The Praxis of the Ethos of Love

The Praxis of the Ethos of Love

Our decisions regarding our thoughts, words, and deeds, in what we do, in what we fail to do, or avoid doing, are the pivot point of our spiritual life. If prayer is the turning of the will towards God, then all of life is prayer. Most especially the process by which we decide what we shall do is prayer, and the fruits of our inner life of God, or lack of it. I recall a Zen teacher saying that the fullness of spiritual practice happens when deep meditation meets the conditions of life where we find ourselves.

In most Buddhist traditions there are moral precepts that are taken that become the daily basis for an examination of conscience, and a measure for which one is acting from the deepest inner reservoir of compassion and loving kindness or not. In the Christian tradition the great commandment of love cited by Jesus from the Jewish Torah is the basis of all moral discernment. “ Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is the greatest commandment.” (Mark 12:29)

Here Jesus tells us the basis of the spiritual life is also the basis of our moral life. Relational life, of which the essence is self-offering love, is the ground on which we base all decision making and discernment in our daily life and prayer practice. He tells us that the way in to this kind of life is one of continual conversion, a letting go of those misdirections and attachments of the mind that have taken the place of right relationship in love. That includes and begins with the activity of the mind where misdirection or sin happens. Jesus also tells us that the vertical and the horizontal relationship are not separate. God is the one Self that we love, both alone in solitude and in all the relationships of our human life. What gives injury or neglect to either affects the entire matrix of our relational life in God. Christ is the living spring in our Heart, Christ is the living presence in those beings we encounter in our lives. The symbol of the cross in a circle so often found in the Celtic tradition symbolizes the totality of the vertical and horizontal relationship of the communion paradigm of Christ.

We have a daily practice of silent communion with Christ at intervals in the day. As we orient the soul toward this communion state as the ongoing state of choice we become increasingly aware of what opposes or injures this state of communion. So in a sense those thoughts, those words and deeds that are unloving, injurious, exploitive or cruel either in intention or effect become increasingly disturbing to our interior life in God. The more we practice the more attuned we become to those disturbances. At the end of the day the residue of that disturbance is likely to be accessible and noticed by us, a disturbance to interior peace. That is why our evening practice is a good time to review the day in a daily examination of conscience. We can note where we have caused injury and where we have neglected to love and serve as our heart's desire calls us. There is no room for the guilt of judgment of our goodness or badness as a person. That only feeds the fiction of a perfected ego and creates a block in our complete acceptance and responsibility for what we have done, what we have failed to do, and to direct our energies toward contrition and conversion. Acceptance means accepting the natural sadness when injury is done to love. Those injuries can come in many ways, lies, betrayals, harshness, pridefulness and self deception, taking what isn't freely given, hurtful anger, and so on.

True contrition comes from the understanding that life arises fresh each moment, and contrition allows us to drop the burden of the distant past, or even the previous moment and return to our heart's desire to be given to love. This is the freedom of conversion, and the wisdom that real repentance is re-directing our life towards true happiness, what we most want and desire. This is true metanoia, coming home, again and again and again.. ceaselessly. We are all the prodigal child, having dissipated and wasted the gift of our life essence, again and again. Yet the door is always open and the arms always welcoming us, a million times in the course of a day or a lifetime. The important thing is to return home to the Heart,and learn compassion from the pain inflicted on ourselves and others. The true wound is separateness, which heals as we harmonize the soul with unitive life in God.

By examining the circumstance of the thoughts, words, deeds, and omissions we have made, we can learn from them and bring the fullness of our practice into that situation when it arises again, as it will in various forms. Our practice is always to observe the mind and to abide in the heart. When we are able to "see", to witness the arising of misdirected hidden thoughts and motivations we can truly offer them up, and relinquish them to make space for our most essential desire, which is loving kindness or agape. The desert elders saw that true conversion must involve a praxis of freedom from addictive or destructive thinking patterns. (There is much more to be said about Prayer of the Heart praxis with thoughts, which can be added in another post.) Over time we cultivate Heart Presence as a ceaseless expression of Prayer of the Heart in daily life and activity, making each moment of life prayer.

The following is an example of the incorporation of reflection on the day and the praxis of contrition and conversion, integrated into the evening prayer practice:

Evening Prayer of the Heart-
- Opening Chant- "Yeshua, Yeshua" and Prayer of Consecration

-Formal Silent Prayer of the Heart Practice- One or more sessions.

-Review of the Day/ Evening Recollection-" O Beloved- Help me to know all the ways I have injured your Love this day. Help me to know the ways I have not loved you in all my being and all my doing. Help me to know all the ways I have not loved my neighbor as myself." ( silent pause and reflection on the day)

- Contrition and Conversion-" O Beloved, I resolve to claim the sorrow of every injury to love and to seek the grace of Your conversion this moment and always."

-Evening Devotional Prayer, Prayer of Jesus, and Intercessions-

-Closing Night Chant- "Into Your hands Abba, I commend my spirit, Into Your hands, Abba/Amma, I commend my spirit. In Christ we are given to You, day and night. Into Your hands, Abba, I commend my spirit."


I hope your find this response helpful in considering your own practice of ethical/moral discernment of the day.

