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LOTUS OF THE HEART
Brian K. Wilcox, a vowed Contemplative in the Christian tradition, and Associate of Greenbough House of Prayer, offers an interspiritual work focusing on cultivating the Heart of Compassion. His book of mystical Love poetry is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. Brian integrates wisdom from the major spiritual Paths. May you always know that you are blessed!
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The presentations at this site cover a long time period. Each one represents part of an on-going Pilgrimage, and the writer's ideas, practices, and experience have changed over time. This change is the quality of any living Journey. Please read with this in mind, allowing the inner Teacher to speak to you as you need at this particular time in your own living Journey. Thanks!
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*Meditation at the Lake, H. Koppdelaney, Flickr
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In meditation, we should not look for a "method" or a "system," but cultivate an "attitude," an "outlook" … faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, joy.
*Thomas Merton. Contemplative Prayer.
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Merton is in sync with words attributed to Jesus, when Jesus says in St. John's Gospel, that the "born again," or "born from above," are like the wind. Even as we do not know where the wind is coming from or going to, He says in John 3.8, "so is everyone that is born of the Spirit" (KJV).
So, the Prayerful Life is a demonstration of this untamed and untameable Presence. Anyone who goes deeply into inner Solitude and inner Silence, comes to discover a Place where technique drops. The means of previous Prayer simply do not work anymore, as they once did.
This same principle applies to serving others. Regardless of how much training you get in a particular field of work in caring for others, the Spirit will not allow you to fit your Work into that system. The system, and learning, will assist. Yet, in all spiritual living, as in the Prayer of Silence, one surrenders to a Presence that cannot be held within the boundaries of any of our previous experience, and this Presence is embedded in the very change that itself is unpredictable and, likewise, is unpredictable Itself.
The fruition of Contemplation, in contrast, is constant and deepening. We can always inquire of ourselves, such as, "Am I becoming more kind?," "More reverent of all life?," "More patient?," "More forgiving?," "More joyful?," ... This is the real test of the Prayerful Life, not the ways in which one does prayer. Prayerful qualities are the Fruit of being Prayer, or being one with Prayer.
*Christ the Redeemer in Rio..., Carlos Eduardo, Flickr
* * * CLOSING BLESSING * * *
Grace and Peace to All
The Sacred in Me bows to the Sacred in You
*You are welcome to contact Brian at briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
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