but my

40:16

will in my discipline to committing

40:19

to the prayer. That's right. There's another

40:21

insight into this too, I think. See,

40:24

when we're in the presence of a teacher, like

40:26

a mystically awakened teacher, they

40:29

stay within the voice that they're in. I

40:32

said, Jesus' prayer, I mean,

40:34

whatever it is, is then mastered with the dharma.

40:37

And the reason is this, is

40:40

that the mysterious process of

40:42

being carried by God into

40:44

God, unexplainably, is very delicate.

40:48

We're subject to self-deception. And

40:51

the teacher who's grounded in this one, this

40:53

is listening, almost like a psychotherapist

40:55

might deeply listen. And

40:58

they're helping us catch ourself. We're

41:00

unwittingly going off into cul-de-sacs and

41:03

kind of things. So in purity to the lineage,

41:06

it's a purity of managing the

41:08

delicacy of the transformation that

41:10

we're into. We come to this awakening.

41:12

Now, the delicacy can be misunderstood fundamentalistically,

41:14

like we have to stick to it

41:16

and pray. Then we're missing the point.

41:19

Yes. Really. We're

41:21

missing the point. So there's a certain specificity

41:25

to the way in which

41:27

we transcend dependence on methods,

41:29

like the method that transcends

41:31

method, which is an attitude

41:34

of our awakened heart. Oh,

41:37

that's so helpful. I just want

41:39

to mention the two

41:41

seasons you just spoke about. So in

41:43

season four, we did the letter of

41:46

months by Guigo, where you take us

41:48

through the Lexio practice. And

41:50

then in season five, we did

41:52

the cloud of unknowing by an anonymous author. And

41:54

so if people want to go

41:56

back and listen to those, they're

41:58

in the archives. I think. Yeah,

42:01

wonderful. That's good. Yeah. Thanks, Jim. This

42:03

is a question from Sharon. This

42:06

episode on the Jesus Prayer was

42:09

particularly precious to me. It clarified

42:11

some of my ongoing struggles with

42:13

faith and my attempts to connect

42:16

strands within my practice that include Jesus

42:18

as well as Buddhist thought and practice

42:20

yoga and others. Still, I

42:22

feel I'm a stranger to Jesus. Am

42:25

I saying the Jesus Prayer to a person,

42:27

an idea, a dream? Perhaps

42:30

it doesn't matter as it is

42:32

the practice itself that creates oneness, but

42:35

perhaps Jim can address that question of

42:37

our relationship to Jesus himself and

42:39

the idea of Christ catching us

42:41

when we fall. First

42:43

of all, I think this. What we're

42:45

to do is we're to follow the

42:48

path that's been given to us and

42:51

it's given to us because it works. You

42:53

know, for example, deeply in the

42:55

Christian tradition, I've profoundly affected by

42:57

the Dharma, by the Buddhist tradition.

43:00

And so Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva

43:02

Kuan Yin, and the thing

43:04

about the one here is the cry of the poor. So

43:07

some people, their path to

43:09

divinization isn't Jesus. It

43:12

isn't Jesus. And so

43:14

there's a language that,

43:18

you know, the Bhagavad Gita

43:20

in Lord Krishna and whatever.

43:22

So one word to find the

43:24

channels that the energy circuits

43:26

of this grace are there for us

43:28

and follow that. The next thing is

43:30

this though, I think, is

43:33

if you're so inclined, it

43:35

isn't you're relating to an idea. You're

43:38

asking for the grace of relating

43:40

to Jesus. And

43:43

so it's like asking Jesus like you'd open the

43:45

Gospels and read

43:47

what Jesus says in the Gospels to someone.

43:50

And know that the deathless presence of Jesus is

43:52

saying that to you. And

43:55

what Jesus is doing for someone in

43:57

the Gospels, the deathless presence,

44:00

that Jesus is doing for you. So

44:03

you're asking Jesus to help you

44:06

step into this luminous presence

44:09

of this way. If you're so

44:11

inclined, you're gonna expand your repertoire,

44:13

or little by little, the beauty

44:16

or the depth of Jesus starts

44:18

becoming more and more vibrant for

44:21

you if you're so inclined. Do

44:25

you know what you say too, that the archetype

44:27

of Jesus on the cross, the way

44:29

Jesus died, is a symbol

44:31

of that mercy? You know, it's a Lord

44:33

Jesus Christ had mercy on me. There's something about

44:35

that symbol where, yeah,

44:38

Jesus's willingness to suffer.

44:40

So you know, Stephen Colbert, who's a devout Catholic,

44:44

and one of his jokes is that if on

44:46

Easter morning, Jesus would have come out

44:49

of the tomb with the machine gun,

44:51

Easter Sunday would have gone very differently.

44:53

See? So imagine Jesus on the cross

44:56

cursing everybody, you know, you'd

44:59

go, what, what is it? So

45:01

what the power of the cross is,

45:04

Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. The

45:07

oceanic mercy is sovereign, absolute,

45:11

and boundaryless in all directions.

45:14

That there's no authority to

45:16

the brokenness. That

45:18

the only authority is the authority of

45:20

love, who loves us in our brokenness.

45:23

And so the whole mystery of the

45:25

cross, then the mystery

45:27

of love crucified, see? It

45:29

is all of this. See how, the way

45:32

I put it too, is how can I

45:34

learn to die of love at the hands

45:36

of love, and nothing's

45:38

left of me but love, see? And

45:41

so nothing's left of me but this

45:43

love that I'm an infinitely, I'm the

45:45

beloved, see? In

45:48

a brokenness that's completely

45:50

unbrethered of any authority

45:53

over the love that alone is real. And

45:55

so I think it's kind of asking Jesus

45:57

for the grace. That's

46:00

what the Jesus Prayer is all about, really.

46:02

The same with visual, like a mandala,

46:04

like an icon, like an

46:06

image, if it's your path, you

46:08

kind of let it soak in this way,

46:11

like bhakti love, it's just devotional love

46:13

for the beloved. A

46:16

question from Walter. I'm

46:18

working with the Jesus Prayer and wanted

46:20

to ask why we use the feudal

46:22

term Lord when referring to Christ. I

46:25

had the feeling that the man Jesus wouldn't have liked

46:27

it. For myself, I'm treating

46:29

my repugnance for the word Lord as

46:31

egoic and practicing obedience to the pilgrim's

46:34

teacher. It is

46:36

helping to steal my rebelliousness, but nevertheless,

46:38

I wonder if you have thoughts about

46:40

such words. Yes. In

46:43

religion, the more

46:45

noble the aspiration, the

46:48

more delicate the vessel that carries it

46:50

through time. So it requires

46:52

a structure to carry it through time.

