Contemplative Spiritual Reflections
"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. Love is a sacred reserve of energy, it is like the blood of spiritual evolution." ---Teilhard de Chardin
"God is an Intelligible (Living/Loving) sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."
- The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers (twelfth-century Latin hermetic text)
"At each moment she starts upon a long journey and at each moment reaches her end... All is eternally present in her, for she knows neither past nor future. For her the present is eternity..."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"He/She is your being and in Him/Her, you are what you are, not only because He/She is the cause and Being of all that exists, but because He/She is your cause and the deep center of your being... And thus, also, He/She is One in all things and all things are One in Him/Her. For I repeat: all things exist in Him/Her; He/She is the Being of all."
- "The Cloud of Unknowing"
"Religion is not the only means of coming to know God. Nature, spiritual friendship, conjugal love, service of others, art,...-these are all ways in which God calls people to himself. Religion is only one way. There may be personal reasons why one cannot identify with any religion at all. God takes all that into account and provides other paths. Moreover, like the spokes of a wheel, all paths to God tend to come closer to each other as they come closer to God, who is the center and source of them all. For example, it is normal for someone who has taken the religious (spiritual) path to perceive the wonders of God in nature as further means of uniting with God."
- Fr. Thomas Keating
“ “All living things are interwoven each with the other,” said Marcus Aurelius, “the tie is sacred, and nothing or next to nothing, is alien to anything else.” Revisioning, then respectfully reentering, the world is the relearning of the genius loci, the spirit of place, that the ancient Greeks spoke of. It is sensing the divine in nature, as the biologist Rene Dubois reminds us, with that which is divine within us, by the God within. Places where we strike a chord with the music of the spheres, where we display an attitude of gratitude, a reverie of reverence. Places where we feel compelled to ask the land what its evolving story is, where we align ourselves with its primordial energies; places where we can “walk our talk”, where we place the soles of our feet on the soul of the world...”
- Phil Cousineau
“...This is the living Word (Christ) within us. Our faith tells us that we are wholly incorporate in this Word, but we need to know it fully, in the height, length, depth and breadth of our spirit to know it is beyond knowledge. The silence brings us to this knowledge that is so simple that no thought or image could ever contain or represent it. By renouncing self we enter the silence and focus upon the Other.
The truth to be revealed is the harmony of our Self with the Other. In the words of the Sufi poet: ‘I saw my Lord with my heart’s eye and said: “Who art Thou Lord?” “Thyself”, He replied,’ “
- John Main
”Self-awareness is responsible for man’s experience of “life”, “being”, “soul”, “self”, “energy” and all his emotional or affective experiences. It is responsible for man’s “interior life” of being able to look within himself and experience a “spiritual” dimension beyond his sensory body. Self-awareness is man’s experience of having a center in himself, of his being a discrete individual person or entity, it is even his experience of oneness with God. There are many other subtle experiences due to self-awareness or self. In fact, without the awareness “I am”, “I exist”, man as we know him would not exist. As for the true essence of man’s universal human nature, this is “Universal Man”, Man, however, that no individual person or self could ever know so long as there is any self (self-awareness or consciousness) remaining. The true essence of man’s human nature is no individual person or particular being. In truth, the eternal essence of man’s common universal human nature is known only to its Creator and it is solely this “Universal Man” (and not any individual self or person) that is eternally one with its Creator. It is this “Oneness” of the unknowable essence of Man that God revealed as everything Christianity knows and calls “Christ”.
...This spirit is not a soul, not a self or a body, it is also not an “energy” or anything man thinks is a “spiritual” energy. It is because man’s “spirit” is non-experiential it is a mystery. Yet it is this mystery in man that contemplates (sees) and knows God, and is the medium that unites the infinite and finite in eternal life. Where the “eye of the soul” is solely on itself —i.e., “the eye which I see God is the same ‘eye’
with which God sees me — the eye of the spirit, on the other hand is selfless — sees neither subject nor object (self or God). Man often wonders “what” it is in himself that sees, knows and unites him to God, he wonders because he knows it is not his mind, intellect,
will-power or even his self. He only knows this mystery is “that” in him that is most akin to God. St. Paul explained that just as the soul has its own physical body, the spirit has its own spiritual body, and it is this spiritual body that is resurrected into eternal life in God.
...No idea in the mind could ever come up with a satisfactory answer to this mystery, only God can reveal the true nature of “what” remains beyond all self and individuation. Since only the Creator knows the true essence of man’s common human nature, only God can reveal its eternal oneness with God. I have written a book about this revelation, its title being The Real Christ.”
- Bernadette Roberts, “What Is Self ? — A Research Paper” in The Christian Contemplative Journey: Essays on the Path
"The stated premise of this book has been the impossibility of having a true understanding of Christ without first having a true grasp of the Trinity. Thus one must first recognize the Trinity in his own spiritual life before he can ever come upon the place of Christ in his life. To think one can know Christ first and then know God ( Trinity ), is not how it works or can ever work. Those who think "God" ("Trinity") and "Christ" mean the same thing, miss them both and know neither God ( the 'True Trinity' ) nor Christ ( the 'True Christ'). It is only in the light of the Trinity one is poised for the revelation of Christ as the true nature of his ( and everyone's ) eternal oneness with and in the Trinity."
-Bernadette Roberts, The Real Christ
"...Our human way of looking at things is extremely limited. As you begin to lose your attachment or dependence on external things and find out by experience that God is dwelling in you and in everything else appropriately to its capacity, you realize that, as your own capacity increases, God's surpassing presence also increases.
You think of God no longer with anthropomorphic concepts which are basically childish and clearly meant to be transcended. That does not mean such concepts are not useful for a specific person if that person does not yet have the capacity to receive the more refined insights of the Spirit. What becoming God comes down to is to know God directly, to rejoice in the healing of the emotional wounds of our lifetime, and to experience the increasing openness to Oneness with everything that exists, especially other people...The capacity to do this is one of the major truths the Divine Therapist communicates through the practice of interior silence."
( Oneness is Consciousness of God's Eternal Sacred Energy of Divine Love -- All in All... )
- Fr. Thomas Keating, World Without End
”...Hence the aim of meditation, in the context of Christian faith, is not to arrive at an objective and apparently “scientific” knowledge about God, but to come to know Him through the realization that our very being is penetrated with His knowledge and love for us. Our knowledge of God is paradoxically a knowledge not of Him as as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on His saving and merciful knowledge of us.
...” To be in “a hell of mercy” is to fully experience one’s nothingness, but in a spirit of repentance and surrender to God with desire to accept and to do His will...It is in this “hell of mercy” that, in finally relaxing our determined grasp of our empty self, we find ourselves lost and liberated in the infinite fullness of God’s love. We escape from the cage of emptiness, despair, dread and sin into the infinite
space and freedom of grace and mercy.”