The Main Thing- A Paradigm for the Christian Mystical Tradition

The Main Thing-
A Paradigm for the Christian Mystical Tradition

The only reasonable measure for Christianity or any religious movement is the degree to which it has brought healing and transformation to the soul of humankind. By this measure all major religions of the world have failed. The Jesus of the Gospels says clearly that "By their fruits you shall know them." (Matt. 7:16) He proclaims to all that the measure of a lifetime is the extent that we come to see his life and presence in all beings, especially those who are the most forgotten, the least powerful, and the most abysmally rejected. "What you have done to the least of these you have done to me." (Matt. 25:40)

When asked what is the most important thing in human existence Jesus called upon the foundational statement of the Jewish Torah: “ Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is the greatest commandment.” (Mark 12:29) Unitive love here is the main thing, the only thing. He is unequivocal that all of law and the wisdom of the prophets is in this. Life is one in God. Life in God is relational self-offering love given in the fullest measure. Many who might find inspiration in this turn their backs on Christianity as a religious movement. Historic institutional and cultural Christianity has become obsessed with power, influence, and lines of authority. It uses fear of a condemning deity who is self-obsessed with what human creatures are compliant and who are not. To be a life-giving way, the Way of Yeshua must exist as a mystic spiritual paradigm. The way of the Christos must be a way of love that is unitive with the Divine in all Creation.

Mystic Path- Learning Path of Trust
Unlike the path of religion the mystic path is not belief based but learning based. We can only begin with a simple faith that there is a Life greater than our own ego from whom our own human life, our own human soul/consciousness arises. We have an intuition of this, and an awakening desire to return Home to this Life. This is the basis of authentic faith. As we grow we discover, we uncover this One Life from whom we arise, and to whom we return. In our growth the mythic religion of our indoctrination is often shattered. The mythic sky-God of our human made doctrines dies and the mystic Life of our life lives. Our journey of uncovering will reveal there is no original sin in us, there is no great gulf between our being and the Life of the universe. What we do know is that Heart of the Beloved is within our heart.

The End of Ritual Killing
Therefore there is no great expiation sacrifice to be made for our sins, no salvific gesture that redeems us from our innate and corrupted image of God within. Many see Augustine's theory as a projection of his own unhealed addictions and judgments of the soul, and not the common ground of our humanity. The original sin/damnation theory of human existence is and has been a tragic inhibiting misdirection in the growth of the human soul's passage on this planet. The harmful consequences and damage by Augustine's theology to the spiritual consciousness of the Christian world is well described in the work of Mathew Fox and other writers of our time.

Christianity and Judaism arose from a primitive desert culture that believed in animal sacrifice to appease an unseen warrior/protector deity. In this culture it was convenient to let Jesus of Nazareth be the lamb of God to be ritually slain in public, a fulfillment of the messianic mythology of the Judaic tradition of Passover. Such a death might be assimilated through Paul's interpretation as the once and for all ritual sacrifice that ended the need for such, especially once the Jewish temple and Jerusalem was destroyed, where all such sacrifices were to happen. In the light of mystic awakening slaughtering animals or humans has no meaning or need, but is seen for what it is, the acting out of unconscious magical beliefs. The Lamb of God instead may be a powerful symbol of the vulnerability and tenderness of a Divine Life within the heart of each of us. In this way Yeshua becomes the revelation of who we are in our true nature in God, and who God is incarnate in the world.

Mystic Yeshua- Cosmic Christos
This brings us to the important question: If Yeshua is not the historic blood sacrifice to appease an angry deity from punishing a corrupt humanity, then who is the historic Yeshua, and in what way is he the Christ, the anointed One? In what way is the Christos the Way, the Truth, and the Life, salvific Life within us?

When considering salvation for humanity, we must examine more closely what is the need of the human species, what is the nature of the human condition, and what is true salvation?

The Genesis story describes in myth and metaphor, and poetry, the central wound in the human condition and the damaging consequences of it through time. In the beginning we, all of us, enjoy the knowledge of our essential oneness with the Source of all being, all life, all existence. It is the garden of our Beloved. We walk in communion with the Divine and our companion creation. It is a condition of nakedness, of no-self consciousness. When the duality of a separate self is created, and with it the polarities of good and evil, the garden experience is lost. As a result of this separate-self consciousness greed, envy, fear, and violence become the lot of human-kind, as illustrated in the fratricide story of Cain and Abel.

The story can only be understood as an esoteric myth about what happens to all of us, in the course of each life. We come into the world with an innate understanding, or memory of our ontological communion with the Divine. Yet what we have a growing experience of separateness in our own soul influenced by the collective soul or consciousness of those human communities where we find ourselves. From this wound issues forth all of the spiritual and moral ills of the world, and all of the terrible and tragic consequences that afflict humankind.

If the Christian revelation has any validity, it must be that in the historic Yeshua, is the opening, the revelation, a doorway and offering of the Love of the Divine Relationship we call Trinity. There is an invitation in to be in personal communion with the Divine in the mystical Yeshua. We can experience the healing of the wounds of the soul in his limitless love and to abide there always (John 15:9). The same emanation of Divine Light and Love manifest in the historic Jesus, is present and offered to us in the personal mystic Yeshua, is present and joined to us in the immanent Divine Christos in the entirety of the Cosmos. Through his love we can open to communion with the Cosmic Christ, the immanent Life of the Divine present in all Creation. And in this way our separateness with the world is healed, and we are then able to participate in the unitive relational Life of the Trinity present and accessible to all Creation as the Mystical Body of Christ.

