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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. I hope persons of varied wisdom paths will find inspiration here.
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox
MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Teacher, Author
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook – Inspirations for Living – Love, Joy, Peace.
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Enter this sanctuary time by settling down, becoming quiet, and breathing deeply some breaths. Remind yourself you are in the Presence of Love. This place you are entering, within, is the inner Temple, where you are One with Grace. You may wish to 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-Life. Enjoy these moments of quietly settling and come out when you are ready.
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The face always reveals the soul; it is where the divinity of the inner life finds an echo and image. When you behold someone's face, you are gazing deeply into that person's life.
*John O'Donohue. Anam Ċara.
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There was an aged woman in China who had supported a Zen monk for over twenty years. She had built a little hut for him and fed him, while he was meditating. Finally, she wondered what progress he had made in all this time.
To find out, she got the help of a girl rich in sexual desire. "Go and embrace him," she said, "and ask him suddenly: 'What now?'."
The girl visited the monk. Quickly, she caressed him, smiling, and asked what he was going to do about it. "An old tree grows on a cold rock in winter," replied the monk poetically. "Nowhere is there any warmth."
The girl returned and told what he said. “To think I fed that guy for twenty years!" exclaimed the aged woman angrily. "He showed no consideration for your need, no disposition to explain your condition. He need not have responded in sexual passion, but at least he could have evidenced some common compassion."
She, at once, went to the hut of the monk and burned it down.
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Spiritual practice is tested in how we respond to others daily. We carry solitude within us, intimacy with our own being, to interact in compassion. We do not have to have a goal of being nice, or kind, or moral, or anything like that. We simply proceed to be present to everyone we meet, by being present to who we are, too.
This includes looking fearless into the eyes, the face, of the other. As the quote above says, when we look into the face, the eyes, we look into the person, not just at the person. This present-looking translates into a subject-subject sharing; not I-Thou, but I-I.
We are aware when we are entrapped in a concept of the other. We relinquish that. Seeing the other as other, without our ideas of, or concepts of, him or her, we are present to him or her. We are him or her. This is compassionate.
Today, I was working with a dear lady, offering her spiritual direction. I became aware, “She is black, I am white, am I seeing her as black, as other than me being white?” I worked with seeing her, and seeing myself, apart from the concept of “black” and “white.” Before the sharing was over, a sense of oneness had arisen, without conceptualizing her mysterious Being.
So, we need to move beyond a definition of compassion as simply “with – passion,” which is feeling-based. A presence-experience is being with the other in open-heart, open-mind. In that, feelings come, feelings go, presence remains. Whether tears or laughter, feeling fluxes within Presence.
In your words share what it means to you to act in compassion. Share an experience when you were helped by a compassionate presence. Share an experience of helping another through compassionate presence.
©Brian Wilcox, and OneLife Ministries. 04/21/2010
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life, as an Associate of Greenbough House of Prayer.
*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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