THE ART OF CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE: How to Listen to Christ “with the ear of the heart.”

One of the greatest blessings of being a Lay Cistercian is learning to use the techniques of the Benediction/Trappist/Cistercian traditions to place myself in the presence of Christ and know I am aware of Him by listening to what He tells me. It is the discipline of waiting without words, an agenda, or extraneous thoughts that seduce one into focusing on Mammon rather than on Jesus. I share with you some Cistercian (Lay Cistercian) techniques that I have developed based on my understanding of Cistercian practices (Lectio Divina, Eucharist, Contemplation, Liturgy of the Hours) and charisms (humility, obedience, abandonment of self to put on the new Christ, making new wineskins).

I find it interesting that, after a lifetime of doing what I thought it was to be a disciple of Christ, the Holy Spirit told me who I actually am, and it scared the Hell out of me. You might think that would be a wake-up call at 80 years of age, but it was more than that. I absolutely dissolved all that I thought I knew about Catholicism, what my decades of faithfully (or so I thought) practicing the paradigms of Prayer cumulatively forged into who I am today, or the prideful thought that Jesus works through me. Ironically, none of that is true, but all of it is real and has led me to recapitulate an iceberg-like topsy-turvy change in what I thought was solid spirituality. I now wish to place myself in the presence of Christ and wait for instructions. When Jesus gives instructions, I try to Do What He tells me. 

What I experienced is what I imagine would happen during a polar reversal. I actually do exist in three separate universes of reality, all one but all different. Reminds you of the Trinitarian template of all reality? A conversion moment happens when you first realize that Jesus is Lord. That happened to me in Eighth Grade in Vincennes, Indiana. When it grabbed me (the only average or lower person of intelligence like myself housed in my young body), I remember thinking that, if I did nothing else, I wanted to “Know, Love, Serve God in this life and be happy with that God in the next.” (Baltimore Catechism, Question 6). I still do. My pilgrimage on this Earth was to live and die in this life more like Christ (capacitas dei) and less like my old self. Over the years, it was not that I was evil (came close a couple of times) but that I set my Catholicism on the shelf and became a settler Catholic rather than a proactive one, who must dig for heavenly gold ceaselessly my whole life to find that motherlode. I got lazy and sat back on the fact that I was Catholic and smugly went into hypernation (Catholicism being only the degree to which I complied with rules and authority that, while good and true, I nevertheless did not take into myself to make new wineskins for the wine Christ was offering me each day.

Seeking to become more and more like Christ, I was accepted by the Abbot of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery (Trappist) in Georgia, to abandon self and strip away everything I thought I knew about the Catholic Church (not abandoning the Catholic Church, like some modern schismatics, but to abandon me and my assumptions, replacing them with nothing except to prefer nothing to the Love of Christ. To do that, I had to learn to listen to Jesus “with the ear of the heart,” as St. Benedict says in the prologue to his Rule. Remember, I am 80 years old, a broken-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit, having had two cardiac arrests (2007 and 2025), a diagnosis of cancer (CLL type) in 2012, and a pacemaker installed.

The quest to “Have in me the mind of Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5) is a rough road, a road less traveled for me, one with boulders that have hurt my feet, since the Holy Spirit shared with me a foretaste of what would await me if I took up my cross daily and walked His Way, trying to drink of the cup that He drank, yearing with an intensity, even in the confines of my house with all my woes, to prefer nothing, nothing to the Love of Christ. What I found was what I share with you. I am not you; you are not me (thank God); God is not us; and we, more certainly, are not God. I used these techniques gleaned from the Lectio Divina session with the Holy Spirit and Jesus, as Magister Noster, My Lord and My God.

What has happened to me might or might not happen to you, but I struck it rich by digging for heavenly gold, treasures that I can take with me to decorate that mansion in the place prepared for me in my Father’s House.

