The Rule Keeper

Some people prefer a God of rules because rules are clear. If you follow the rule then you are right with God and there will be rewards for this.  You keep the rule and your God keeps you.  Such people don’t care much for meditation.  It is too fuzzy and inconsistent.  They don’t have any way to measure “how am I doing?”  For them, often, if you break rules, ignore rules, diminish or deny rules then God will get you.  They see only chaos in that way of life.  If the sermon is long, pointless, redundant, you go to worship anyway.  It’s the rule.  Growth?  One can only hope.  

A Manageable God

 We do not want a God of the desert with the uncertainty of silence, solitude and a seeming absence of anything.  So we conjure up a more manageable God of theology and concept.  We prefer our idea of God, assuming that our idea is God.  Then we come up with proofs for the existence of God so we can debate and prove that we have the correct God.  All this avoids the fiery encounter with the power of Presence, free to act beyond our control.  We fail to live, breathe and love God from a transforming depth.  We do not surrender.  The cost is too much.  

Reading

 One who simply reads about spiritual stuff, such as my blog, or a book, but does not practice what is suggested in the reading or the tape, is like a person who spends a lot of time looking at a map, but never actually setting out on the journey.  You can learn a lot from reading, but not grow very much with only information.  One gains a lot more by the journey or the practice in meditation.  One gains a lot by being of service rather than just thinking about it being a good idea. 

The Opposites

 One of the best ways I have found to explain meditation is using words together that seem opposite to one another.  It is like a koan.  At first, it makes no sense, but in time, it is a very wise saying.  “Silent Music,” is one such phrase.  There seems to be no sound, but in fact there is, for one who has ears to hear, the contemplative.  The emptiness becomes full and yet no thing is here.  “Pregnant Emptiness” is another such phrase.  Where there seems to be no life, there is new life.  Empty is not empty for one who is at the heart level of prayer.  In a meeting where meditation is part of the meeting, nothing seems to be going on for one who lives in their head, or is full of fear and self-centered, but in fact, much is going on for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.  

The Boxer

 Interior Prayer is like a boxer in the ring.  The boxer has to stay undistracted, and focused on what is in front of him/her, or else the fight will have no chance of success.  In meditation, there can be a lot of distractions in the mind or from sounds/sights around us.  We have to ignore all that so we can be focused on what we are trying to do.  We sort of close ourselves off from the mind so that we can be open to the heart where the battle with ourselves is enacted.  In recovery meetings one must focus on what is being said, while distractions may go on around the room.  

The Routine

 Some people look for beautiful, stunning churches, temples, nature scenes to find God.  They think God is in the spectacular.  And it is only momentary.  They move on into their ordinary, routine, and uneventful life, thinking they have to get back to God in some other special place.  But God is in the routine, the ordinary and the seemingly uneventful.  It’s we who are missing in these very moments, longing to be elsewhere.  Incense and drink are delusional.  They only make you think that God is showing up.  God is always right here now.  Why don’t you show up to the present moment.  Meditation might help.  

Heart Conversion

 Some people only partially convert or buy in.  They agree in their head but not in their heart.  For instance, a person says they are a Christian because they believe in the dogma and rules, but they remain judgmental and prejudicial against people who are not of their skin color, language or ethnicity.  People “join” AA recovery but only believe in the steps, and think they follow them, but are still just as prejudiced as the above Christian.  Conversion that goes deeply into the heart sees Oneness, not differences in the room.  It says in the Bible, “Anyone who hates his brother is in the darkness.”  

Just Talkin’

 Catechism allows you to talk about God.  Meditation can allow you to experience God.  Reading the bible can give you information, historical, mythical and so on.  But it will hang around in your mind and imagination.  It won’t make you a better you.  You can read the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” and know about history of recovery, but you won’t become a recovering alcoholic until you actually do the steps, which have meditation as part of the twelve steps.  I know people who are quite familiar with their catechism answers and rules, but I would never want to be like them.  Not because of what they know, but because of what they have not yet experienced at sufficient depth.  

Standing Still Journey

 Some journeys you take by standing still.  This is the desert journey of interior prayer.  The desert image is a good one because the desert is simply the desert.  You move about and it is still the desert, empty, silent, nothing to do.  A great genre for meditation, wordless prayer with just you.  At first, you simply get used to it.  “What am I doing here?”  “This is a waste of time.  I should be doing something productive.”  These are the temptations, the demons.  But you stay.  In time, as you get used to it and some method to keep you in silence and stillness, you may become aware that you are not alone.  You are in the home of some power that is not you.  Eventually, it becomes a power that is you.  Non-duality.  It is the standing still journey.  

