Kelsey, Foster: Fasting

Kelsey, Foster: Fasting

“Fasting can be to the body what silence is to the mind and soul,” Morton Kelsey, Companions of the Inner Way, The Art of Spiritual Guidance, p 119.

I am helped by the words of Richard Foster on fasting in his now classic book, Celebration of Discipline.  Fasting from food or any other ways of living helps us become aware of what is controlling us and the degree that it is controlling us. This is of course the traditional call of Lent, “to give up something,” a fast from something.

 A fast should be a spiritual discipline to connect more closely to God as are all the other disciplines. As we crave the substance or action, we can enter into the suffering of Christ and of others. Goodness knows, why in the world should we identify with more suffering? It is already present in our minds and in our bodies. For myself, however, when I attempt to fast from food or a certain type of food or from an action such as shopping or work, it is helpful to keep reminding myself that this is in an attempt to hear and see and find more time for God in my life. It can be a re-centering of what is important.

Fasting can especially be an important discipline to investigate how food or an action or a behavior pattern has become too important in our lives.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Charleston, Sanford: Traveling Inward

Traveling inward

“How quickly the days clatter by as we age, like a train rushing to some unknown station.. Sit back and look to the vision within: the unexplored rooms of your heart, the open ground of your creativity, the hidden dimensions of your faith. Reflect on the reason for your travel and turn time to the will of your spirit. Sit back and look to the vision within, for when you go deeper, you go slower.” Steven Charleston, Daily Facebook Emails

John Sanford’s, The Kingdom Within, The Inner Meanings of Jesus’ Sayings is often one of the first books to recommend for people wanting to go on an inner journey.  As his title suggests, Sanford tells us that the kingdom is really within us. Sanford was a Jungian analyst and an Episcopal priest who was one of the first to apply depth psychology to Jesus’ sayings, relating Christianity to depth psychology, discussing personality types, feminine and masculine aspects of personalities, the struggle between the spiritual and the physical, being aware of our own egocentricities, projections, the struggle to become conscious, our identification with our outer mask, as they all relate to the teachings of Jesus. He talks extensively about the problem of evil and sin in the world, reminding us that Jesus himself had little to say about the sins of the flesh. He was more concerned about the more deadlier sins of the spirit brought on by a lack of awareness that causes us to “miss the mark”. Sanford believes we hate our enemies because we project onto them what we hate in ourselves.

If you have been on this journey, tell us more.

Joanna

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Rohr: Stream of Consciousness

Rohr: Stream of Consciousness

“I’m sure that most people in the Western world have never really met the person they really are…We have to discover the face that we already had before we were born.. Imagine a river or stream. You’re sitting on the bank of this river, where boats and ships are sailing past. While the stream flows past your inner eye, I ask you to name each one of the ‘vessels’ or thoughts floating by. For example, one of the boats could be called ‘my anxiety about tomorrow.’ Every judgment that you pass is one of these boats. Take the time to give each one of them a name, and then let it move on.  As soon as we own a boat and identify with it, it picks up its own energy. We have to practice un-possessing, letting go, detaching from our thoughts and feelings, or they own us. With every idea or image that comes into our head, we have the opportunity to say, ‘No, I’m not that.’ This is basic training in nonviolence.."   Adapted from Richard Rohr, What the Mystics Know: Seven Pathways to Your Deeper Self (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2015), 83-84. Wednesday, February 8, 2017 Richard Rohr Online Meditations

Barge on the Mississippi

Rohr’s exercise gives us a daily practice or really a second by second opportunity to learn how to connect to the person God created us to be. I identify with his “streams” of consciousness. I know of no better word to describe how our mind seems to work. I see our thoughts and feelings as coming from a large computer constantly feeding us data. We do have a choice. We can believe or act on the data or not, but telling the data it is no good is like slapping the hand of the schoolboy with a ruler. The data is repressed and eventually leads to false data, ‘fake news’ so to speak and anxiety.

 Other authors have talked about imagining that we are wearing some type of protective clothing that does have some holes in it. As we hear information  or data from ourselves or others we make a decision as to whether to take that information into our body. Is this information about ourselves true to who we are?  If we do decide not to take the data in, we say, “thank you, but this is not true for me.”

This is so reminiscent of centering prayer where we have a sacred word which helps us re-center as distractions come to mind. Many have suggested seeing the distractions like boats or barges on a river. We are to let them float by without engaging in them.

This is similar to Jesus’ reaction to Satan in the wilderness when Jesus is being tempted. Jesus did not dialogue with the devil. He quotes a line from scripture in respond to Satan’s request that he turn stone into bread, perform magical acts, or gain the world if he worships Satan.  Again, a sacred phrase re-centers him and keeps him from entering into, engaging in conversation with the devil.

Rohr is asking us to do something similar for the distractions that constantly speak to us  in our mind.

This is soul work.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com