Gold and silver I have none, but what I have that I consider gold, found by renouncing self, seeking mercy and forgiveness for myself and others each day, and preferring nothing to the Love of Christ, I share with you. All of my works, for whatever they are worth, I will give to you, readers and subscribers of my website: https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org. I offer them at no cost (I don’t charge for what Christ died on the cross to share with all who listen, in humility and obedience to His energy). I don’t ask you to use these techniques to do what I do, but rather to become who you are as one who seeks to always dig deeper into the mystery of your humanity and ask three questions: What do I need to know to reach and maintain knowledge of what it means to be human at the deepest level of my evolution? How can I love so fiercely to prepare myself to stand in the presence of Love and just be present, as I have learned to do while on Earth? What is absolute truth beyond the corruption of nature, beyond my humanity’s capacity or capability, where there is only resonance with all that is, not the dissonance in which I had to walk through the minefields of life with the Way of Jesus as my guide?

SIX QUESTIONS: The Divine Equation

The Divine Equation is the result of a Lectio Divina meditation that I think became a contemplative overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, answering my longing and need to know who God is and to prove God’s existence. The answer, it seems, came over seventy-five years, during which I kept deepening my life. I did not know who helped me or why, but an energy beyond my human capability told me that the Divine Equation was the six morphings, or sheddings, of my skins over a lifetime of self-awareness.

These six questions enabled me, in hindsight, to move ever deeper into the mystery of Faith and, as I absorbed it, illuminate my own mystery of humanity. Later, I came to think that all humans had to answer these six questions with answers drawn from their life experiences and choices between good and evil. The Divine Equation had nothing to do with God’s proof or existence, a hopeless Quixotic tilting at windmills that is not possible with mere human reasoning and free choice.

The Divine Equation was Divine because both the answers and the only questions must come from God’s energy to tell us who we are as humans, each one of us. Whatever you place as your answers, which may change over time, is who you are and where you are in the evolutionary chain of movement toward complexity and consciousness (Teilhard). Only you can answer these questions with what you have discovered at your own Center. You won’t know if you are correct until you stand before Magister Noster and see how closely your answers tally with reality. While on Earth, all I have is Faith that the Way is true, Hope that Jesus keeps His word, and a life led in a way worthy of adoption by the Father.

I. What is the purpose of life?

II. What is the purpose of my life?

III. What does reality look like?

IV. How does it all fit together

V. How can I love fiercely?

VI. You know you are going to die; now what?

The answers we give to these six questions —whether you are Christian, Jew, Atheist, Pagan, Mormon, Hindu, Muslim, or none of the above —define who you are and your view of reality—a note. Because we have reason and free will to choose or unchoose any of these ideas, they are fluid and must be constantly addressed to keep them from drifting into rationalism and irrelevance. Life is a process of accumulating what each individual chooses as the answer to these six questions and what energy each of us uses to sustain it each day against the corruption of original Sin. It is my choice that the Christ Principle provides not only the questions for deeper penetration into my humanity, but also the energy to know what human reasoning alone cannot know and to choose what seems opposite to what my free will and human tendencies pull me toward. There is only one Way to move forward: place myself in total abandonment of my reason and obedience to be in the presence of Christ in that upper room of my inner self, then wait, and Do What He Tells You.

SEEING JESUS: THE PLACE WHERE NO ONE WANTS TO LOOK

I. The Mystery of Faith

• Grace builds on nature.
• God’s knowledge, love, and energy (service) draw all things to Himself.
• Must have God’s help to see what human reasoning can only partially “see.”
• Faith informed by reason.
• God gives of Himself (Eucharist) to sustain us, and forgiveness (Making All Things New) so we can start over when we fail.
• Christ came not only to tell us how to love but to show us
• Four Assumptions that don’t make sense in each age
• How can the Church be Holy yet be filled with sinners? (except for Christ and Mary?)
• How can the Church be One yet be so diverse without blowing itself apart?
• How can the Church be Catholic with the same heritage and tradition yet be so individual in meeting our needs?
• How can the Church be Apostolic and yet remain relevant for each age, showing us how to live in a school of Love with Christ as Rabboni?
• God gave humans his only-begotten Son, so we might discern the Way and come to believe in absolute truth, thus beginning to live life at the deepest level of our human evolution.
• Catholics pack for the trip to forever by following the Christ Principle. What we pack in our two suitcases we can take with us to Heaven after we die, a continuation of struggling to see Jesus while we lived in a human temple of the Holy Spirit, but, after death, being in resonance with all that is, was, or will be.

