Monday, May 17, 2010

The Practice of Awareness

I received the following in my email from Richard Rohr this morning, and really appreciated it:

All spiritual teachers tell us “DO NOT JUDGE.” For those of us raised in a religious setting, this is very difficult. In a strange way, religion gave us all a Ph.D. in judgmentalism. It trained us very early in life to categorize, label, and critique. It told us all about worthiness and unworthiness. This judgmental mind told us what is right and wrong, who is gay or straight, and who is good or bad. This sort of mind never creates great people, because everybody has to fit into our way of thinking. At an early age our grid was complete. We had decided who fit in and who did not fit in. We fashioned our own little world.


Christianity that divides the world in this manner and eliminates all troublesome people and all ideas different from our way of thinking cannot be mature religion. It cannot see the multiple gifts of each moment, nor the dark side that coexists with it. This mind does not lead us to awareness, and above all, this mind will find it impossible to contemplate. To practice awareness means you live in a spirit of communion; your world becomes alive and very spacious, and not divided by mere mental labels.
(Richard Rohr)

4 comments:

shallowfrozenwater said...

wow, pretty much the same post as i saw on Waving or Drowning? today. you seem to be on the same reading list.
i'm jealous actually.

http://miketodd.typepad.com/waving_or_drowning/2010/05/the-practice-of-awareness.html

Lisa said...

hey Ian,
yep, looks like it was the same. The email is a daily one from Father Richard Rohr, and you can sign up here: http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/subscribe.php

It's the daily meditation one that you would want.

Lisa

renee said...

LOVE this. thank you for sharing it.

Jenny said...

wow! this is amazing! Was only talkign about a similar angle with my SD this week. Thanks fpr the link, I'm going to sign up!