The Violin

The violin comes alive in the hands of the musician, and beautiful music comes forth.  But for this to happen something must first die.  The violin is made of wood, fir and maple, and the tree has to die first before the building process can begin to create the violin.  If I am to be “for the world,” to become some spiritual instrument for God to express God’s self, then I must go through a dying too.  Die to wanting to be noticed, like a tree that yearns to grow tall and be seen, majestic.  If I let myself, bad wood and all, die to self, God can make something beautiful, to express God through me.  Like a seed that dies, germinates to become a tree, that dies, to make an instrument, I can become what God wants in the hands of God.  Maybe a ukulele?

Depression

 Yes, one can get depressed inside a monastery.  I have found it so from time to time.  I used to think that I was doing something wrong or that I was sick.  This depression is not so much clinical as it is a feeling.  At these times I used to look at the past and all that I used to have, the good times, the success, the recognition, the purpose in life.  Or I look to the future with anxiety or fear, a sense of nothing much to look forward to.  But then I have come to realize that in my situation, this feeling is a part of life that happens.  Plus, the God I seek does not live in the past or the future, but only the now moment, and loves me, regardless of what I feel.  This helps to ground me in the present moment.  I am loved regardless of the feeling I may have.  I can be of service to the community in some small way at the moment.  Clean something up.  And then I eat a piece of chocolate.  Love!

The Fifth

 You have heard about, "taking the fifth" as in not incriminating yourself in a legal hearing or trial.  Well, taking the fifth as in taking the fifth drink in about alcoholism.  It is the craving.  But the first drink is about sobriety.  What?  You tried to stop drinking, but your efforts are minimalistic at best.  A few meetings, a little reading, some gym work, a divorce, change of job or scenery, and you "celebrate" sobriety.  Then you take the first drink...again.  Sobriety became your problem, not your solution.  I have found that recovery is a lot more than staying sober.  It is a lot of work.  And I have to be selfless.  OMG!  It is not just changing a drinking pattern.  It is changing me and it never seems to end.  I may be a mediocre priest, monk, blogger, but I do not want to be mediocre sober.  Am I really a mediocre priest?  

The Facts

 It is said, "Feelings are not facts."  They can be very helpful in directing our life away from danger, inappropriate situations, so they have a place.  But I try not to use feelings to assess the facts of what is going on.  I may feel angry, or judgmental around someone, but generally I don't know about all the facts of their life.  So many times, given a feeling, I have judged someone of some situation, only to find out with more "information" that I was wrong, and missed out of something very beneficial.  Never judge a meeting by how I feel when I walk in.  Never judge a priest by his sermon, or the church service by how I "feel."  None of these are dangerous!  I try to be patient and avoid becoming a danger to myself.  

Hell

Many people get into a spiritual way of life before their life completely falls apart.  This is good, but has a downside.  No desperation.  So they don't work hard enough at recovering a life, obtaining a sane way of living.  I have seen many a person go to church or meetings whose life is really going through a kind of hell in spite of their attendance.  Things are just not working out.  They are not happy or joyous and certainly not free of knots around their heart.  It has been said, that if you don't go through hell before you get a spiritual practice, you will go through hell afterwards!  Why?  Desperation makes you work to the max to get out of your hell.  Low bottom people know this.  They don't want to go back to where they were.  High bottom, and people who are just baptized into a religion tend to mediocrity.  Or drop out.  This is why I do not want to forget my past.  Keeps me on my toes.   

Bondage To Self

One of the reasons that you go to a spiritual gathering, be it a meeting, church, prayer group, service to others, is to get out of yourself, get out of focusing on yourself.  Get your mind off of you.  it is not that one should never think of themself, but that when your are getting irritable, discontented and irascible, you probably are too self-focused.  Those moods generally do not lead to anything constructive.  When I pray, I most often try not to think about me and my problems.  Yes, I do ask God to help me be better person, but then that becomes God's job.  Mine is to then let go of focusing on my feeling and thoughts.  It is why meditation seems to help me to relax.  Afterwards, I seem to be more helpful and concerned about others, more at peace with a world that does not conform to my preferences.  I like meetings.   

