ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-9

John’s Dark Night and Teresa’s Message

Part One

John and Teresa are clear on most basic points in their understanding of the spiritual life. Teresa, however, places the foundation on prayer while John identifies freedom of desire. There is much agreement beyond these two points.

This includes liberation from attachment, self-knowledge and realization of one’s true identity in God. Teresa considers the process of self-knowledge right from the beginning in her description of the spiritual journey. Since John says little about the beginning, his treatment commences with the opening to the contemplative experience in the Dark Night.

“The first and chief benefit of this dry and dark night of contemplation causes is knowledge of self and one’s own misery…the difficulty encountered in the practice of virtue makes the soul recognize its own lowliness and the misery which was not apparent in the time of prosperity.” (1.12.2)

John points out three critical blessings flowing from a newly acquired self-knowledge. The first is that self-sufficiency is an illusion. The truth of our total dependence on God becomes a source of true freedom. As we become open to the true consequences of our mortality, we achieve a more realistic relation with ourselves. Finally, the humility that self-knowledge generates, opens our eyes to new and beautiful truths about God and our brothers and sisters.

The purifying grace of the Dark Night experience opens up great possibilities to truly love our neighbor. In the stages of early prayer, propped up by consolations, the strong tendency is to be judgmental of our neighbor. We are strongly inclined to focus on their faults and lack of spirituality.

In the Dark Night’s healing experience of God, we are drawn into a great irony. The gift of humility leads us to embrace the publican by the acknowledgement of our sinfulness. We forsake the self-righteousness of the Pharisee that had been our operating mode. (Lk 18:11-12)

By keeping our eyes on Jesus and being faithful to prayer, we are gifted to see with a gospel vision. We begin to both understand and embrace the true beauty of God’s presence in our sisters and brothers. A newly self-critical vision, an empowering self-knowledge, gives us new eyes. Now we can accurately grasp Mt 25 and the least of our brothers and sisters. (Dark Night 1.12.7-8)

The great gift of the Dark Night’s healing in this early stage happens in this way. In self-knowledge, we experience our weakness and moral blindness. This frees us for the driven need to judge others. Now we become accepting and compassionate for their troubling human condition. This is a gift drawing us closer to God.

John concludes that we will not know God unless we know ourselves. Teresa sees the same truth from another perspective. She states that we will never know ourselves unless we know God. Whatever the order, self-knowledge and knowing God belong together.

Finding God Begins with Self-Knowledge

Self-knowledge demands an unremitting pursuit for a deeper and more extensive awareness of our personal reality. The burdens and advantages of self-knowledge will never be depleted in this lifetime. Learning what honestly is taking place within us is a task that is never completed. One way of getting insight into the search for self-knowledge is seeing the conflict in our lives as a struggle between the false self and the true self, between sin and grace.

The false self involves layer after layer of self-deception, delusions and a sense of self-grandiosity that places us at the center of our world. We tend to become blinded to our faults and failures and, more importantly, to the presence of God at the true center of our being. We emphasize the shortcomings of others.

Jesus put it ever so clearly when he pointed our blindness to a log in our eye rather than our stress on the splinter in our neighbor’s eye. (Mt 7:3) Self-righteousness controls our worldview. As we become aware of the false values flowing from our fragmented heart, we find ourselves facing a fork in the road.

We have a choice of life or death. We choose death when we double down on the clamoring of the false self for more attention. We choose life when we open ourselves to the mercy of God which draws us toward the true self. At the heart of this decision is the perennial challenge of knowing ourselves.

Teresa of Avila never stopped proclaiming the significance of self- knowledge for the path to God in the center of our being. In one of her many statements on self-knowledge she said: “Well now, it is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering ourselves, reflecting on our misery and what we owe God and begging Him often for mercy.” (IC 2.1.11)

There are numerous gospel passages that point out this practice of leaving the false self of our self-centeredness and moving on to the true self which is seeking God at our center. In Mark we read: “If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all.” (Mk 9:35) Matthew tells us: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39) Again, John says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (Jn 12:24) Finally, Matthew adds: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mt 16:24)

Conversion

The slow process of growing in self-knowledge leads to a gradual development of personal transformation called conversion. It is repeated at several stages of spiritual growth. The journey to discover and accept the true self, leading to God at the center, is only possible when we acknowledge our sinfulness and pettiness.