46:55

But the trouble with the structure is the

46:57

seduction of empire, where

46:59

it turns into having, et cetera,

47:01

et cetera, et cetera, like this. But

47:04

I think Lord, it's true, there is that

47:06

medieval use of the Lord. Yes, my Lord.

47:09

Yes, yes. But again, we're returning to

47:11

the intended meeting in the scriptures. My

47:13

Lord and my God, see, you're the Lord

47:16

of my true self. You're

47:18

endlessly creating me for love's sake

47:20

alone. And

47:22

your mercy upon me and my brokenness

47:24

is taking me unexplainably to yourself as

47:27

the beloved. And that's that you're

47:29

my Lord, my Lord and my God,

47:32

not in the medieval sense of

47:34

the Lord. Although in the imagery of

47:36

feudal society, actually the two were

47:38

seen to resonate with each other. Actually,

47:41

yeah, we kind of lost that we don't.

47:44

Yeah, the translation got a bit enmeshed.

47:46

It did, yeah, and we lost the, yeah.

47:49

There's vestiges of it with the

47:51

Queen in England. But

47:54

also it's got so much layered with layers of

47:57

gold and rubies and diamond. But there's a

47:59

certain. primitive intuition about

48:02

a certain divine dimension to the

48:04

structure of society this

48:06

way. So anyway. So

48:09

do you like this

48:11

approach of altars of just practicing

48:15

egoic obedience, seeing

48:17

it as egoic and practicing obedience? If

48:20

you read the sentence to me again

48:23

where you said, I'm treating my repugnance

48:25

of the word lord as egoic and

48:27

practicing obedience to the pilgrims teacher? Yes,

48:30

I do like that. See, that's

48:32

a good point. I don't like it. But

48:35

what if my dislike is ego-based?

48:38

It bothers me. And so what

48:40

I'm learning is asking for the grace to be healed

48:42

from that. Because just that

48:45

that's clearly not the

48:47

essence of who Jesus is, and it's clearly

48:49

not what metamorphosized the pilgrim

48:51

when he said one morning the prayer woke

48:53

me up. See? And

48:55

so, actually what it is, it's

48:57

kind of the unraveling of the ego

49:01

until nothing's left. But love is

49:03

not egoic. It's really being liberated

49:05

from the ego having

49:07

the final say in who we are.

49:10

And only God's love has the final say in who we

49:12

are, which we discovered through our ego, which

49:15

gets touched and transformed. And yeah,

49:17

I like that. It's good to

49:19

see that. Yeah, it's an interesting

49:23

unraveling of the ego, unexpected. It

49:25

is. It's an insight. It

49:29

reminds me of the

49:31

previous question and then my own experience with the prayer

49:33

of, you know, I'm

49:35

really trying to find Jesus's mercy through the

49:38

prayer. I'm really trying to get in touch

49:40

with that. And so that word, if it's

49:42

getting in the way of that mercy, I

49:45

need to let go of what in myself

49:47

is letting that word get

49:49

in the way. Yeah. That's what's so deep

49:51

about it. So that's the thing is the

49:53

mercy. See, when we ask for have mercy

49:55

on me, we're asking for the mercy that's

49:57

already given. Yeah. Because it is given. And

50:01

so what we're asking for is a

50:03

gift to experientially realize what's already given.

50:06

And therefore the mercy is the irrelevance of

50:08

any obstacle we might come up with, real

50:11

or imagined. Then

50:13

we might have mercy for attributing

50:15

authority to obstacles. Yeah,

50:17

yeah. And all the obstacles that

50:20

you know, kind of being

50:22

exiled from this truth have put in the

50:24

way for ourselves, like poor translations of the

50:26

Bible, for instance. The church

50:29

itself and its brokenness and our

50:31

family, yeah, exactly. Wow. Lovely.

50:34

A question from Monica. The

50:37

Jesus Prayer I always knew and loved

50:39

was Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the

50:41

living God, have mercy on me

50:43

as sinner. You present a different

50:46

shorter version. I was wondering

50:48

why, especially after listening to the

50:50

most recent podcast where you explore

50:52

different interpretations of mercy where

50:54

suffering meets love. I'd love to

50:56

hear your interpretation of sinner. Yeah.

51:00

It's been a while since I read about this, history

51:02

of this, is that when

51:05

the text of the pilgrim first began to

51:07

emerge in the 19th century, it

51:10

started to emerge with different variations

51:13

of the text. I see. So

51:15

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me

51:18

as sinner is one. But

51:20

then another one is the shorter one. So the

51:22

translation that I'm using by French is the shorter

51:24

one. It's like the Lord's Prayer. In

51:27

one gospel it ends, for thine is the kingdom,

51:29

the power, and the glory now and forever, amen.

51:32

And the other gospel, that's not there. Yeah.

51:34

And so they think probably the shorter one

51:36

is the original one, really. And then in

51:39

another faith community, it got added.

51:41

And so these texts are like this. I

51:44

think that's what it is. Yeah. That's

51:46

helpful. Do you have any comment on,

51:49

in the longer version, why they would include

51:51

a sinner? Yeah,

51:53

because we're sinners. We

51:57

all qualify. See? Alegin-Lok-Marian,

52:00

he says about being Catholic, he

52:02

said, there's only one Catholic, it's

52:04

Jesus. All the rest are sinners that

52:07

God's infinitely in love with,

52:09

which is ecclesia. But

52:11

being a sinner is my credentials to get in.

52:13

It's like AA. Everyone's

52:17

welcome. In order to be

52:19

admitted, you have to admit. See,

52:21

if you don't admit, I'll call it, you're

52:23

not admitted. But only if

52:25

you're admitted, you get in, which saves you

52:27

from dying from it.

52:30

So it's that paradoxical liberating,

52:33

the very word sinner has a twist, has

52:35

a paradoxical little like

52:38

a coin or a riddle to it. Like

52:40

it's a great deliverance, really. Yes, yes, yes.

52:42

It's like the ultimate thorn in the flesh.

52:46

I like Flannery O'Connor, in

52:48

one of her short stories, a Catholic author. She

52:50

said she had this vision of

52:53

all humanity at the end

52:55

of time being led to the

52:57

gates of paradise, by

52:59

the fools of the world, topping up

53:01

and down turning some results and so

53:03

on, followed by the righteous concerned

53:06

whether or not they were singing on key.

