I will give you a new heart
and place a new spirit within you,
taking from your bodies your stony hearts
and giving you natural hearts.
- Canticle of Ezekiel
"The Holy Spirit seems to have a certain method to its madness. Although it doesn't feel bound to follow a particular structure, it adjusts to each person. It starts out the conversion when we decide to pursue the transformative process, by clearing off the ... conscious junk that is obvious to us as hindering our process.
"… Wherever you start – let's say you start in old age, because you can start at any age – it is never too late for this process. The Holy Spirit investigates or brings to our attention what needs to be improved at that point. It then continues the process with a little rest or enjoyment of the new privileges of each state of life, or the new freedom. It works down through adulthood, early adulthood, adolescence, childhood and infancy until each part of our life has been healed or investigated."
- Thomas Keating, excerpt from Monday's video
"And, indeed, as time goes on, the Divine Therapist extends the walls of our office, so to speak, our inner room, to the whole of life so that everything becomes a process of purification, of healing and of releasing the empowerment in the unconscious, and in facing more and more the dark side of our personality in the form of self-centeredness, that tends to focus ultimately on over-identification with our roles, our thoughts, feelings, bodies and ultimately, identity. ...
"… To bring our prayer life into confrontation with the reality of daily life with its people and unexpected happenings is really a very important part of the whole purification and sanctification process, and might be called the discipline of the Holy Spirit.
"Under the influence of the Holy Spirit … our actions are more and more emerging from that place of surrender, silence and receptivity that is the full development of the contemplative process."
- Thomas Keating, "Divine Transformation," Heartfulness: Transformation in Christ
A Meditation
"Transformed in Christ, these blessed souls
will live the life of God and not their own life
… although, indeed, it will be their own life
because God's life will be theirs
… through a union of love.
This is a great blessing …
As he said in the Song of Songs:
'Put me a seal upon your heart' (Song of Songs 8:6).
… The heart signifies the soul in which God
dwells in this life as a seal."
- John of The Cross, The Spiritual Canticle
To Practice
Examen: In the Commentaries, Maurice Nicoll states, "All religion, all esoteric teaching, is about the fact that we are born as self-developing organisms … in order, by a certain kind of work on ourselves, to reach something inherent in us (as a new being is inherent in an egg) which is called Real I … The object is to have what is called 'Christ' born in us. You must not think of the historical Christ but of the fact … that the Kingdom of Heaven lies within you and that means the realization of Real I. If you are only mechanically good or good externally for the sake of your reputation, you can never get to this secret goal which is inherent from birth in us … a potentiality in any one of us. Now to do this we must leave Imaginary 'I'. … Now the application of the Work to yourself is all about making it possible to go on a journey, spiritual or psychological, towards what is really you, Real I in you."
- Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, "On Practical Work," Vol. 4, p. 1348
Where are you in relation to over-identification with your roles, thoughts, feelings, body and even identity? Are you able to separate and declare, "This is not I. That is not I?" Non-identification begins with uncritically observing. The practice of "not I" begins to reveal so much more – Self-remembering toward Real I in you.
An archive of previous emails may be found here.
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