—Thomas Merton
”Thomas Merton and the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality:
VIA POSITIVA: This is the path of wonder and awe. Or as Merton begins: “Our real journey in life is Interior; it is a matter of growth, deepening.” Awe is an inner response, an opening to the beauty and wonder of life and God.
VIA NEGATIVA: This is the path of letting go and letting be, of solitude and silence, but also of undergoing grief and sorrow; it’s an ongoing act of radical trust in the Divine. Eckhart calls it “sinking eternally into the One,” and Merton refers to it when he mentions “an
ever greater surrender.”
VIA CREATIVA: This is the path of celebration and creativity, of cocreating with the work of the Holy Spirit. Or as Merton says, it’s “the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.”
VIA TRANSFORMATIVA: This is the path of compassion and justice; it is the way of the prophet who calls us to action. The Holy Spirit moves us not just to contemplate Divine compassion, but to enact it in the world in order to help others. Merton voices this when he
says, Never was it more necessary for us to respond to that action.” “
— Matthew Fox
"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. Love is a sacred reserve of energy, it is like the blood of spiritual evolution." ---Teilhard de Chardin
"God is an Intelligible (Living/Loving) sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."
- The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers (twelfth-century Latin hermetic text)
"At each moment she starts upon a long journey and at each moment reaches her end... All is eternally present in her, for she knows neither past nor future. For her the present is eternity..."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"He/She is your being and in Him/Her, you are what you are, not only because He/She is the cause and Being of all that exists, but because He/She is your cause and the deep center of your being... And thus, also, He/She is One in all things and all things are One in Him/Her. For I repeat: all things exist in Him/Her; He/She is the Being of all."
- "The Cloud of Unknowing"
"Religion is not the only means of coming to know God. Nature, spiritual friendship, conjugal love, service of others, art,...-these are all ways in which God calls people to himself. Religion is only one way. There may be personal reasons why one cannot identify with any religion at all. God takes all that into account and provides other paths. Moreover, like the spokes of a wheel, all paths to God tend to come closer to each other as they come closer to God, who is the center and source of them all. For example, it is normal for someone who has taken the religious (spiritual) path to perceive the wonders of God in nature as further means of uniting with God."
- Fr. Thomas Keating
“ “All living things are interwoven each with the other,” said Marcus Aurelius, “the tie is sacred, and nothing or next to nothing, is alien to anything else.” Revisioning, then respectfully reentering, the world is the relearning of the genius loci, the spirit of place, that the ancient Greeks spoke of. It is sensing the divine in nature, as the biologist Rene Dubois reminds us, with that which is divine within us, by the God within. Places where we strike a chord with the music of the spheres, where we display an attitude of gratitude, a reverie of reverence. Places where we feel compelled to ask the land what its evolving story is, where we align ourselves with its primordial energies; places where we can “walk our talk”, where we place the soles of our feet on the soul of the world...”
- Phil Cousineau
“...This is the living Word (Christ) within us. Our faith tells us that we are wholly incorporate in this Word, but we need to know it fully, in the height, length, depth and breadth of our spirit to know it is beyond knowledge. The silence brings us to this knowledge that is so simple that no thought or image could ever contain or represent it. By renouncing self we enter the silence and focus upon the Other.
The truth to be revealed is the harmony of our Self with the Other. In the words of the Sufi poet: ‘I saw my Lord with my heart’s eye and said: “Who art Thou Lord?” “Thyself”, He replied,’ “
- John Main
”Self-awareness is responsible for man’s experience of “life”, “being”, “soul”, “self”, “energy” and all his emotional or affective experiences. It is responsible for man’s “interior life” of being able to look within himself and experience a “spiritual” dimension beyond his sensory body. Self-awareness is man’s experience of having a center in himself, of his being a discrete individual person or entity, it is even his experience of oneness with God. There are many other subtle experiences due to self-awareness or self. In fact, without the awareness “I am”, “I exist”, man as we know him would not exist. As for the true essence of man’s universal human nature, this is “Universal Man”, Man, however, that no individual person or self could ever know so long as there is any self (self-awareness or consciousness) remaining. The true essence of man’s human nature is no individual person or particular being. In truth, the eternal essence of man’s common universal human nature is known only to its Creator and it is solely this “Universal Man” (and not any individual self or person) that is eternally one with its Creator. It is this “Oneness” of the unknowable essence of Man that God revealed as everything Christianity knows and calls “Christ”.
...This spirit is not a soul, not a self or a body, it is also not an “energy” or anything man thinks is a “spiritual” energy. It is because man’s “spirit” is non-experiential it is a mystery. Yet it is this mystery in man that contemplates (sees) and knows God, and is the medium that unites the infinite and finite in eternal life. Where the “eye of the soul” is solely on itself —i.e., “the eye which I see God is the same ‘eye’
with which God sees me — the eye of the spirit, on the other hand is selfless — sees neither subject nor object (self or God). Man often wonders “what” it is in himself that sees, knows and unites him to God, he wonders because he knows it is not his mind, intellect,
will-power or even his self. He only knows this mystery is “that” in him that is most akin to God. St. Paul explained that just as the soul has its own physical body, the spirit has its own spiritual body, and it is this spiritual body that is resurrected into eternal life in God.
...No idea in the mind could ever come up with a satisfactory answer to this mystery, only God can reveal the true nature of “what” remains beyond all self and individuation. Since only the Creator knows the true essence of man’s common human nature, only God can reveal its eternal oneness with God. I have written a book about this revelation, its title being The Real Christ.”
- Bernadette Roberts, “What Is Self ? — A Research Paper” in The Christian Contemplative Journey: Essays on the Path
"The stated premise of this book has been the impossibility of having a true understanding of Christ without first having a true grasp of the Trinity. Thus one must first recognize the Trinity in his own spiritual life before he can ever come upon the place of Christ in his life. To think one can know Christ first and then know God ( Trinity ), is not how it works or can ever work. Those who think "God" ("Trinity") and "Christ" mean the same thing, miss them both and know neither God ( the 'True Trinity' ) nor Christ ( the 'True Christ'). It is only in the light of the Trinity one is poised for the revelation of Christ as the true nature of his ( and everyone's ) eternal oneness with and in the Trinity."
-Bernadette Roberts, The Real Christ
"...Our human way of looking at things is extremely limited. As you begin to lose your attachment or dependence on external things and find out by experience that God is dwelling in you and in everything else appropriately to its capacity, you realize that, as your own capacity increases, God's surpassing presence also increases.
You think of God no longer with anthropomorphic concepts which are basically childish and clearly meant to be transcended. That does not mean such concepts are not useful for a specific person if that person does not yet have the capacity to receive the more refined insights of the Spirit. What becoming God comes down to is to know God directly, to rejoice in the healing of the emotional wounds of our lifetime, and to experience the increasing openness to Oneness with everything that exists, especially other people...The capacity to do this is one of the major truths the Divine Therapist communicates through the practice of interior silence."