53:10

It's sinner has that kind of, have

53:13

mercy on me, has that same thing. Also,

53:16

in the exaltet on the

53:18

Easter Vigil, where they

53:20

turn out all the lights, they light the new

53:22

fire on the Christ resurrection,

53:25

and they light

53:27

the Paschal Candor, and they sing

53:30

the exaltet, O Felix Culpa,

53:32

O Happy Fault Amare such a Redeemer.

53:34

Thank you, Adam, for messing everything up,

53:36

because Jesus came. It's

53:40

a lovely hymn, really. Yeah, yeah. A

53:46

note from Scott who says, I personally

53:49

preferred the prayer with just the seven

53:51

words, which emphasize our

53:53

Trinitarian God's mercy

53:55

and its power to transform us, our

53:58

need for redemption. seems implicit

54:00

in this simple prayer. Me too.

54:02

Yeah. Thank you for your wisdom.

54:06

Question from Helene. I'm

54:09

wondering if the practice loses power if

54:11

you pray divine love rather than Jesus,

54:14

or help me, or abide with me

54:16

rather than mercy. Can

54:19

sinner be dropped? All words

54:21

suggestions welcome. From what I

54:23

can summarize, and in my experience with

54:25

other contemplative practices, it seems the

54:27

Jesus prayer practice could be followed with

54:30

other words if you do it with

54:32

devotional sincerity without ceasing in the quiet

54:34

of your being. What

54:36

other components am I missing, if any? First

54:39

of all, I think the power of the prayer

54:42

is the presence of God. This

54:45

experience and the sincerity of your openness

54:48

to the presence of God, that's the

54:50

power. So

54:52

the question is, though, there

54:54

are certain lineages or

54:57

paths for our

54:59

oneness with that graced power of

55:01

God, the presence of God, is

55:04

followed by specific lineage. So

55:07

for example, the Jesus prayer is a specific

55:09

lineage. It's like if

55:11

you're practicing Buddhism, zazen. There's

55:13

a specific zazen. If

55:16

you're sitting with the Roshi, he's in the lineage,

55:20

or the Rebbe with the Jewish

55:22

mysticism and so on. So

55:27

there are certain channels, like ancient

55:29

lineages, and this

55:31

is one. And

55:33

so we follow it because it's

55:35

ancient, and people

55:38

have been transformed in God in

55:40

it over long periods of time, and

55:42

we feel called to do it, but

55:44

not rigidly, we do

55:46

it. Because if you drop Jesus out of it,

55:48

you're not dropping God out of it, but

55:51

you are dropping Jesus out of it. That's

55:53

how I see it. I think there's

55:56

these specific lineages, and

55:58

we can feel called if it feeds. us.

56:01

And we can outgrow it too. We can be in

56:03

a certain lineage this way and

56:05

outgrow it or take on another

56:07

lineage. We can have more than one. We can

56:10

move back and forth over time. We have to

56:12

just be open to our heart

56:14

on how we're moved by God to follow.

56:17

And in the end, I think

56:19

really that all these lineages come

56:21

to fulfillment when they all fall away. No,

56:24

there's no means left.

56:28

You know, they're just the oneness this way.

56:31

Someone once said in Buddhism that

56:34

the way that this is true Jesus too, that

56:36

the teachings, the way and the teachings of the

56:38

Buddha, the

56:41

end and the means become

56:43

increasingly ambivalent. That is

56:46

the eightfold path, which is the means

56:48

to nirvana, which is the end. That

56:52

nirvana, which is his ultimate

56:54

liberation, starts showing up

56:56

in the ground beneath your feet on the path

56:58

that leads to it. So

57:00

there's this increasing non-distinction between

57:02

the path and the ultimacy that's welling

57:05

up and giving itself to you infidelity

57:07

to the path. So I

57:09

think that kind of insight has always helped me.

57:12

Yeah, beautiful.

57:15

I'm resonating with a lot of the questions

57:17

around, you know, how do

57:19

we find Jesus? Can we drop

57:21

the word Jesus? Because although

57:23

the mystics are all very Jesus-centered,

57:26

this sense of divine love and

57:28

infinite love is really

57:30

what I've focused on too. So I've

57:33

seen this as an opportunity to, you know,

57:36

connect with and discover how

57:38

I might find that mercy in the

57:40

presence of Jesus. Yeah. I

57:43

would say too, and I say this is

57:45

in psychotherapy or contemplative spiritual direction. Let's say

57:47

someone in person would ask that. And

57:51

so I'd say, well, tell me about yourself. I

57:54

mean, where are you at? Is it worth for

57:56

you? Yeah. Yeah. Does that

57:58

work for you? And And so

58:01

do you want to pursue that and why? And so

58:04

ask God to help you work with that.

58:06

In other words, the way is never other

58:09

than the crust of the wave where we

58:11

sincerely are in our desire to follow this

58:13

path. That is the path. And

58:15

so it isn't like, like what if and where's

58:17

the answer and how can I find it? It's

58:20

my open sincerity and

58:22

sitting with it is the way. And

58:25

I see where it goes. I

58:27

let it take me where it takes me. And just

58:29

like, relax. You

58:33

know what I mean? Like just relax and

58:35

trust and just stay open. And what rings

58:37

true to you and go

58:39

with that and see where it takes you and that

58:41

kind of, to me, that's the feeling.

58:43

Yes. Yeah. Well, what I love about

58:46

the podcast is the opportunity to explore

58:48

these different lineages, like you say, and

58:50

the kind of, even the

58:52

nuances within the mystical lineages and finding

58:54

ones that really resonate. So. That's right.

58:56

As we go through these mystics, each

58:59

mystic in his or her own way embodies

59:01

this way. You know, they just

59:04

speak because they are it. It's

59:07

not a theory or something out of books. They just speak

59:09

out of it. And so as you

59:11

move to the different ones, it allows us to

59:13

move back and forth and

59:15

freely become more freed up like

59:17

a wayless way in the

59:20

midst of the present way, which could change it any

59:22

minute. Yes. Yeah. So

59:25

Jim, we have another voicemail to listen to,

59:27

and this one comes from Tina. Hi.

59:29

My question is from the intro session

59:31

of this season, where Jim

59:34

talks about the commonalities that the

59:36

mystics have between different religious traditions.

