Enter this sanctuary time by settling down, becoming quiet, and breathing deeply a few breaths. Remind yourself you are in the Presence of Love. This place you are entering, within, is the inner Temple. Here, you are One with Spirit and all persons, and Nature. You may use a mantra, or prayer phrase, follow the breathing in-and-out, or witness the arising and falling of all around you as the manifestation of universal-Grace. Enjoy these moments of Quiet and come out when you are ready.

We each live in the Divine Light. Regardless of our feelings at any moment, we are each and all the Heart of the Sacred. Celebrate your Life! See how beautiful you truly are, in Love!

*Joe Cocker. You Are So Beautiful.

Many have been taught a harmful teaching, one that denies the full, fleshy Incarnation of the Divine within and as you. This assumes that humbleness means rejection of the self, with its body. Somehow, the assumption is that less attention to the self means more attention to the Source. This meets with two logical problems.

First, this sets forth a dualism between self and Divinity. In popular religion such dualism is taught, but it is never well practiced, for one cannot well practice a duality of what is a unity. Contemplative theology assumes prior union between the self and its Source; indeed, the One co-inhering with the self, awakens the self to its being in Spirit and Spirit in it.

Then, the second problem with the teaching of abandoning the self pertains to prior union. How can one disdain self to honor Grace, self-Maker, Who creates and lives in that self, as the self, and infuses the self with the divinity apportioned to all creation as offspring of Creative Spirit? We cannot logically speak of rejecting some aspect of Creation as a means to honor the Creating Life-Presence.

The route to the fulfillment of the divine Purpose of the self is to understand the self as what is implied in True Self, and to act accordingly. True Self is the Unitive-Self awakened to already Being-In-Love with Sacredness.

Below, I quote the great Christian mystic Nicolas of Cusa, and his remarks on this, in the form of a dialogue with God. Note how Nicolas relates the realization of the paradox of God-self as occurring in the "silence of contemplation." Therefore, he remarks on an experience of the coincidence of apparent opposites, which is most reasonable, for it transcends conceptualization. Also, note the apparent experience of tension in contemplation between self-initiative and Divine-initiative. Only in contemplative experience is this, and all apparent logical contradictions, resolved, for one is enlightened with Absolute Reason. So, let us read; afterward, I give a verse and Exercise:

To God: ... what would be more absurd than to ask that you give yourself to me, you who are all in all? And how will you give yourself to me if you do not at the same time give me heaven and earth and all that are in them? And, even more, how will you give me yourself if you do not also give me myself?

And when I thus rest in the silence of contemplation, you, Lord, answer me within my heart, saying: "Be yours and I too will be yours!" O Lord, the Sweetness of every delight, you have placed within my freedom that I be my own if I am willing. Hence, unless I am my own, you are not mine, for you would constrain my freedom since you cannot be mine unless I also am mine. And since you have placed this in my freedom, you do not constrain me, but you wait for me to choose to be my own. This depends on me and not on you, O Lord, for you do not limit your maximum goodness but lavish it on all who are able to receive it. But you, O Lord, are your goodness. But how will I be my own unless you instruct me? You teach me that sense should obey reason and that reason should be lord and master. When, therefore, sense serves reason, I am my own. But reason has no guide except you, O Lord, who are the Word and the Reason of reasons. I see now that if I listen to your Word, which does not cease to speak in me and which continually shines forth in my reason, I will be my own, free and not the slave of sin. And you will be mine and will grant me to see your face, and then I will be saved. May you be blessed, therefore, in your gifts, O God, who alone are able to comfort my soul and to lift it up so that it might hope to attain to you and to enjoy you as its very own gift and as the infinite treasury of all that is desirable.

*H. Lawrence Bond, Ed. Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings. In "The Classics of Western Spirituality."

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Thanks!

Brian Kenneth Wilcox

©Brian Kenneth Wilcox Ministries, and Love Light Fellowship. 01/18/11

*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers. To book events with Brian, go to Facebook and his page Brian Kenneth Wilcox, or write him at briankwilcox@yahoo.com .