( Oneness is Consciousness of God's Eternal Sacred Energy of Divine Love -- All in All... )
- Fr. Thomas Keating, World Without End
”...Hence the aim of meditation, in the context of Christian faith, is not to arrive at an objective and apparently “scientific” knowledge about God, but to come to know Him through the realization that our very being is penetrated with His knowledge and love for us. Our knowledge of God is paradoxically a knowledge not of Him as as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on His saving and merciful knowledge of us.
...” To be in “a hell of mercy” is to fully experience one’s nothingness, but in a spirit of repentance and surrender to God with desire to accept and to do His will...It is in this “hell of mercy” that, in finally relaxing our determined grasp of our empty self, we find ourselves lost and liberated in the infinite fullness of God’s love. We escape from the cage of emptiness, despair, dread and sin into the infinite
space and freedom of grace and mercy.”
—Thomas Merton
”Thomas Merton and the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality:
VIA POSITIVA: This is the path of wonder and awe. Or as Merton begins: “Our real journey in life is Interior; it is a matter of growth, deepening.” Awe is an inner response, an opening to the beauty and wonder of life and God.
VIA NEGATIVA: This is the path of letting go and letting be, of solitude and silence, but also of undergoing grief and sorrow; it’s an ongoing act of radical trust in the Divine. Eckhart calls it “sinking eternally into the One,” and Merton refers to it when he mentions “an
ever greater surrender.”
VIA CREATIVA: This is the path of celebration and creativity, of cocreating with the work of the Holy Spirit. Or as Merton says, it’s “the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.”
VIA TRANSFORMATIVA: This is the path of compassion and justice; it is the way of the prophet who calls us to action. The Holy Spirit moves us not just to contemplate Divine compassion, but to enact it in the world in order to help others. Merton voices this when he
says, Never was it more necessary for us to respond to that action.” “
— Matthew Fox
Further Reading Recommendations about Global, Depth Ecology and Cosmological - Spirituality:
- Perennial Philosophy; Aldous Huxley (1945, 2009)
- Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God; Elizabeth A. Johnson (2007)
- The Search for Spirituality: Our Global Quest for a Spiritual Life; Ursula King (2008)
- The Experience of God: Being, Conciousness, Bliss; David B Hart (2013)
- Soul, An Archaeology: Readings from Socrates to Ray Charles; ed. by Phil Cousineau (1994)
- * One Mind: How Our Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters; Larry Dossey, MD (2013)
- The Ways and Powers of Love; Pitrim Sorokin (1954, 2002)
- Teilhard de Chardin - The Divine Milieu Explained: A Spirituality for the 21st Century; Louis M. Savary (2007)
- Christ in all Things: Exploring Spirituality with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; Ursula King (1997, 2016)
- The Dream of the Earth; Thomas Berry (1988, 2015)
- The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future; Thomas Berry (1999)
- Journey of the Universe; Brian T. Swimme, Mary E. Tucker (2011)
- Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe; ed: Mary E. Tucker, John Grim (2016)
- Conscious Evolution (revised edition): Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential; Barbara M. Hubbard (1998, 2015)
- The Way of Selflessness: A Practical Guide to Enlightenment Based on the Teachings of the Worlds Great Mystics; Joel Morwood (2009)
- One: Essential Writings on Nonduality; ed. Jerry Katz (2007)
- The Art of Freedom: A Guide to Awakening; Michael Damian (2017)
- A New Vision of Reality: Western Science, Eastern Mysticism, and Christian Faith; Bede Griffiths (1990)
- A Window to the Divine: Creation Theology; Zachary Hayes, OFM (1997)
- The Emergent Christ: Exploring the Meaning of Catholic in an Evolutionary Universe; Ilia Delio, OSF (2011)
- Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness (Catholicity in an Evolving Universe); Ilia Delio, OSF (2015)
("This volume is the first in a series by Orbis Books that seeks to illuminate the meaning and purpose of an unfinished universe, the role of human life in an evolving universe, and the significance of Christogenesis (literally, "Christ birthing") or the emerging, personalizing union of God, human and Cosmos." - Ilia Delio) - The Hours of the Universe: Reflections on God, Science, and the Human Journey; Ilia Delio, OSF (2021)
- Radical Wisdom: A Feminist Mystical Theology; Beverly Lanzetta (2005)
- *Monk Within: Embracing a Sacred Way of Life; Beverly Lanzetta (2018)
- Personal Transformation and a New Creation: The Spiritual Revolution of Beatrice Bruteau; ed. Ilia Delio (2016)
- The Grand Option: Personal Transformation and a New Creation; Beatrice Bruteau (2001, 2007)
- The Point of Existence: Transformations of Narcissism in Self-Realization; A.H. Almaas (1996)
- The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence; A.H. Almaas (2008)
- Toward a Psychology of Awakening; John Welwood (2000)
- The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter; Rupert Spira (2017)
- Christophany: The Fullness of Man; Raimon Panikkar (2004)
- What Is Enlightenment?: Exploring the Goal of the Spiritual Path; edited by John White (1995)
- The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief; Gregg Braden (2007)
- The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality; Michael Talbot (1991)
- The Science of Oneness: A Worldview for the Twenty-First Century; Malcolm Hollich (2006)
- The Dream of the Cosmos: A Queast for the Soul; Anne Baring (2013)
- *Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing The World; Betty J. Kovacs, Ph.D. (2019)
- Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth; Matthew Fox (1991)
- The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine; Matthew Fox (2008)
- Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times; Matthew Fox (2014)
- Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond;; Matthew Fox (2020)
- Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God...Including the Unnameable God; M. Fox (2018)
Spiritual Consciousness/Dimensions and Afterlife Research/Experiences:
- Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of A New World View; Richard Tarnas (2006)
- The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness; Stanislov Grof, MD (1998)
- *Hidden Truth — Forbidden Knowledge; Steven M. Greer,MD (2006)
- Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World’s Greatest Secret; Steven M. Greer, MD (2017)
- *Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters; John E. Mack, MD (1999)
- UFOs For the 21st Century Mind; Richard M. Dolan (2014)
- Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of Near Death Experience; Pinn van Lommel, MD (2011)
- Lessons from the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience; Kenneth Ring, Ph.D. (1998, 2006)
- The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion and Ordinary People are Proving the Afterlife; Eben Alexander, MD (2014)
- *Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives; Michael Newton, Ph.D. (1994)
- *Destiny of Souls; Michael Newton, Ph.D. (2000)
- *The Secret of the Soul: Using Out-of-Body Experiences to Understand our True Nature; William Buhlman (2001)
- Adventures in the Afterlife; William Buhlman (2013)
- Demystifying the out-of-body Experience: A Practical Manual for Exploration and Personal Evolution; Luis Minero (2012)
- Between Death & Life, Dolores Cannon (1993)
- The Three Waves of Volunteers and the New Earth, Dolores Cannon 2011)
- Miracles Happen: The Transformation and Healing Powers of Past Life Memories, Brian Weiss, MD and Amy Weiss, LCSW (2012)
- *Hypnoenergetics - The Four Dimensions,; Peter Smith (2011)
- *Quantum Consciousness: Journey Through Other Realms; Peter Smith (2018)
- The Evolving Soul: Spiritual Healing Through Past Life Exploration; Linda Backman, Ph. D. (2014)
- Souls on Earth: Exploring Interplanetary Past Lives; Linda Backman, Ph.D. (2018)
- Deep Awake: Wake Up to Oneness and Celebrate Your Individuality; Tim Freke (2016)
- Living the Paradox of Enlightenment; Thomas Razzeto (2017)
- Channeling: Investigations On Receiving Information From Paranormal Sources; Jon Klimo (1987)
See the following websites for further developments about the interrelationship between consciousness and spirituality, personal and social transformation:
- ContemplativeOutreach.org
- extensioncontemplativainternacional.org
- spiritualityandpractice.com
- eternea.org
- iands.org
- noetic.org
- siriusdisclosure.com
- scienceandnonduality.com
- lightomega.org
- contemplativechristians.com
- centerforsacredsciences.org
- friendsofsilence.net
- wccm.org
- MatthewFox.org
- cac.org
- newtoninstitute.org
- enlightened-spirituality.org
For more information about Christian contemplative spirituality, read:
* More advanced reading for the mature contemplative on the spiritual journey toward "transforming union" with-in God, the unitive state.
