contemplation

You belong.

Fellowship is a kind of belonging that isn’t based on status, achievement, or gender, but instead is based on a deep belief that everyone matters, everyone is welcome, and everyone is loved, no conditions, no exceptions.
—Brian McLaren

Center for Action and Contemplation

People on all parts of the continuum of gender identity and expression, including those who are gay, bisexual, heterosexual, transgender, cisgender, queer folks, the sexually active, the celibate, and everyone for whom those labels don’t apply. Response: I belong.

People of African descent, of Asian descent, of European descent, of First Nations descent in this land and abroad, and people of mixed and multiple descents and of all the languages spoken here. Response: I belong.

Bodies with all abilities and challenges. Those living with any chronic medical condition, visible or invisible, mental or physical. Response: I belong.

People who identify as activists and those who don’t. Mystics, believers, seekers of all kinds. People of all ages. Those who support you to be here. Response: I belong.

Your emotions: joy, fear, grief, contentment, disappointment, surprise, and all else that flows through you. Response: I belong.

Your families, genetic and otherwise. Those dear to us who have died. Our ancestors and the future ones. The ancestors who lived in this land, in this place, where these buildings are now . . . we honor you through this work that we are undertaking. Response: I belong.

People who feel broken, lost, struggling; who suffer from self-doubt and self-judgment. Response: I belong.

All beings that inhabit this earth: the two-legged, the four-legged, winged and finned, those that walk, fly, and crawl, above the ground and below, in air and water. Response: I belong.

2021

The main theme for January is “Start Up”.

Power Path.

“We are in a new time, a new landscape, a new sun (according to Toltec wisdom), a new vibration and frequency, and completely new potential and opportunity for a whole new experience of life. This month we look at new containers, new support systems, new attitudes and beliefs, and new ways we can create a start-up for ourselves

A “start-up” is different than a re-start as it implies something brand new rather than re-starting something that is already existing. Instead of replacing just the battery in an old car and restarting it, we are actually in the market to buy a new car, an upgrade for the old one that no longer serves us well. We are stretching ourselves to be able to have this upgrade, to feel worthy of it and to trust that the resources will be there to support it.

The start-up this month is not unlike this analogy. We are in a completely different time with different energy and the potential for completely shifting everything. We need to release the old structures we have been re-starting over and over and allow ourselves to go to the next level and bring in something new and improved. This is scary and exciting at the same time. A start-up comes from a new idea, needs a new container and a new support system. It requires a new brand, new organization and a new set of intentions. And it requires a deep inner trust as you take the risk into something new. Even if you keep the details of your life much the same, it is important to infuse your daily routines with a change that allows for something different.

The most significant start-up will come from within. As we have entered into an artisan time of huge creativity, it will come with some chaos, a necessary side product of dissolving old structures. Sometimes you have to turn old things upside down to see your way through them to something new. This new sense of self and of how you perceive the world need to be seeded from the inside. We are shedding the skins of old personal and societal imprints, and stretching our wings in freedom to make choices from within about who we are, what we want, and whom we want to be with.

If you were to create a business start-up, you would first come up with a new idea. Then you would build a container around this idea and bring in the necessary support, your team of allies and experts to help you create the foundation and structure of your start up. The energy this month is not dissimilar to a business start-up except the start-up is related to your own life and your personal expression of it. The conscious co-creation of this start-up requires a balance between allowing inspiration, clarity and support to come to you, and proactively creating what you are clear about and wish to manifest. How do you build a good container for your start up? You make sure that you bring in all the elements that will support you in the best way possible.

The key to all of this is that the creativity comes from within, the inspiration comes from within, the desire comes from within, the clarity comes from within, and the intuition that you are on the right track comes from within. This is not to say that you cannot have confirmation from the outside. You will receive plenty of signs when you are on the right track. Pay attention to them and trust.

Adventure is one of the primary needs for this year and a supportive energy for taking any kind of a risk. Your personal start-up may feel like a risk. Look at it as an adventure as you navigate this new landscape. Even if you experience road blocks along the way, know that any change comes with a bit of chaos and destruction. If an old structure is dissolving, don’t resist its demise. Know that there is a new creation wanting to burst forth from the vacuum.

Full personal forecast at: thepowerpath.com

January 28: Full Moon in Leo is Thursday, January 28 at 12:18 PM Mountain Standard Time. (MST)… “Wolf Moon.”

Universally shared.

Order.

Disorder.

Reorder.

