Wisdom Story

For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.

*Philippians 2.13 (NLT)

Wisdom Story

The following story, The Rose Garden, is a personal account told by Sateesh Chirutkar.

I have been a volunteer to a particular person offering my services for quite a long time. Many times, despite of my sincere attempts to make this person happy, it so happened their responses were mostly passive with distrust to divine energy. Many times this was brought to my attention. My repeated suggestions to have gratitude towards God yielded no results. Recently I had a little argument on a silly matter, which I could have avoided. I didn't understand why I was holding on and was so hesitant to ask for a small request.

That same evening I realized my mistake and went ahead and did my duty. Immediately I was relieved. I was tense on that evening, but the next morning, as I usually do, I went to my rose garden. As usual there were some beautiful roses in my garden but they seemed to be laughing at me. I suddenly became curious. I went closer to them to see that some of them were affected by some type of infection. It was clear that I was careless with them and despite this neglect the plants were still giving colorful and joyful roses. I looked inside myself and suddenly it flashed on me of what a fool I am, I have forgotten natures biggest secret. To give without knowing to whom you have given and why! I realized that it was my ego which was holding me back and this is where I went wrong. My plants taught me the real lesson of meditation: unconditional acceptance. What I was doing was conditional. Now the light has come to me and I shall serve in a more energetic way without expecting the outcome to come from where I think it should. My real practice of Meditation has begun from this day only.

Copyright © by Sateesh Chirputkar. See www.askalana.com .

Comments

The passivity that contemplatives speak of concerns nonclinging to actions and results. This fosters freedom within in work and relationships.

Contemplatives develop effortless effort. This is active passivity, or passive activity, is a restfulness in God. This rest is resultant of relinquishment of self to God.

God is the Center of rest and work, passivity and activity, giving and withholding, surrender and exertion, and creativity arises ceaselessly within the harmony of these paradoxes in God. God is the Harmony of these apparent opposites in a supralogical Intelligence that is infinitely present in everything and within Which the bounded finds the bliss of Boundlessness. Therefore, every increment is from and to Wholeness, the dance in time of inspiration and aspiration as one Act of God in many movements.

In love with Love, Love dissolves one in the Harmony of these unities that human logic sees as contradictory. God engods the the contemplative with these paradoxes by being oneed with God, for to be oneed in God is to be oneed in all God Is. And for the contemplative, to be oneed with God is to be oneed in God and God to be One in the contemplative.

The unattached effort, or free effort, arises from the Divine Energy. The Divine Energy arises through our True Self, from beyond, or outside, or within the sense of self, or ego. Here, really a non-here, polarities is Harmony.

Love is the fount of effortless effort, which is loving effort. Scripture says: "God is working in you." "Working" is the Greek energeo, and from the root of this verb comes the English "energy." So, the Scripture can read: "God is energetic within you" or "God is effectively operative inside you."

The Philippians passage observes two matters God is causative of in us. First, God is causing us "to will" good. Second, God is causing us "to do" good.

The assumption behind the above facts is surrender to God, which entails surrender to the Divine Will even when not knowing what the Will precisely entails. This is the river surrendering itself to the Ocean. This resignation allows the effort of God to rise in and fill up the openness shaped by the chosen, active passivity of human will ~ for the passivity must be both freely chosen and an action of the human will prepared by Grace, which is Energeo, to God.

God does not negate human will by the rising and filling of the effectual working, or energeo. Human will is transformed into the intentful direction of the Divine Will by an inner alchemy. The Energeo of Christ fills the human will, divinizing it into the image of the Will of God. Human energeo is infused with and redirected by Energeo; this is the spiritual inspiration that leads to spiritual aspiration ~ for spiritual births spiritual, always, and births nothing other.

So, the Christian willing and working spiritually is not an act of self-will. Spiritual Christian work arises from inspiration, which is an effectual energy arising from the Being of God.

St. John of the Cross speaks of the inner, effectual Motive for this active inspiration, or energeo, as prelude to the aspiration of spiritual action. In discussing initiation in the night of the senses, he counsels: "[T]o be successful in this initiation, renounce and remain empty of any sensory satisfaction that is not purely for the honor and glory of God." So for, so good, but the essential quality comes next, the motivating and inspiring energeo: "Do this out of love for Jesus Christ" (Ascent of Mount Carmel).

The opening story speaks of the effortless effort, or loving action that arises freely out of freedom from self-will. The beginning of this is Love, wherein Love inspires within us Love ~ for Love can only recreate Its likeness and no unlikeness. The continuation of this engendering Love is Love, whereby we respond in Love to Love, Who inspired the Love to Love by the outgoing of Love in loving action ~ that is, our loving action is our loving God, or we love God by loving others, even as we love others by loving God.

This aspiration of action is one with the whole process of energeo, for the Love giving Love, and the Love loving Love, and the giving of Love in Love loving through us is one Love. These aspects are actually one effectual action of cause and consequence grounded in the Unseen Order, Who is the source and destination of the energeo.

This demonstrates an important truth about action. Not all good action is spiritual. The person in Christ is summoned to be more than one doing good. He or she is to be spiritual. This being spiritual is the process of being filled with the Spirit, which means being energized with the power of Infinite Vitality. This inundation in the Word of Life transforms the inner energies, and, thus, inspiration arises from the Spirit within and action is consequent of that motivating, powerful, and effectual Love that allows a centering of all goodness in God alone.

Therefore, the spiritual Christian works from being oneed with God and, thus, living within, from, and for the flowing of Energeo. This progressively consumes the spiritual Christian in a blissful dying to self, and all other lights are penetrated by and transformed into this one Light.

Reflection

How do you see Divine energy animating your willing and doing?

What is the difference between doing good things and behaving spiritually in action?

What spiritual exercises do you engage to train in surrender to Love?

*The quotes from St. John of the Cross are from The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. Trans. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez.

Brian will respond to requests pertaining to seeking a Spiritual Mentor. He offers retreats, workshops, and classes in such subjects as Contemplative Prayer (he trains in Visualized Praying, Centering Prayer, Christian Meditation, The Jesus Prayer, ...), Contemplative Living, A Spiritual Understanding of the Lord's Prayer, and Spiritual Use of the Scripture. See any major on-line bookseller for his book An Ache for Union.

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