“We have to go beyond all these historical structures and recover the original Myth of Christianity, the living truth which was revealed in the ;New Testament. But this cannot be done by the Western mind alone. We have to open ourselves to the revelation of the divine mystery, which took place in Asia, in Hinduism and Buddhism, in Taoism, Confucianism and Shintoism. Nor can we neglect the intuitive wisdom of more primitive people, the Australian Aborigenes, the Polynesian Islanders, the African Bushmen, the American Indians, the Eskimos. All over the world the supreme Spirit has left signs of His/Her presence. The Christian mystery is the mystery of God’s presence in Man, and we cannot neglect any sign of that presence.”
— Bede Griffiths
”Perhaps this is the deepest impression left by life in India, the sense of the sacred as something pervading the whole order of nature. Every hill and tree and river is holy, and the simplest human acts of eating and drinking, still more of birth and marriage, have all retained their sacred character....In the West everything has become “profane”; it has been deliberately emptied of all religious meaning....It is there that the West needs to learn from the East the sense of the “holy”, of a transcendent mystery which is immanent in everything and which gives an ultimate meaning to life....The Western world must recover this ancient vision of the three dimensions of reality. Then everything is sacred. That is what one finds in India; everything is sacred —- eating or drinking or taking a bath; in any of the normal events of life there is always a sacred action....We have lost that awareness....(There Is) this sacrementality of the universe. The whole creation is pervaded by God.”
— Bede Griffiths
”...Bede recognizes a “sacramentally of the universe,” which everything that exists and all our daily actions are part of. This is what Teilhard de Chardin was also speaking about. How can we deepen our understanding and experience of the sacred in all things and all our daily actions? How can we create rituals that accomplish this?”
— Matthew Fox
”The central idea of the Eastern Fathers was that of theosis, the divinization of all creatures, the transfiguration of the world, the idea of the cosmos and not the idea of personal salvation.... Only later Christian consciousness began to value the idea of hell (‘the idea that the kingdom of God is about life after death or about being saved from hell...’) more than the idea of the transfiguration and divinization of the world....The kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world, universal resurrection, a new heaven a new earth.”
— Nicolas Berdyaev
”...How are we doing in bringing about “a new heaven and a new earth” based on justice and compassion?”
— Matthew Fox
”In the beginning was the Tao. All things issue from it; all things return to it.
To find the origin, trace back the manifestations,
When you recognize the children and find the mother, you will be free of sorrow.
If you close your mind in judgements and traffic with desires, your heart will be troubled.
If you keep your mind from judging and aren’t led by the senses, your heart will find peace.
Seeing into darkness is clarity. Knowing how to yield is strength.
Use your own light and return to the source of light.
This is called practicing eternity.”
— Lao-tsu, Chinese (c. 600 B.C.)
”The reunion of the Christian churches can only come, therefore, through a rediscovery of the “mystery of Christ” in all its dimensions, and this means that it must be related to the whole history of humanity and of the creation... The narrow-mindedness which has divided the Christian churches from one another, has also divided the Christian religion from other religions. Today we have to open ourselves to the truth in all religions.”
— Bede Griffiths
”The call to “open ourselves to the truth in all religions” is an attitude of deep ecumenism. Moreover, Griffith implies that “narrow-minded” Christianity has lost its sense of the “ ‘mystery of Christ’ in all its dimensions”. Until this can be rediscovered, there will be no reunion of the churches. In other words, the Cosmic Christ needs to be rediscovered, for this relates to the “whole history of humanity and the creation”. How might we open ourselves to the truth in all religions? “
— Matthew Fox
”... We must admit, however, the fact, to which history testifies all too well, that obsession with correct doctrinal formulas has often made people forget that the heart of Christianity “is a living experience of unity with Christ which far transcends all conceptual formulations.”... Too often the Catholic has imagined himself obliged to stop short at a mere correct and external belief expressed in good moral behavior, instead of entering fully into the life of hope and love consummated by Union with the invisible God “in Christ and in the Spirit,” thus fully sharing in the Divine Nature.”
— Thomas Merton
”If we as contemplatives are people who are growing in our realization of participation in divine life, then we are committed to giving up identifying with the descriptive self (‘the old, false, ego-centric mind-self”) and expanding in the faith and the daring to accept identification with the true, transcendent self who dwells in God and in whom God dwells. When the sense of identity makes that shift in perspective, then the contemplative breakthrough or insight is present and full. Because of the nature of the divine life as creative agape, the confemplative life, which is a union with the divine life, must be creative. It is the nature and the vocation of the contemplative to create the world in the image of God, as an interchange of loving creative energies, and as an ongoing process of ever-new improvisations.”
— Beatrice Bruteau
”Christ is not only the name of a person, Panikkar claims, but the reality of our own; that is, Christ does belong only to the Jesus of history but the living human person united with God at the heart of the universe. Thus, Raimon Panikkar points to a deep inner center
in the human person with the capacity to manifest Christ — what he calls “christophany.” Christophany makes sense only within a trinitarian insight; that is, only in light of Christ the divine Word who is the Logos of the Father and thus the creative principle of God does every aspect of creation express Christ. This idea is consonant with Bonaventure’s doctrine of expressionism by which everything in creation expresses the Word of God.
