All God appears to want from us is honesty and humility (and they are finally the same thing). If God is holding out for human perfection, God is going to have a long wait. There is no other way to read Jesus’ stories of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) or the publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14). In each story, the one who did wrong ends up being right—simply because he is honest and humble about it. The one who is formally right ends up being terribly wrong because he is proud about his own performance.
How have we been able to miss that important point? I suspect it is because the ego wants to think well of itself and deny any shadow material. Only the soul knows we grow best in the shadowlands. We are blinded inside of either total light or total darkness, but “the light shines on inside the darkness, and it is a light that darkness cannot overcome” (John 1:5). Ironically, it is in darkness that we find and ever long for more light. Mystics like John of the Cross recognized this to be true on the spiritual level first. It seems the inner and outer worlds mirror one another.
~Adapted from Richard Rohr, Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
We only become enlightened as the ego dies to its pretenses, and we begin to be led more by soul and by Spirit. That dying is something we are led through by the awesome and quiet grace of God and by the hard work of confronting our own shadow. As we learn to live in Divine Space, we will almost naturally weep over our former mistakes, as we recognize that we ourselves are often the very thing that we hate and attack in other people. Weeping, by the way, is much more helpful and true than ever attacking, hating, or denying our sin—maybe not literally weeping, but sincere, non-self-hating compunction for our mistakes. (Compunction was the subtle word that the mystics often used to describe a regretful ownership of our sins, but without descending into abusive self-hatred.) Only grace can teach us how to do that. But only then can we begin to become and to live the Great Mystery of compassion, even toward ourselves. How you treat yourself is how you will usually treat other people too. The person who was vindictive to you today has been vindictive in his own mind since early this morning. She is punitive toward you because she has been punitive toward herself for years—without even knowing it.
God’s one-of-a-kind job description is that God actually uses our problems to lead us to the full solution. God is the perfect Recycler, and in the economy of grace, nothing is wasted, not even our worst sins nor our most stupid mistakes. God does not punish our sins, but uses them to soften our hearts toward everything.
~Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Lever and a Place to Stand: The Contemplative Stance, the Active Prayer (CD)
God is the only one we can surrender to without losing ourselves. In fact, we find our deepest, truest, and most loving self in God. Yet it is still a paradox. I am increasingly convinced that all true spirituality has the character of paradox to it, precisely because it is always holding together the Whole of Reality, which is always “everything.” Everything in this world is both attractive and non-attractive, light and darkness, passing and eternal, life and death—at the same time. Don’t just accept my statement here, but think about this philosophically, physically, biologically, or scientifically. Everything has different sides, levels, truths, perspectives, and potential problems that it carries along with it.
A paradox is something that appears to be a contradiction, but from another perspective is not a contradiction at all. You and I are living paradoxes, and therefore most prepared to see ourselves in all outer reality. If you can hold and forgive the contradictions within yourself, you can normally do it everywhere else, too. If you cannot do it in yourself, you will actually create, project, and revel in dichotomies everywhere else.
~Richard Rohr, Holding the Tension: The Power of Paradox (CD)