Once again, this process includes humility as essential to our growth in prayer and away from self-centeredness. To face ourselves with honesty is a challenging task. It is not a joyful part of our growth. The price tag for faithfulness to God drives away the timid and comfortable. All prayer must begin with a sense of the loving presence of God.

When we accept the challenge of the divine presence, there is the bridge between our heart and our life. This call to conversion always joins God’s loving call, our acceptance of our poverty and our determination move on to the true self.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-8

The Power of Silence

This is the eighth in a series of blogs on the Christian life, prayer and self-knowledge.

I

Christian Meditation is another, and mostly unknown, method of prayer. It is truly different in its approach from lectio divina and other forms of meditation where the mind is a vital component of the prayer. Christian Meditation is a contemplative approach to prayer that centers on silence. It hopes to eliminate, or at least quiet down, all thinking and the imagination during the period of prayer.

The silence invites God to be active in our prayer. The spirit of poverty is the goal. We simply seek to create an emptiness that is the best invitation to the Spirit, where God prays within us. “In the same way the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groaning.” (Rom 8:26)

The individual is asked to silently repeat the holy word, Maranatha, which means “the Lord will come.” The choice of the word is arbitrary and its meaning serves no purpose in the prayer. The simple and slow repetition of the mantra has a clear goal: the creation of silence that subdues the mind and imagination.

This happens by placing the focus on the holy word or mantra. The repetition connects to one’s breathing. The slow repeating of the word is the individual’s prayer. The mind and imagination are the source of the distractions. There is a fear on the part of the ego that the silence will mean the loss of the ego’s control.

The gentle reciting of the mantra liberates us from the captivity of the mind and imagination. We want to open space for God. Simplicity and emptiness need to be the goal. The repeating of the word symbolizes and encourages the trustworthy surrender to God. The important issue is to grow in purity of heart with openness to God’s Grace.

The prayer is experiential and practical. People need to start the journey and let the experience be the teacher. The purpose of the simple repetition of the mantra, Maranatha, is to clear the mind, to get beyond thinking. We want to move from the head to the heart. We need to pay attention to how we say the mantra. Our effort should be calm but firm in our prayerful repetition.

This clears the mind enough to make space for the Spirit. The highly recommended schedule for this prayer is twenty to thirty minutes in both the morning and evening. We must never forget that the final measure of effective prayer is a life more in tune with the values of the gospel, walking with Jesus.

The Mantra’s Opening to Self-Knowledge

II

When we begin to pray, we immediately encounter the obstacle of our human condition. We are selfish people. The ego wants to protect our comfort and control. Our operating pattern is deeply ingrained.

We have embraced the superficial and convenient. We are resistant to the more demanding depths of our spirit. We have been happy to float along, carried by a materialistic culture and a dominant consumerism. Prayer is threatening to this self-seeking agenda.

A serious commitment to prayer draws us into the immediate conflict with the chaos that has been operating under the surface. Personality traits, patterns of thinking, value systems and character limitations are some of the disruptive elements. Christian Meditation offers a simple but challenging option: a peaceful, silent approach centering on the mantra. The slow, steady repetition of the mantra of contemplative prayer will produce change. The task of the mantra is to isolate oneself from the ego and be free for God. The mantra’s assignment is to purify and to enlighten.

There will be a gradual withdrawal of emphasis on the ego controlled element of our personality. The measured passage to silence gently lessens the dominance of our self-centered desires and prejudices. The faithful practice of Christian Meditation creates new insights leading to gospel values and to self-knowledge. This is an overture to our true destiny: to be one with God.

With some growth in this form of contemplative prayer, we are on the journey that highlights self-knowledge. This is a sure passage that opens the way to a true and expanding knowledge of God. The mantra digs deep into the psyche and unveils hidden levels of brokenness and the driving power of selfishness. This is the beginning of personal purification and transformation. The task of the mantra, operating in silence, opens us to God’s healing grace in at special way. The real power is the silence.

The mantra draws us into the silence that is the true language of God. In the silence, God takes over the prayer. In the process of quieting the mind and calming our possessive desires, the mantra facilitates the emergence of self-acceptance and self-knowledge. There are vast areas of our personality and other internal influences emerging from our unconscious that now come into play. This new enlightenment most often happens outside the time of prayer.

All these changes lead to a new centering. The focus is away from ourselves. God emerges as our true center.

How to Meditate

III

The most important thing to learn about meditation is to meditate. It is extraordinarily simple. This is the problem. Few believe that something so simple is so effective and transforming.