The term christophany has as its root the ‘phaneros’ of the Christian scriptures: a visible, clear, public manifestation of a truth. “Christophany stands for the disclosure of Christ to human consciousness and the critical reflection upon it”; each person bears the mystery of Christ within. The first task of every creature, therefore, is to complete and perfect his or her icon of reality, because “Christ
is not only the name of a historical personage but a reality in our own life” (Phil 2:7-11). Christ is the symbol of our human identity and vocation which, in its acceptance and fulfillment, is the union of all created reality in the love of God.”
— Ilia Delio
”Christophany is the manifestation of the mysterious union of the divine, human, and cosmic “dimensions” of reality. Jesus Christ is the
prototype of all humanity. In Christ the finite and infinite meet; the human and the divine are united. In him, the material and the spiritual are one, to say nothing of masculine and feminine, high and low, heaven and earth, time and eternity. Christ is a “cosmotheandric” reality, the reconciliation of the divine and the universe, who calls us to reconciliation, that is overcoming otherness.”
— Raimon Panikkar
”Through years of contemplation and meditation on the mystery of Christ, Bede Griffiths realized that “Christ is incarnate in every person, or rather he is incarnate in the whole universe. For as all are one Person and form the body of Christ, so the whole universe is one body, one organic whole, which comes to a head in the human person ... Christ is the Indwelling Spirit, the Self, of the universe, who redeems it from the dispersion in space and time, and unites all its diverse tendencies in one body in himself.” ... In his view, each individual person has a unique character and is a unique image of God. As one grows in union in Christ in a deep personal union, one becomes more universal. Bede writes, “You do not diffuse yourself, you do not lose yourself as you grow in knowledge and understanding and love — you extend. You do not cease to be a person. You become more deeply personal. Jesus is the most personal being in history, and yet He is the most universal.”
Bede, like Teilhard, saw love as the very nature and structure of reality because the cosmos, created through the divine Word, is a perichoresis of trinitarian love centered in Christ. As Bonaventure and Scotus remind us, Christ is first in God’s intention to love and to create. One who enters this love at the center of one’s soul, enters into this love at the heart of the universe. The evolution of human consciousness toward transcultural consciousness (and complexification of the Christ mystery) is a deepening of oneself in the risen Christ in whom the power of love transcends differences and thus unites.
The import of Bede Griffiths’s works lies in the capacity of the human person for divine life, for the fullness of love and the unity of all things in love. The mystery of Christ is a mystery of unity in love, and only by becoming oneself in Christ does the unifying love of Christ become reality in the world. Dom Bede found this love and thus found the center of the universe within his soul ... Bede reminds us that the life of Christ is our life; the mystery of Christ is our mystery. We must enter into it, make it our own, discover ourselves in it, and make it alive.”
— Ilia Delio and Bede Griffiths
”If Christ is what we are about, then “doing Christ” is what we are created for, making the power of God alive in the universe through our lives. The idea of a God-centered life as the life of Christ in creation corresponds to Teilhard’s notion of “co-creator.” For God, “to create” is to unite Godself in the world by incarnation. God evolves the universe and brings it to completion through the instrumentality of human beings. The human person is called to be a co-Creator—a cooperator with God in the transformation of the universe. Thus, it matters what a human person does and how a person lives in relation to God, for only through his or her actions can she or he encounter God.
If love is at the heart of Christian life in the universe, then “doing Christ” is a reflection of the divine light shining through one’s life. According to Merton, the light within brightens by discovering our true identity, which can be found only in God; it is the initial growth of integration and unity.... As we allow the Spirit to search the depths of our own lives, so too we can begin to search the depths of others, the depth of God that is revealed in the human face. Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, we the gifts of mercy, forgiveness, peace, charity, kindness, which help create us as christic persons. As Christ is formed within us, our vision of the world begins to change. We are drawn from that self-clinging which makes authentic relationships impossible to. real vision.
It is precisely the new unfolding life of the universe that impelled Teilhard to see Christianity as aa religion of evolution. Christ is the evolved, the centrating energy of the evolutionary movement. But Christ cannot be the energy of evolution unless the incarnation is allowed to continue in us. That is, Christ is in evolution insofar as the life of Christ continues in us—humanity and creation. In this respect, the direction of evolution depends on our participation in Christ. It is no longer enough to pray to Christ—to “be saved.” Now salvation means participation in the mystery. Our participation in the Christ mystery is necessary for the fullness of Christ. Christ must come alive in us if this universe if this universe is to find its fulfillment in God. What took place in the life of Jesus must take place in our lives as well if Creation is to move toward completion and transformation in God. We are to give ourselves to Christ and to his cause and values, which means not losing the the world but finding the world in its truest reality and in its deepest relation to God. Zachary Hayes writes, “we are to fill the Christ-form with the elements of our personal life and thus embody something of the Word in ourselves in a distinct and personal way.” Our participation in the mystery of Christ, therefore, lies at the basis of a healing world, a world aimed toward the fullness of the reign of God. This “putting on Christ” through the living out of an agapistic ethics means living in creation as gift relating to creation as family, that is, as brothers and sisters, and treating the world of nature with respect and a healthy concern. Hayes indicates that this evolutionary world can move forward toward its fulfillment only because of our loving actions and not apart from them. He gives a positive emphasis to the role of humans in the mystery of Christ but also indicates that without our participation, creation will not attain its destiny in God.
Christian life in the second axial period must be marked by openness to God not a transcendent a-historical God but the God of history, the God of evolution. God is the future into which we are moving, not a tribal God of some ancient history. We live in a dynamic and unfolding universe where change is integral to the emergence of new life, we should welcome change as the very sign of life. To resist change is ultimately to resist Christ; it is to prevent evolution toward unity of life in the universe. To be a Christian is to be
”on the way,” announcing the good news of the risen Christ through spiritual attitudes of poverty of being, humility, compassion, openness of heart and mind, values that can let Christ live in us and in others as well.
Christology in the second axial period needs a new understanding of Christ, a new way of doing theology, and a renewed sense of Christian life. The vernacular theology of the mystics is the most viable way that Christ can be raised from the dead and become “God for us”—through participation, dialogue, and engagement with the world. Teilhard’s spiritual vision, centered on and rooted in Christ, emphasizes “global responsibility, action and choice in shaping the future of humanity on our planet. He affirms that life is a task to be done, a work to be achieved, and celebrates life as a most precious and wonderful gift to be loved and experienced as a sign of the Spirit who sustains us all.” This is the insight of a Christian deeply in love with God, One who nurtured the mystery of Christ deep within his being and gave birth to Christ in his life.... Teilhard, Panikkar, Merton, and Griffiths are icons of Christ and models of holiness in the second axial period, for they urge us to let go and die into love—to be what we say we are, Christian. They show us that fear is driven out by perfect love. They were not afraid to live as Christians and neither should we be. Like them, we are to seek the hidden God in our world by seeking the hidden God in our lives—living Christ by doing Christ”
- Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution
”Quantum physics should bring us to our knees in the wake of mystery, and meditation may be our most effective ‘technology’ (that is,
contemplative prayer) for curing our illness. For the inner universe shapes the outer universe; consciousness is governed by the attraction of love; how consciousness and love flow, so goes space. What we love or fail to love influences our spatial differences and the between us affects what we become both personally and collectively.