II. DUAL CITIZENSHIP: TWO WAYS TO LOOK AT REALITY

CITIZENSHIP OF THE WORLD – Galatians 5

• We interact with our environment with human intelligence and choices in the mental and physical universes only.
• We take our values from human rules and experiences. No one makes a choice that they think is bad for them.
• We seek to discover meaning and Love through our senses and reasoning, making choices that fulfill us in this moment.
• We make choices based on what is good for us. Adam and Eve chose poorly. Both good and bad choices have consequences.
• The world is part of the Pauline Duality, which views humanity as existing only in the physical universe (base), then developing into the universe of the mind. This uses mental energy but does not produce enough to lift a human to that next level, much less maintain it there.

CITIZENSHIP OF THE SPIRIT – Galatians 5

• We attain the deepest consciousness of our human evolution with Baptism and Reception of Adoption as sons and daughters of the Father and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven.
• From the moment God accepts us, we struggle to maintain that covenant relationship with the Father as individuals, until we pass over to the next life in Christ.
• Heaven begins now on Earth, where we train to experience that higher level of our evolution after we die.
• Jesus is the Magister Noster, our Teacher, Rabbi, Friend, who gives us what we need to struggle in the wake of Original Sin and keep ourselves centered on the authentic Way that opens up absolute truth, so that we can live a life now that begins to pack for the trip to Heaven, after we die.
• We decorate our mansion in Heaven with God with those good works (knowledge, Love, and service).
• The Holy Spirit gives us divine energy to become adopted sons and daughters of the Father and to sustain that covenant relationship while on Earth.
• Satan uses very subtle human weaknesses (Seven Deadly Sins and Galatians 5) to seduce the Church Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and all Laity to split the Body of Christ into factions, resulting in the Faithful fighting each other, rather than being one in Christ Jesus and serving the poor in Spirit.
• The Holy Spirit will not allow factions to cause the downfall of the Catholic Church, even though its members abandon Christ in favor of the Protestant Principle (the individual, not Scripture, Tradition, the Primacy of Peter, chooses their interpretation of who has authority) rather than abandoning false self and the snares of Satan.
• Catholics must get their hands dirty in the battle between good and evil and who has the authority and is Jesus’ choice to lead the Church.
• Jesus came to cast fire on the Earth and divide families (factions are the result of being put to the test and found wanting).

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN –  JESUS GIVES US GIFTS TO HELP US WALK OUR UNIQUE PATH.

• We live in the visible and invisible reality of nature in the physical, mental, and spiritual universes. At Baptism, God gives us five gifts: a. Special glasses to see what cannot be seen and to be able to receive divine energy by being in the presence of Christ and waiting; b. Eucharist, the Real Presence of Christ each time you join Him in the Last Supper as food for the journey, God’s energy in you through, with, and in Christ to the glory of the Father. Food for the journey on Earth and energy to be Jesus in Heaven, where the Food of Angels sustains all the faithful. c. A Map: the Scriptures as a guide to what is true, and to lead a life of penitence and fulfillment of our evolutionary destiny toward Omega. d. One end of the Golden Thread (linked infallibly with the hem of Christ’s garment), a thread which I alone can thread through what I have found to be good and truthful about life, all of which I can take with me to Heaven to decorate the mansion the Father has waiting for those who are faithful. I can thread through sunsets that remind me of Jesus, all the deeds where I struggle to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus but fail, only to use Jesus to make all things new again and again, and to repent of my transgressions and the Seven Deadly Sins that cause dissonance in my personal life. e. The Catholic Church, the body of Christ, to be that blanket of warm traditions that come directly from Jesus to me so that I can convert my life daily (conversio morae) by an act of my will to become more like Jesus and love with all my heart, all my mind, all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. The Church is my mother, Mary, the Mother of God, like St. Joseph, present to guide me if I but ask, like St. Michael, whom I trust will guard my Six, and Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, the source of my energy (Eucharist) and one who stands with me before the Father as friend and with the Advocate, is Omega. Satan tried to distract me from the School of Love by raising heretics (presumed to be sincere) and schismatics (SSPX, and others who usurp the Shoes of the Fisherman because of their pride (Genesis all over) and worship the Golden Calf of their egos. The Catholic Church will never sow factions (Galatians 5) but always unity in, with, and through Christ, to the glory of the Father.
• Original Sin is forgiven at Baptism. We still have the effects of Sin (pain, suffering, hatred of others), but Christ gives us the grace to love others as He loves us. He won’t do it for us but with us. Spirituality takes work to maintain (Cistercian practices and charisms, as I know them).
• We seek God where we are, using God’s own energy (Faith) to make choices that fulfill our human nature and make us adopted sons and daughters of the Father (Belief).
• Disciples are commanded to love others as Christ loves us. Good and bad choices have consequences.
• When you enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you receive an indelible mark on your soul (the sign of the cross).
• You also become a pilgrim in a foreign land. You are no longer of the world.
• All words now have two meanings: Peace in the World is the absence of conflict; Peace in the Kingdom of Heaven is the presence of Love, the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