To meditate, sit still and upright while seeking the awareness of God’s presence. As you relax, close your eyes. Slowly begin saying the mantra in four syllables. Do not think or imagine anything. As distractions come, return to the mantra softly but decisively. Even good thoughts are to be excluded.

The target is twenty to thirty minutes in the morning and evening. There are three simple goals to guide the two meditation periods each day: Say the mantra for the complete time of the meditation. This is a skill. It will take time to create a habit.

Say the mantra throughout the meditation without interruption. The task here is to continually return as soon as possible from the persistent distractions that are the ego’s hunger for control. In saying the mantra, let it draw you into the depths of your being, beyond thought, imagination, and all images. Rest in the presence of God dwelling in the depth of your heart.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-7

Part Two

I

As the disciples began to follow Jesus, they were far from the finished product. In fact, they saw in Jesus the answer to their ambitious dreams of power and prestige. It was a long, painful journey for them that gradually freed them from the blindness of their self-centered ways. Jesus was constantly calling them to a place they found unsettling. Jesus was relentless in disrupting their complacency.
The movement away from a worldview centered on them in the spotlight and God offstage as an emergency support was aptly called “the road to Jerusalem.”

When we truly encounter the Word of God in the Bible, we will have the same challenging experience. This is always the case when we address a self-knowledge rooted in selfishness. This is our universal inheritance from our original parents.

A steady dosage of God’s Word will produce a frontal attack on all superficiality and bogus values that prop up a false self. This fundamental internal distortion energizes an unyielding pursuit for comfort and control. The Word of God is indeed the two-edged sword. It opens up that part of our life that we would rather keep hidden. Everything about the Bible is geared to transform our self-knowledge. It helps us abandon selfishness and to build up a life of self-giving love and healing presence. This is a journey to the true self that places God at the center.

If the Bible is only a source of comfort for us, we are losing the real treasure. The true Word of God, revealed in Jesus, is about our personal transformation through our death to selfishness and our rebirth to love and service. Growing in true knowledge of ourselves is an essential element of this new life.

It is our commitment to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

II

When we enter a serious encounter with God’s Word in the Bible, we always bring extensive personal baggage. There are countless pitfalls in the sacred task of prayerful reading of the Bible. These three essential steps will be most helpful.

…..Listen to what God has to say to me;

…..Seek to learn God’s will;

…..Always be committed to walk with Jesus.

Exposing the hidden agenda of the disciples was a constant part of Jesus’ teaching. It is also part of our search for true discipleship. We are all caught in a cultural and economic captivity that pulls us constantly away from gospel values.

A prayerful reading of the Word of God clearly surfaces our internal conflict and turmoil. Deep personal change is set before us as a non-negotiable summons. This gospel call to conversion centers on self-knowledge. It is a process of seeing ourselves in a new way, the way that the light of Christ opens before us.

True faithfulness will slowly but steadily unveil a deeply entrenched selfishness and deceit. With gentle divine guidance, we will see things in a new way. We will be uprooted and set loose. The choices before us will slowly erupt with an enticing clarity. This will be the first step on a long journey.

It will eventually become evident that God’s plans never seem to be finished. Along the way, our self-knowledge will be slowly transformed as we embrace a new freedom.

Teresa of Avila never tired of talking about the importance of self-knowledge. She knew well that growing in honest self-knowledge transported us into a humble and totally life-giving presence to God. The key is humility, the ability to accept ourselves as creatures utterly dependent on an all-powerful, all-loving and all-merciful Creator God. This is the true passage from the dominance of the ego, and its destructive false self, to the true self.

“Oh, but if it is in the room of self-knowledge! How necessary this room is – see that you understand me – even for those who the Lord has brought to the very dwelling places where He abides. For never, however the soul may be, is anything else fitting for it…Humility, like the bee making honey, is always at work. Without it, everything goes wrong.” (IC.1.8)

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-6

The Bible is a privileged source of self-knowledge. It is God’s gift bringing light and wisdom to humankind to combat the sinful heritage of Adam and Eve. It is an invitation to move out of our broken condition of self-centeredness. It is a call to accept the simple overwhelming truth that our true destiny is to be one in love with God as the source and center of all reality.

Jesus is our special invitation into this journey. “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe, who is the refulgence of his glory, and the very imprint of his being.” (Heb 1:1-3)

In the Gospel of Mark, we have an outstanding example of the Word of God as an invitation to self-knowledge. This selection begins with the healing of a blind man. (Mk 8:22) and ends with healing of a blind man. (Mk 10 52) In between, Jesus announces his forthcoming Passion, Death and Resurrection three times.