59:38

And I find that teaching

59:41

so beautiful. And I

59:43

was wondering how Jim would respond to

59:46

someone of Christian faith that would

59:48

say that, you know, scripture where

59:51

Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and

59:53

the life, and no man comes to the father

59:55

except through me. That verse is

59:57

often used to sort of save it. that

1:00:00

Christianity is the only way to

1:00:02

God. And I wondered how Jim

1:00:04

would respond to that verse

1:00:06

or teaching or that point of view. Thank

1:00:08

you, really appreciate all the work that you

1:00:10

guys do on this podcast. That's

1:00:13

a big question in a way. How do we understand

1:00:15

this? First

1:00:17

of all, they do say that. And

1:00:20

Jesus said it. You

1:00:22

can open it up and read it for

1:00:24

yourself. And since the scripture is God's word,

1:00:26

since God himself said it, Jesus

1:00:28

said no one comes to the Father but through

1:00:30

me. So if you don't come to the Father

1:00:32

through Christ, you don't come to the Father. This

1:00:36

is why those who take this approach

1:00:38

is evangelical, not certain evangelicals take this

1:00:40

approach. This is why if you're saved,

1:00:43

that is you do take Jesus as

1:00:45

your Lord and Savior. You

1:00:47

should always pray for your relatives who aren't saved

1:00:49

because they won't get into heaven. Likewise,

1:00:53

all the millions of Hindus, none of them

1:00:55

are going to heaven because

1:00:57

none of them believe in Jesus. All

1:01:00

the Buddhists, millions and millions of them, none of

1:01:02

them are going to heaven. No one gets into

1:01:04

heaven but us because we believe

1:01:06

in Jesus because Jesus says so. All

1:01:09

the indigenous peoples, none of them

1:01:12

are going to heaven, either none.

1:01:14

You go, really? I'm serious. Seriously.

1:01:17

I'll give you a break. Now we don't know

1:01:19

whether they're burning in hell forever for not believing

1:01:21

in Jesus or they're just stuck in

1:01:24

a kind of a limbo state but they don't get in.

1:01:28

But either way, it's not good. It

1:01:31

just isn't good. By the way, I want to

1:01:33

share something. How do we understand this? You

1:01:35

know, in Catholic and, this

1:01:38

is in the Catholic monastery and I

1:01:40

never had any really in-depth exposure to

1:01:42

evangelicals but when I got my scholarship

1:01:44

from my doctorate, it was

1:01:46

five years of the PhD program at

1:01:49

Fuller Theological Seminary which is an evangelical

1:01:51

seminary. They taught this. All of them

1:01:53

didn't teach this. It's interesting.

1:01:57

And I can remember being exposed to Protestants for the first time. I

1:02:01

can remember thinking to myself, how

1:02:04

could these people be

1:02:06

so bright, grounded

1:02:08

in Scripture, and

1:02:11

sincere about Christ, and be

1:02:13

Protestants? I

1:02:16

don't get it. So confusing to me,

1:02:18

really. And this is why

1:02:20

what you really do when you meet these

1:02:22

people, what really matters is holiness. And

1:02:26

also, in the words of their

1:02:28

hymns, it's really mystical this

1:02:31

way. So everyone has their own little thing

1:02:33

from the outside, and there's historical reasons why

1:02:36

they think there's not to go into all

1:02:38

of that with the Enlightenment period and the

1:02:40

Reformation and so on. But

1:02:43

the Catholic Church, and the past has kind

1:02:45

of taken that approach too, in

1:02:48

a way. So, the R.I. Peter

1:02:50

and I are upon this rock, I'll build

1:02:52

my church. So the Roman Catholic Church is

1:02:55

the one true church. So all Protestants are

1:02:57

heretics, because they're

1:02:59

not in the one true church founded by

1:03:01

Jesus Christ. That goes on and on and

1:03:03

on. But a more

1:03:05

contemplative approach, which I think is

1:03:08

more pervasively at the

1:03:10

heart of the mystical traditions and most

1:03:12

theologians today, I want

1:03:14

to share a broader point of view. It doesn't

1:03:16

concur with that. It doesn't see that approach. The

1:03:19

approach is different, and I want to offer

1:03:22

some ways to look at it. When

1:03:25

Jesus says, no

1:03:27

one comes to the Father except through me. Though

1:03:31

Jesus, who's speaking there, is not

1:03:34

the historical Jesus, simply.

1:03:36

That is, if unless you believe in me, the

1:03:39

historical Jesus, you don't come to the Father. But

1:03:42

who's speaking is Jesus, who's the second person

1:03:44

of the Trinity. In

1:03:46

the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

1:03:49

with God, and the Word was God. And

1:03:52

all things were made through him. So

1:03:55

no one comes to the Father except to the

1:03:57

second person of the Trinity, because all persons are

1:03:59

made through him. are created through the Word. God

1:04:03

eternally contemplates us in the Word and

1:04:05

then creates us through Christ the

1:04:07

Word. And so it's the universality

1:04:10

of the divinity of the Word this

1:04:13

way. Another way to look at it is this. I'll

1:04:17

use this example to languages.

1:04:20

So each language is the language that it

1:04:22

alone is. So right now we're speaking in

1:04:24

English. So if we wanted

1:04:26

to have this conversation in French, we'd

1:04:29

have to learn French. We'd have

1:04:31

to learn vocabulary cards and syntax. And

1:04:34

if we had the motivation to do it in the ability,

1:04:36

we can get to the point where we could talk in

1:04:38

French. And some people are bilingual

1:04:40

culturally. Some people know four or

1:04:42

five languages. And they can move

1:04:44

back and forth across different ones. If

1:04:47

you're really good at it, you can think in different languages.

1:04:49

But if you look across languages,

1:04:52

you see that all languages are

1:04:54

language. You

1:04:56

can see the quality of language, which

1:04:58

is really to see the quality, the

1:05:00

nature of consciousness, which is the nature

1:05:02

of the mind, which is the nature

1:05:04

of the person. So likewise, you can

1:05:07

look across religion, like historically

1:05:09

culturally specific languages. And

1:05:11

each one is different. Each has its own creed and so

1:05:14

on. But if you look across

1:05:16

those who live in that lineage and

1:05:18

are transformed in it, and you look

1:05:20

across it, you see the universality of

1:05:24

spiritual awakening and fate. Thomas Merton

1:05:26

once said, The real way to

1:05:28

understand Buddhism is not to

1:05:30

read a lot of books on Buddhism, it's to meet a holy

1:05:32

Buddhist. And the

1:05:34

real way for Buddhists to understand Christianity

1:05:36

isn't to read a lot of Christian theology,

1:05:38

it's to meet a holy Christian. Merton

1:05:41

once said, The unfortunate thing a lot about

1:05:43

Christian missionary work is they

1:05:45

failed to realize the people they were converting

1:05:48

were in many instances as holy or more

1:05:50

holy than they were. They

1:05:52

were not holy because we believe, but

1:05:54

we believe is the historically culturally specific

1:05:56

way with God's grace for learning to

1:05:58

be holy. And

1:06:01

that's the approach that makes the most sense to

1:06:03

me. If you want to see Merton's approach to

1:06:05

this, his book, Mystics and

1:06:08

Zen Masters, and the other one, Zen and the

1:06:10

Birds of Appetite. Zen

1:06:12

and the Birds of Appetite. This

1:06:14

you see his approach to the

1:06:16

universality of discovering and other religions,

1:06:18

this oneness. Thomas

1:06:21

Merton, he wrote a letter to D.T.

