Our commitment to spiritual practice.

Any practice that fosters the remembrance and ongoing awareness of the Great I AM, God, the Ultimate Mystery, dwelling within the depths of our very own being and animating the particular I am that is me, could be considered a spiritual practice.

It is our commitment to such spiritual practices on a regular basis that reinforces our experience of this deep inner knowing stabilizing, us in this reality more and more. Over time, as Cynthia Bourgeault and many other Wisdom teachers have said, this place where our deepest Self resides is not merely a place our egoic sense of self visits only to return back to the surface. It becomes the selfhood from which we live and return to after moments of being overcome by our ego. It is this I am Self, rooted in and animated by the Great I AM, in which the ego and personality can become rooted and from which they begin to be animated.

We begin to sense ourselves as much more than the identifications of the latter ("I am this or that"), without having to reject them. The false and incongruent ways we try to reveal ourselves to others in order to meet a perceived lack no longer satisfy and begin to fall away, allowing our most real sense of Self to continue to be strengthened. As this process unfolds, we become able to serve to the whole ray of creation, especially in service to the transmission of the more subtle substances of love, humility, compassion, kindness, courage, stability, and so much more.

With Love,

Heather

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Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, July 28th

Reading: “Mystics… believe that there is a space within us to which other people cannot gain access, and which the considerations of the super-ego cannot reach or affect. This is the quiet space, the realm of quietude, where God himself dwells in us. Where God lives within us other people can have no power over us. Mystics believe that every single one of us has such a space deep inside him or her. Many people, however, never realize that they have this area within them, because they are cut off from it by a stratum of rubbish and rubble. This is a layer packed with worries and problems, thoughts and plans, that have intervened between their conscious minds and their real selves. The way to that inner area of silence is the way of prayer and meditation.” — Anselm Gruen

Chant: “Stillness, deep deep within us. From small beginnings it flows into the living waters. The ocean of God, through our stillness, God moves.” – words of Gerard Guiton from Stillness, p. 23, put to chant by Paulette Meier

Tuesday, July 29th

Reading: "In the Gospel according to John, Jesus says that those who believe "will have rivers of living water flowing from their inmost heart" (John 7:38). And there is a source in me that never dries up: the ever-flowing spring of the Holy Spirit. To sense it, I can breathe out and, as I do so, imagine myself penetrating the layers of rubbish and waste that I have deposited over this source, until I come to the first unmistakable evidence of this pure spring in the depths of my soul, and sense it forcing its way through and cleansing the troubled waters of my confused emotions, until I am inwardly refreshed.” — Anselm Gruen

Chant: “Stillness, deep deep within us. From small beginnings it flows into the living waters. The ocean of God, through our stillness, God moves.” – words of Gerard Guiton from Stillness, p. 23, put to chant by Paulette Meier

Wednesday, July 30th

Reading: “In this inner space I begin to sense who I really am. There I come into contact with my own self. Where God dwells within me, [God] liberates me from the power of human beings: from their complaints and expectations, from their judgements and the yardsticks by which they measure my competence and worth. There [God]  frees me from the packaging of false images and prejudices others have left me in, or that I have so assiduously wrapped round my real self.

“God liberates me to experience my very own self. I am more than my life-history, I am a unique image of God. Within me there is a fresh and untroubled image that God has made of me. This is my true being, as God shaped it.

“Meditation also leads me to my authentic self. There, where the opinions of other people and even my own usual standards of judgement have no validity, I can really be myself. There I can apprehend my divine worth. There, in the profundity of my own self, I am in direct contact with God [God]self.” — Anselm Gruen

Thursday, July 31st

Reading: “I must say to myself: There is a mystery within me that is greater than me. When I withdraw into my inward self I do not merely retreat to the level of contemplating my own past life and my problems. Below that level, deep down within me, is an area of tranquillity and stillness. It is a place where God, the ultimate Mystery, lives within me. I am truly at home where God, the Mystery of mysteries, dwells in this mysterious place inside me. There I can sense profound calm and perfect harmony. I know that there, beneath all the noise and bustle of everyday life, and below all my inward worries and troubles, there is a secure place where peace reigns undisturbed. Evagrius Ponticus, the leading monastic writer of the fourth century, used the image of Jerusalem to describe this secret place, Jerusalem, after all, means "vision of peace." We enter that realm of quiet in order to enjoy the "vision of peace in which a human being can see a peace within himself or herself that surpasses all understanding and protects our hearts from all harm.” — Anselm Gruen

Chant: Sink into the taproot of your heart – Heather Ruce

Friday, August 1st

Reading:“When I enter that stillness inside my being, a feeling of freedom and of trust grows in me. This is no mere outward show of self-confidence, constructed for the world to see, but an assurance derived from true inner freedom. It enables me to enjoy my personal freedom, and to forsake pointless, destructive struggle with other people. There is a space within me where no one has power over me, for it is the home of God. There I am in touch with my own true self. There I am entirely who I really am. There my own true self is safe. It is there that my authentic self-esteem is nurtured and I am increasingly one with myself, until I reach the point at which I am indeed me, whole and entire.” — Anselm Gruen

Chant: “Stillness, deep deep within us. From small beginnings it flows into the living waters. The ocean of God, through our stillness, God moves.” – words of Gerard Guiton from Stillness, p. 23, put to chant by Paulette Meier

Saturday, August 2nd

Chant: Draw us deeper into silence, draw us into you. Draw us deeper into stillness, draw us into you. – Henry Schoenfield

Sunday, August 3rd

Reading: “You must trust that you being the best possible you matters somehow. That trying to be an honest and tender parent will echo for centuries through your tribe. That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will prevent a thread or two of the social fabric from unraveling. And you must do all of this with the certain knowledge that you will never get proper credit for it, and in fact the vast majority of things you do right will go utterly unremarked. Humility, the final frontier, as my brother Kevin used to say. When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or several at once, sometimes; when we are older we take on other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you and I both know men and women who become trapped in the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to escape who they no longer wish to be; but finally, I think, if we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief, that none amongst us is ultimately more vulnerable or rich or famous or beautiful than another; and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and true about humility.

“That is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that this is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love. That could be. I wouldn’t know; I’m a muddle and a conundrum shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.” – Excerpt from The Final Frontier by Brian Doyle

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