Each declaration is followed by an event that shows that the disciples just do not understand. They are caught in a false self-knowledge. Jesus then offers a teaching of enlightenment that calls them out of their false consciousness. The first incident takes place in Mk 8:31-38. In this case, Peter denies the need for the passion and death. Jesus declares emphatically, “Get behind me Satan!

You are thinking not as God does but as human beings do.” (Mk 8:33) Jesus then proceeds with his teaching against the false consciousness of the disciples and us. True discipleship demands that we take up the cross and have true self-denial.

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever dies to his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” (Mk 8:35) This is a straightforward attack by Jesus of the false self-knowledge of the disciples’ desire for worldly success, power, prestige and wealth.

In chapter nine the pattern is repeated. Jesus’ second declaration of the Passion Death and Resurrection is followed by this announcement. “But they did not understand the statement and were afraid to question him.” (Mk 9:30)

Jesus’ teaching here begins with a question: “What were you arguing about on the way?” (Mk 9:33) With deep embarrassment, they admit their heated conversation was about who among them was the greatest. Jesus then pronounces, “If anyone wishes to be first, he should be last of all and the servant of all.” (Mk 9:35) Here again, we have Jesus attacking the disciples’ ambition rooted in worldly values.

Finally, in the third foretelling of the Passion, Death and Resurrection, the pattern repeats itself. James and John step forward expressing their ambitious resolve to be recognized as leaders. Jesus responds: “Whoever wishes to great among you will be the slave of all.” (Mk 10:34) The climax is in the healing of the second blind man. Here we have a true manifestation of discipleship. The text says, “He threw away his cloak…and he followed him on the way.” (Mk 10:50-52) His cloak symbolized all his possessions.

This freed him in total generosity to follow Jesus on “the road to Jerusalem!” In these passages from the Gospel of Mark we have a sparkling and clear presentation of how Jesus is attacking the distorted consciousness of his followers. At the same time, he is inviting them to see in his journey to Jerusalem, the true self-knowledge that leads to life and freedom. This repetitive pattern fills the Bible with the call to conversion away from self-centeredness to placing God at the center.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-5

When we pray regularly we develop the habit of deep personal prayer. This sets us on the road to serious personal change. This personal transformation, however, comes at a price. God always wants more. This is the why we come up with so many reasons we cannot pray. At the top of the list is time in one way or another: need to work, need to relax, need to be present to loved ones, need to…. And also watch TV, football, shopping, politics etc. There are other reasons like being just too tired, sick and other heavy responsibilities. It all comes down to a question of determining what is important for us.

Since God is so insistent, regular prayer will always bring us to the challenge of changing our lives. Prayer points out what God wants in a way that confronts our blind spots. The nature of deep personal prayer is to draw us out of comfortable deceptions. The journey to the center and its encounter with our loving God in prayer is not the easy way. The issue of time and the other excuses hindering our prayer are rooted in a fear of moving away from our comfort zone, a personal space rooted in the selfishness inherited from or original parents. True self-knowledge is the necessary and demanding path rescuing us from these hidden and disruptive undercurrents within us. In the normal flow of events, blindness is the norm when it comes to self-awareness. Prayer is the path to enlightenment.

II

Merton’s definition of prayer is yearning to be aware of the presence of God, knowledge of God’s Word and personal understanding of God’s will and the capacity to hear and obey. It is that last phrase “to hear and obey” that invites us out of our self-satisfaction in a movement from our head to our heart to our life. Authentic prayer is always necessary in the quest for honest pursuit of God. Self-knowledge is a decisive component in this development.

Here are a few examples of this inward transformation. Many families are caught in the trap of a destructively addicted member. Everyone suffers. AL ANON offers relief but it comes at a price of self-knowledge. One needs to lose the illusion of control, a mindset that assumes one can alter the addictive person’s behavior. It also challenges the pattern of denial or being a victim.

The simple acceptance that one cannot change another person comes slowly and with personal sacrifice. The change in attitude, however, is life-giving. This is the sort of thing that God is always surfacing in our prayer: movement from death to life, from illusion to reality. It is an invitation to accept the gospel values and go beyond the superficial allegiance.

In the early 80’s, already a priest for twenty years, I was confronted about my blatant prejudice against homosexuals. I fought it. I rejected it. I became angry but I prayed and eventually began a journey to acceptance and repentance.

