Via Practica

The discipline of denying oneself in regard to religious life boils down to assisting ourselves to identify and then to provide encouragement in stopping being dependent upon enculturated, false forms of understanding that which is most basic to our identities. Ascesis is a practical way that helps its practitioners to reflectively to sort out one's true self from one's false self. This means that through practical action and reflection we become less integrated to our social and cultural self, which is the product of mere human will and intentions. Human activity itself in the world has always at least nominally been a response to problem solving and thus reactive in character, most always proffering a human hope that is both seldom clear as well as ignorant of its consequences. In reality, these solutions are not solutions at all. They are merely ways that maintain the interests of those who have figured out how to profit from them, which happens at the expense of most others. Contemplative living, fueled by contemplative prayer, undercuts all of this.