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Consciousness and Contemplation

Today’s meditation is longer than usual, but I want you to have all of this together in one place. Many people think of their consciousness as the same as their brain. It’s really not. Scientists still struggle to define consciousness and where it arises. The early Alexandrian and Desert mothers and fathers of the church knew consciousness was not the same as the thinking mind. They used the Greek word nous to describe consciousness as

VERY LOVING LIGHT

Consider yourselves fortunate when all kinds of trials come your way, because you know that when your faith succeeds in facing such trials, the result is the ability to endure. -James 1:2-3 Ego is often maligned as some sort of table-pounding ogre, or a spoiled brat who throws all the toys out of the pram when things don’t go its way. While ego certainly has its bad days, it is also quite happy to charm

Monday of Meat-Fare. Our Piety is Between Us and God

Jesus said ”Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven… And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:1, 6 (Gospel on the Second Saturday of the Souls) The word “piety” is defined as “the quality of being religious or reverent.” Wikipedia has a whole page dedicated to the concept of piety,

Shaping Life Spiritually (Part II)

Every evening numerous dramas are played out as husbands and wives come home from work, bringing with them a chaotic mass of negative feelings from the office. They are glad to see each other, but they are full of thoughts from work. And thus there is no meeting of minds; people talk past each other and unload problems dragged in from elsewhere. Here it would be a good exercise to take the path home more

When All Becomes Too Easy

By Father Vasile Tudora There are many places in the world where the fear of not being able to make ends meet, leaving your family without food, shelter, and other means of subsistence, or the fear of a ravaging war, is intensely present. With the golden era of prosperity, in the Western world at least, these great survival fears have almost disappeared, morphing into new and shallow anxieties: not being able to land the most

ARE WE TALKING ABOUT PSYCHOLOGY IN THIS SPIRITUALITY?

Is psychology more practical than spirituality? Nothing is more practical than spirituality. What can the poor psychologist do? He can only relieve the pressure. I’m a psychologist myself, and I practice psychotherapy, and I have this great conflict within me when I have to choose sometimes between psychology and spirituality. I wonder if that makes sense to anybody here. It didn’t make sense to me for many years. I’ll explain. It didn’t make sense to

Inner Polarities

In a society that gives much value to development, progress and achievement, the spiritual life becomes quite easily subject to concerns expressed in questions such as, “How far advanced am I?” “Have I matured since I started on the spiritual path?” On what level am I and how do I move to the next one?”—”When will I reach the moment of union with God and the experience of illumination or enlightenment?” Although none of these

ON WAKING UP

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know, all mystics-Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion-are unanimous on one

BLIND WITH ANGER

Evagrius helped lead another student into liberating insight into the nature of her very active mind, especially the connection between her anger and her fear. While she was less revealing of the details of her struggles, she was grappling with the fallout and follow-through of an intervention initiated by concerned friends. She admits it needed to be done but she still struggles with feelings of betrayal and more. She wrote: Evagrius seems to know that

Serious about the Scriptures

My dear friend, Dr. Gerald May, made a distinction years ago that I have found myself using frequently. He says spirituality is not to encourage willfulness, but in fact willingness. Spirituality creates willing people who let go of their need to be first, to be right, to be saved, to be superior, and to define themselves as better than other people. That game is over and gone; and if you haven’t come to the willing