What is common in both of these issues, one personal and the other social or cultural, is that often in prayer a matter is brought to our awareness but we resist it. However, it is now in play in our consciousness and if we pray regularly we have to work hard to avoid it. The change evolving from our “hearing and obeying” sometimes is a matter of days or often months or even years.

God is patient but never stops calling us out of the darkness to the light. This always involves in a growth in self-knowledge. The “hear and obey” of Merton’s definition of prayer is the encounter of our total being with God’s word and will. This openness and acceptance of God’s call leads to personal transformation.

The message of the gospel is sown in our heart. These seeds of new life are always looking for the opportunity to blossom. This is the goal of prayer: to slowly but surely to create a new heart in the image of Jesus Christ. It is a gradual passage from self-absorption to self- giving that enriches self-knowledge.

III

Any serious commitment to deep personal prayer begins a movement involving personal change. This consistent prayer, this openness to God’s call, assaults our inherited disorder. It exposes fragile and damaged nature.

This prayer, when consistent and faithful, attacks the limiting boundaries of our self-knowledge. We are slowly challenged with a steady stream of new insights about ourselves. Compassion and gentleness, flowing from regular prayer, begin to replace a harsh and judgmental attitude. We gradually pull away from the hunger to “look good”. Now it is easier to accept our faults and limits.

Prayer generates a sense of trust that begins to identify and diminish our hidden fears. With regular prayer, we begin to see the true importance of forgiving. Even more, we start to open new horizons to expand our call to love our neighbor. There are many other healing factors, all directed to our original brokenness, all expanding our self-awareness.

This new self-knowledge is an influential part of prayer that brings us back to the road toward original innocence leading to God.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-4

SEARCH FOR THE GIFT OF CONTEMPLATION

Prayer plays a vital role on the Christian journey. This is especially true as we come face to face with the demands of gospel integrity. However, in the end, prayer only identifies and clarifies God’s presence in our life. Life is where we encounter God. Life is the greatest grace. Prayer enlightens, enables and draws us into this true mystery and goal of our existence, to be one with God.

One of the primary tasks of prayer is to enlighten us through the Word of God. This process slowly lets us see that our grasp of Jesus’ message in the Gospels is quite shallow. A few personal examples will help make this concrete.

As a young teenager I thought it was an outrageous sacrilege for girls to play sports. Likewise, I believed that the African Americans were perfectly happy in their neighborhood. There was absolutely no understanding of the intensity of the overcrowding, the poor and decrepit housing stock, the underfunding of the segregated schools, and the lack of medical services and a multitude of other expressions of racial injustice.

Faithfulness to prayer slowly expanded my awareness of my captivity to a culture that was intensely sexist and racist. That journey continues full speed into the present. This is one of numerous ways prayer enhances our self-knowledge by attacking our false consciousness.

II

Most often when people pray they have a plan. They want God to respond to their strategy for happiness. But God also has a plan. God wants us to respond to that plan. Here is the conflict: the two plans, God’s and ours. This is a significant problem with prayer. Growth in self-knowledge is a major factor in resolving this apparent discord.

For most people, a good part of their spiritual journey involves this transition from one’s personal plan for happiness to God’s plan for our happiness. We are clear with what we want and what we think we need. Most often it is dominated by the deceitful values of the false self. However, through the experience of life’s many trials, we gradually see the need to ease off of our agenda and let go. Little by little we come to see and embrace the need to let God! Our growth in a more righteous self-knowledge is a major contributor to this positive experience.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church there are several definitions of prayer. One from St. John Damascene states: Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.”

Our “good things” often conflict with God’s “good things”. A significant part of the Christian life is learning to discern the difference and importance of our self- perceived “good things” and the “good things” of God. More often than not, our “good things” are rooted in the false values of our materialistic and consumer driven culture rather than the values of the gospel. As we begin to break loose of the restraints of the false self, the light of gospel shines more brightly in our heart.

This is always a shift towards a more genuine self-knowledge. In the early stages of Christian growth, we are praying for the “good things” we feel are necessary for us. Authentic prayer demands that we change rather than God change. We grasp this very slowly, if at all. The irony often is that, in the very troubles and burdens that we want God to remove; we eventually will find the hidden blessing of life on the way to the “good things” of God’s Kingdom.

The growth in Christian maturity demands that we change our ideas of God and continue to deepen our self-knowledge. In maturing prayer, we move from asking God for our “good things”, the blessings that we think we need to bring peace and order into our own created kingdom.

