Die To Your Self; Alive And Alert To Christ

It is an unfortunate reality that there are people who claim that the contemplative life requires special aptitudes and that those who do not have these aptitudes should not meddle beyond their capacities. In fact, the only capacity required from the human side is emptiness. As for God's part, God is free to reveal Godself to whomever, wherever, and whenever God chooses, or at least that is both the witness of scripture (the basis upon which all subsequent revelation is founded) as well as the manifestation of God having done so throughout the history of the church. Die to your self; alive and alert to Christ.

It is true that in order to give our self to a life of passive, open reception to God you have to be mentally and spiritually prepared to do so. But there are far too many who consider this to form a spiritually elite group, when nothing could be further from the reality of the experience of contemplative love that God offers to each and every person. That there are individuals and indeed swaths of the church itself who are thus prejudiced is not just tragic, but sinful. This sin sprouts and grows from the seeds of ignorance and arrogance, prestige and power.

The contemplative life has been described as a war with the surrounding culture and takes place in a person's own inner geography. And it is true that as long as one continues to feel the pull of gravity from the enculturated values of society one will forever be sparring to relinquish the space one reserves for the self over to God. But the simple solution is to just walk away. There is nothing holding you in that orbit other than your self. It is genuinely that simple. And when you do so reality will become clear, psychoses and neuroses will all fall away, and it will come as the greatest relief imaginable.