Richard Rohr on "True, Healthy Spirituality"
One of the most profound pieces of wisdom, I’ve ever read, contained in just one paragraph, by Richard Rohr.
For me, the two correctives of all spirituality are silence and service. If either of those is missing, it is not true, healthy spirituality. Without silence, we do not really experience our experiences. We may serve others and have many experiences, but without silence, nothing has the power to change us, to awaken us, to give us that joy that the world cannot give, as Jesus says. And without clear acts of free service (needing no payback of any sort, even “heaven”), a person’s spiritual authenticity can and should be called into question. Divine Love always needs to and must overflow!
Or as we a quote in the meditation hut at ESI, in Ahmedabad..
“Meditation is inner service, and service is external meditation”
Just in couple of paras, Father Richard Rohr has offered several gems —
The opposite of contemplation is not action, it is reaction.
You do not hear silence (precisely!), but it is that by which you do hear. You cannot capture silence. It captures you.
Silence is a kind of thinking that is not thinking. It’s a kind of thinking which mostly sees.
It is a form of knowing beyond mental analysis, which is what we usually call thinking.
I used to think that mysticism was the eventual fruit of years of contemplation; now I think it all begins with one clear moment of mystic consciousness, which then becomes the constant “spring inside us, welling up unto eternal life”. (also remids me Peace Pilgrim’s metaphor: center-piece of the puzzle which takes your life from “busyness” to “fullness”.)