On the contrary, when we repent and seek Jesus’ Kingdom, our heart moves to seek what God desires. We gently become aware that God is the Creator and we are the creature. God’s better plan calls us to change, to grow in self-knowledge. That change is personal conversion, a gradual and life-long process transitioning from ourselves as the center to God as the center. The eyes of our heart slowly begin to see the beauty of God’s “good things”.

III

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who was one of the great spiritual teachers in the 20th Century North America, spoke eloquently about a deep personal prayer. Merton defined it this way: “Prayer then means yearning for the simple presence of God, for a personal understanding of God’s word, for knowledge of God’s will, and for the capacity to hear and obey God.”

In Merton’s definition of prayer, God is at the center. We search for understanding and direction in our lives that need to open us to God. We find five helpful points for this goal in Merton’s definition of prayer:

1) All prayer must raise our awareness of God’s presence.

2) We need to encounter God’s Word. The most privileged way of this engagement is with the Bible but it also is in the experiences of life.

3) The encounter with God’s Word leads us to God’s will, a call out of selfishness to generosity toward God and others.

4) In this prayer, listening is the key.

5) New insight into the reality of God’s word and will guides our way of life.

Conclusion

It is clear that there is interdependence between self-knowledge and prayer. In this mutual dependence, we discover one of the many contradictions in the spiritual life. As self-knowledge increases, there is a startling awareness that we just are not able to fix all that is broken. The after-effects of original sin run very deep. This opens us to God’s mercy which, in time, moves us to a greater dependence on prayer.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-3

The material in this selection is a more advanced message for readers who are more urgent in their Search for the gift of contemplation. Self-Knowledge and the Pursuit of God

Our normal mind-set is filled with deep prejudices, false values, illusions, and a grandiose sense of self-importance. They all join together to blind us to God’s presence in the depths of our heart and more especially in our world. Clearing this passage is the task of an authentic spiritual life. Self-knowledge, an appreciation and awareness of what is taking place within us, is a crucial element on this path.

The journey of self-knowledge is often described as moving from the false self to the true self. It is a new way of looking at ourselves, at others, and at the world. It is a transformation of consciousness. Growth in self-awareness also opens up the vast patterns of injustice in the world. In our day, this is especially manifest in the thoughtless and uncaring violations of the gift of God’s creation.

The false self is entrenched in our exaggerated sense of self-importance, our illusions of grandiosity, the blindness of our prejudices and addictions, and, most of all the unreality of our idols. Our heart creates many false centers in our attachments and the distorted use of God’s creatures. The heart becomes fragmented and flawed.

We tend to become blinded to our faults and failures. We emphasize the shortcomings of others. Jesus described it well. He highlighted our blindness to the log in our eye in contrast to our stress on the splinter in our neighbor’s eye (Matthew 7:4–5). Self-righteousness dominates our approach.

As we become aware of the false values flowing from our deficient heart, we come to a fork in the road. We are called to decide. Are we really motivated by the love of Christ? Or are their more hidden and more selfish values driving our actions? If we look at our likes and dislikes and our powerful emotions we can get a clue what is really driving our decisions. As we pause for reflection we will often be surprised at the hidden darkness driving our actions.

This is the dominance of our false self. We need to move away the choice of death, a decision that surrenders to the clamoring of the false self. We choose life when we yield to the mercy of God, which leads to the true self. At the heart of this encounter is the perennial challenge of knowing ourselves.

Teresa of Avila and the Mercy of God

For Teresa of Avila, the long search for self-knowledge led to two important facts that became the foundation of all her spirituality. First, she had a clear encounter with the false self, a distracted heart pulled in many directions leading away from God. In this disorderly heart she identified her sinfulness.

More importantly, she slowly accepted her helplessness to change. The second reality Teresa welcomed was this: she was loved and forgiven. She lived in a sea of mercy. This led Teresa to accept life rooted in her vulnerable sinfulness. At the same time, she experienced life immersed in the loving mercy of God. She was the creature caught in sin but a loved and forgiven child of God. God was the creator revealing his power in love and mercy.

Self-knowledge, Prayer, and Life

Teresa of Ávila was relentless in declaring the importance of self-knowledge for the spiritual journey, the journey to God in the center of our being.