Fr Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation:

Contemplative Epistemology

One spirit, at work in each, becomes their guide, led by more than mere human communication. -Day by Day with St. Francis

‘The primacy of love allows our knowing to be much humbler and more patient and helps us to recognize that other traditions—and other people—have much to teach us, and there is also much we can share with them. This stance of honest self-knowledge and deeper interiority, with the head (Scripture), the heart (Experience), and the body (Tradition) operating as one.

Contemplation allows us to see things in their wholeness and thus with respect (re-spect means to see a second time).

Only at a deeper level of contemplation do we begin to see the correlation between how we do anything and how we do everything else. We take the moment in front of us much more seriously and respectfully. We catch ourselves out of the corner of our eye, as it were, and our ego games are exposed and diminished.

Such knowing does not contradict the rational, but it’s much more holistic and inclusive. It might be called trans-rational although many think it is pre-rational. It goes where the rational mind cannot go, but then comes back to honor the rational, too…“contemplative epistemology”—a contemplative theory of how we know what we know.’

-Fr. Richard Rohr

Keep listening.

When someone disagrees with you today, stay present, listen, and then let them solve the problem.

Problems are transformed when we are present.

-Judith Hanson Lasater, PhD

“By contemplation, we mean the deliberate seeking of God through a willingness to detach from the passing self, the tyranny of emotions, the addiction to self-image, and the false promises of the world. Action, as we are using the word, means a decisive commitment toward involvement and engagement in the social order. Issues will not be resolved by mere reflection, discussion, or even prayer, nor will they be resolved only by protests, boycotts, or even, unfortunately by voting the “right” way. Rather, God “works together with” all those who love (see Romans 8:28).”

The only way out and through—for either side of any dualism, including that between action and contemplation—is a kind of universal forgiveness of Reality for being what it is; it thus becomes the bonding glue of grace which heals all the separations which law, religion, or logic can never finally or fully restore.

-Fr. Richard Rohr

Dualism, it’s a good thing.

In a nondualistic kinda way.

Fr. Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation

When I first learned contemplation in my Franciscan novitiate, I was taught a practice of silent, wordless prayer. Over the decades, I have learned there are many paths to contemplation, a myriad of ways to access nondual consciousness. Regardless how we practice—with stillness, breath, observation, chanting, walking, dancing, calm conversation—contemplation calls the ordinary thinking mind into question. We gradually come to recognize that this thing we call “thinking” does not enable us to love God and love others. We need a different operating system, and it both begins with and leads to silence.

Even through practices full of sounds and words, contemplation helps us access a foundational silence, a deep, interior openness to Presence. One of our faculty members, Barbara Holmes, writes: “An ontological silence can occupy the heart of cacophony, the interiority of celebratory worship. . . . Silence [is] the source of all being. . . . Silence is the sea that we swim in.” [1] And yet we’re often oblivious to it. Thus, the need for practice.

In my book The Naked Now, I call non-silence “dualistic thinking,” where everything is separated into opposites, like good and bad, life and death. In the West, we even believe that is what it means to be educated—to be very good at dualistic thinking. Join the debate club! But both Jesus and Buddha would call that judgmental thinking (Matthew 7:1-5), and they strongly warn us against it.

Dualistic thinking is operative almost all of the time now. It is when we choose or prefer one side and then call the other side of the equation false, wrong, heresy, or untrue.

But what we judge as wrong is often something to which we have not yet been exposed or that somehow threatens our ego. The dualistic mind splits the moment and forbids the dark side, the mysterious, the paradoxical. This is the common level of conversation that we experience in much of religion and politics and even every day conversation. It lacks humility and patience—and is the opposite of contemplation.

In contemplative practice, the Holy Spirit, [Gaia, Energy] frees us from taking sides and allows us to remain content long enough to let it teach, broaden, and enrich us in the partial darkness of every situation. We need to practice for many years and make many mistakes in the meantime to learn how to do this. Teachers of contemplation show us how to stand guard and not let our emotions and obsessive thoughts control us.

When we’re thinking nondualistically, with this guarded mind and heart, we will feel powerless for a moment, stunned into an embarrassing and welcoming silence. Then we will discover what is ours to do.

Cathari, (from Greek katharos, “pure”), also spelled CATHARS, heretical Christian sect that flourished in western Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Cathari professed a neo-Manichaean dualism—that there are two principles, one good and the other evil, and that the material world is evil.

Catharism was a heretical, Christian dualist or Gnostic revival movement that thrived in some areas of Southern Europe, particularly what is now northern Italy and southern France, between the 12th and 14th centuries.

[wikipedia]

Keep moving.