1:06:23

Suzuki, the Zen scholar. And

1:06:26

he said, when I read your stories about

1:06:28

koans, about enlightenment, for the master, with the

1:06:31

teacher, with the student, and the student's

1:06:33

enlightened. He said, something leaps off

1:06:35

the page at me and says, this is true. And

1:06:38

I'd like to know if I, as a Christian, could

1:06:40

talk with you as a Buddhist about our common ground.

1:06:43

So with the Dalai Lama, with

1:06:46

the Muslims, he was always looking

1:06:48

for this breaking down hardened lines

1:06:50

of tribal differences for the underlying

1:06:52

oneness that pervades all traditions and

1:06:55

transcends all traditions this way. So

1:06:58

that's what makes sense to me. And I'd like

1:07:00

to read this passage by Carl Rauner. There's a

1:07:02

lot of passages in Merton like this, too. This

1:07:05

is in an article by Harvey D.

1:07:07

Egan, the mystical theology of Carl Rauner,

1:07:09

who is one of the great theologians

1:07:11

of the Second Vatican Council. You

1:07:14

see this approach we're taking here. So I

1:07:16

just want to read it, because it's very nice. Rauner

1:07:21

is the 20th century's preeminent

1:07:23

theologian of grace. In

1:07:26

his view, grace is

1:07:28

primarily God's universal self-communication, not

1:07:31

the sporadic bestowal of certain divine

1:07:33

gifts. And all

1:07:36

human beings are the addresses of

1:07:38

this communication. Therefore, all

1:07:40

truly human activity is a free,

1:07:43

positive, or negative response to God's

1:07:45

offer of self. The

1:07:48

grace at the heart of human existence, because

1:07:51

God offers nothing less than God's

1:07:53

very own self to everyone, the

1:07:55

human person is, to Rauner's way

1:07:57

of thinking, a homomistuch us that

1:07:59

we are. that is, a

1:08:01

mystical person. This

1:08:03

relationship stamps all personal experiences

1:08:05

with at least an implicit,

1:08:08

yet primordial experience of God.

1:08:12

Because we do not have an

1:08:14

immediate pre-conceptual experience of God through

1:08:16

the experience of the limitless breadth

1:08:18

of our consciousness, which is always

1:08:21

there, Rauner writes, there is such

1:08:23

a thing as a mystical component

1:08:25

to Christianity. And

1:08:27

it's a mystical component that's shared with all

1:08:29

religions, which is the

1:08:32

divinity of the immediacy of

1:08:34

what is intimately realized. And

1:08:37

so I would say that would be the

1:08:39

difference, the respectful difference between those who hold

1:08:42

that evangelical position

1:08:44

you're suggesting and the one we're

1:08:46

seeing in a Catholic position. Catholic

1:08:48

meaning universal, the universality

1:08:50

of God all pervasively throughout

1:08:53

all of human life. It's the

1:08:55

beloved. Yeah. Yeah,

1:08:57

beautiful. I just so

1:08:59

appreciate that simple logic

1:09:01

that you shared, Jim. I hadn't really heard

1:09:03

it said that way, where if

1:09:06

Jesus is the Christ, the third part

1:09:09

of the Trinity that brings all life

1:09:11

into being, that everything's created through Jesus,

1:09:14

then we come to God through

1:09:16

Jesus because we're created through the

1:09:18

Christ. And that's beautiful. So

1:09:20

it's just an event. It happens. It

1:09:23

is. There's nothing to

1:09:25

believe. Yeah. Yeah. Another interesting

1:09:27

thing about Merton is D.T.

1:09:30

Suzuki, his then scholar came to get somebody to

1:09:32

visit him. And he went to New York to

1:09:34

visit Suzuki. And he died.

1:09:37

And he had a sessions

1:09:39

with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

1:09:41

It was electrocuted in Asia. Died

1:09:43

there this way. So he was

1:09:45

so immersed in this universality

1:09:47

of the Dharma and Christ. And he wrote a

1:09:49

letter to the monastery. And they read it in

1:09:51

the refectory. He said, the more I

1:09:54

get to know my Buddhist brothers and sisters,

1:09:56

the more I appreciate my faith in Christ, may

1:09:59

live in the heart's. of all of us. And

1:10:02

he would know the Dalai Lama would return and

1:10:04

say, the more I know my Christian brothers and

1:10:06

sisters, the more I appreciate my

1:10:08

faith in the Buddha on the night of

1:10:11

enlightenment, may that enlightenment shine through all of

1:10:13

us. And so there's a kind

1:10:15

of a polyphony of this mutual

1:10:17

recognition of each other in

1:10:19

these different dialects of the

1:10:22

divinity of life. For people who

1:10:24

have that kind of level

1:10:26

of consciousness, that openness. And you know

1:10:28

where I think it comes from? It's contemplation.

1:10:31

Because contemplation is boundary-less.

1:10:34

Like it's not an answer or a conclusion,

1:10:36

like the rains fall from your hands in

1:10:39

a state of quiet amazement as a

1:10:42

revelation of the nature of God. And

1:10:44

so I

1:10:46

think that's another significant thing about the mystics,

1:10:48

is they draw us toward that. Yeah.

1:10:51

And there's really an infinite number of

1:10:53

lenses that we could put on that

1:10:55

experience. That's right. That's exactly right. I

1:10:58

am one of those people who came

1:11:01

into Christianity as a Protestant. Thank

1:11:06

God you found the truth. Oh

1:11:09

no, you're Episcopalian, right? Well,

1:11:12

in Australia, it's Anglican. We

1:11:14

call it Anglican. You're

1:11:16

Anglican. So close. Not

1:11:19

Roman. But you're just

1:11:21

so close. We're praying for you.

