"Lord, teach us to pray...." Contemplative Prayer

Prayer:

Clear my mind for your truth.

The following excerpt appeared in my web mail box yesterday and seemed appropriate for the Wednesday reflection on prayer and the spiritual life. Richard Rohr is the author.

“In order to understand contemplation and the contemplative mind, we need to talk about our true self in God. This is the only self that has ever existed, and the only self that contemplates reality in its first and final big frame. The small, false self can only “calculate” - with itself as the reference point. As if it were! The work of religion is to get you to know who you are and always have been: “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). From this vantage point of love and union alone makes spiritual knowing possible.

“You came from God and will return to God. Your deepest DNA is divine. You are already a spiritual being—the much more difficult question is how to be human! That is what we have yet to learn. I believe that's why Jesus came as a human being: he didn't come to teach us how to go to heaven but to teach us how to be simple, loving human beings here on this earth. Some “non-religious” people do this much better than us “spiritual” folks.”

“The “false self” settles for ritualism and legalism, petty moralisms instead of true mysticism (which is available to all once one does not make it a contest or an achievement). The true self is not about requirements, it’s about relationship—the quality and capacity for relatedness. This lays the foundation for contemplation. The contemplative does not need to be “right,” but only in relationship.

“The false self will say its prayers but the true self IS a prayer. This is why Paul can say “pray always” (Ephesians 6:18). We pray always whenever we live in conscious union with God. Then every action is a prayer no matter how secular, mundane, or ordinary it might appear. I would more admire someone cleaning the house in loving union than a priest saying Mass outside of union.”

(Richard Rohr: Adapted from the CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action)

Love One Another - Brian