This is a mystical theology of the Cosmic Christos that is beyond most "traditional" teachings. Yet it is the grand insight and vision of mystics in the Christian tradition from the earliest centuries to the inspiring vision of Teilhard de Chardin and present day pilgrims of the Way. Gregory of Nazianzius said, "Christ exists in all things that are." Morgan of Wales a Celtic teacher and monk of the fourth century said, " The presence of God's spirit in all living things is what makes them beautiful." And Teilhard de Chardin says, " Through your incarnation, my God, all matter is henceforth incarnate." (Mass of the World)


Communion Paradigm
Beatrice Butreau, a contemplative writer of our time(The Holy Thursday Revelution), says that the profound healing of the human condition comes to us in Yeshua's revelation of the "Communion Paradigm" as the true nature of things. The communion paradigm is the realm of unitive love in God. It is the true resurrection experience, where through the personal healing of the mystical Yeshua we come to full participation and belonging in the Universal Christos. In this way the domination paradigm, born of the damaged consciousness of separateness is healed and the possibilities of spiritual growth and development of the human species become realized. We make ourselves accessible to this offering of healing through the praxis and grace of awakening and self-offering love. In the communion paradigm those who follow the Way of Yeshua find it treads the same common ground, and touches and opens to the same Ultimate Reality of the Way of the Buddha, the Prophet, and the other mystic paths of the peoples of the earth.

The Divine Christos-The Incarnation Creation Story

Chandogya Upanishad- "In the beginning was only Being. One without a second. Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos. And entered into everything in it. There is nothing that does not come forth from him. Of everything he is the inmost Self. He is the truth; he is the Self supreme." chapt. 6 vs. 2.2

The Astrophysics story- The researchers collected observations of this polarization signal to create a map of the early universe, allowing them to test a sub-theory within the Big Bang theory, called "inflation."

Inflation theory states that the universe underwent a rapid expansion immediately following the Big Bang…"During this growth spurt, a tiny region, likely no larger than a marble, grew in a trillionth of a second to become larger than the visible universe," said WMAP researcher David Spergel, also from Princeton University.

The new observations reveal that the early expansion wasn't smooth, with some regions expanding faster than others….These fluctuations are thought to have led to clumping of matter that allowed the formation of galaxies.Brian Greene, a physicist from Columbia University who wasn't involved in the research, called the new findings"spectacular"and"stunning." http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060316_wmap_results.html

Revelations of Divine Love-Julian of Norwich- "Also in this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall [last] for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God."

Gospel of John -" In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was Life, and the Life was the Light of the people." (John 1:2-4)

All the systems of matter, biology, and consciousness that have arisen are manifestation of the One Life that animates and holds us into being. The amazing thing, the Main Thing, is that intimacy with the mystic Yeshua brings us into intimacy with the Cosmic Christ in all Creation, making us full members and participants in the universal mystical body of Christ, the One Incarnate Life.

Wisdom Schools

(Dear Friends,
This post will be controversial. Yet I hope it will stimulate reflection.
I hope you will read it with openness.
Blessings,
Bill Ryan)

Wisdom Schools- A New Vision of the Transmission of the Christ Mystery

The Legacy of Religion
Many theologians and scholars will say that Yeshua of Nazareth did not come to found a religion. Rather he wished to transmit in himself and his teachings a revelation of the Source of Life whom he knew as Abba. Yet what is the legacy of religion, both Christian and that of other traditions? What are the fruits of the great institutional structures, cathedrals, and temples? What are the contributions of the caste system of clergy and denominations that have multiplied throughout the world? What are the great contributions to the healing of humankind after all the money and resources dedicated to religion have been tallied? What we have are centuries of wars fueled by religious hatred, wars of conquest and colonial expansion under the symbols of both cross and crescent. We have endured wars of genocide fueled by ethnic and religious distrust and fear. Millions have been persecuted, killed, exploited, or sent into exile. This is the legacy of religion.

In the U.S. public attitudinal sampling reports consistently that Christian church goers are most likely to have attitudes in favor of the death penalty, supporting violent solutions to international conflict, opposed to compassionate social policies for the most vulnerable populations, and least tolerant or accepting of persons who are different in ethnicity or sexual orientation. If we look around the world, many of the most violent actions and conflicts between peoples have religion at their source. "By their fruits you shall know them."

If religion has any benefit for human kind it must be the capacity to bring healing and transformation to the soul of humankind, bringing forth the fruit of compassionate concern and service to the world. Instead those who are most religious seem to be most callous and hardened towards others, and the least mindful and responsible in their relationship with the natural systems of life around them. Those who are most religious seem to be most inclined toward violence and hatred. The least progressive societies, in measures of meeting basic needs and enacting compassion and peace-making in their social, economic, and foreign relations, are those who are the most religious. The most progressive societies in those same measures are those who are the most secular in their political and cultural make-up.

For this reason a genuine critique, a prophetic examination of the structure of religion, it institutions, and practices must be undertaken. Perhaps what we need in the world is a lot less religion and a lot more committed and serious spiritual practice.