Teilhard was keenly aware of these realities and emphasized throughout his many works that love is our deepest reality. There is an absolute Divine Love at the heart of life, a wholeness of Love completely centered, irresistible, and attractive. This Love is the life force of unity and deeply vested in what life becomes. To wake up to this Divine Other at the heart of life is to admit that reality is relational and God is Love.
Our crisis of soulspace is a crisis of Godspace. If we find our inner cosmic soul, we will find God, and if we find God, we shall find our inner cosmic Soul... The more scientists come to know about nature the more they are confronted by the mysterious depths and complexities of nature; for nature will always elude the scientific grasp. The heart of nature is not another nature but the ground of nature we name as God. Augustine’s famous insight on the interior presence of God can help us make sense of science and religion today. If I know myself better in God than in myself, then I know nature better in God than in the tools of science alone.
We have put all our money on science and technology in our modern age, but we cannot find the unity, happiness, and peace we seek. For these are formed not in the outer universe of scientific facts but in the inner universe of conscious, loving union with God. Only from this inner union can we be transformed in a radical way, for radical action. Science must Open its doors to the mind and the mind must clear the path for Love.”
- Ilia Delio; A Hunger FOR Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence (“Conclusion”; 2018)
”The science of Oneness is based on the belief that everything that exists is one whole, and that the apparent independence of objects, events and processes is illusory. Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to understanding this Oneness that I have called
”the one from the many” and “the many from the one.” The first is the approach of ...modern science (quantum and relativity physics). And the second is more akin to the approaches of mystics and indigenous peoples. The science of Oneness seeks to harness the strengths of each in a synthesis of the two.”
- Malcolm Hollick, The Science of Oneness: A Worldview for the Twenty-First Century
- An Invitation to the Contemplative Life/Thomas Merton; Edited by Wayne Simsic (2006)
- Seeking the Beloved: A Prayer Journey with St. John of the Cross; Wayne Simsic (2012)
- + Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel; Fr. Thomas Keating (2005)
Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation; Fr. Thomas Keating (1992)
Intimacy With God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer; Fr. Thomas Keating (1994)
Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit; Fr. Thomas Keating (2000) - Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations; Matthew Fox (2011)
- Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart; Matthew Fox (1980, 2000)
- The Coming of the Cosmic Christ ; Matthew Fox (1988)
- Stations of the Cosmic Christ; Matthew Fox/Bishop Marc Andrus (2016)
- A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey; Matthew Fox (2016)
- Contemplative Church: How Meditative Prayer & Monastic Practices Help Congregations Flourish; Rev. Peter Traben Haas (2018)
- Centering Prayers: A One-Year Daily Companion for Going Deeper into the Love of God; Peter Traben Haas (2013)
- Radical Grace: Daily Meditations; Richard Rohr (1995)
- Psalms for Praying: An Invitation for Wholeness; Nan Merrill (1998)
- Seven Days of Sabbath: A Mystical Practice For Our Time; Julie of Light Omega (2016)
- The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism; edited by Bernard McGinn (2006)
- Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies throughout the Ages; Ursula King (2001)
- The Big Book of Christian Mysticism: The Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality; Carl McColman (2010)
- All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets and Witnesses For Our Time; edited by Robert Ellsberg (2002)
- The Mandala of Being: Discovering the Power of Awareness; Richard Moss, MD (2007)
- The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey from Anguish to Freedom; Henri Nouwen (1996)
Discernment; Henri Nouwen (2013) - Abandonment to Divine Providence; Jean Pierre de Caussade (1975)
- Contemplation (1982); The Spiritual Journey (1987); Fr. Francis Kelly Nemeck, Marie Teresa Coombs
- *The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice; Cynthia Bourgeault (2016)
- *Path of the Heart : A Spiritual Guide to Divine Union; Beverly Lanzetta (1985, 2015)
- * The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God; David Frenette (2012)_
- * What Is Self?: A Study of the Spiritual Journey in Terms of Consciousness; Bernadette Roberts (2005)
("Ms Roberts' special gift as spiritual writer is her capacity to articulate the ineffable." Fr. Thomas Keating)
* The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center; Bernadette Roberts (1985, 1991)
* The Christian Contemplative Journey: Essays on the Path; Bernadette Roberts (2017)
* The Real Christ; Bernadette Roberts (2017) - * Christ in Evolution; Ilia Delio (2008)
- * The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love; Ilia Delio (2013)
- * A Hunger FOR Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence; Ilia Delio (2018)
- The New Creation in Christ: Christian Meditation and Community; Bede Griffiths (1992)
- Return to the Center; Bede Griffiths (1976)
- The Mysticiism of the Cloud of Unkowiing; William Johnston (2000)
Mystical Theology: The Science of Love; William Johnston (1995)
"Arise, My Love...": Mysticism for a New Era; William Johnston (2000) - Prayer in the Cave of the Heart: The Universal Call to Contemplation; Cyprian Consiglio (2010)
Spririt, Soul, Body: Toward an Integral Christian Spirituality; Cyprian Consiglio (2015) - Silence and Stillness in Every Season: Daily Readings with John Main; Fr. John Main (1997)
- The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation; Thomas Merton (2004)
- The Climate of Monastic Prayer; Thomas Merton (1969, 2018)
- Thomas Merton’s Dark Path; William H. Shannon (1981)
- At Play in Creation: Merton’s Awakening to the Feminine Divine; Christopher Pramuk (2015)
- The Future of Wisdom: Toward a Rebirth of Sapiential Christianity; Bruno Barnhart (2018)
- Immortal Diamond: The Search For Our True Self; Richard Rohr (2013)
- The Divine Dance; Richard Rohr (2016)
- *The Universal Christ; Richard Rohr (2019)
- Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually independent: Sacred Teachings-Annotated&Explained; Rami Shapiro(2013)
- Oneness: Great Principles Shared By All Religions; Jeffrey Moses (1989)
* More advanced reading for the mature contemplative on the spiritual journey toward "transforming union" with-in God, the unitive state.
“We have to go beyond all these historical structures and recover the original Myth of Christianity, the living truth which was revealed in the ;New Testament. But this cannot be done by the Western mind alone. We have to open ourselves to the revelation of the divine mystery, which took place in Asia, in Hinduism and Buddhism, in Taoism, Confucianism and Shintoism. Nor can we neglect the intuitive wisdom of more primitive people, the Australian Aborigenes, the Polynesian Islanders, the African Bushmen, the American Indians, the Eskimos. All over the world the supreme Spirit has left signs of His/Her presence. The Christian mystery is the mystery of God’s presence in Man, and we cannot neglect any sign of that presence.”
