We do not want to know who we are. We prefer someone telling us who they prefer us to be, what they’ve determined we are. So often we belong to advertisers, anyone with something to sell, repositories of another’s agenda, desire, or ambition.
Hence, lostness. Amnesiac trance walking in our shoes. Vacant gaze. Greed, anger, and delusion in torn sweatshirt.
All this time, waiting to be recognized, the stranger lingers just outside of view, quietly watching for any sign of an awakening awareness, ready to reveal the true nature residing within and without, surrounding and intuiting one’s true reality.
The True Self is the Divine Indwelling, the Holy Spirit within you. I would say that the True Self is precisely the divine part of you that is great enough, deep enough, gracious enough to fully accept the human part of you. If you are merely human, you will tend to reject your embarrassingly limited humanity. Think on that!
Paradoxically, immense humility, not arrogance, characterizes someone who lives in this True Self. You simultaneously know you are a child of God, but you also know that you didn’t earn it and you are not worthy of it. You know it’s entirely a gift (see Ephesians 2:8–9 and throughout the Pauline writings). All you can do is thank Somebody Else, occasionally weep with joy, and kneel without any hesitation.
The true purpose of mature religion is to lead you to ever new experiences of your True Self. If religion does not do this, it is junk religion. Every sacrament, every Bible story, every church service, every sermon, every hymn, every bit of priesthood, ministry, or liturgy is for one purpose: to allow you to experience your True Self—who you are in God and who God is in you—and to live a generous life from that Infinite Source.
(-from, Trusting Our Essential Self, by Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, 27feb2022)
The false self wants what is not his or hers. It invades, usurps, denigrates, humiliates, punishes.
The true self allows, suffers, permits, accepts, works to liberate, comforts the oppressed, listens to what is being said, responds faithfully with humble gentleness and fierce justice.
The brevity and the impermanence of it all.
XI
The peach petals would like to stay,
But moon and wind blow them on.
You won’t find those ancient men,
Those dynasties are dead and gone.
Day by day the blossoms fall,
Year by year the people go.
Where the dust blows through these heights,
There once shone a silent sea.
(-Han-Shan)
You know me.
You see me.
You love me.
Teach me, O true guest, where real home is, right here, all encompassing, including everything, complete in itself.
waka for waking
On this Sunday morn
Psalmody and sunlight, cat
tears through cardboard box,
dog offers body to touch —
If you pray, nunc et semper
-wfh
Now and always — that’s where prayer dwells — with you.
There’s no other place. Start there!