Our focus is on contemplative practices for the individual, but the ultimate hope is that this transformation radiates outward into all facets of life to help open ourselves to the greatest extent possible. Here are some of the many available spiritual practices that Christian contemplatives, mystics, and monastics have drawn on over the centuries.
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One would think crucifixion would become easier each time, that one could perfect it like an art – surrendering to suffering with the skilled internal acrobatics of a saint, sinking into despair with fearless free-fall, embracing and shining through shame like an eternal child of the Light.
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One. Two. Three. Four. I declare a thumb war. As Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson sets to square off with Czech theorist Slavoj Zizek on April 18th to debate capitalism vs. Marxism in Toronto’s Sony Center for up to $1500 per ticket, I prefer to think of it as a different sort of dualistic battle: like two intellectuals bickering across the shallow ends of two different swimming pools. Peterson stands in the mystic pool and Zizek ticks from a pool of madness- two things that look quite similar in small doses. Wade a bit deeper in each and neither of their careers would be possible; their own ideas would cease to feel relevant to them.
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Sometimes experiences of what the Zen tradition calls no-mind may come too soon. While I prefer Pink Floyd’s line, and if the dam breaks open many years too soon, Buddhism might talk about this in terms of changes of consciousness: devotion (saddha), discipline (sila), detachment (caga), and depersonalization (panna). The later, panna experience can sometimes come prematurely. Sometimes the subsequent integration is smoother; in my case , it wasn’t.
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Some draw hard lines in terms of comfort zones. And, when we cross those lines, we do, on occasion receive hate mail.
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Stoicism involves looking reality dead in the eye and, in short, knowing the difference between what you can control and what you can’t, a sort of rational philosophy of the Serenity Prayer. The Stoics offer direct medicine for 21st century anxiety.
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Ever since I was young, it always seemed to me that if God were real, if there was any supernatural force in the Universe, then it must also be accessible in everyday life…
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Evelyn Underhill’s classic work Mysticism has been one of those books that I perpetually relish year after year. It was influential in my the beginning of my mystical journey, and it served as a very helpful guidebook in shaping our current class on the Christian Mystics. Every sentence seems to be packed with dense wisdom.
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So, it was a relief to meet Paul Smith. His life and work are an authentic testimony to the fact that one can come into an abiding sense of divine union in this lifetime.
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