1:11:25

Well, I was going to share just based on the

1:11:27

listener's question, what really got

1:11:29

me questioning that belief

1:11:32

was when my grandmother died,

1:11:34

she wasn't a Christian. But on

1:11:37

her deathbed, she was kind of in a bit

1:11:39

of a state, like

1:11:41

almost like in a coma on

1:11:43

the last day of her life and the hospice

1:11:46

chaplain came in and

1:11:48

said to her, Norma,

1:11:50

are you happy with your God? And

1:11:52

she opened her eyes and she said, I am

1:11:55

happy because God is pure love.

1:11:59

And then she died. And so for me, that

1:12:01

really just started to undo

1:12:03

that sense. And

1:12:07

that she really offered that to

1:12:10

me as her teaching to leave me. Can I find that pure

1:12:12

love and live into it before I die? And

1:12:17

so that started me searching for the mystical

1:12:19

path. You know, another

1:12:21

thing about this too, about the creed, all religions, like

1:12:24

belief, like the creed. I

1:12:26

believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven

1:12:28

and earth and all things visible and physical. And

1:12:31

so when we stand and say the creed, it's liturgy

1:12:33

in the Catholic tradition. We don't

1:12:35

just say it as a formula, we mean it. But

1:12:39

at this level, we mean it

1:12:41

as a configuration of the divinity

1:12:44

of giving itself to us and life

1:12:47

itself. That's why in the Catholic tradition,

1:12:49

when we receive the Eucharist, we

1:12:52

receive Holy Communion, not Holy Communication. It's

1:12:55

a communion, but

1:12:57

the gospel and the homily embody the

1:13:00

cadences of that communion. It's

1:13:02

like the words, I love you, back

1:13:04

and forth to each other, are these

1:13:07

words of an invitation

1:13:09

to a realization that can't be

1:13:11

explained, which is love. Yes.

1:13:14

I'll recommend one book as well, which

1:13:16

is Richard Rawls' book, The Universal Christ,

1:13:19

where he really just tried to

1:13:21

lay out what you said, like

1:13:24

the historical ways

1:13:26

this teaching

1:13:28

got distorted throughout,

1:13:31

yeah, by the church. Well,

1:13:34

thank you. Wonderful. So we

1:13:36

got an email from John and he had

1:13:39

some information about the rosary that's mentioned in

1:13:41

the book. So

1:13:43

he says, regarding your episode where you mentioned the

1:13:45

rosary and the Jesus prayer, I thought

1:13:48

you might like to mention that there is a

1:13:50

specific rosary just for saying the Jesus prayer. It

1:13:53

is used mainly in the Eastern Orthodox

1:13:55

churches. It is called a

1:13:57

trotki or a komboskini. There

1:14:01

is an interesting legend about its origin. St

1:14:03

Anthony of the desert was said to have

1:14:05

made one of wool to

1:14:07

count his prayers, but the devil kept

1:14:10

untying the knots to distract him, so

1:14:12

he devised a more intricate knot made

1:14:14

of multiple cross-type knots, thereby the devil

1:14:16

could untie them. The

1:14:20

chot-key today are made with these multiple intricate

1:14:22

knots for each bead. They are usually made

1:14:24

with 33, 50 or 100 knots, peace always

1:14:26

with beginning them. First

1:14:30

of all, I love stories like that about

1:14:32

the knots. Like the devil going, damn, I

1:14:34

can't untie these damn knots. Anthony

1:14:37

is praying away and foiled again.

1:14:40

This is a great story. Yes, I'm aware of

1:14:42

those stories. I have one here. Oh, right there.

1:14:45

And this is 33 beads. And

1:14:48

then I also had one of cloth with the knots,

1:14:50

and I lost it. I want to get another one.

1:14:54

Can I say that? Oh, yeah, look

1:14:56

at that. There's quite a bit of knotting in between

1:14:58

each. Yeah. That's beautiful.

1:15:01

Jesus lived for 33 years. So

1:15:04

you have 33, but then you have 50, then you have 100. And

1:15:07

so you use them to count. And

1:15:10

it's just a nice devotional too, just to keep.

1:15:13

So yeah, I have one. Did

1:15:16

you know it was the chot-key? I did. Oh,

1:15:19

you did. Yeah, I knew of it from the pilgrim. That's

1:15:22

why I got it. When

1:15:24

I first discovered this when I was in the monastery,

1:15:26

and I was aware of the tradition and so

1:15:29

on, so I got one. You've

1:15:32

had a long time. I have a set of rosaries,

1:15:34

yes. Yeah, beautiful. Okay,

1:15:38

here's a comment from Nigel, which

1:15:41

is lovely. So Nigel said, I

1:15:43

have fairly advanced Parkinson's and

1:15:45

I'm prone to falling over, particularly when

1:15:47

out walking my dog. I

1:15:50

have for a long time silently repeated the

1:15:52

Jesus prayer to myself, both to

1:15:54

help me stay on my feet and to give

1:15:56

me courage. This despite the

1:15:58

many strictures I have read. saying that it

1:16:00

should not be used like a mantra. It

1:16:03

is a source of great comfort to me, a

1:16:05

blessing, as is your podcast. I

1:16:07

would very much value your thoughts on this. Yes.

1:16:10

First of all, I don't know what that means it

1:16:12

should not be used as a mantra. First

1:16:14

of all, let's define terms. A

1:16:17

mantra is a word or

1:16:19

a phrase repeated over and over and

1:16:21

over and over again. So

1:16:24

because of the Jesus verse, say you say

1:16:26

it without stopping. It is a mantra. Mm-hmm.

1:16:29

It's like the Desert Fathers, also the

1:16:31

International Christian Meditation Society, Father John Maynes

1:16:35

and Father Lawrence Freeman. They

1:16:37

said it as a mantra. They said it

1:16:39

without stopping. And I compared it to being in

1:16:41

the monastery chanting the psalms so they

1:16:43

don't pause. So it's not a

1:16:45

force or contrived. It's a kind of

1:16:47

a flow that allows the

1:16:49

mind and the heart to go deeper in

1:16:51

a mantra. But notice in the cloud of

1:16:54

unknowing, it's not a mantra. You only use

1:16:56

the word as needed. So

1:16:58

you kind of sit, you ground

1:17:00

yourself in this unknowing heart. And

1:17:02

then when the mind drifts off

1:17:05

into this or that distraction, you

1:17:07

say the word quietly within yourself

1:17:09

to get regrounded in wordlessness. So

1:17:12

it is a mantra. But it's very touching

1:17:14

to have this image of this person walking

1:17:16

along with their dog with the parka,

1:17:18

you know what I mean? And falling over and

1:17:21

praying. It's just very lovely. Beautiful.

1:17:23

That's something more than a mantra.

1:17:25

It's almost like, you know, something

1:17:29

laying along the path with him.

