updated 3d ago
An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation
This allows grace to loosen this ego-knot and opens the way to a more expansive, receptive, far less cluttered awareness.
from An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Justin Reidy added 5mo ago
what is important is the weaponry of the demons: afflictive thoughts (in Greek, logismoi).
from An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Justin Reidy added 5mo ago
Reactive mind is characterized by a compulsion to acquire as well as a throttling need to progress toward mastery. It is what we embarrassingly call our normal way of life, shaped by a culture that feeds on compulsion, consumption, conquest, credit, and cash.
from An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Justin Reidy added 5mo ago
As John Chapman writes in his Spiritual Letters, “Progress will mean becoming more and more indifferent as to what state we are in.”
from An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Justin Reidy added 5mo ago
this “stacked up” head–heart split is not what St. Diodochos means when he says “enlightened by the Holy Spirit in the inner shrine of our heart.” In Judeo-Christian tradition “heart” intends the unifying, grounding, center of the human person. The heart in this deep sense permits no “stacked up” dualisms, which shape our culture and our lives.48 L
... See morefrom An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Justin Reidy added 5mo ago
Its receptivity is not passive. It is a generous receptivity that contributes to the life all round it:
from An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Justin Reidy added 5mo ago
God cannot be an object of awareness, for God would then not be God.
from An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Justin Reidy added 5mo ago
Devotion can certainly play a positive role in the practice of contemplation, but it differs from the silence of simple reverence.
from An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Justin Reidy added 5mo ago
For our purposes we can describe ego as a sort of knot of psyche. This knot of ego gets in the way of our realizing with expanding clarity that there is no separate, isolated self to begin with, for we are all one in God and always have been. The problem is the knot, not the psychic energy itself.
from An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird
Justin Reidy added 5mo ago