Demons

 Buddha did not come upon Nirvana by simply reading books on wisdom or being a good social worker.  He got there by dealing with his demons.  This is a lot of what meditation is about, and why many people abandon it early on.  They want to feel good.  They don’t want the desert experience.  Loneliness, and darkness a silence, solitude are a bit too scary.  It is the realm of the demon who is quite at home in all this.  If you are human, you have demons.  Perfect and human is an oxymoron.  Jesus and Buddha never bothered to call themselves perfect.  They spoke about eternal life and Nirvana, but not becoming perfect human beings.  Jesus would do some healing and preaching and then go off to a deserted place before dawn.  Reconnect with the inner self.  Don’t give free space to your demons.  The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert after Baptism.  Beware of ones who offer to save the world, but don’t go into their desert.  

Follow Me

 Early on in John and Mark’s Gospels Jesus invites people to “come along” or “follow me.”  What makes someone follow another?  I think that first, you sense something missing in yourself but you don’t know quite what it is.  Second, you sense that this invite comes from a person who might have a Way for you to become more fulfilled.  You have tried the ego-centered way, all about you, and it did not seem to fill you up.  In 12 step recovery, one person follows another because the one without recovery senses in someone else, a Way to recovery.  They follow.  A sensed need and a felt solution is what can bring people together to make a profound change and a life-long relationship.  People often leave a spiritual practice because they no longer sense a solution in the practice or a need in themselves.  Sufficient suffering consequently, might make them take another look.  

Debate Confronts Action

 I find that some people like to debate he existence of God. Those on both sides of the debate often end up in doing nothing to make the world a better place, more just and peaceful.  Those who say God exists, simply feel that being in the right religion or the right belief is sufficient.  Action beyond this or some pious worship is sufficient.  They remain more or less selfish and self-centered.  Those who say there is no God, then also feel no need to action for a better world.  There is no God, no religion so what is the point of doing good.  Get all you can for yourself.  Both sides remain selfish and ego-centered.  I don’t waste time on this debate.  Act on my belief.  Get out of my head and into my heart with compassion, some desert time, and do good for others without caring about a thank you or recognition.  Twelve-steppers know this.  

Absorb It

 I know many people who have taken the boat trip along the Danube as tourists.  They tell me how beautiful a trip it was.  But that beauty covers up evil.  The Nazis used to take people to the Danube, strip them, shoot them and dump their bodies into the river.  The remains are still at the bottom.  But evil did not have the last word.  In time, the Danube became beautiful especially in the those who had no memory of WWII.  Sometimes I experience evil and like the Danube, I am challenged to absorb it and in time to respond with beauty, the beauty of a life full of love, acceptance, service, selflessness.  A spiritual path is a way to not allow evil to overwhelm us such that we become the evil in ourself.  

The Plus Factor

 I like my spiritual life to be prayer plus.  Plus what?  Plus service for others.  I think it is a combination that works for me because sometimes in my prayer, I think a lot about me or my woes, fears, wants, even though I try to ignore this stuff.  In service to others, I get out of myself.  If I am being of service to others but thinking all about me, I will stay self-absorbed and that is not the point of service.  Prayer is to attend to the insides of my life, and service is to attend to the outside world of needs and wants around me.  A good balance.  

Sick

 At this moment I have a lousy cold at least.  OTC stuff does not seem to do much but a couple of hours in a sleep stupor.  My dilemma is that I am supposed to go to a funeral Friday in Scottsdale, AZ.  I see my doctor not until Thursday afternoon.  Trying for something sooner today.  Not easy with no cell phone service at monastery.  My dilemma, readers, is this:  the funeral is for someone already dead, a long time friend and I am the preacher.  But what if I get on the plane and sit next to a litle ole lady (wait!  I am 80.  I am a little old man) and give her my germs and she has health issues already.  She gets sick or worse?  Or give all my 80 year old friends at the funeral my germs.  My covid home test says negative.  What do I know.  Everybody will be disappointed if I bail on the funeral, including me.  Suck it up and go?  And maybe next funeral is mine or worse someone else?  Maybe I am being too dramatic.  Feeling OK now in the morning but by night I feel lousy.  Funeral is in the morning.  maybe I only infect people at night

Time As A Gift

 How much time do I give to running?  I would say one hour a day.  But in fact I give my body more than that one hour of healthy exercise.  I warm up with stretching and some yoga.  I make sure I wear the correct clothes to factor in the run and the climate.  I stretch and yoga after the run.  Then, during the day I am choosing what to eat and what to avoid.  A little sugar, yes, and a lot of choices in which I say no.  And so on for diet.  In fact then, I give a lot of time to the point of my exercise for health.  It is the same for prayer or recovery.  One does not give only an hour to either of these.  The prayer and meeting is surrounded by good behavior and correct attitude.  Spiritual paths are ongoing through out the day.  I did come across a factory that makes Hostess Twinkies the other day.  I was tempted to stop in and buy a basket full.  Good sugar recovery can press the “no” button.  I did.  