III. HOW TO ACCESS THE PLACE WHERE NO ONE WANTS TO LOOK?

Matthew 6:5.

Use what is human to see what is. Use what is from Jesus to see what is at the deepest level of humanity.

Seek to go to that place in the upper room of your inner self and wait for instructions in Christ’s presence. Then, do what He tells you. Unlike fishing, you may not know if you will catch anything, but being in Christ’s presence means you made a conscious choice to be with Jesus.

Use the human mind to see a deeper reality (All the Sciences, Philosophy, Religion, Literature) and discover meaning and truth.

Use the human mind and freedom to choose God as your Center. This is the process of moving from self to God: dying to self to rise again with Christ, denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Christ. This is achieved with contemplative spirituality. 

To access that place where no one wants to look, the upper room of our inner selves, where we meet Christ not as He is but as we are now, then, in silence and solitude, wait for what He chooses to share with me. Full circle means I must listen “with the ear of the heart” and Do What He tells me.

I am the tabernacle where the real presence of Christ resides, and as keeper of the keys, I receive each day, as new wine, what is kept and guarded from the corruption of matter. No free rides. Taking up the cross of Christ as my own means that I must actively make all things new each day by creating new wineskins to hold the new wine Christ shares with me, His Body and Blood.

IV. FIVE LEVELS OF SPIRITUAL AWARENESS

Reading the Word in Holy Scripture is not like reading a telephone book (or what used to be a book until the Internet put them out of business). The Word of God is placing yourself in the presence of Christ and listening to the reading with the “ear of the heart,” reflecting on it several times, each time growing deeper into the Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection and how His energy allows you to “Do What He Tells You.”

I share with you five levels of deeper reflection that I use when doing Spiritual Reading of the Scriptures.

I. Say the Word

II. Pray the Word

III. Share the Word

IV. Be what you say, what you pray, and what you share with others.

V. There are no words needed to listen to the Word

V. TWO DIMENSIONS OF PRAYER

VERTICAL PRAYER-The realm of the mind – to know God. Personal Prayer

HORIZONTAL PRAYER-The realm of the heart—to love God. Prayer of the Church

Vertical Prayer- Jesus and I are present to each other in contemplation and the Eucharist, allowing me to tag along as the Son of God, who alone can approach the Father, gives praise, honor, and glory to the Father (the pure energy of Love). I get to sheepishly hide behind the Humanity of Christ, as a child would hide behind his mother’s skirts when introduced to a powerful person, to give my unworthy addition to that of Christ. Vertical Prayer is between Christ, me, and the Father through the energy of the Holy Spirit. Using Christ’s energy, I can pray for others, make reparation for the slothful behaviors I exhibited, and ask for God’s mercy on myself, my family, my colleagues, my fellow Lay Cistercians and monks/nuns, and the whole world, as outlined by Our Lady of Akita. Prayer is being present to the one you love.

Horizontal Prayer – I join my vertical Prayer with all vertical prayers (horizontal) of the Anawim, as the Catholic Church militant, purgative, and triumphant, with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, to give glory, praise, and honor to the Father for the forgiveness of sins. Eucharist, Penance, the Art of Contemplative Practice, the Rosary, the Liturgy of the Hours, Devotions to the Sacred Heart, the Miraculous Medal, Litanies, Novenas, Eucharistic Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, dedication as a Lay Cistercian (for me), or other Lay orders or institutes.