— Bede Griffiths
”Perhaps this is the deepest impression left by life in India, the sense of the sacred as something pervading the whole order of nature. Every hill and tree and river is holy, and the simplest human acts of eating and drinking, still more of birth and marriage, have all retained their sacred character....In the West everything has become “profane”; it has been deliberately emptied of all religious meaning....It is there that the West needs to learn from the East the sense of the “holy”, of a transcendent mystery which is immanent in everything and which gives an ultimate meaning to life....The Western world must recover this ancient vision of the three dimensions of reality. Then everything is sacred. That is what one finds in India; everything is sacred —- eating or drinking or taking a bath; in any of the normal events of life there is always a sacred action....We have lost that awareness....(There Is) this sacrementality of the universe. The whole creation is pervaded by God.”
— Bede Griffiths
”...Bede recognizes a “sacramentally of the universe,” which everything that exists and all our daily actions are part of. This is what Teilhard de Chardin was also speaking about. How can we deepen our understanding and experience of the sacred in all things and all our daily actions? How can we create rituals that accomplish this?”
— Matthew Fox
”The central idea of the Eastern Fathers was that of theosis, the divinization of all creatures, the transfiguration of the world, the idea of the cosmos and not the idea of personal salvation.... Only later Christian consciousness began to value the idea of hell (‘the idea that the kingdom of God is about life after death or about being saved from hell...’) more than the idea of the transfiguration and divinization of the world....The kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world, universal resurrection, a new heaven a new earth.”
— Nicolas Berdyaev
”...How are we doing in bringing about “a new heaven and a new earth” based on justice and compassion?”
— Matthew Fox
”In the beginning was the Tao. All things issue from it; all things return to it.
To find the origin, trace back the manifestations,
When you recognize the children and find the mother, you will be free of sorrow.
If you close your mind in judgements and traffic with desires, your heart will be troubled.
If you keep your mind from judging and aren’t led by the senses, your heart will find peace.
Seeing into darkness is clarity. Knowing how to yield is strength.
Use your own light and return to the source of light.
This is called practicing eternity.”
— Lao-tsu, Chinese (c. 600 B.C.)
”The reunion of the Christian churches can only come, therefore, through a rediscovery of the “mystery of Christ” in all its dimensions, and this means that it must be related to the whole history of humanity and of the creation... The narrow-mindedness which has divided the Christian churches from one another, has also divided the Christian religion from other religions. Today we have to open ourselves to the truth in all religions.”
— Bede Griffiths
”The call to “open ourselves to the truth in all religions” is an attitude of deep ecumenism. Moreover, Griffith implies that “narrow-minded” Christianity has lost its sense of the “ ‘mystery of Christ’ in all its dimensions”. Until this can be rediscovered, there will be no reunion of the churches. In other words, the Cosmic Christ needs to be rediscovered, for this relates to the “whole history of humanity and the creation”. How might we open ourselves to the truth in all religions? “
— Matthew Fox
”... We must admit, however, the fact, to which history testifies all too well, that obsession with correct doctrinal formulas has often made people forget that the heart of Christianity “is a living experience of unity with Christ which far transcends all conceptual formulations.”... Too often the Catholic has imagined himself obliged to stop short at a mere correct and external belief expressed in good moral behavior, instead of entering fully into the life of hope and love consummated by Union with the invisible God “in Christ and in the Spirit,” thus fully sharing in the Divine Nature.”
— Thomas Merton
”If we as contemplatives are people who are growing in our realization of participation in divine life, then we are committed to giving up identifying with the descriptive self (‘the old, false, ego-centric mind-self”) and expanding in the faith and the daring to accept identification with the true, transcendent self who dwells in God and in whom God dwells. When the sense of identity makes that shift in perspective, then the contemplative breakthrough or insight is present and full. Because of the nature of the divine life as creative agape, the confemplative life, which is a union with the divine life, must be creative. It is the nature and the vocation of the contemplative to create the world in the image of God, as an interchange of loving creative energies, and as an ongoing process of ever-new improvisations.”
— Beatrice Bruteau
”Christ is not only the name of a person, Panikkar claims, but the reality of our own; that is, Christ does belong only to the Jesus of history but the living human person united with God at the heart of the universe. Thus, Raimon Panikkar points to a deep inner center
in the human person with the capacity to manifest Christ — what he calls “christophany.” Christophany makes sense only within a trinitarian insight; that is, only in light of Christ the divine Word who is the Logos of the Father and thus the creative principle of God does every aspect of creation express Christ. This idea is consonant with Bonaventure’s doctrine of expressionism by which everything in creation expresses the Word of God.
The term christophany has as its root the ‘phaneros’ of the Christian scriptures: a visible, clear, public manifestation of a truth. “Christophany stands for the disclosure of Christ to human consciousness and the critical reflection upon it”; each person bears the mystery of Christ within. The first task of every creature, therefore, is to complete and perfect his or her icon of reality, because “Christ
is not only the name of a historical personage but a reality in our own life” (Phil 2:7-11). Christ is the symbol of our human identity and vocation which, in its acceptance and fulfillment, is the union of all created reality in the love of God.”
— Ilia Delio
”Christophany is the manifestation of the mysterious union of the divine, human, and cosmic “dimensions” of reality. Jesus Christ is the
prototype of all humanity. In Christ the finite and infinite meet; the human and the divine are united. In him, the material and the spiritual are one, to say nothing of masculine and feminine, high and low, heaven and earth, time and eternity. Christ is a “cosmotheandric” reality, the reconciliation of the divine and the universe, who calls us to reconciliation, that is overcoming otherness.”
— Raimon Panikkar
”Through years of contemplation and meditation on the mystery of Christ, Bede Griffiths realized that “Christ is incarnate in every person, or rather he is incarnate in the whole universe. For as all are one Person and form the body of Christ, so the whole universe is one body, one organic whole, which comes to a head in the human person ... Christ is the Indwelling Spirit, the Self, of the universe, who redeems it from the dispersion in space and time, and unites all its diverse tendencies in one body in himself.” ... In his view, each individual person has a unique character and is a unique image of God. As one grows in union in Christ in a deep personal union, one becomes more universal. Bede writes, “You do not diffuse yourself, you do not lose yourself as you grow in knowledge and understanding and love — you extend. You do not cease to be a person. You become more deeply personal. Jesus is the most personal being in history, and yet He is the most universal.”
Bede, like Teilhard, saw love as the very nature and structure of reality because the cosmos, created through the divine Word, is a perichoresis of trinitarian love centered in Christ. As Bonaventure and Scotus remind us, Christ is first in God’s intention to love and to create. One who enters this love at the center of one’s soul, enters into this love at the heart of the universe. The evolution of human consciousness toward transcultural consciousness (and complexification of the Christ mystery) is a deepening of oneself in the risen Christ in whom the power of love transcends differences and thus unites.