Good Deeds

 If you are trying to do good deeds for immediate reward, such as $$$, or for applause and renown, you will find no peace in your efforts.  You cannot control the outside world by your good deeds.  You might have a positive result of your action in the person, place or thing of your efforts, but renown, even a thank you is not a guarantee.  I try to do my best to satisfy me.  “I gave it my best at this moment.”  Sometimes you won’t ever know the good you do.  I have found that some people will never tell you the good effect you had on them until you are about to move away.  

Rain Or Shine

 Just because it is raining or snowing during the day, does not mean that the sun is not shining.  It just means you cannot see the sunlight.  It is hidden from your eyes, but not absent.  We have to remember that just because we cannot see something does not mean it is not there.  If you focus only on what the eye can see, or the body feel, you miss a lot.  It is one of the reasons I meditate.  As with the flower before it buds, you don’t see all the work the flower is doing to prepare to bloom.  Inner work will make you bloom too, and then you will see with a new attitude, from the eye of the heart.  

Budding

 You can think of contemplation and how it works by imagining a flower that is still in its bud.  On the outside, all you see is the bud, but inside the bud the flower is growing, maturing.  You just cannot see it yet.  In time, when the flower is ready, the bud will open up and the flower will bloom for all to see.  So, just keep practicing.  If nothing seems to be changing within you, give it time.  The prayer is at work, but not in a way that is noticeable by you.  Patience.  You are not in control of results, but you are in control of showing up for the prayer.  This is how you water the plant of your heart.  

Easy Does It

 Sometimes, when things are not going “right” we are feeling out of balance, we try to change the he outsides first.  We buy something, we move, change locations, ingest something, get a new job, but yet with all this outside change we don’t seem to get a better balance.  I think we need to change the insides first.  Then we will see better what needs to change on the outsides, if anything.  Insides first, is first things first.  Practice becoming kind, patient, tolerant and considerate.  The action will become an attitude, and with an attitude change, I find the world around me changes and I don’t have to “move” or fix things.  I find that I even became loving, by action, and not by will-power.  Since my will-power is rather weak, I seek the spiritual power buried within me, through meditation, to do the right action.  

Reinventions

 Part of growing up for many of us is the reinvention of ourselves from the original invention which is conception/birth.  The Creator has a plan.  As we grow up, clueless of this plan, or afraid to follow it, we reinvent ourselves patterned on approval from others, desire to be noticed, praised, financially secure and such worldly magnets of esteem.  And we grow up happy, restless, irritable and feeling a sense of ‘unfitness” within ourselves.  But the Creator has not abandoned us.  At times, or for some few of us, there comes a light, a moment of truth, our truth of who we were meant to be.  It takes courage to go onto this new path, but there is a sense of rightness about it, a good fit, to help keep us afloat amidst the doubts of those around us.  At times it seems a trudge, but also a joy, a sense of new freedom.  

One Day

  Where I live might close down as a place for me to live.  It is not immediate, but too often I treat it as if it were going to happen right now.  I worry.  Fret.  Self-pity. Whine and so forth.  If I worry about what is not going to happen today, then I am not living in the today.  I neglect to be here now, in this one day which is a gift.  I cannot control these move decisions anyway.  So why live in what I cannot control?  Someone said, “Live life one day at a time.”  Meditation keeps me in the present.  And being around good examples helps to focus me on the NOW.  

No Escape

 What if you are feeling miserable with one dark emotion or another, do you try to escape with drink, sex, jog, gym, shop, take a trip, TV or internet?  It seems to me, that you might escape for the moment, that is  get away from the misery.  But the misery remains.  It does not go away.  So eventually you come back to your pre-escape routine.  The misery awaits you.  So rather than you running away, why not get into some spiritual practice that accepts the misery, sits with it, and then just let it go by not paying attention to it.  You might find a peacefulness in spite of the outsides seeming to stay the same.  I try to work on changing me which is not an escape.  It can be a coming home to my best self.  

Light

People say they love the lights at Christmas season. The tree lights and  City Christmas decorations can be wonderful.  I walking around San Francisco during the Christmas season and found that the City lights are better after dark.  Light requires dark to be, well, light!  So why do we fear the dark, but want the light of God in our lives.  Meditation learns to handle the darkness, so that we can more likely enjoy and recognize the Light.   

The Desert

 John the Baptist was drawn to the desert.  It is a place even now without electricity, gas stations, but does have lots of silence and solitude.  Try it in the dark.  Now that can be scary.  But Prayer needs a desert experience with the same things, silence, solitude, no electrical things turned on.  Why?  God said to John and to others that God is coming to us, but through the desert.  We are supposed to make it straight pathed for God.  So if you cannot find God or feel abandoned, try desert type meditation.  And patience.  