• The product of the mind and heart – love others as Christ has loved us. Forms a cross.
• St. Benedict tells us to “listen with the ear of the heart. (Prologue to the RB)
• Long for Capacitas Dei and Conversio Moriae daily as a mindset to what it means to be Catholic.

VI. LECTIO DIVINA STEPS TO REACH CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE

 A Carthusian monk named Guigo II designed a step-by-step technique to help his monks begin their journey toward making contemplation automatic. I use this technique to the point that I don’t even think about the steps; I perform them habitually. The late Pope Benedict XVI added a fifth level to the sequence, which he called ACTIO, or Do What He Tells You.

1. LECTIO – Reading a sentence or short paragraphs from Scripture (a Gospel reading) slowly several times, pausing each time you read it to reflect for five to fifteen minutes on what you read. Lectio is the Latin for reading, and it refers only to reading Scripture, which allows me to place myself in the presence of Jesus and treat the text as producing Christ’s own energy through the Holy Spirit. Repetition of reading is key here.

2. MEDITATIO – Lectio Divina is not a process to read Scripture but to take the individual deeper into one point or a sentence. Meditation means thinking of what it means to you and how this reading is for you, right now, listening to Jesus “with the ear of the heart.”

3. ORATIO – The third level of depth in the text is to stop the meditation, which is your mind trying to discover a meaning for you in this moment, and raise your mind and heart to God in silent Prayer from your heart. I ask Jesus to still the cosmic noise around me so that I can prepare myself to wait for whatever Jesus wants to tell me.

4. CONTEMPLATIO—The purpose of Lectio Divina as a process of going ever deeper into the upper room of your inner self is to have the discipline of just waiting with Christ next to you on the couch, both of you silent in mind and heart (Be still, my heart.) until He tells you what you need. When I began my Lectio journey towards habitual Prayer (pray ceaselessly) using these four steps, I lasted about two minutes before my mind seduced my heart. As time went on, and I started over and over and over, I began to make the steps one act: all I had to do was be with the One I loved most and long for His presence.

5. ACTIO – The Blessed Mother told the wine stewards to “Do What He Tells You,” at the wedding feast in Cana. Catholicism is about doing, not just filling up time because there is no other option, but activating in your life what you need to “Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5) right now, and sharing it with others.

ACTIO– Lectio Divina without “Actio” means you have not shared Christ with one another as Christ loved us. “Do What He Tells You” is the product of your mystical covenant with God through Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

VII. THE TEMPLATE OF ALL THAT IS:  THREE UNIVERSES, ONE REALITY.

I have written extensively about my conceptual framework of “What does reality look like?” This Way of thinking about all that is takes three dimensions: the physical universe, the mental universe, and the spiritual universe. Together, they form the template for my view of “How does it all fit together,” one step in The Divine Equation (first conversation).

My discovery of this process was inspired by Atheists and Agnostics that I read on Quora.com. They challenged me to discard (abandon) the assumptions I had held about what I considered real and true, and the premise that God somehow plays a role in all of this. Scientific inquiry was a field I found explained what was real using mathematics, physics, chemistry, and logic. For example, when I look out at the cosmos, or the world of matter and its properties, these languages tell me what is true using tested measurements and formulae. All of this is true, with the caveat that science is the discovery of wonder in looking at reality, not a final process, but one that itself exists in movement, in complexity and consciousness, as it picks up bits and pieces and begins to assemble them. Atheism, for my inquiry into the purpose of life, collapsed when I asked myself, “Okay, there is no God. So, what is there?”

