Mystics Week 4 ~ Animus & Stillness & Stitches

The Second Mansion

...the wish is for
every flower of the heart to unfold.
  ~Cynthia Bourgeault

This week brings the unexpected.
As each week has.
This week brings Cynthia Bourgeault
Cynthia Bourgeault in conversation with Adyashanti
Centering prayer
Stillness
Ocean of light energy running through us
Deepening practice


Animus and Mike and Wholeness and Freedom
Winter skies
Anniversaries
Somatic memories
Stitching, lots and lots of creating and stitching

More confusion about the indescribable love of god and yet the suffering ~ though a tiny crack of light has gotten into this one. I think. 

 

The Mystics Week 3 - Part 2 ~OR~ The Life Force, The Diamond Soul

She was radically faithful to something she didn't see coming,
and she surrendered to it, and it just broke right open. 
~Jim Finely

Contemplation is the practice of being fully present
—in heart, mind, and body—
~Richard Rohr

In the middle of the season, in the middle of the session, I leave Merton behind and skip to season two of Turning to the Mystics where I find St. Teresa of Avila. 

From the Introduction Jim speaks about Teresa's words in The Interior Castle, The First Dwelling (or mansion):

I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or a very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms...

We are a mystery to ourself. We are a mystery to ourself because our finite comprehension and ego consciousness is infinitely less than the infinite mystery of the depths of our own soul. So we cannot gather up the immensity of god giving herself away in and as the majesty of our own soul. Our little mind can't grasp it but what we can't grasp we can realize if we surrender to it. We can intimately realize the intimate immediacy of what we can't comprehend. Which is spiritual understanding. 

! Big insight into something that has troubled me from the beginning. If we are nothing without god's presence, if at the count of three we would vanish if that love was withdrawn, then god is the life force. Yes! The Life Force. Now I get it. 

From Jim's reflection: 

Our soul has a quality that is elegant, it's vast, it's mysterious, it's graced, it's luminous, it's inherently holy or, I would say sacred. This is the mystery of our soul. Reflecting on this, then god, who is being poured out and given to us as the mystery of our own soul, then that one, the life force lives inside of us, in the innermost hidden center of us. (I'm thinking our hearts.) And god takes his delight in us, that we are the beloved of this life force.

When we love someone deeply, we see the soul of them, we see in our love for them, we see the preciousness of who they are, like the innermost depth of the gift and the miracle of their presence. And we also sense then that when we see the soul of a person which is the preciousness of the person then we see how grateful they are to be so deeply seen. They see that you see in them this indescribable preciousness and this gifts them. This is love being poured out. 

(What a pity that Jim is speaking here only of romantic love, partnered love, marriage)

The door to which we enter into this first mansion of the diamond soul is prayer and meditation. As far as I can understand, the door of entry into this castle is prayer and meditation. For what is prayer? Prayer is the sincerity of asking for such things. Prayer is being aware of who we are talking to. When the prayer ends, ask god not to break the grace not to break the thread of such sensitivity. This subtle shift in the paradoxical state of realizing god's infinite oneness with us; this reciprocal love that is sustaining us. If we did nothing more than this, be a faith first mansion person, that would be an amazing thing. 

! It is our souls that are made in god's image!! Our souls, not our physical bodies. God is not a man because he made Adam in his image of a man! Huge, huge seeing for me. Oh what the church, patriarchy, has done. 

At the same time I have started reading Mirabai Starr's translation of The Interior Castle. From the introduction: 

"The extraordinary thing about this castle where god lives is that it is inside of us. The journey to union with the Beloved is a journey home to the center of ourselves. I myself can come up with nothing as magnificent of the beauty and the amplitude of a soul. The human soul is so beautiful, so glorious, that the Beloved chooses it as his dwelling place." A little stumbling block on this last piece. 

But we rarely consider the soul's excellent qualities or who it is that dwells within her or how precious she really is. And so we don't bother to tend to her beauty. 

I love that Mirabai translates "through our own faults" to "what a shame that, through our unconsciousness, we do not know ourselves."

Random Notes:

Richard Rohr: An appreciator is a contemplative, in fact you become an all day appreciator of little things, of everything...

Note: Merciful and mercy are more words that don't work for me. These are based on the needing of compassion or forbearance because one is an "offender" or a subject to one's power. Lower. Bad. Less than. 

The Mystics Week 3 Part 1 ~ OR ~ Emptiness is Perfect

"Contemplative wisdom is present in the hidden
recesses of our own bodies, minds, and hearts,
waiting to be recognized."  
~Jim Finely

This week isn't going well as far as Mystics. Right away a hitch. Which I expected, but not even this intensely. 

In the middle of the reflection on Thomas Merton's words I've stopped the recording. So many strong emotions coming up. First, so much sadness at the thought that this is probably not my path after all. But also the seeing which I've known but keep overriding. My truth, that I cannot find You in religion. I cannot find You in the words, in the ideas, in the trappings of religion. This, this is the word that comes, trappings—it makes me think, ironically, of the Trappist monks, though named for a place not a state of being, La Grande Trappe, France. Still this being trapped is a place. A grand, trapped place. 

I cannot find you in the sexism, the misogyny, the dogma of religion, especially religion founded in patriarchy—weren't they all—upheld in patriarchy—ditto. I cannot find You there, cannot find You in those words, cannot find You in god the father, in lord, in master. No. No god the father. No. And that we are filled with him and we are nothing without that. We are nothing without that but not in the way that they think. because we ARE that. I tell the divine that I need not words but direct experience, not religion but spirit; spirit, spirituality; feeling, not thinking; being, not doing. I was hoping, Beloved, that You would be illuminated to me through this path because I don't know what other path there is. If not here, where? 

The answer comes to me in living daily life, in the streams, in the stream that I listen to when I meditate/pray, the beads, in how much I love my family, how much I love nature and the world. And what about all the suffering? Annie is suffering. Katie is suffering. Faye is suffering. Ukrainians are suffering. Palestinians. Jews. All around the world people are suffering. What god creates this? Though maybe... I mean those are human questions, they occupy the mind nonstop~and they are not unimportant questions. But what if, what if it's about letting go of trying to make sense of anything, maybe the questions stand in the way, maybe there will never be understanding, and also I think that the glimpses I got of You in nature, in the natural world, before I turned to the Christian mystics, which just felt so pure and so beautiful are as real as any transcendent experience. Maybe it's about feeling the suffering. Letting it break open the heart. You know this. I can feel that You know this. 

Then I opened the meditation app this morning and there was a snippet from Robert Frost that's been a favorite since I was a child ~ "

Two roads diverged in a wood,and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
 and that has made all the difference." 

And it feels like here I am again, and I don't know why that makes me so sad.  And empty. Like will I ever find my place? Will I ever find my way?Like it was here, filled with possibility, with potential meaning, with tiny inklings of something, and now it has left. I want to say that I'm confused but actually I'm not confused. I'm not confused. This is not my path. 

Later, getting ready for bed, full yellow moon hanging just outside my window I think that maybe emptiness is good. Maybe it's even perfect. Maybe it's just the right thing because you can't fill a bowl or a glass that's already full. This way there's a place that spirit can move into. Ah. But can we be empty while at the same time filled?