Love and Bread

 The phrase “Making Love,” and “Making Bread” don’t seem to go together, but there are similarities.  Maybe Bakers make good Lovers.  In both cases you use your hands.  You have to know how to touch and feel.  Love and bread don’t just happen by a 1, 2, 3 and you are done.  That machine approach makes for bad bread and bad love.  You have to know what goes into the making, and mix when it is time.  Timing is important.  Readiness is a process.  Bread and person respond to touch in a certain manner.  And the making is never the same each time.  But experience does help.  When you are finished mixing the bread you are not “done.”  The bread mix is not fully bread anymore than sex is fully love.  The dough needs time to develop like lovers need time to just be with one another as in “after.”  You cannot hurry dough and love.  I think the baking of bread in the oven is like becoming our truer self because of the love-making that day.  But what do I know.  I am a monk!

Poverty

 Poverty in terms of a spiritual practice is not about having nothing.  You don’t have to give away everything.  You are not a monk.  Poverty in the world means not being attached to any of the things that you have.  This helps you to stay more focused on what is important, and the source of enduring happiness.  This poverty gives you a sense of freedom.  You are not tied to your “stuff.”  And in time, with your prayer practice, you will see where you can be of service to others in giving them some of your stuff that they truly need.  You separate your needs from your wants.  Wants are about ego, self.  Poverty in this sense is about freedom that endures the loss of stuff.  

First Things First

 A monk is no closer to God than anyone else.  God is close to us all equally.  A monk simply puts God before all else.  A monk offers to God whatever he or she has at the moment.  A monk need not be a stranger to others, nor live in a desert, but God is always in the foreground, though seemingly invisible, intangible.  You might say that you are too busy with family, job, plans and agenda of one sort or another.  Well, so is the monk who often lives with many others in a monastery.  It is not the task, the daily agenda, but what you bring to it of yourself.  We can all do lots of things, tasks, but with the attitude that God is right here with us, in us.  A little early meditation and spiritual reading can help a lot.  And if you can, gather at some point with like-minded people.  "Recovery" is about putting first things first.  

The Search

 If you are searching for God, there are two moments when you can encounter God.  The present moment and the moment of death.  If one can be at all comfortable with dying, a good preparation would be to seek God in the present moment.  Thus the thought of meditation, and keeping God in mind, as one can, during work, and daily routines, as well as special events.  One can ignore all this with the thought that there is no God.  Surprise if they are wrong, and then so ill prepared.  I have found that people with some spiritual life, seem to be more comfortable about the idea that they will not last forever in this mortal flesh.  Sometimes my blogs might serve to refocus someone as they begin their day, all in a frenzy about the past or future.  Take a moment to be in the moment.  It is a gift.  

Change

 Many of us shun change when it seems to equal loss.  We like things to remain the same because they are familiar, or we can think of nothing better.  "At least I have this or that," we say.  The downside to this is that we can get into a rut that blinds us to new possibilities.  We spend all of or time in maintenance of what we know.  And we tend to hang around with the same people who are in agreement with us.  It can surely be a safe life and one of some growth, but it may be a life that is not as full as we were meant to be.  At this point, to think about change can be scary.  Fear.  Anxiety.  Feeling like an outlier.  I am about to lose my monastery "home."  What next?  I don't know.  But I try to stay open to change.  And get second opinions.  God is one of those opinions.  

Growth

Some of us feel that there is growth if we have "more."  If I have more of whatever than you have, am I not growing better than you?  Growth seems to be measured in comparisons with others.  Thus it has to be something concrete.  My house is bigger than yours.  We do not think of loss as growth.  Loss means less, right?  Maybe not.  Sometimes less or even nothing is more.  This wisdom does not come easily.  It is surely the narrow road.  I remember when I could drink more than other people.  Growth in capacity.  Until I could not drink at all.  Loser.  Failure.  Bum.  Then the light came in the darkness.  Loss became gain.  Growth is funny that way, except it was not so funny at the crossroads into a new life.  Sure beats oblivion.   