1:17:31

Yeah, being with him on that

1:17:33

path. Yeah. I love this

1:17:35

phrase. I want to say Benedict founded

1:17:37

the monastery. And someone

1:17:40

asked him once he was out in

1:17:42

town buying supplies or something. And

1:17:44

he said, what are you monks doing the

1:17:47

monastery all day? And

1:17:49

he said, fall down and get up, fall down and get

1:17:51

up, fall down and get up this way.

1:17:53

So there's something beautiful about

1:17:55

the person's sincerity and faith

1:17:57

in their physical fragility. has

1:18:00

a certain cathos to it and it's

1:18:03

touching, yeah. Yeah, very. Judy

1:18:07

asks a question about if

1:18:09

there's a translation of the phyllicalia that

1:18:12

you prefer, Jim. No,

1:18:14

I'm only aware of one. I don't have it

1:18:17

right here with me. Maybe Cory could get,

1:18:19

I'm only aware of one really, could look at, maybe there's

1:18:21

another one. So I just have this,

1:18:23

I just have the one. It's

1:18:25

lovely, it's beautiful. Okay, very

1:18:27

good. A question

1:18:30

from Ken about quickening. I've

1:18:32

heard Jim often use the word quickening

1:18:34

for the moment of awakening or the

1:18:36

aha moment. Does that word

1:18:38

come from a particular mystic? What

1:18:41

other words have the various mystics used

1:18:43

to describe this connection? Does

1:18:45

Jesus or any scripture verses use

1:18:47

some other words to describe this

1:18:49

experience? Yes, I

1:18:51

use the word, I like it. I

1:18:54

don't know where it comes from, exactly, a specific

1:18:56

one. Other words for it would

1:18:58

be touched, it's a touch. Another

1:19:01

phrase I use is a moment of

1:19:04

spontaneous spiritual awakening, that

1:19:06

you're interiorly moved. See,

1:19:09

you're interiorly moved. The

1:19:12

author of the cloud of a knowing and the little

1:19:14

introduction, he talks about saying our

1:19:16

prayers and so on, and he talks about a

1:19:18

blind stirring of love in the inmost core of

1:19:20

your being. That is the

1:19:23

inmost place within yourself that you don't know

1:19:25

how to find. It stirs and

1:19:27

it spills over into your, like

1:19:29

it echoes in your emotions this way. And it

1:19:32

sets your life on a whole new direction.

1:19:35

Theresa Vavila talks about sitting in prayer

1:19:37

in the fourth mansion. And

1:19:39

she's just sitting there in the sincerity of your

1:19:41

prayer. And she said, imagine

1:19:43

a basin filling

1:19:45

with water and it's

1:19:47

overflowing. But what if the basin didn't overflow

1:19:50

but kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger?

1:19:52

And you realize that's what's happening to your

1:19:54

heart. You're sitting there and your heart's being

1:19:56

enlarged to divine proportions. So

1:19:58

there's different words for your like...

1:20:01

materially quickened or moved or stilled.

1:20:04

It's like the intimacy of a

1:20:06

quickening or a touch. You

1:20:09

know not what to make of it, see? But

1:20:12

you surrender, it's the gate of heaven. And

1:20:15

then what happens, I think we all have little moments like

1:20:17

that. Sometimes they're very intense, actually.

1:20:20

But what starts to happen, and this is

1:20:24

that in these quickenings or these touches

1:20:26

or these being kissed by God, these

1:20:28

stirring, there begins to grow in us

1:20:30

a desire to abide in the depths

1:20:32

of fleetingly glimpse, and that's the path.

1:20:36

I know that I fleetingly tasted that

1:20:38

without which my life will be

1:20:41

forever incomplete. So how can

1:20:43

I be more habitually stabilized in it, knowing

1:20:45

that in the taste it isn't

1:20:48

something more was given, but I fleetingly

1:20:50

taste the divinity what every moment is.

1:20:52

Where can I find someone to help

1:20:54

me? That's the pilgrim, that's the archetypal

1:20:57

search for the teacher. Where

1:20:59

can I find someone who's well-seasoned in

1:21:01

this? And in those presence,

1:21:03

they can help me to stabilize in it. That's

1:21:06

the lineage. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

1:21:09

Wonderful. That leads perfectly into our

1:21:11

next question from Lee. Longing

1:21:15

exists in duality. As long as we

1:21:17

long, there is duality. Resting

1:21:19

being in God, there is no

1:21:21

longing. To me, it seems to

1:21:23

be essential to feel the longing. Is

1:21:26

the feeling of the longing actually the knowing?

1:21:29

To feel the longing is very subtle and deep.

1:21:31

Is the longing a bridge into

1:21:34

non-duality, the heart-loving presence? Does

1:21:37

the longing transform into a

1:21:39

simple, gentle fire of beingness?

1:21:42

We touched on this earlier in the little phrase about the

1:21:44

Buddha, about the path, that in

1:21:47

our Vāna, the ultimate goals are showing up

1:21:49

in the path beneath your feet. So

1:21:51

I want to paraphrase it here also from

1:21:54

Bernard Larnach and his

1:21:56

work on mystical consciousness and

1:21:58

so on. that there

1:22:01

is a longing, but

1:22:05

it's a longing that incarnates the

1:22:07

consummation of what you're longing for.

1:22:11

And it's a longing because it's still

1:22:14

an intentional consciousness. So

1:22:16

it's like an intentionality because the depth

1:22:18

to which you've come provides

1:22:21

a vantage point where you can see

1:22:23

there's still a deeper depth. And

1:22:26

once you see it, you want to go there. See? So

1:22:28

the longing is an ongoing longing that

1:22:32

actually incarnates the fulfillment of what

1:22:34

you're longing for as religious consciousness.

1:22:37

The purity of mystical consciousness is

1:22:39

there's no longing. It's

1:22:42

just God in all directions this

1:22:44

way. And that's

1:22:46

mystical union in the strict sense of

1:22:50

the word. And so in the broad

1:22:52

sense of the word, like Bernadine Beggin was saying, it's

1:22:55

all the ways we experience God, understand

1:22:57

God in our dreams, in our life,

1:22:59

and our—that's mystical path. But

1:23:03

it's all an intentional consciousness of a

1:23:05

longing that incarnates the presence of God

1:23:07

that we're longing for because that longing

1:23:09

is an echo of God's infinite longing

1:23:11

for us. See? And we

1:23:13

deepen it. But it's also possible for

1:23:16

there to be this cessation of longing, which

1:23:18

is death, the eternal life.