The Structure of Religion-
Where we have been-
Whether it be Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Judaism or other religious structures and "isms" in the world, it can be said that without exception through the centuries all have betrayed the teachings of their founders. The structures, values, traditions, and activities of religion have been largely possessed and contaminated by the cultures and history of the peoples and geography they occupy. Religions have come to serve themselves and not the healing of the world. Today, more than ever, religion is at the center of the divisions and violence that scar humankind. And religions again seek to aggrandize themselves with political power and dominance in the societies where they dwell. Religions market the emotional massage and psychological consolations that keep us from truly living into transformative life. They convince the adherents to find refuge in the small circles of familiar ethnic and cultural prejudice rather than the expansive and transformative universal Heart and unitive ethos of the Divine. Religions are without exception primarily at the service of their own power and prestige and not at the service of spiritual healing to humankind. Religions reinforce rather than heal the central wound of separateness that afflicts humankind. This is unacceptable.

A New Direction-
We do not need more institutions and more clergy demanding ever more financial support in this world. We do not need a religious caste system of ministers, priests, and monks who enjoy a privileged position of deference and authority in human communities. We do not need intermediaries with the sacred. Rather we need to start with a new premise, the revolutionary premise of Yeshua the Christ that the temple of the Divine is not on the hill, not in structures, nor in brick or stone, nor in creeds or dogmas. Rather the temple of the Divine is the Heart, the spiritual center within us all. What humans need are teachers and companions of the Way, who will walk with us, teach and support us in the disciplines of awareness and will that open our soul/consciousness to the Ultimate and true dwelling place of the Spirit of the Beloved within us. What we need is the praxis to transform the soul that it becomes the lamp of the Light of Christ in the world, rather than the distorted and opaque vessel of confusion, despair, fear resulting in human compulsions of greed and power and resultant violence.

Wisdom Schools-
When the historical Jesus was living, his followers did not call him, "priest, minister, reverend, cardinal, or pope." Indeed his followers called him "teacher," and Jesus said in the end he wished to be called "friend." A soul friend, or anam cara, is someone who shares the fruits of inner life of the Beloved with another, who walks with another on the Way. (In the earliest years of the Jesus movement, those who were his followers were called the people of the "Way.") Spiritual transmission comes through teachers and soul friends, not through authoritative intermediaries. The Light of Christ is transmitted truly in this way to the people of the Way. For this reason we should be considering models of spiritual community other than denominational churches and parishes with their agendas for power and societal status. Is not the spiritual journey, is not the life of Faith (not belief), one of discovery and opening to what is beyond the egoic mind and consciousness? We need spiritual teachers and soul friends, who support us on the Way, who continually point to the true Teacher and true Friend, Christ, within us. He is already at the center of our Heart, why do we need grand buildings, institutions, and political power to possess what is already offered to us in each moment, the unconditional love and healing of the Divine Beloved in the universal mystical Christ? We can live a life of communion with Christ our true and universal friend and healer of the soul- our Way to experience the Divine Beloved who is the Heart of Creation. And from this healing of our wound of separateness the compassionate life is born.

Blessings to all,
Bill Ryan

Lenten Praxis

Dear Friends,
I wrote this little piece about Lenten spiritual practice. I hope you find it has some merit in considering your own approach to the season of Lent.
Many blessings,
Bill Ryan

Lenten Practice in Prayer of the Heart
By Bill Ryan

The time of Lent has had a penitential theme in years and centuries past, implying a certain self-punitive expiation for sins. As a child growing up in the pre-Vatican II era of the Roman Catholic Church I never found that expiation theology satisfying but the liturgies and symbols did touch me and move me.

Lent- the Interior Movement of Purification
Through my practice of Prayer of the Heart these many years I have come to an appreciation of the theology and practice of kenosis as central to the spiritual life. I have also come to appreciate the time of preparation in the 40 days Yeshua spent in the desert and that any important transformation in life involves a period of preparation and sustained inner work of purification. In the transformations of grace and deepening communion with God our preparation involves an emptying and opening to allow the love and grace of God to come alive in us, and to heal those wounds and addictive patterns in our soul that keep us bound. So Lent is a time of breaking out of the bondage of entrenched patterns so that we can be an empty and receptive vessel for the Light of Christ to burn brightly. Simplicity is the true meaning of purification, being freed to be wholly given to our heart's desire.

The Liturgical Year- Our Growth in the Christ Mystery
In the liturgical year, starting in Advent we liturgically enact the Christ Mystery in our human lives. The Calmaldolese monk Bruno Barnhardt restates the central truth of the Christ Mystery from the original statement by Athanasius (3rd c.) that in Yeshua the Divine became human so that humans might become divine. This understanding of Christianity of Theosis (Divinization) has remained central in the Christian East since the time of the earliest centuries of the desert tradition and the early articulations of the Greek Fathers. In Advent and Christmas therefore we celebrate the Incarnation of the Light of Christ not only historically but also in our own inner being, the Heart.

The Fire and Light of Christ, however, remains a dormant potential deep within us unless we do the inner work of the actualization of "theosis." We offer our soul/consciousness to become accessible, infused, and alive with the Light of Christ already present and living within the tabernacle of the Heart or true spirit. This is the praxis we do in Prayer of the Heart. We unite the soul with the Christ Light of the True Spirit or Heart within us. This is our inner work in Prayer of the Heart.

In the action of kenosis we give our will and awareness to self-emptying, a liberation from all that is non-essential, to receive and live our true essence in Christ. In this way the words of St. Paul, "I live no longer I (the ego-mind), but Christ (the Life of Christ) lives in me.)." (Gal. 2:20) In our praxis we release from the patterns of a lifetime, and the residue and wounds of existence so that the space and freedom is present for Christ to live fully in us, to bring us to healing and wholeness.

