A Map of the Fortified Country of Man’s Heart (detail). Hand-colored lithograph, 1830s.  
Printed and published by D.W. Kellogg & Co., based on a composition by “A Lady.” — Connecticut Historical Society  

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Levels of Spiritual Development
(Part Two)

Stage Four: My deeper intuitions and felt knowledge in my body are who I am.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

If you can stay in the liminal space between Stage Three and Stage Four, if you can suffer the shock, humiliation, and necessary failure of your game falling apart without regressing to earlier, more dualistic thinking, you will ideally move to Stage Four.

I describe Stage Four as this: My deeper intuitions and the felt knowledge in my body are who I am. People who have been trained to keep the heart and head spaces open and to live grounded inside their own bodies and feel their real feelings are able to pass to Stage Four because they have the greatest capacity for presence, and presence to what actually is!

For some, this is such a breakthrough, so enriching, grounding, and self-validating after wallowing around in ego and confusion for so many years, that it feels like enlightenment itself. Thus, very many become stymied here and think it’s the whole spiritual journey. They have “depth” compared to all these hopeless others around them! This can lead to individualism, self-absorption, and inner work as a substitute for any honest encounter with otherness or with The Other. In such a place, there is little real social conscience (beyond verbal political correctness) and usually a lack of compassion or active concern for what is happening on this earth. This kind of spirituality is all about my enlightenment and my superiority.

But if you are authentically present at Stage Four, you will begin to see your shadow self in sometimes humiliating ways. Without humility, you will run back to Stage Three, and many do. You’ll see your phony motivation: that you are not as holy as you think you are; that you are largely doing this for your own self-image, to think of yourself as moral, aware, and enlightened. Politeness and political correctness pass for actual love. Ken Wilber calls it “Boomeritis” since it is so true of a certain age group in America and Europe.

Yet this struggle and humiliation is what is going to lead you to real non-dual thinking: when you face the enemy and the enemy is you, and you recognize that you can’t project evil onto other religions, races, classes, political parties, or genders. I’m the problem. I’m petty, needy, self-absorbed, or whatever it might be.

If you are unwilling to do some shadow work, to wrestle with the shadow and see it in all of its humiliating truthfulness, you will not go to Stage Five.


Adapted from Where You Are Is Where I Will Meet You, disc 1
(CD, MP3 download)

Gateway to Silence:
Open me to wholeness

 
 

 
Readings for Lent

 

Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent

 

Fr. Richard offers these reflections on the daily readings of the season for the sake of our transformation. He invites us to participate in the “wondrous loop of divine disclosure,” letting ourselves be fully known. As Teresa of Avila says, “We find God in ourselves, and we find ourselves in God.”

 

God for Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Lent and Easter

 

Richard Rohr joins other writers, including Kathleen Norris and Ronald Rolheiser, to reveal the God who is for us—for our liberation, for our healing, for our wholeness. This elegant hardcover volume features full-color reproductions of liturgical art alongside scripture readings, commentary, and prayers for every day of Lent through Easter Sunday. Whether presented as a gift or treasured as a keepsake, God for Us is ideal for individual or group study.

 

Order at store.cac.org by February 18
to receive in time for Lent (March 5, 2014).


 

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