Well now, it is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering ourselves, reflecting on our misery and what we owe God and begging Him often for mercy. (THE INTERIOR CASTLE, 2.1.11)

For Teresa, the mystery of God unfolds in the dynamic of the person’s prayer and life experience. Self-understanding brings this process together. When we accept the reality of God’s place and our place, God’s mercy is the dominant issue. As she grew in self-knowledge, Teresa grew steadily more compelling in her oft-repeated conviction: “My life is the story of God’s mercy.”

As we grow in self-knowledge, we will celebrate our lives as immersed in the sea of God’s mercy. Self-knowledge will gradually bring us to embrace the wonder of this gift. There is no better way to understand and enter into this relationship between God and ourselves than opening our hearts to Jesus and his call. Deep personal prayer will follow.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-2

In the Exsultet, the most glorious Easter proclamation, we read:

That sanctifying power of this night

Dispels the brokenness, washes faults away,

Restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to the mourners,

Drives out hatred, fosters concord and brings down the mighty.

The Christian Life aims to make that beautiful vision of the Exsultet an overwhelming certainty in the life of each follower of Christ. One factor in this necessary personal transformation is self-knowledge.

The brokenness acknowledged in the Exsultet is our heritage, the consequence of the sin of our original parents, Adam and Eve. Every human being is caught in this alienation that drives them away from God. This is the product of personal, social, economic and cultural factors. We are all caught in the grasp of a false consciousness that leads us to see things for our personal benefit. From these most fundamental desires flow the division, the isolation, the conflict and hatred so inherent in our common human experience. Likewise, culture creates further false values to support hostility and separation. The economic system adds to the pattern of lies that defines us as consumers with needs that supposedly only further acquisition can bring the happiness we long for.

The following five observations help clarify the intensity of this false consciousness that engulfs us.

1) We are locked into a false consciousness.

2) This false consciousness creates a world view that is a gross distortion of reality but a world view, nevertheless, that we embrace as true.

3) Part of this perspective. Fostered by society and culture, and driven by our innate egoism, defines us primarily as a consumer.

4) We are constrained by the deep and hidden prejudices aimed at protecting our economic, political, cultural, gender, social and racial privileges to the exclusion and deprivation of others.

5) The power of the ego is in a relentless struggle to avoid any diminishment of its control of our false consciousness.

The interplay of all these forces, generating a false consciousness, deeply influences our quest for happiness. It is a never-failing way to ultimate disappointment and grief. These are patterns of deceit and distortion. They create a mindset that pursues goals that, in the end, can never achieve lasting happiness.

Authentic self-knowledge is the only way out. Jesus has told us, “The truth will set you free.” (John8:32) The first step on the road to freedom is moving out of the captivity of the destructive lies. We need to move into the truth of God’s call to our original innocence. This is the work of the Christian life. Self-knowledge is a critical feature of the venture.

Here is a short personal example of false consciousness. As a child, I was told the “colored people” would never come past 47th St. Gay and lesbian people just did not exist. The glass ceiling for women, which was never mentioned, was more like a combination steel and titanium. All of these were wrapped up in a religious message of my beloved parish.

My spiritual journey has been an on-going struggle to break free of this racism, prejudice against the LGBTQ community and sexism. All of these destructive lies have festered deep within my false consciousness over a lifetime. Like a cancer, they have quietly been eating away at my spiritual well-being. The search for true self-knowledge has led to a fierce battle against my ingrained captivity.

Eventually, a growth in self-knowledge has been generated by seeking a true Christian life. This has been possible only with an encounter with Jesus in the Gospels and deep personal prayer. The struggle continues. The importance of Self-Knowledge on the Christian Journey.

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ADVANCED CONTEMPLATION-1

The Way of Prayer: A Guide to the Footsteps of Jesus

The material in this selection is a more advanced message for readers who are more urgent in their search for the gift of contemplation. This is first in a series of blogs on the Christian life, prayer and self-knowledge.

I

The Easter Vigil is the most sacred of all liturgical celebrations. The Liturgy of the

Light is the first of four parts. It centers on the proclaiming of the Exsultet, the

Easter hymn of singular beauty and sovereignty. This song celebrates the Easter

victory of life over death, grace over sin, love over hatred. There is a crescendoing

announcement expressed ten times in a description that begins “This is the

Night…” In this story of salvation there are two stunning statements between the fourth and fifth declarations of “This is the Night…”. They challenge us to address the wonderful glory of the Easter reality.

O truly necessary sin of Adam,

Destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!

O Happy fault that earned so glorious a Redeemer!

Some verses later, the song continues:

That sanctifying power of this night

Dispels the brokenness, washes faults away,

Restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to the mourners,

Drives out hatred, fosters concord and brings down the mighty.