Living the Paschal Mystery
This is the inner work of transformation and self emptying we do in our daily silent sitting practice and in the endless praxis of consecrated bowing in adoration and self offering in love we do inwardly in the middle of activity. During Lent we can bring a special energy to this work of freedom, the freedom to release from all that we aren't, to become all that we truly are in Christ. This work of freedom brings us to the Holy Week Triduum and the enactment of the Paschal Mystery of death and resurrection. This is the liturgical enactment of our own death to the self-created, separate self, and the rising to the Limitless Life that is the Heart of Christ, our True Life. We become the lit flame of the Light of Christ. We can truly chant with all Creation as the candles are lit from the Paschal Christ candle on Easter sunrise, "Lumen Christi- Light of Christ, Deo Gratias- Thanks be to God." This is our true destiny, to become a lit flame of Christ's Love, and to live His Light and share it with the world living the compassionate life in the season of Pentecost through the end of the liturgical year and the remainder of our days in the human state.

Lenten Praxis
As a child I was drawn to the liturgies of the Stations of the Cross and the practices of fasting that adults did. The fasting was a canonically enforced practice and the adults rarely understood why they were doing it. The notion of "giving up" something for Lent was done, but again without much understanding of the value as a praxis. We have just begun to explore a notion in the lexicon of ecological spirituality known as "voluntary simplicity." It means stripping away the unnecessary and burdensome patterns of consumption and attachment in our life in order to get down to what is essential. (No small task in this consumer driven culture.) This comes closer to the wisdom meaning of Lent in the liturgical calendar.

It is not the material order of Creation that is the impediment in our spiritual journey of liberation. What constitutes the blocking of our grown in communion with Christ is the attachment of human consciousness to "things" or addictive patterns as God substitutes, to attempt to fill the soul's hunger, craving, and emptiness. In the wisdom of the beatitudes it is the seeming paradox that in our emptying, as Yeshua does in the desert, that we confront the adversary of the ego-mind and the temptations to find God substitutes.

In our practice of kenosis we can come to find the vast spaciousness where the Divine dwells in our own Hearts, and come Home to our true belonging in the Sanctuary of the Heart. In the emptying of this kenosis we are prepared to become the vessels of the Life of the Risen Christ in our own life.

If we wish to make Yeshua our life, Yeshua our home, and Yeshua our singular Love, we must give ourselves wholeheartedly to the daily consecration of the undivided presence and will to become ceaseless adoration and ceaseless self-offering. We find liberation and healing from a divided life when we can become so fully given and freed from the divided life our attachments to God substitutes inflict on us. Regardless of our station in life we can all be "monos", monastics in the true sense of being fully consecrated to the Living God. What divides us from our deepest desire manifests differently in individual lives, but is something we face regardless of our station in life. The "consecrated life" is possible for all.

Given to our Deepest Longing
Our ongoing inner work of love is the commitment. In this way we become accessible to Love's gift of Self to us. Our deepest longing is this, and this alone. In this way the liturgies and the traditional practices of fasting and detachment can become truly enlivened. The Way of the Cross, as a devotional form of prayer, can become a profound enactment of our own path of liberation and transcendence.

Therefore we can approach Lent as an essential movement of our growth in communion with Christ. In Prayer of the Heart praxis we exercise vigilant awareness and release from our the mind's enmeshment with those patterns of living, of mental and behavioral compulsion, that divide us from being fully consecrated to the Love of Christ in all things.

We may decide to choose at least one habitual pattern to release from and offer up. At the same time we may also consider in what ways we can intensify our daily practice, possibly by increasing the time of silent sitting in prayer. For most people the primary impediment is getting to bed early at night so they can rise early in the morning and have more uninterrupted prayer time before they start the day. Intensifying or re-examining our vow of practice or daily rule of life can be an important commitment to make.

Choosing the Better Part
Yeshua tells us we must choose between our misdirected desire for psychological security and comfort and our true desire for God. Commitment or avoidance is an inescapable choice. We cannot do both, we cannot lead a divided life and still enter the Kingdom of unitive love. We cannot have God and god substitutes. We cannot worship God and idols of our construction. In the story of the rich young man Yeshua challenges him to give over everything to his heart's desire. (Matt. 27:57) His fear erodes his desire. In the story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38) Yeshua admonishes Martha, not because she is serving by doing manual work, but because she is creating a duality in herself and is divided in what she is doing, and therefore envious and resentful. The "better part" that Mary has chosen is her undivided devotion, a devotional love that can be undivided in both activity and stillness.

Therefore let us discover anew the season of Lent and Easter as a season of consecration, a season of healing of the divided life, a season of renewed commitment. Let it become a sacred and spacious time of freedom and unbinding of those vital energies within us that want to be given and united in the utter simplicity of our heart's desire. We can choose the better part wholeheartedly: Yeshua, our companion, our path, our destination and our home.

