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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
SCRIPTURE
As in Adam all spiritually died; so, in Christ, shall all be made spiritually alive.
*I Corinthians 15.22
The Tathagatas [liberated ones from birth-death] do not enter ultimate liberation until all living beings have entered ultimate liberation.
*Buddhism. Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
My past bishop, one who strongly supported my intellectual integrity, knew of my past tendencies toward universalism - or universal redemption. He asked me one day, "Is it because you cannot see anyone being eternally lost?" I said, "Yes, I cannot see such." Well, my supervisor under him just recommended I keep quiet on some things, to stay out of trouble. I still did not stay out of trouble. Anyway, thankfully, now I can speak and write out as I need to, with greater felt-freedom. I join the ranks of the many persons whose intellectual integrity led them to being a not-fit, but not an unfit.
The key idea here is what I can and cannot "see." When a person has started living from a contemplative awareness, he or she cannot "see" as before. Everything changes; the lens by which the person sees and believes will never return to the exclusion and religious totalism of his or her past belief. Indeed, the person takes belief into Universal Love, not as in the past, when the other way around.
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Christian Meditation, as taught by the late Benedictine, and founder of the Worldwide Community of Christian Meditation, John Main, is a form of mantra meditation. Here, typically, the mantra is used from beginning to end of the meditation time. Thomas Keating, one of the developers of Centering Prayer, includes the mantra to return to being present, but allows an ongoing use of the mantra, as in Christian meditation.
In yoga and meditation, the mantra is an object. The purpose of the mantra differs from tradition to tradition. Generally, in some meditation the mantra is only for the stabilizing of awareness. In some paths, the mantra is for the forming of a specific state of awareness, as when some practitioners meditate on a name of Divinity to enjoin oneness with that aspect.
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Therefore, any object, as a mantra, can serve to facilitate internalization, or withdrawal of senses. Concentration, the process of consistent observation of an object, and recollection, withdrawal of the senses, are mutually supporting. Concentration upon the object brings forth simplification of the senses. As awareness deepens, it broadens, becoming more inclusive but finer, and more gross, or dense-like, awareness subsides.
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Late Yogic Master B.K.S. Iyengar speaks of this "integration" (samādhi) as the loss of self-awareness: which I call separate-awareness. In this state there is no longer self-consciousness, sense of self as separate. This is like a musician losing himself in his music, or a painter transcending herself in her art.
So it is with the yogi: when his object of contemplation becomes himself [that is, subject and object become only subject, or everything is subject], devoid of himself, he experiences samādhi [harmony, union of all and with all, or the All].
*Light on the Yoga Sūtras of Patańjali
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Christian contemplation is samādhi. This integration is the tasteless taste of harmony, of union of spirit with Spirit. Here one is no longer meditating, for meditation has led one through recollection, through the use of an object.
So, here Eastern spirituality and Christianity meet. The processes are the same, though the language and philosophy differs. The destination is the same, though different words are used to describe it. In contemplation, the Christian is in, or is, samādhi.
Here, all religions can meet. This is why contemplatives universalize Grace, for they experience directly the universal Truth. A contemplative can fathom nothing being outside God, now or forever. The idea of someone escaping being captured and enfolded in the Love of Grace forever is beyond the ability of a contemplative to affirm.
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So, this is a reason meditation is so important: Only at the point of the experience of contemplation, or samādhi, do we leave behind the dualities that create in the mind of community and self relative divisions among spiritual and religious paths. Only outside contemplation can we perceive our relative way as the only one absolutely right. Another way of saying this is: Only when we are truly in God, not just talking about God or believing in God, are we in pure experiential knowledge, or transcending Love.
So, the path I teach cannot be taken without a commitment to some meditative practice. For meditation is the using of the mind-heart to transcend the limitation of the self, which is congregated with differentiating thoughts of subject and object. However, God, or Pure Awareness, is beyond differentiation, while encompassing such in time. Then, we could as easily say: Love is beyond differentiation; Love is the absolute Union of all phenomenal opposites.
So, you are blessed to meditate and to experience contemplation. Whatever tradition you are in, contemplation is the unification of the whole self into the selfless awareness that is God-like, and there you become what your deepest Self is; that is, one with all peoples and all creation.
And, in this practice, understand that meditation is not contemplation. If you meditate but do not transcend the meditation, then, you are still in the opposites and relative consciousness, not the Consciousness of Absolute: what many Easterners call Sacchidanana- Being, Consciousness, Bliss, or Pure Spirit, and the Christian tradition has called theoria or contemplatio.
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Therefore, the greatest act of intercessory prayer is contemplation, for prayer in unity is taken up into the consummate experience of the One, Who is Unity, wherein all creation will find its consummation in Love, eternally. And this Love is: Being Conscious of Blissful Joy. Therefore, even for those who believe in universal redemption of all creation, only in this contemplatio is one fully experiencing the Truth, beyond the idea of.
© OneLife Ministries. Jan 13, 2010.
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. While within the Christian path, he is an ecumenical-interspiritual teacher, author, and chaplain. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Jail, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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