The import of Bede Griffiths’s works lies in the capacity of the human person for divine life, for the fullness of love and the unity of all things in love. The mystery of Christ is a mystery of unity in love, and only by becoming oneself in Christ does the unifying love of Christ become reality in the world. Dom Bede found this love and thus found the center of the universe within his soul ... Bede reminds us that the life of Christ is our life; the mystery of Christ is our mystery. We must enter into it, make it our own, discover ourselves in it, and make it alive.”
— Ilia Delio and Bede Griffiths
”If Christ is what we are about, then “doing Christ” is what we are created for, making the power of God alive in the universe through our lives. The idea of a God-centered life as the life of Christ in creation corresponds to Teilhard’s notion of “co-creator.” For God, “to create” is to unite Godself in the world by incarnation. God evolves the universe and brings it to completion through the instrumentality of human beings. The human person is called to be a co-Creator—a cooperator with God in the transformation of the universe. Thus, it matters what a human person does and how a person lives in relation to God, for only through his or her actions can she or he encounter God.
If love is at the heart of Christian life in the universe, then “doing Christ” is a reflection of the divine light shining through one’s life. According to Merton, the light within brightens by discovering our true identity, which can be found only in God; it is the initial growth of integration and unity.... As we allow the Spirit to search the depths of our own lives, so too we can begin to search the depths of others, the depth of God that is revealed in the human face. Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, we the gifts of mercy, forgiveness, peace, charity, kindness, which help create us as christic persons. As Christ is formed within us, our vision of the world begins to change. We are drawn from that self-clinging which makes authentic relationships impossible to. real vision.
It is precisely the new unfolding life of the universe that impelled Teilhard to see Christianity as aa religion of evolution. Christ is the evolved, the centrating energy of the evolutionary movement. But Christ cannot be the energy of evolution unless the incarnation is allowed to continue in us. That is, Christ is in evolution insofar as the life of Christ continues in us—humanity and creation. In this respect, the direction of evolution depends on our participation in Christ. It is no longer enough to pray to Christ—to “be saved.” Now salvation means participation in the mystery. Our participation in the Christ mystery is necessary for the fullness of Christ. Christ must come alive in us if this universe if this universe is to find its fulfillment in God. What took place in the life of Jesus must take place in our lives as well if Creation is to move toward completion and transformation in God. We are to give ourselves to Christ and to his cause and values, which means not losing the the world but finding the world in its truest reality and in its deepest relation to God. Zachary Hayes writes, “we are to fill the Christ-form with the elements of our personal life and thus embody something of the Word in ourselves in a distinct and personal way.” Our participation in the mystery of Christ, therefore, lies at the basis of a healing world, a world aimed toward the fullness of the reign of God. This “putting on Christ” through the living out of an agapistic ethics means living in creation as gift relating to creation as family, that is, as brothers and sisters, and treating the world of nature with respect and a healthy concern. Hayes indicates that this evolutionary world can move forward toward its fulfillment only because of our loving actions and not apart from them. He gives a positive emphasis to the role of humans in the mystery of Christ but also indicates that without our participation, creation will not attain its destiny in God.
Christian life in the second axial period must be marked by openness to God not a transcendent a-historical God but the God of history, the God of evolution. God is the future into which we are moving, not a tribal God of some ancient history. We live in a dynamic and unfolding universe where change is integral to the emergence of new life, we should welcome change as the very sign of life. To resist change is ultimately to resist Christ; it is to prevent evolution toward unity of life in the universe. To be a Christian is to be
”on the way,” announcing the good news of the risen Christ through spiritual attitudes of poverty of being, humility, compassion, openness of heart and mind, values that can let Christ live in us and in others as well.
Christology in the second axial period needs a new understanding of Christ, a new way of doing theology, and a renewed sense of Christian life. The vernacular theology of the mystics is the most viable way that Christ can be raised from the dead and become “God for us”—through participation, dialogue, and engagement with the world. Teilhard’s spiritual vision, centered on and rooted in Christ, emphasizes “global responsibility, action and choice in shaping the future of humanity on our planet. He affirms that life is a task to be done, a work to be achieved, and celebrates life as a most precious and wonderful gift to be loved and experienced as a sign of the Spirit who sustains us all.” This is the insight of a Christian deeply in love with God, One who nurtured the mystery of Christ deep within his being and gave birth to Christ in his life.... Teilhard, Panikkar, Merton, and Griffiths are icons of Christ and models of holiness in the second axial period, for they urge us to let go and die into love—to be what we say we are, Christian. They show us that fear is driven out by perfect love. They were not afraid to live as Christians and neither should we be. Like them, we are to seek the hidden God in our world by seeking the hidden God in our lives—living Christ by doing Christ”
- Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution
”Quantum physics should bring us to our knees in the wake of mystery, and meditation may be our most effective ‘technology’ (that is,
contemplative prayer) for curing our illness. For the inner universe shapes the outer universe; consciousness is governed by the attraction of love; how consciousness and love flow, so goes space. What we love or fail to love influences our spatial differences and the between us affects what we become both personally and collectively.
Teilhard was keenly aware of these realities and emphasized throughout his many works that love is our deepest reality. There is an absolute Divine Love at the heart of life, a wholeness of Love completely centered, irresistible, and attractive. This Love is the life force of unity and deeply vested in what life becomes. To wake up to this Divine Other at the heart of life is to admit that reality is relational and God is Love.
Our crisis of soulspace is a crisis of Godspace. If we find our inner cosmic soul, we will find God, and if we find God, we shall find our inner cosmic Soul... The more scientists come to know about nature the more they are confronted by the mysterious depths and complexities of nature; for nature will always elude the scientific grasp. The heart of nature is not another nature but the ground of nature we name as God. Augustine’s famous insight on the interior presence of God can help us make sense of science and religion today. If I know myself better in God than in myself, then I know nature better in God than in the tools of science alone.
We have put all our money on science and technology in our modern age, but we cannot find the unity, happiness, and peace we seek. For these are formed not in the outer universe of scientific facts but in the inner universe of conscious, loving union with God. Only from this inner union can we be transformed in a radical way, for radical action. Science must Open its doors to the mind and the mind must clear the path for Love.”
- Ilia Delio; A Hunger FOR Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence (“Conclusion”; 2018)
”The science of Oneness is based on the belief that everything that exists is one whole, and that the apparent independence of objects, events and processes is illusory. Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to understanding this Oneness that I have called
”the one from the many” and “the many from the one.” The first is the approach of ...modern science (quantum and relativity physics). And the second is more akin to the approaches of mystics and indigenous peoples. The science of Oneness seeks to harness the strengths of each in a synthesis of the two.”
- Malcolm Hollick, The Science of Oneness: A Worldview for the Twenty-First Century