The Deep Peace of the Son of Peace

Dear Friends,

A familiar Celtic blessing ends with this wish: "The Deep Peace of the Son of Peace be with You."
For me it is an intuitively satisfying blessing. We experience peace as a condition of the soul when we find home, sanctuary, and belonging. Peace is not an emotional state. It is state that emerges from deep within. And at the same time we know that we have a desire to have peace in the world around us, a longing that seems to go unrealized every day. There is a spoken prayer that is a favorite of mine, "Let there be peace in the world, and let it begin with me." We do not decide whether there will be peace in the world. We do decide whether we can bring forth the gift of peace to the world. Such a peace that surpasses understanding begins in the heart and our praxis of communion with the Son of Peace.

As I journey through this year of transition from the world of my past profession and from our previous residence to the new one in Salem, Oregon. Even as I am immersed more deeply into the retreat experience of greater intensity of practice, I am aware also that human beings are in a time of dangerous global passage, where the violent conflicts may break out in a more horrible way. News reports warn of an impending attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, an attack that will inevitably lead to wider, and possibly nuclear war.

Like Merton who wrote his "Confessions of a Guilty Bystander" I wonder what can I do. I can share my concern and be a witness to a better way than massive violence under the pretense of a safer world. More importantly I can find my sole refuge in the only peace that is truly inseparable from every human being who sincerely seeks it. The Heart of Christ is my refuge, my home, and my peace. There is no other even though the world should explode and end.

Yeshua whispers to us, "Peace is my gift to you, my own peace I give to you, that the world cannot give." John 14:27 This peace of Christ we can all bring forth in the shining lamp of our own souls. We can shine the Light within us in the world and be a witness to it. This we can all do, and I am at peace when I consecrate myself to what can be done rather than go into the despair of I can't do.
The peace of Christ be with us all, Friends.
Bill Ryan

Mythical Christmas and Mystical Christmas

Friends,

The fundamentalist right seems to be much inclined to worry whether people greet each other with "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holiday." This argument has nothing to do with authentic Christmas values and much to do with tribal symbols, affiliation, and cultural dominance. Whose flag is the dominant one, whose group is the greater and in charge? These are their anxieties. At such a time the cultural and political forces waging this war are very much concerned with giving more of the nation's resources to the already affluent while the minimum safety net of food, health care, and shelter is cut even more. A sad, sad, path to take, and one which will bear bitter fruit for years to come.

I long ago signed off the cultural Christmas we now have in this land, of consumption, buying, selling, and the overall escalation of expectations and stress in people's lives. No presents, no cards, no tree, no decorations. I do have a small Christmas altar as part of a larger altar. That suits me fine.

As I puzzle over this I wonder how what is essentially a pre-Christian Northern European pagan festival came to be a celebration of the birth of Christ, particularly when we consider that the birth of Yeshua, the Christ is thought to have happened in April. I'm all for celebrations of lights in the middle of dark winter, but let's not make it more than it is. Let's search deeper.

The story is a good one, the Revelation of Divine Light, the King come to heal the land. That's one that many, if not all cultures, can understand. A child born in poverty, who will challenge empires, principalities, powers, and the priorities of societies like the present American one. But what does this story have to do with here and now, this moment and the next? The story is the mythical dimension of religion, but without something more, it's just a story, a beautiful one perhaps, but it's not my story, or the story of the Universe.

The icon of Christ Pantocrator is the compelling one for us. Christ who is at the Center of the Cosmos and the Center of our own Hearts. The Mystical dimension is the doorway in, what gives life and purpose to the myth. (Myth here does not mean "untrue") The Mystical dimension is the unitive spiritual dimension. Mystical Christmas is a celebration of a spiritual truth that happens to all of us as either actualized or unrealized potential. The Light of Christ can be born, can be revealed in each of us, can come forth if we allow, if we surrender to the longing for this birthing to happen in each of us, whether we be Christian or not. The One Life, that Christians know as the Trinity, the "I AM" Source of all existence, known by countless other names in other traditions, wants to be manifest and lived, consciously and intentionally in our own life.

Hence the goal of the spiritual life, the goal of religious practice, is not to simply venerate the historical events of Yeshua of Nazareth, or proclaim our tribal and group affiliation with this historic personage. The purpose of our life is bring forth, to actualize the same Light that Christians know as Christ in the life and humanity that is the human vessel of our own brief life on this earth. In this way the liturgical celebration of Advent and Christmas carries therefore deep significance. The historical event and the mystical process are joined in us and in the moment to moment choice we make to be present and open in presence and adoration to Divine Light and to offer the gift of our human self, our human will and faculties to this same Light and Love who wishes to be born and live fully in us. The goal of the Christian journey is not primarily to venerate the historical Jesus but to birth and live the mystical Christ-Christosis.

Christmas Peace and Blessings to All,
Bill Ryan

Who am I? What am I doing?

My Dear Friends,

It has been two and a half months since my last post. This time has been a revelation to me again of the depth of my vulnerability and has brought me home to a semblance of humility about who I am and my nature in this world. To be human is to develop attachments, to desire and to cling to what is seen as safe and pleasant and to avoid what is seen as fearful or unsafe. I am no different. To change households after 17 years reveals the depth of these attachments, and confronts me with the inevitability of seeing each one. Some are old, and take the form of fears and manifestations of psychological anxiety forms. Some are new and show me my aging and my mortality, and my physical diminishment.