Part of the great mystery of Christ Crucified and Christ Risen that we celebrate in the three holy days of the Triduum is this. We see Christ as the New Adam. He is offering us a way out of the sinful state we were born into. Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, every human being comes into the world with a deep brokenness, a disoriented heart and blinded mind. Our natural state makes us the victims of ignorance and pulled toward division, isolation and hatred. 

This state of Alienation leads away from God in every possible way. The clear message of the Exsultet is that God is calling us back to the original innocence. The vocation of every person is to forsake the Alienation, the inheritance of our first parents, and direct our whole being to the pursuit of God.

Our true destiny is to restore ourselves and all persons and all creation as one in God. This is the goal of the true and authentic Christian life. Jesus has given us an invitation and an opportunity for personal transformation. This is how the message of the Exsultet becomes reality in our life. Jesus calls: “Come and see.” (John 1:39) Jesus reveals: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) Jesus gives us the path to freedom and life: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mk8:34)

Along with the sacraments, prayer becomes a central issue in refocusing our life in harmony with the beautiful message of the Exsultet. This is the message and the call of the gospel. This is walking in the footsteps of Jesus. A common name for this search for personal transformation is the spiritual life.

II

Here is a description of the spiritual life that I have found very helpful. It is the quest for self-transcendence. This is a long, painful process. It involves moving from ourselves as the center to making God the center of our reality. This is the Christian journey in the footsteps of Jesus. Every part of our life is involved in the personal transformation from selfishness to service and love.

Deep and personal prayer is critical along with our relationships, responsibilities and commitments. This mature prayer integrates and authenticates all of our life in the pursuit of God.

III

Here is a simple description of the spiritual journey. There is the beginning. In this initial state the consequences of our sinful condition hold sway along with the superficiality resulting from a consumer culture. We take that first step away from our original sinfulness and selfishness. Then there is the actual journey which involves a conversion process. We begin the long road to freedom from our self-centered ways. Self-knowledge is a tedious but healing and redemptive element of this process. Eventually we have a sense of arrival. We gain an awareness of movement away from the dominance of the ego. These three steps of beginning, journey and arrival are the advancement of the spiritual life. 

There is true experience of progress. We have begun to transform the deep distortions of our heart with gospel values. Though we do not realize it at the moment, this is just the first step of a long, wearisome journey. The process will repeat itself over and over and over again. It is a spiraling passage to our center where God resides.

At each stage we see things with a more acute perspective but never with total clarity. The repeating conversions create a depth of purification and transformation. These new insights are far beyond our power to envision at the beginning of the journey. Each stage offers new horizons, new inclusiveness, new openness to reconciliation. Once we thought it was progress to see two sides to every story. Eventually we begin to see that often there may be several sides to the story. The same is true with our racism and our attitudes to different states of sexuality.

 Many other prejudices have held sway with no challenge. Each new level of awareness invites us to face turmoil and new choices. Slowly we begin to see the great chasm between what we want and what we need.

While we move forward by faithfulness to the struggle, each stage along the way enlightens us to see God’s goodness and our sinfulness more clearly. Humility becomes more important with each step of growth. The irony is that we recognize our personal limits and weakness and sinfulness much more clearly as we make progress in our pursuit of God. 

We see our sinful state with always more transparency with each step forward!

Another paradox of the spiritual journey is this. At each stage, we make significant progress from the previous stage. Yet we are more or less blind to the upcoming progress. That only happens when we do the necessary steps for the next conversion along the way. 

We are regularly tempted with the distortion that we have finally arrived. The many phases of the spiritual journey always involve a deeper degree of prayer, more detachment, and especially confronting our addictions, which often cripple us from any further progress. 

Along the way, self-knowledge and humility shine the light in the darkness.

IV

The spiritual life seeks to transform us into that person described in the Exsultet:

That sanctifying power of this night

Dispels the brokenness, washes faults away,

Restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to the mourners,

Drives out hatred, fosters concord and brings down the mighty.

To accomplish this goal, to be a new person in the image of Christ, we will continue with some helpful material in the coming weeks. We will offer reflections on the Journey of self-knowledge, the Journey of Prayer, the Journey of Lectio Divina, the Journey of Christian Meditation and finally, some considerations on Teresa of Avila’s Program of Humility, Detachment and Charity.

All of these reflections aim to help us to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. The Importance of Self-Knowledge on the Christian Journey.

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