When I considered if science answered the six questions of The Divine Equation, my conclusion was yes and no. Yes, because this view of reality, this language of what is, must be a critical component of whatever makes us reality. No, because it only looked at matter and its properties, good though they are, but could not measure what was beyond what a person can see or hear or touch. There must be more. There is, because I did not limit my language just to science, although it must be understood that this is an integral part of the whole; the Physical Universe is the platform for matter to evolve in complexity and consciousness. The Mental Universe, with its exclusive purpose of meaning, using free will and the ability to reason, exists to allow only humans to evolve to that next level of humanity: the Spiritual Universe, one where the only access is the individual choice to choose something quite foreign to reason and painless free will, but one that is the highest point of evolution. It is not dependent on nature for this movement, because humanity does not possess the energy to allow an individual to evolve into this citizenship, which contradicts reason and is “a stumbling block to the Jews and folly for the Gentiles.” Science is a part of how human evolution discovers meaning. Still, it takes more than the language of science, as good as that is, to abandon self to take on the nature of a servant, and follow the Way to the truth that leads to authentic meaning in this life and a continuation of all life’s experiences and relationships in the next level of our evolution, that of being an adopted son or daughter of the Father in Heaven after our human body sheds moral life.

THREE UNIVERSES AND WHY HUMANS NEED TO LEARN HOW TO USE THEM.

Asking the question of “What else is out there that would give a more robust view of why I am where I am, as I am?” I came up with three universes, each separate: the template of all that is, seen and unseen, known and unknown, and how it is itself in a process of evolution, where humanity discovers resonance amid the dissonance of daily living. Here are my results.

PHYSICAL UNIVERSE: This universe is matter, its properties and elements, and how they interact. It exists beyond human control, with its own set of rules. All that exists in this universe is governed by the laws of nature: gases, elements of the periodic table, macro and micro forces, within the context of time (movement by adding complexity and consciousness). All living organisms (bacteria, living cells, animals, even humans) are part of this physical universe. It is the foundation of all that is, interacting with one another according to laws humans have identified so far.

THE MENTAL UNIVERSE: If the physical universe is the baseline and foundation for more complexity and consciousness as it accumulates reality into its collective DNA, then only humans, not animals or lower species, possess qualities that have their own nature, not apart from animality, but evolving beyond it. Two of these new additions to animalistic needs are reason and the ability to make choices independently of our nature but subject to the consequences of our actions, good or bad. Science examines the physical universe using tools developed relatively recently to ask questions and build on what the cosmos might be. It does not do a good job of looking at the human dimension of the interior or the invisible moods or deviations as to what is good or bad behavior. Psychology, depending on whom you follow (Freud, Jung, Maslow, Fromm, Buber, Skinner, etc.), looks at how the invisible interacts with matter. The mental universe is peculiar not only to our species, but, more significantly, to me as an individual who pops up for eighty years or so and absorbs the physical universe’s lessons on the purpose of life, so that I can align my purpose of life with absolute truth, outside of the corruption of matter and mind. I can’t reach the spiritual universe without using the tools of both the physical and mental universes to unlock the mystery of my humanity.

There is only one key to unlock the gates that lead to the deepest part of my evolutionary journey to reach Omega, the highest level of knowledge, Love, and truth I can absorb.

SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE: I spend my whole life searching not only for the keys to a higher level of humanity, but also for the six questions needed to open the six locks of the inner tabernacle of my heart, one no one wants to go to. I enter the spiritual universe by freely choosing to do so, but a problem remains. How do I sustain my choice of Jesus as my Center (Phil 2:5), because as soon as I say I believe, the forces of original Sin and rationalism begin to eat at my conversion? I must tend to this daily to keep my equilibrium. Eucharist is my food. Forgiveness of sins repairs any wayward treks or rotten timbers that hold up my temple of the Holy Spirit. Only with Christ’s energy can I sustain and maintain my Catholic heritage. It is work. I must get my hands dirty.