Barbary Coast Rain

 It is many years since I was in San Francisco for Winter days.  One of the experiences that come with a Winter visit is the rain.  It does not shower for a few minutes and move on.  It can rain off and on for a couple of days.  You cannot complain about the rain since you chose to be here at the rainy time.  California has its seasons.  It is the same with the spiritual life.  It is what it is and has its patterns.  It does not give you what you want when you want it.  At first I would stay inside during the rain.  Then I said, “It will continue to rain.”  I will not stay inside.  I will walk in the rain with my raincoat on and a protective hat.   And shopped!  One learns to adjust.  

Silence

 Silence in prayer makes room for the encounter with the God of silence.  The silence of prayer is not simply the absence of external noise.  It’s the absence of internal noise that comes from thoughts, words spoken in our mind, imagination at work, and all such distractions in the world around us.  This is the dying of the ego.  It is the defeat of our demons.  And it takes a lot of time, patience and commitment.  It works in a spiral fashion.  Sometimes the prayer is “noisy” full of distractions, our demons at work in us.  Our active life can feel like the same ole, same ole.  But be consistent each day.  This prayer is work.  It needs time to dismantle us.  At some point, in God’s time, comes the transformation, the discovery of your truest self.  This becomes your gift to the world.  

Epiphany

 Many cultures celebrate the day of “Epiphany” with special meals and exchange of gifts.  Epiphany is about the Magi or Three Wise Men as they are sometimes called.  What is important is that they were serious searches.  They looked to the heavenly stars for signs of the Divine at work.  Then they left their comfortable homeland to cross barren areas, deserts, in search of God’s sign of activity in the world.  They found it in a house with a baby and mother.  They found God at work in the world.  They did not have to be baptized, or join anything.  They went home, the search satisfied.  Many people say they cannot find God at work in the world.  Maybe they are looking in the wrong places. Or not searching very hard.  Or willing to give up very much. 

Tower Clock

There is a tower clock at Old St. Mary’s Church in downtown San Francisco.  When it is working, it chimes and tolls on the hour.  Why bother?  Everyone has a watch or cell phone now, and it can disturb people who want peace and quiet, in the evening and early morning.  But the clock in a church tower has a purpose for the people going about in a big city to get their agendas done on their time.  The bell tolls to remind us all that we are on God’s time.  It is a call to pay attention to what is important.  We are not immortal.  As Fr .Greg Apparcel used to say to me, “When it is your time, it is your time.”

Sabbath

 If God can place limits on what God does, why can’t we?  Because we are not free to choose the limits.  The Sabbath is the signpost that God took a day off.  God did enough creating.  Let things evolve.  Do you have any sabbath time?  Time you simply stop achieving? Rest in the middle of a day or early morning, evening?  A spiritual practice is meant to give us freedom, time to not do something, achieve some goal.  Rest.  Do you drive yourself in activity until you collapse?  Are depleted?  Then you have given up freedom for some ego-goal.  

Get Over It

 One of the ways to get over yourself, is to love the God you did not make up.  Lots of believers make up their god to satisfy something about themselves.  They generally don’t meditate because that would eventually require them to let go of god-images made up in their imagination.  They prefer the god who speaks to their self-attachment.  Not much discovery here.  No surprises.  My imagination prefers a god who punishes me when I am bad and rewards me when I am good.  It is infantile.  Infants are self-absorbed.  Pathetic in an adult.  

Enough Religion

 A little religion can leave you hating those who are not of your religion.  You get religious wars, prejudice, judgments and bad behavior at this level of religion.  A lot of a religion can bring us to love one another in spite of or even because of differences.  Meditation is part of the path that can take us from a little religion, to a lot of religion.  Acceptance and love requires a lot more than simply showing up.  Ask anyone in a Recovery Program.  

A New Year

 If one of your goals on your spiritual path is “Divine Union” however you define it, a good start is to become less self-absorbed.  You don’t achieve any union by your efforts.  The self-absorbed person keeps thinking, “how am I doing?” In the spiritual practice this is self-absorption.  Rather more ‘nada” or “mu” if you are of an Eastern meditation practice.  Nothing that you think or imagine, is going to bring about divine union.  It is a given, because union implies an other, who is not you.  This Other bestows union.  It is a gift.  Your meditation practice, letting go of focused thoughts and goals, is an opening for the Other to gift you with this intimacy of union.  It is a bit like falling in love with a partner.  It is a gift seemingly out of the blue.  You did not make it happen.  So just keep up the practice.  Trudge along.