Human beings should dig and work at discovering our deep and true self. If we don’t, we reside superficially out of worry or greed or habit and set ourselves up for false idols and lies. For another person’s expectations for us which might set us up for dictatorship of many varieties.
Certainly, it could be that the rising quest for authoritarian political leaders is being stirred up by the identical forces that set off habit in us. (Keep in mind that “habit” and “dictator” are intently associated phrases.)
When our deeper selves, our more true selves, is ignored, the gaping gap within the soul seeks to be crammed by one thing else. That one thing else could be medicine or alcohol or compulsive work or conspiracy theories or political guarantees–attachments of any sort that enable us to numb our emotions of despair, loss or grief. All such addictions lead us away from our true selves, our internal selves, the place our actual depth lies.
True self-knowledge consists of consciousness of our hidden and uncared for facet, our shadow each private and collective. If we don’t take note of it, it might take us over and create monsters of us. Absolutely this was a part of the dynamic of the rise of fascism within the 1930’s. It’s current in immediately’s rise of authoritarianism in politics and faith and the media the place loads of hucksters lurk wanting to pounce on self-ignorant individuals to take advantage of them for never-ending cash and energy.
The lesson? Don’t be self-ignorant. Uncover your true self and work from that. Throw off the false self. Let it go. Study detachment, as all of the mystics educate us. Eckhart: “We sink eternally from letting go to letting go into the One.”
Once we study to let go and sink into our true selves, we’d discover what Eckhart, Merton and different mystics discovered: {That a} Christ (or Buddha or Picture of God) dwells deeply inside. St. Paul found that “not I, however Christ lives inside me.”
On a number of events Merton declares that “we’re different Christs” and, echoing Eckhart, wrote in his journal: “Who am I? A Son of God…My true self is the self that’s spoken by God—‘Thou artwork My Son!’… Great happiness and readability (in darkness) is my response: ‘Abba, Father!’” To be continued.
Tailored from Matthew Fox, A Method To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey, p. 229.
And Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart, p. 49.
To learn the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video instructing, click on HERE.
Banner Picture: “Midnight mirror picture” Photograph by Miguel Tejada-Flores on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you “sink eternally from letting go to letting go into the One”? Have you ever tasted the expertise of “large happiness and readability within the darkness” that you’re a son/daughter of Divinity?
Really helpful Studying
A Strategy to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey
In A Method to God, Fox explores Merton’s pioneering work in interfaith, his important teachings on mixing contemplation and motion, and the way the imaginative and prescient of Meister Eckhart profoundly influenced Merton in what Fox calls his Creation Spirituality journey.
“This clever and marvelous ebook will profoundly encourage all those that love Merton and need to know him extra deeply.” — Andrew Harvey, writer of The Hope: A Information to Sacred Activism
Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Guide
A centering ebook by Matthew Fox. This ebook of easy however wealthy meditations exemplifies the deep but playful creation-centered spirituality of Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart was a Thirteenth-century Dominican preacher who was a mystic, prophet, feminist, activist, defender of the poor, and advocate of creation-centered spirituality, who was condemned shortly after he died.
“These quiet displays of spirituality are outstanding for his or her immediacy and readability.” –Publishers Weekly.