Characteristics:

• One with three separate components is the template of reality.
• Three separate universes (physical, mental, and spiritual) exist simultaneously, each with its own characteristics and nature. Together, they form visible matter (Physical), visible and invisible reality (Mental), and the bridge to the next step in our evolution as a species; then, visible reality on Earth, which leads to learning how to live in a condition without matter, space, time, or human references.
• I use a template to help me SEE reality in its unique components, yet each universe has a purpose that helps me discover my own. I call it the Rule of Threes.
• For example, I begin by observing that the Physical Universe has energy. I know that because others have described nuclear fission in the Sun, and because I exist in the universe of meaning and the mind. Because I use the Rule of Threes, I look for why the physical and mental universes, each with its own unique energy, exist, and what it means to use that knowledge of those two universes to seek a deeper universe for humans.
• The Spiritual Universe may be invisible to the human eye. Still, I use my human reasoning and freedom to choose to move to that deepest level of humanity, being a spiritual ape.
• To get to the spiritual universe, I think that humans, using reason and free will alone, do not have the energy to make what would be looking at reality and make an opposite conclusion about the next invisible level of evolution, one that can only be entered with help from a nature that is not human nor confined to the limitations of matter or mind.
• The Spiritual Universe is twofold:
• With a kenosis (complete abandonment of all that went before to accept the Rule of Opposites in this universe), e.g., if you want to be my disciple, you must love one another as I have loved you. If you want to be the greatest, you must be the servant of those around you; you enter the Kingdom of Heaven while you still live, beginning to learn how and what to pack for the trip to be with Christ in a universe without matter or mind, but taking with you what Jesus has told you to pack. You die to the false self at Baptism and become a pilgrim in a foreign land. You are an adopted son or daughter of the Father and heir to the kingdom of Heaven in Heaven, your reward for being a good and faithful servant on Earth.
• Having died (death is your human life that is changed, not ended), you live out what you have discovered about the Divine Equation’s six questions with the answers that Christ has given to you through the intermediary of the Catholic Church. 
• We are made from star stuff, but we are also destined to evolve into using what we have learned to live among the stars outside of time itself, with the one who is Omega, the one who has no boundaries of matter or mind.

• Jesus took on the nature of an enslaved person (Philippians 2:5-12) so we could learn HOW to make the jump from merely being human to fulfilling our destiny at the deepest level of evolution possible for our species.
• My books and blogs all have the Rule of Threes interwoven throughout. This is my most frequent template to keep my mind from being seduced into thinking that all there is is just composed of matter and mind.

VIII. THE TEILHARD MAP OF ALL REALITY

I use Teilhard de Chardin’s map of reality as a template for how I use the notions of dual citizenship, The Divine Equation, and the Rule of Threes, among others. This map highlights a crucial view of mine: that all reality is connected, that there are not two universes (matter and mind). Still, they lead to an evolution of the deepest part of being human, the spiritual universe, all working together in harmony to move in complexity and consciousness toward a predetermined Omega.

Figure 1 Teilhard’s View of Reality in Motion

This big picture of human evolution brings into focus the Father as creator and sustainer of matter, the Son as taking matter and adding not just human meaning but the opportunity to move in complexity and consciousness toward the fulfillment of human nature, being an adopted son or daughter of the Father and a friend of Jesus the Son. To sustain this evolutionary glide path, the Holy Spirit helps both the Catholic Church and each one of its individuals (all individuals) to have the energy to move from humanity to that next level, while still living in the world, one of dual citizenship, but one which is also substantially more sophisticated than being a spiritual ape. We inherit the kingdom in Heaven after we die, but all Catholics must follow the teachings of the Master Rabbi (Magister Noster) to see life on Earth through those new glasses Christ gives us at Baptism.

 IX: What do you see? Three levels to dig for heavenly gold on Earth.

Because the Rule of Threes is so important in how I look out on each day, trying with all my might to convert myself to more Jesus and less my false self, hooked as it is with the Seven Deadly Sins, to my earthly body, I have developed a technique using just one photo, but looking at it three times: first time just with the eyes of matter and its properties; secondly, looking at that same image but asking the question: What do you see? This is just what my humanity sees in the photo as meaning, leaving out God and any religious interpretation.

Lastly, one more time, the question: What do you see, this time adding in what your religious background suggests, but with an important twist: Ask Jesus to share with you what He sees and then Do What He Tells You.  Plus, look at it for a timed fifteen minutes without losing focus, just allowing Christ to whisper to you.

The Holy Spirit has deemed it to share more techniques with me using spiritual energy, not my own. These are the ones that I use most often. Take them and Do What He Tells You.

Copyright. Michael F. Conrad, Ed.D. The Center for Contemplative Practice. All Rights Reserved.