Richard Rohr’s Meditation: Sharing in God’s One Spirit

The Holy Spirit is God’s very own life shared with us and residing within us (see John 20:22). When we pray, we are steadfastly refusing to abandon this Presence, this True Self, this place that already knows we are beloved and one with God. But our false “contrived” self is so needy that we must practice living in this presence through conscious choice (“prayer”) at least once, but preferably many times, every day. Contemplative prayer is “our daily bread” that keeps us nourished so we can dare to believe the Gospel, to trust the Divine Indwelling, and to remember our God-given identity.

.. The True Self cannot really be hurt or offended. The false self–our egoic identity–is offended every few minutes. But if we notice when we take offence, and what part of us is offended (always a provisional identity), this will train us to gradually reside more and more in the Big Truth. (Most of John 14-16 circles around this message.) Thomas Keating charts conversion as a series of necessary humiliations to the false self.

In order to fully experience the intrinsic union we already have with God, who is Love, it seems that we need to first be love ourselves in some foundational way. We can only see what we already partly are, which is why I like to call it a mirroring process.

.. Sometimes people will come up to me and say, “Oh, Richard, you’re so loving!” But I know I’m not–and I know they are! They are seeing themselves in me. Spirit recognizes Spirit. To know the Truth, one must somehow be abiding in that Truth, and the deepest Truth of every human is Love, as we are created in the image and likeness of an infinitely Loving God (Genesis 1:26-27), which Christians call Trinity.

.. If we are in a state of negativity, what Julian of Norwich calls “contrariness,” we won’t be love or see love. We must watch for this contrariness–we all experience it quite frequently–and nip it in the bud. This contrary self often takes three forms:

  1. comparison (common in the female);
  2. competition (common in the male);
  3. and contrariness or oppositional energy (common in all of us).

Our false self is actually relieved and empowered when it has something to oppose. The clearest identifier of untransformed people is that they are living out of oppositional energy, with various forms of comparing or competing, judging and critiquing. As long as we do this, wenever have to grow up; we just show how others are wrong or inferior.

.. In the Hindu tradition, darshan (or darsana) is to behold the Divine and to allow yourself to be fully seen. Many Hindus visit temples not to see God, but to let God gaze upon them–and then to join God’s seeing which is always unconditional love and compassion. During your time of contemplative prayer, allow God’s eyes to behold your nothingness and nakedness. Imagine God looking upon God’s Self within you, loving what God sees. If thoughts, emotions, or sensations distract you, return your awareness and attention to receiving God’s gaze.

When your practice has ended, commit to seeing God’s presence in someone or some creature this day. If appropriate, you might greet them by placing your palms together at your chest, bowing, and speaking “Namaste.” (Namaste is a familiar Indian greeting which means “I bow to the divine in you.”) Or you might say, “The Christ in me sees the Christ in you.”