1:23:21

So these mystics are gravitating towards,

1:23:23

they're guiding us to discern how

1:23:25

to go deeper and deeper toward

1:23:28

that point. So

1:23:31

the statement that longing exists in

1:23:33

duality, as long as we long, there

1:23:35

is duality. What you're describing the

1:23:37

longing, there's no duality. Yeah, I put

1:23:40

the same. There's no duality

1:23:42

as in dualistically other, but

1:23:44

there remains distinction. There

1:23:48

remains distinction. So it's like

1:23:50

an underlying end distinction permeating

1:23:52

the distinction, but

1:23:54

it transcends duality. It isn't like someone

1:23:56

dualistically other. It's like people deeply in

1:23:58

love with you. with each other. And

1:24:02

so in moments of loving union, they say, we

1:24:04

are one. But in

1:24:06

realizing there are one, they don't cease to be two. Because

1:24:09

if they would cease to be two, they couldn't be there to

1:24:11

know that they're one. But they

1:24:13

don't live by the two, and that

1:24:15

carries over into prayer this way. So

1:24:18

it's an indistinction that permeates the distinction

1:24:21

this way. But then there's a

1:24:23

oneness beyond distinction, which

1:24:26

is a foreshadowing of eternal life, which is

1:24:28

the mystical union in a strict sense. So

1:24:31

in a way, surrendering to the

1:24:34

longing is the end of duality

1:24:36

for us. It's like... It

1:24:38

is. Yeah. Because

1:24:40

when we were doing MGTell to Magburt

1:24:42

earlier, where she said, God revealed to

1:24:45

her that he has so

1:24:47

freely chosen to be so hopelessly in love

1:24:49

with her, he honestly doesn't know

1:24:51

if he could handle being God without her. And

1:24:54

she said, take me home with you, I'll be your physician

1:24:56

forever. And so really,

1:24:59

see, the longing is really God loves us

1:25:01

first, God longs for us. And

1:25:04

so God creates us to have someone

1:25:06

to long for and

1:25:08

to long to completely give God to us

1:25:11

as our life. And that's

1:25:13

what all this is about, really, I think. It's

1:25:15

one way of putting it. Yeah.

1:25:18

Lovely. Lovely. Okay,

1:25:20

last question for today is from Anne. I'm

1:25:23

curious about what you name as the gift of

1:25:25

tears. My teacher Sufi tradition

1:25:27

names one of the teachers in the

1:25:29

lineage crying so much in

1:25:32

India, her blue handkerchief was bleached white.

1:25:35

In this tradition, the crying is associated with

1:25:37

longing that on its own will take you

1:25:39

back to God. I'm experiencing

1:25:41

great waves of grief that seem unconnected

1:25:43

to anything in my life and

1:25:46

wonder about both longing and the Christian

1:25:48

understanding mentioned in this season as the

1:25:50

gift of tears. You

1:25:53

know, first of all, the different ways of looking at

1:25:55

it. Sometimes the tears are actual tears. Another

1:25:59

way, what it is... is where there are actual,

1:26:01

like the body, the somatic dimensions of

1:26:04

the body praying. But

1:26:06

really, the gift of tears

1:26:08

is being loved unexplainably with

1:26:10

our foundations. It's

1:26:13

like a free fall, see? It's

1:26:15

the gift of tears. There's no footing anywhere.

1:26:19

And a lovely image, when we

1:26:21

did a ladder of monks, Guigo II,

1:26:23

so he says we start

1:26:25

out with Lectio Divina,

1:26:28

the sustained attentiveness, listening to God's words

1:26:30

in Scripture, whatever. Then

1:26:33

we meditate on it in the presence

1:26:35

of God, discursive meditation.

1:26:38

And then there's prayer from the heart, help me

1:26:40

with this. He said,

1:26:42

what happens if we're sitting this way,

1:26:45

that there can begin to grow in us an

1:26:48

unbearable longing for infinite union

1:26:50

with the infinite, which were

1:26:53

powerless to cross with our

1:26:55

finite abilities. And

1:26:57

the urgency of unconscimated longings, which

1:26:59

is given to us by God,

1:27:02

see? He says, and God cuts us

1:27:04

off mid-sentence and there's a boundary

1:27:06

crossing. And God crosses over

1:27:08

and grants the infinite union with the

1:27:10

infinite that we're powerless to grant this

1:27:12

way. And then he says,

1:27:14

and so when that oneness happens, as

1:27:17

it passes away, you're like falling backwards

1:27:19

in slow motion. You fall, and

1:27:21

where do you land back? You land back

1:27:24

sitting there with the Scriptures open on your lap,

1:27:26

your finger on the text, see? It's

1:27:29

like you fall back into the ordinariness of

1:27:31

your ways, but now you know that at

1:27:33

any moment it can catch fire. And

1:27:36

that's Guigo. So

1:27:38

that's the longing, the waves

1:27:40

of longing, consummated, unconscimated, that

1:27:43

carries us along. So

1:27:45

all these mystics I think are trying to help us learn

1:27:48

to live with. Yes,

1:27:52

beautiful. Well, we've

1:27:54

come to the end of our listener

1:27:56

question session, and unfortunately

1:27:58

there's never enough time get through

1:28:00

all the wonderful questions that come in. But I

1:28:02

know, Jim, you read them all. I read them

1:28:04

all. And they're so helpful, just overall. Don't

1:28:07

you find that? Yes, very much so. Yeah,

1:28:10

excellent. So and in this season,

1:28:12

we also ask people to send in stories

1:28:15

of pilgrimage. And we've had

1:28:17

such an overwhelming response that we're going to

1:28:19

take some more time to develop

1:28:21

that episode. And that will come out

1:28:23

as a bonus episode after season 10.

1:28:27

So be looking out for that. We're

1:28:30

excited to share some of

1:28:32

the wonderful stories that have come in. So

1:28:34

thank you, everyone who sent those in. So

1:28:37

Jim, we'll be back with season

1:28:39

10 in the fall. But thank you for

1:28:42

this wonderful, wonderful season, the Wave of Pilgrim.

1:28:45

It was great. Thank you. Thank

1:28:47

Corey. Look forward to

1:28:49

working with Dorothy too, down the road. Yes,

1:28:52

yes. Thank you, Corey, in the background. And

1:28:56

Dorothy, who's going to be working with us in

1:28:58

the fall. Thank

1:29:06

you for listening to this episode of Turning to

1:29:08

the Mystics, a podcast created

1:29:10

by the Center for Action and Contemplation.

1:29:14

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1:29:16

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1:29:18

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1:29:20

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1:29:23

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1:29:25

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