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*Brian Wilcox. 'Life Blooms!'. Flickr
Before we can see that created things (especially material) are unreal, we must see clearly that they are real.
For the “unreality” of material things is only relative to the greater reality of spiritual things.
We begin our renouncement of creatures by standing back from them and looking at them as they are in themselves. In so doing we penetrate their reality, their actuality, their truth, which cannot be discovered until we get them outside ourselves and stand back so that they are seen in perspective.
We cannot see things in perspective until we cease to hug them to our own bosom. When we let go of them we begin to appreciate them as they really are. Only then can we begin to see God in them. Not until we find Him in them, can we start on the road of dark contemplation at whose end we shall be able to find them in Him.
*Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude.
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Today, in Silence, the idea of poverty came to heart. This came forth in the experience of poverty. For in the Silence, resting in spaciousness, I have nothing to claim as my own. I cannot even claim myself as my own. In the Silence I am no one and have nothing, I am useless, for only subject to being where nothing is but Silence. By entering these hours daily, I am learning more deeply this being no one with nothing. Possibly, this is a reason many flee the Silence, knowing that the Silence will denude us of everything, even ourselves. Yet, this is not a calamity, this is a door to freedom from the delusion that we are someone and have something, when we are not and do not. This is wise to learn before death teaches us, when death takes away everything we cling to as belonging to us. So, the wise say, "Die before you die." So, to the extent to which I die from "I, me, mine," I am alive to Life. I am not a perfectionist, claiming any human being on this Earth pilgrimage reaches such a state of total renunciation, yet, we are blessed as we grow into less attachment to things, inner and outer, and in so doing, we open more to Love and to love.
Continued... |