Perplexed

 When some people feel they need more power to do something or avoid something, they go to the gym and get better fitness.  Or they try and make more money to solve an issue.  Or they shop for something like clothes, tools, technology upgrades.  And they get or think they get, more power, more control.  But some issues simply perplex us.  Nothing "out there" seems to solve our lack of power issue in this case.  Despair is one response.  Such solution can destroy us.  But maybe there is a power we cannot purchase.  Yet it has a cost.  We have to surrender our desire for control.  Then admit we have no control in some cases.  Instead of searching for a spiritual solution, why not seek someone who has found an answer for your lack of power?  I remember when there were alphabet listings in phone books.  I started with "A."  It did not take long.  

Never Sleeps

 You may get a good night's sleep and think your irascible moods are behind you, or your bad choices are behind you.  You feel good and ready for the day.  But then stuff happens, moods return, shortcomings, emotional  and mental all come up.  Bad choices seem to look not so bad.  What happened?  Well, the enemy never sleeps.  That is the thing about the dark side.  It never needs sleep.  It thrives in power when complacency takes over your itinerary for the day.  "I am fine.  I don't need to do thus and so today," and so on.  Better to do good habits as a daily exercise rather than wait for desperation.  It may be too late by then.

Distractions

 In prayer, distractions are only in the mind, not in the heart.  When you decide to sit and meditate, it is the heart that really decides.  It longs for union.  The mind seems to make the decision but distractions that soon follow in the mind, show the mind to be divided at best.  What to do?  Just keep praying, because God and heart are doing fine, though the mind is too busy with distractions to notice.  And it is the mind that judges how the prayer went.  So never judge your prayer based upon some feelings or level of distractions.  Prayer is not so much to change the mind as to change the self as in transformation.  The mind will catch up in time.  

The Koan

 The purpose of the Koan is to take you beyond thought.  You can never think your way to union with God.  Knowledge is about something, but is not the experience of union, or deep connect that might change you for the better.  “One hand clapping” is not some riddle to be figured out in the mind.  It goes beyond the mind or beneath the mind.  It requires mediation, stillness and silence with oneself, leaving the mind on the sidelines for other pursuits later.  Many of Jesus’ sayings are of a Koan nature.  They are meant to halt us on our superficial paths, and bring us to be still, wait, and maybe wait for quite some time.  Who has the patience for such waiting?  The Adept.  

Secularization

 We live in a post modern secular world.  Religion can function in this environment as a corrective to “secularization.”  Secularization is the tendency of those who seek money, power, control, fame, fortune, the cult of the individual, to neutralize religion.  How do they do it?  They encourage religion to be private, so that it will have no effect on the social scene.  If you can get religion to focus on “real presence” in the Eucharist, it might take away from a focus on engaging in issues of poverty, justice, racism, gun violence, equality, employment pay, sexual exploitation and the list goes on.  I suspect the 1% rich, the power brokers, don’t want the gospel meddling in their quest for “more” of whatever they already have.  Jesus was not executed for private religion.  He upset the powerful.  

Curiosity

If the deepest form of prayer is imageless and wordless, as many mystics in all paths say it is, I would not start there.  Your interest would be fueled by mere curiosity at best.  I have met many people who say they, “Used to practice” some form of mediation or spiritual way be in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Karbala, Christianity, Islam, Sufism, you name it.  Desperation is what fuels the journey when things seem to go sideways, nowhere, or not in your plans for a better life.  Desperation can lead us to a better life, just not the one you planned.  I have never seen a drunk get sober in a Recovery program simply based on curiosity.  One must see the futility of where they have been.  A one week retreat may make you feel better, but will it make you “be” better as a self-less, loving person, of service to others?  Fortunately, I hit the desperation spot.  It was not fun.  But change never is, when you are all about yourself to begin with.  

Beginner Faith

 True faith takes us into the unknown.  No one starts there.  We begin faith with an appeal to the mind.  We “understand” by reading, listening to talks, practicing some rituals and communal activities.  Not bad.  We are doing OK.  But in time we can drift.  Anxiety, worldly concerns, fears, the ego all gain a foothold in our beginner faith.  It is like the seed tossed upon rocky and thorny ground.  No depth.  None of these things satisfy after a while.  Then we meet someone, read something, or experience something that invites us to “emptiness” and “surrender.”  Abandon yourself to the unknown, the Power beyond all mind-knowledge.  This is the deeper faith that changes one after life’s shortcomings have been experienced.  We follow this path and begin to rise from our bottom.  Bottoms, if survived, are the first step in transformation.  A bottom? It is when you find out your old way did not work, but you are still alive to do something about it.  

