Readings week of August 18th.

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Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, August 18th

Reading: "The practice of meditation is indeed an authentic experience of dying to self ... it is like a "mini-death," at least from the perspective of the ego ... We let go of our self-talk, our interior dialogue, our fears, wants, needs, preferences, daydreams, and fantasies. These all become just "thoughts," and we learn to let them go. ... In this sense, meditation is a mini-rehearsal for the hour of our own death, in which the same thing will happen. There is a moment when the ego is not longer able to hold us together, and our identity is cast to the mercy of Being itself. This is the existential experience of "losing one's life." …

"Just as in meditation we participate in the death of Christ, we also participate in [Christ's] resurrection. At the end of those twenty minutes or so of sitting, when the bell has rung, we are still here! For twenty minutes we have not been holding ourselves in life, and yet life remains. Something has held us and carried us. And this same something, we gradually come to trust, will hold and carry us at the hour of our death. To ... really know this is the beginning of resurrection life.” ― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

Chant: O Mercy, I entrust myself to you, that I may be transformed – Suzanne Toolan RSM & Catherine Regan

Tuesday, August 19th

Reading: “There is something so mysterious about how we unfold out from Origin… What the ego self is indispensable for is agency, is for the manifestation of the way in which we can serve. And this is the level at which the questions about being voiced or unvoiced or systematically oppressed are really addressing themselves, and they need to be addressed there because the ego well pruned and honed becomes the tool by which we express and manifest the ways in which our identity serves the whole. The whole theory that the way you get to be realized and non-dual is to destroy your ego is frankly bullshit. 

"It develops really kind of infantilized beings that may have a great beautiful dose of essence but without the sense of agency to actualize the force that goes and creates. So once we get that clear, then we have a lot more room to play with because what we can do in one regard is in situations where oppression is happening clearly and injustices being created where people are not being given opportunity to develop agency you can draw on the power of being, of identity to help strengthen agency. 

"A lot of people go ‘well no I have to have an ego first before I can transcend it,’ that's linear thinking. Actually you have both and you use them to leverage one another… It's the work in prayer that can begin nowadays that creates that source of confidence that cuts through the inherent anxiety of ego and says, right or wrong, oppressed or not, down in the cesspool all day or not, I Am. and I Am by participation as birthright in the Divine I AM and that cannot be taken away. And that becomes the rock of the strength if you can allow people to find that and then out of that strength, which is nonanxious, non vengeful, non retaliatory you then learn to deliver the karate chop that speaks to the oppression.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, ‘Session 11: Work Alone and Identification’ Introductory Wisdom School May 2025

Chant: Slowly Blooms the Rose within – Lynn Bauman

Wednesday, August 20th

Reading: "Thomas Keating fully recognizes the witnessing function, of course, even though he does not identify it by that name. When he speaks in one of his Spiritual Journey videos' about how contemplative practice allows a person to view life's inevitable emotional upsets like "a second-rate movie"--”You can just walk out!"--he is describing precisely the ordinary domain of witnessing practice. Whatever it is that allows us to take a step back from the vicious circle of reactions, commentaries, and attractions/aversions that keep us glued to false self programs for happiness" in fact unfolds within the sphere of witnessing. Functionally, Keating's metaphor of walking out of the movie covers exact the same territory that Eckhart Tolle describes as the emergence from “ordinary unconsciousness" into "awareness of being": “What I call ordinary unconsciousness means being identified with your thought processes and emotions, your reactions, desires, and aversions. It is most people's normal state. In that state you are run by the egoic mind, and you are unaware of Being.”

"Awareness of Being" is what witnessing is fundamentally all about. And whether this Being is experienced as an "it," a "who," or a more indescribable sense of inner positioning…, most the great spiritual paths insist that without some fluency in inner observation, we will never move beyond the egoic, narrative self with its endless stories that most of us mistake for the seat of our personal selfhood. In fact, "the unobserved mind" is “Tolle's succinct definition for egoic selfhood itself.”  Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer, p.78-79

Chant: Come into being as you pass away — The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West

Thursday, August 20th

Reading: “In this flattened, disorganized culture and society that we see spinning almost out of control towards entropy, toward the breaking down of things that were organized in the isolation and polarization. There is a need to constitute, collectively, a rising force that takes those virtues that we know belong to the face of humankind, and lifts them up, collects them, consolidates them, and offers them back into the whole.

"I've become more and more sure over the course of this winter that the post of wisdom and seekers of wisdom in this time is to somehow, collectively, become that rising force to begin to turn the tide of despair and chaos that's affecting our planet. Not because we feel happy, not because we feel personally Pollyanna-ish uplifted, not because we are receiving anything that makes us happy, but because we know that it is our post to do so, and we know that we can do so.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, Eucharist Celebration, Introductory Wisdom School May 2025 

Chant: With you is the well of life and in your light we see light – Susan Latimer

Friday, August 22nd with Faye

Reading:

Each of us has an ever-faithful

companion-presence.

"Something that is always with us.

“Something that helps us live with

inner integrity and depth,

to see through the outer coverings

of others and of the world

to their purpose and core being,

and to get over placing ourselves

at the center of everything.

“This companion-presence

is Silence.

"It never goes away.

We go away from it,

become distracted and forgetful,

and lose the manners needed

to nurture companionship with it...

“If we drop into quietness

just for a moment,

we feel the presence

of Silence as an

invitation.

"The center of our bodily being

is the organ for receiving

this invitation from

the Silence.

“As we enter the mystery of Silence,

its presence resonates

throughout the fibers of our flesh,

while extending beyond the flesh

to the soul inwardly and

to the cosmos outwardly.

“Our body’s center is

the necessary meeting point

where the inward Silence of solitude

meets up with the great Silence

of Cosmic Wisdom."

— Robert Sardello, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness

Chant: I Am Within You — Faye Cox

Saturday, August 23rd with Faye

Reading: "The peace in my heart changes the world.

"I believe world peace is possible, even in the presence of strife and conflict. In prayer, I find eternal, changeless calm. I commune deeply with the peaceful presence expressing in and through me and every other person on earth. As each of us embodies more and more of our spiritual natures, our thoughts and actions become synchronized more easily and more harmoniously with divine life, love, and peace.

"If members of the human family created the state of the world as it is now, then we must also have the power to make new and better choices. I imagine peace radiating from me and like-minded others, creating ripples of harmony throughout the world. I imagine this healing, loving energy blessing all the world." — the Daily Word

Chant: Peace, Salaam, Shalom — Faye Cox

Sunday, August 24th 

Reading: "Look around you, love. Slowly. Do you notice this sunset? It's the only one you'll ever see. Tomorrow, you'll see another one when you come to this edge—but then it will be another sunset, incalculably different from the ones you've already seen. Such is the miracle and wonder of the world. Everything moves, nothing stays or congeals long enough to ever be fixed into being. Everything is caught in the trance of becoming.”– Bayo Akomolafe, These Wilds Beyond Our Fences

Chant: Come into being as you pass away — The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West 

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