To place oneself in the process of moving, of selling one's home and buying another is to place the control and outcomes in the hands of others. As if I ever really had control over outcomes. Again I am reminded that I can only be with the River of human life, the best I can, and to make my self-offering such that I can be present and swim in the River of Divine Life as it flows through our own. There are moments when you can do nothing, nothing except, Breathe Yeshua. More than ever I know that to live my life is to Breathe Yeshua in this moment and the next, ceaselessly to offer the best of myself in loving kindness and to abide in His Presence ceaselessly, returning home again and again. Yeshua is My home.
With deep bows and ceaseless offering,
Bill Ryan

Yeshua is Coming

"Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know when the Master of the House will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockrow, or at dawn, or else He may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: 'Keep awake!" Mark 13:35-37

"Yeshua says, I am the Light shining upon all things. I am the sum of everything, for everything has come forth from me, and towards me everything unfolds. Split a piece of wood and there I am. Pick up a stone and you fill find me there." logon 7- Gospel of Thomas

These two scripture readings address the question of our posture toward Christ. Sadly in the religious education of many, the question of this posture is one of loyalty and external affiliation to the correct religious ideology and institution as proof of one's alignment on the "right" side of history when Jesus comes in the second coming or the parousia. For many this is a fear based proposition, a kind of "hedging" of bets or religious life insurance. It presents Jesus as a pathetic authority figure whose sole concern seems to be your unquestioning loyalty rather than the state of your commitment and transformation in the life of love and service. This is the state of conventional religious consciousness.

Here we see two important things. In the first reading Yeshua is the "Master of the house." The house is the self. The Master is the Life that animates the self. To see this from an esoteric and mystical understanding then is to see that we are invited to a state of spiritual attentiveness and receptivity at all times so we will be receptive and open and awakened to Christ's presence within us bursting forth. He is the bridegroom of the soul, the Fire of the Heart or true spirit.

The second reading is much more deliberately focused on the interior life. Here Yeshua's message is clear that the revelation of his true nature depends entirely on the state of our receptivity. Hence real spiritual practice is the cultivation of this receptivity, not by adding anything but an awakened attention to the Light that manifests in all things. When we open to the true essence or Light in each moment of every day life, in animate and inanimate things, we open to the Light of Yeshua's essence. They are the same. Hence the mystics have always said, our true nature is Christ. And the journey of a lifetime is one of Christosis, becoming Christ in all things.

If the praxis of this interior life of communion with Christ were the focus of religious denominations they would cease to be interested in the power and the standing that comes from being an "intermediary" and instead be a companion. They would understand that the "second coming" of Christ is this moment and the next. The true measure of life would then be our capacity for loving kindness in the world rather than the purity of our loyalty to religious institutions and our deference to their ideologies and pretensions of authority.

Many blessings,
Bill Ryan
cmpnwtr@earthlink.net

Being Naked

"His students asked him. When will you manifest your self to us? How long will it be before we see you as you truly are? Yeshua replied, " On the day you strip yourself naked like those little children and take your clothes off and trample them on the ground under your feet without shame, then you will be able to look upon the son of the Living One without fear." Logon 37- Gospel of Thomas

Friends,

Yeshua uses the metaphor of wearing clothes and being naked to draw our attention to something quite simple but essential in the spiritual life. Persons begin the spiritual journey or a spiritual practice to answer some basic questions in life. Primary among them are "Who are we, where do we come from, where are we going?" If you answer the first question, you answer them all. Yeshua's students are saying, "show us your true nature." Yeshua responds by saying, "you will see my true nature as you uncover your own. They are the same." The Christian mystics say that Christ is our true nature, our true self. The primary paradigm of spiritual development in Eastern Christianity is that of Christosis, the transformation of our soul, our humanity from the inside out, in becoming Christ.

The process of this transformation is one of uncovering, of divestiture of the levels of false identity that we have cultivate in our life. The clothes we wear are the personas we create, the identities we mold in order to find survival and success in life. When we become identified and give our life to these self-creations we commit a life oppressing idolatry and become unable to experience our True Life, our true nature. This divestiture is not a comfortable thing. Often it happens when some support, or some identity we have created is lost or taken from us. Welcomed or not in aging, in sickness, and in death we will be divested and naked. We can throw off our clothes in freedom and joy or be stripped in fear and shame. In the Way of the Heart we learn the freedom of kenosis and releasing our burden of self.

A part of the purpose of taking an extended retreat such as this one, is to "strip' voluntarily from the attachments and the identities that have held one's life together. This is the second time in my life I have voluntarily left my professional career and identity. To leave it brings up an insecure feeling. In a previous extended retreat I had repetitive dreams of being naked in public and trying to hide. Yet here Yeshua is asking us to tread these identities under our feet, these protections from the world, without shame, without trying to hide. This is a new freedom, a new trust that the Life that we are, and the Life that holds us into being, is the Life to which we truly belong and find our home. It is total gift, we can not be undeserving, we can receive it and be glad, and Live this nakeness of our true being in joy. In this joy we recognize Yeshua and we recognize who we are, in our origin and Source, in our manifestation in this transitory life and in our end and new beginning at the end of this life. In the unveiling of the Glory that is Christ we unveil the Glory that abides also within us in our true nature. May we learn to uncover and live this Glory.
Blessings to all,
Bill Ryan
cmpnwtr@earthlink.net

The Way of Remembrance of God

Friends,

I heard a few years ago what is reportedly a true story. A young couple brought home their new born second child. On the first night at home, they awoke to hear their oldest daughter, now three, approach the crib of the infant in the nursery. She peered into the face of her young brother and said, "Tell me about God, I've almost forgot."

