A MOSAIC PIECE OF MY LIFE: Making sense of three types of dying to reason and my free will.

In my book, The Three Rules of the Spiritual Universe, I try to set down (for myself) what I have observed about spirituality, using my unique set of experiences. “I am not you; you are not me; God is not us; and we, most certainly, are not God.”

To discover anything about God, I must listen with “the ear of the heart,” as St. Benedict points out in his Prologue to The Rule. Most of my life has been juggling what words mean, such as “God” and “Trinity,” and what it means to have embraced a Catholic Universal approach to the reality I meet each day. What has changed for me during the last year or so (I am now 83.10) is my fascination with how all of these words each have a depth, but that depends on my knowledge, how I have discovered the meaning of love and the whole conundrum of what is absolute truth in a condition of imperfection.

I have used my reason, my free will, to approach these foggy words using the only tools I can, that of my experiences and testing of what is good or bad, according to the template of truth I have selected, SO FAR, as the one which most checks all the boxes of a)What does it mean to be fully human? b. How can I love fiercely? And, c. What truth won’t disintegrate with the next shift of winds of change?

All of this leads me to use my humanity, not to prove God exists, which seems like a dog chasing its tail, but rather to resolve just a little of the three innate longings of my hungry heart. So, I made the crazy mistake of opening myself, unreservedly abandoning everything I held to be true to bring into my wheelhouse assumptions I would not ordinarily entertain, such as dying to self. How utterly against my human reasoning and freedom to choose is that? It is indeed that.

Choosing a Lay Ciistercian Way, one that I have crafted just for me, I now do Lectio Divina as my primary time in that upper room of my inner self, just sitting in the presence of God, whom I have invited into my inner sanctum, the holy of holies, to just sit down together. All I do is wait nowadays.

One of the awarenesses I have experienced is that, when I die to my humanity, I actually move into the deepest part of my humanity, one accessed only by my reason and free will. Again, my free will and reason alone don’t have the power to move or lift me to that next level of evolution. I must trust that something is on the other side of abandoning my humanity. I cannot know what that is unless I leap into the unknown. Yet, in that upper room of my inner self, my reasoning and free will are lifted up by Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. My evolution progresses in complexity and consciousness (Teilhard Map) until it can’t go any further and bumps into a step that I can’t scale. In abandoning or dying to self, I reach out with my hands to grasp another hand that reaches down to me to pull me up to that next level of my humanity, one where my old self makes sense out of the chaos of my earthly existence.

The Rule of Opposites In my new universe of spirituality, I enter through an act of the will (Baptism). I am sustained through daily competition for my attention from that former self (the world) to fall back into my old routines. Here, I haven’t lost any of my humanity but have discovered a whole new universe of reality that requires me to use my reason and free will to maintain its stability as my center. But this universe has its own characteristics and measurements. It is a universe without matter, but it depends on the physical universe to sustain me until my physical body no longer exists. Like the booster stage of a rocket ship, I continue on my journey toward what nature intended. In the spiritual universe, I have found that the opposite is true of my former self. If I want to live at that next level of depth, I must abandon my former self to accept what is beyond believability.

In point of fact, I have identified three such levels of abandonment. The first is my baptism, where God overshadows me with adoption and gives me the tools to use to challenge all that life can throw my way each day.

The second dying to self is that of dying to the Catholic Church as my center and purpose of life. In abandoning the teachings of the Catholic Church and using the Rule of Opposites, I grow in complexity and consciousness in this spiritual universe to an even deeper appreciation of my Faith. Simplicity is the key and awareness that is beyond my energy to produce such thoughts and behaviors to live as an adopted son (daughter) of the Father. It is only when I abandon the Catholic Church to rise to a new level of Catholicism, one centered on discovering what it means to be human, what it means to love as Christ loved us, and the truth that defies corruption of matter and mind, that I can shake off being hostage to all kinds of rules and laws. I give up the Catholic Church like a snake sheds its skin, a natural act so that I can move forward in my awareness of who I am, where I am, why, and what I am. I accept the Catholic Church but seek its fulfillment and use its purpose to help me reach Heaven, now and in the life to come.

The third dying to self is my free acceptance of the Rule of St. Benedict and the unique ways Cistercian spirituality interprets it. This is the deepest level of my abandonment, where I realize what it means to be a disciple of the Master and use those talents I have experienced and the teachings of the Catholic Church that I have freely brought into my inner self to help me be more human and excel at being an adopted son (daughter) of the Father, with the energy of the Holy Spirit. This is not an easy cross to carry daily, but I have all the help if I only sit there next to Christ, in humility and truth, and wait. You can’t image how good that is. I can’t imagine how good that is. All I can say is, “Thanks be to God.”

To be continued…

uiodg