Love In Action

 Love does not have to be a feeling.  It can be expressed in action. Example: you find that your heart is full of self, all about me…me…me.  You want to change.  You pray: ask your God or Power for help.  Is it not a God of Love?  You pray and wait to feel love that will help you become less selfish and more loving.  You feel nothing in your meditations, incantations, and begin to doubt the whole process.  Where is the love?  Well, do you begin to change in your relationships with others, in your daily actions?  Are you in fact becoming more concerned about others, and less about your me…me…me?  This is love in action.  Your spiritual power has moved into the heart space that was vacated by your self-focus.  Eventually, you will begin to feel the love within.  Meanwhile everyone around you is feeling the love from you.  I try not to wait till I feel good before I will do good.  

Starter Spirituality

 Ok, a lot of this contemplation and nothingness makes no sense.  Accept where you are.  Start with something rather than try to leap into  nothing.  Non-duality is never the beginning of any path.  Look at Eastern spirituality.  They start with something.  Buddhist, Hindu, Tao all have vital stuff, such as tapestries, colors, statues, pictures.  But they write about silence, nothingness,  emptiness.  That is more for the adepts, who started with things more tangible.  Catholics have that too.  Unfortunately, most of them get stuck at the level of the tangible and it shows in the lack of spiritual growth.  It is appropriate to teach a child as a child, but not to teach an adult as a child.  

Dating

 Some people think a relationship with God, to be fulfilling, is like dating.  In dating you want to feel something, and you act to help get whatever that feeling is.  We date to get something out of it.  That is the way people pray.  It is so self-centered.  Rare is the person who seeks God just for God.  In which case one would have to let go of the controls, to surrender, to trust.  Loving God is not what you get out of it, but what you become, your truest, best self.  Contemplation is not about feeling or experience.  It is becoming a receptacle for God's love and Grace.  We become receivers of Love.  How will I know then what is going on?  By the fruits of the prayer.  Your life will change.  In the 12 step recovery program, the first 10 steps are achievement steps full of feeling and experience.  Then 11 and 12 we let go, not asking for good feelings, or for our program for happiness.  We become of service.  By their fruits you will know them.  That is in the bible.  

Achievers

We are such achievers in our culture of the rugged individual and bring this attitude to prayer.  But we need do less.  Bring ourself to be present for God to love us.  Do less.  Try less.  Let go.  Achieve nothing but being still and present to the moment.  Some achievers want to know more doctrine, to then understand better their God, as if that would give them fulfilling answers.  It is better simply to long for God and God's free grace of Love and Presence.   But even if all this non-achieving brings you nothing but the feeling of emptiness at any one moment of prayer, God is at work and other people will come to know God through the changes in your life.  Many people have begun the journey to sobriety, to religion, to belief through contact with one who is on the Way already.  Having your good feelings in prayer, achieving a nice buzz, does not change anyone at any depth.  A few drinks could do that.   

Importance

Meditation has a lot to do with letting go, not just thoughts, though yes to that.  This prayer is about letting go of all those things that make us feel important.   We clutter ourself up with so much importance, when in fact we ought to become unimportant to ourself.  Make room for God's love, or anyone's love for that matter.  You are hard to love if you spend so much time, focus, and energy on being important.  We become "too full our Self."  No room for anyone else.  I am less busy with more time for a spiritual practice, when I stop working at stuff to feel important.  And I talk less.  No need to impress or advertise my greatness on anyone else.  The best importance comes from others and that includes God.  We mind less when we are ignored, if we don't have a craving for importance.  

A Version

You might have your own version of God, or a God of your own understanding.  This version might have been a great help to you.  God adjusted to your version because you were desperate, powerless, or just bereft.  Your version though, is not God.  We all want our own version.  It makes God have to do the heavy lifting while we can remain much the same in many ways.  We want a "spiritual life" or "prayer" but we do not want God.  Too much surrender.   Prayer is a relationship.  All real relationships require a letting go.  God let go, and waits, while we hang onto the God of our imagination, our "ego thing" our there.  We don't want God too close or intimate.  This is why meditation is so important.  It lets go of imaginary gods, and personal agenda on our part.  It opens to the unknown, and surprisingly here is where deep love happens.  You truly die to your old self.  The seed must die to bear fruit.  Bill W. says, "Abandon yourself!"