Now this is an endearing story but it speaks a profound and simple truth. The experiential knowledge of God, what the Greeks called "gnosis," and the Hebrews called "da'ath," is what we already possess. In Christianity and in the Semitic mystical origins of Christianity "remembrance" is the essence of all prayer and worship. The word used in the Middle East mystical traditions, whether they be Jewish, Christian, or Islamic, is "Remembrance" or "Anamnesis" (the Greek word). If we possess the knowledge of God in the Heart then there is an understanding that our origin and end is God, God is our Home, always was and always will be in eternity. By inference then the real adversary in our spiritual work is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness of our true nature and our origin and belonging is the source of every spiritual ill in the human condition. To Wake Up!! is then our task in remembering. We are admonished again and again by the Yeshua of scripture to be awake, because the "bridegroom comes." This is falsely understood by some as an apocalyptic reference. Rather it is the practice of 'every moment' unceasing prayer of remembrance, of cultivating spiritual attention and listening to the Heart of Christ beating in our own Heart or Spirit.

To wake up from the unconsciousness of our soul captivated in the ego-mind it is necessary therefore to cultivate a spacious interior silence the ancients called Hesychia. This spacious silence happens as we learn to observe and release from the traffic of the ego-mind and sink into and abide in the interior silence and Presence of the Heart. Prayer of the Heart as a process then, is "observing the mind, abiding in the Heart." In this abiding we began to recognize we are Home, and our inner ear of the Heart is listening more and more to the Heartbeat of the Universe, the Heart of Christ within us. As we listen, we attune our soul, our consciousness, our will to this deep, deep, and Life-giving Heartbeat. Our soul, every aspect of our humanity then becomes an expression of this Inner Heartbeat of Christ. This is Christosis, becoming Christ and we are all the Beloved Disciple with our cheek resting on the breast of Christ. We are Home, and we are remembering who we are, and the Life pouring forth from that Great and Universal Heart that upholds and sustains us.
Many blessings to all,
Bill Ryan
cmpnwtr@earthlink.net

Being on the Way

Friends,

The early followers of Yeshua were called people of the Way. It's a pity that present day followers don't have the same understanding. In Chinese spiritual tradition the Tao, or the Way, is both the Divine Mystery and the path. In Semitic Eastern Christianity, Christ is both the Divine Mystery manifest in the world, and the Way into that Mystery, the Way we participate in the Mystery.

Inevitably students of mine, as I have done in times past, ask if they shouldn't be having experiences, or noteworthy steps of attainment in the course of their years of practice of Prayer of the Heart. I can only say what I tell myself. There is nothing to be attained, and no separate person to attain it. The goal is the process, participation in the Way. The flow of the Christ Life in our Life is the Way. And we can either unite ourselves in it, in our awakened attention and in our self-offering surrender, or we can resist it, attempt to deny it or flee from it. Clearly having come a certain way, there is only one choice but to say "Yes". Saying Yes is what we can do. We may not be saints, we may not be illumined mystics, but we can continually say "Yes." And quite simply there is nothing else to do.

I awake in the morning. I drink my morning tea and look at the goldfish. They are awake, they are swirling around in their space. As thoughts of the day ahead begin to form, I can return to here and now as I am about to enter my prayer space. Yes, I can do this. I can sit and be present. I can be in Remembrance of the Way, of the appearance of Christ in me, in the world. I can shake off forgetfulness, here and now, and keep returning. This I can do. I can enter the Way, and return, again and again, without ceasing. This is the Great Way of Yeshua. We can do this!
Many blessings on your day,
Bill Ryan
cmpnwtr@earthlink.net

The Edge

Friends,

A master of the spiritual journey is the African American mystic, Howard Thurman, who was reportedly a spiritual guide to Martin Luther King and many other prophets of our time. In the collection of writings Meditations of the Heart he has a short paragraph reflection called "The Growing Edge." He is speaking about that spatial zone in our life when we are most open to growth. He says, "Look well to the Growing Edge. All around worlds are dying and new worlds are being born..." Life brings change to us, and the path of growth is the open hand, which releases and receives and releases and receives. And it is the moment when there is space that new life can come, especially when we have reached the end of our limits. He states it eloquently this way, "It is the extra breath from the exhausted lung, the one more thing to try when all else has failed, the upward reach of life when weariness closes in upon all endeavor." The retreat experience is an attempt to deliberately place one in this space of the "growing edge.' The spiritual writer, Richard Rohr, calls this "liminal space." Whether a short or a year long retreat, the schedule and the discipline is such to move into liminal space. The hours of formal silent sitting practice are increased, the external sources of social and emotional support are severely limited. The role of being "hermit" wears thin, the romance leaves quickly. There is just you and your practice, nothing to divert you, nothing to excuse you. There is only Breathing Yeshua, nothing else. And one moves into an emptiness that is the liminal space of growth, when what is essential can be revealed. There is no reward system, there is no quid pro quo, the bowing and offering are itself all that is to be found and strangely to our ego-mind it is complete, it is enough. This creates crisis for the ego that continually seeks reward, living in the world of self and other. The numinous world is just ceaseless bowing and ceaseless self-offering. It is its own fulfillment in the flow of Divine Life. To do this and find one's true life is to let Christ live in us.
Many blessings,
Bill Ryan
cmpnwtr@earthlink.net