Connected

 Individuality, if it means a sense of disconnect, is not a good thing.  If we are going to become who we are truly meant to be, it will include a sense of connection, a deepening connection with the world of nature and people around us.  We can be living in solitude but we will still sense this connection with others, with our world and even parts of the world we have never experienced first hand.  We develop compassion,  a sense of being present to what is going on in the here and now, be it on a bus or a walk in nature.  People in recovery are reaching out more to newcomers as part of this growing into becoming their better self.  It is a world of non-duality rather than over and against.  

Fidelity

 Perfection is not possible.  But fidelity is what we need in any effort. Be faithful to the effort on a daily basis.  Recovery programs need daily attention from imperfect, normal human beings.  Prayer has no “perfection” measurement.  But it must be a daily practice.  I will have only bad days if I require perfection or if I fail to be faithful to the effort.  I do a daily blog and it is often very imperfect.  But it is for imperfect people.  The perfect people would not benefit.  

Saints

 What makes a saint?  I think they are tempted just like everyone else to bad behavior, and they may succumb as do many of us from time to time.  But what is different is what they do in service to others.  Lots of holy pictures show saints gazing at statures, or kneeling looking up into the sky.  Pious looks yes, but that did not make them saints.  It might have inspired them, but their response to the needs of the world around them is what made the difference, made them saints.  Gazing at holy things, sights, sitting in churches is supposed to lead to action, just as sitting at recovery meetings is supposed to lead to service.  A lot of “believers” want to sit and stare in their private devotions, but do not want to respond in action to the sufferings around them outside their holy venue.  Though we all have limitations, we have an underlying sanctity.  It is Grace and it is for the world, not to be ignored.  

Techniques

 We like techniques.  They deliver experience in prayer.  We feel better at that moment.  It makes my ego feel that prayer is “working.”  I even may drift into the delusion that I am a spiritual adept.  Techniques are OK to quiet us down, and get us detached from our emotional and mental clutter, for a bit.  But prayer really begins to happen, to affect us, not on any of these levels.  Prayer is when we allow God to love us.  God is Love.  It is impossible to effectively love someone who is thinking about themselves in any encounter.  If you make love to someone for what you get out of it, is that really love?  Maybe it is to a teenager, an immature person.  Nor is that encounter going to change them for the better.  I like meditation, an advanced step 11.  I ask a for nothing.  Trust.  God is at work.  

The Heavy Lifting

Essentially, God does the praying.  “What?” You say!  What about all the talking you do, the mantras, the breathing exercises, the yoga.  All a form of prayer to the God of your understanding.  BUT, what if the God of your understanding is just that, your understanding and not really God at all.  A God that makes you feel good sometimes when you pray, and keeps you sober must have some reality.  If sobriety is a miracle then you did not make it happen.  God id the work. Maybe God simply empowers our ego-centered imagination of divinity until you get it right.  Which is?  Stop trying so hard to make God do something or you to feel good.  Meditate.  Wait.  Be still.  God is at work, is doing all the work, the heavy lifting, while you sit ignoring your mind and imagination.  Prayer does not require you to feel something.  God action prayer is too deep for feelings.  They come later when you get your ego out of the way and do service for others.  

Stillness

 People tell me that they cannot find this “stillness” that I talk about in prayer.  Where is it?  It is hidden…behind your busy mind.  This is why meditation speaks about trying to quiet the mind or ignore the mind.  The mind can stay busy but if we do not focus on thoughts, the past, the future, judging how I am doing at the moment, then the mind tends to slip out of the way of our focus.  Silence and stillness begin to appear.  They are always within us but eclipsed by busy, focused mind.  I don’t worry so much about getting still in physical posture, or just the right chair, cushion and bodily comfort.  A modicum of comfort is sufficient if I can get it.  Otherwise, I let the Power do the heavy lifting as I ignore my thoughts.  It gets easier overall with practice.