Contemplation and the Divine Therapy
Contemplation and the Divine Therapy
Who are you? This is the great question of the second half of the spiritual journey. All of us come into this world as little bundles of emotional needs, of which we can identify three in particular: security, survival, affection and esteem, and power and control.
Without these needs being met in some degree, infants would withdraw in depression and apathy and eventually die from psychological starvation. Hence the significance of these basic human needs and the extraordinary effect that the providing or withholding, real imaginary, of these biological needs has on the rest of our lives.
The energy that we put into trying to find happiness in fulfilling these emotional needs tends to increase with time. The painful sense of early rejection may be repressed into the unconscious, where it continues to affect how we react to daily life and our adult decisions.
Our experience of life on the ordinary psychological level is normally one of being dominated by external events and our emotional reactions to them. Some of this is conscious, but much of it is rooted into the unconscious. This is the illness of the human condition from which we all suffer.
Daily life constantly triggers events that frustrate our emotional programs for happiness. Then such afflicitive emotions as fear, anger, and discouragement arise automatically. The fact that we experience anxiety and annoyance is the certain sign that, in the unconscious, there is an emotional program for happines that has just been frustrated.
Human nature is so designed that our imagination and emotions work together, like the interaction of the wheels of an old clock. As soon as we start to be upset by any emotion, the imagin ation immediately responds by calling up the pre-recorded tapes that are appropriate to the level of intensity of the emotion.
This is happening to us every day to some degree, from the fairly mild to the very extreme. Our unconscious value systems are often challenged by some particular event or person. Immediately we are in the midst of an intense interior dialogue as well as emotional turmoil.
If we don't reverse the process, that every time that cycle occurs, we are "reincarnated" in the same old emotional programs for happiness and their inevitable frustrations. Is this the way to lead a human life? It is into this situation that Jesus arrives on the scene with his exhortation to repent, to change our conscious and unconscious motivations; to change, in short, where we are looking for happiness. We need the divine therapy.
The divine therapy, like Alcoholics Anonymous, based on the realization that you know where you are and that your life is unmanageable. We may be able to lead a relatively normal life, but ther is no experience of the true happiness that comes from letting go of the obstacles to the awareness of the divine presence.
Spiritual awareness is designed by God to become our normal awareness. To what might we liken our awareness in ordinary daily life? It is like being at a good movie where we identify with the characters on the screen, We may even forget that we are in the movie house.
In similar fashion, unless our selfish programs for happiness have begun to be dismantled by a spiritual practice or discipline, we are not aware that events and people or our plans and memories are dominating our awareness from morning to night.
Suppose that through a practice of Centering Prayer, which prepares us for contemplation, the primary locus of the divine therapy, we take half an hour every day for solitude and silence, just to be with God and with ourselves (without knowing yet who that is).
As a result of the deep rest and silence that comes through such practice, our emotional programs begin to be relativized. They were designed at a time when we didn't know the goodness and the reassurance of God's presence.
The presence of God is true security. There really isn't any other. Divine love is the full affirmation of who we are. Interior freedom is the gift of God as we let go of our attachments and aversions, our "shoulds" and the emotional programs of happiness that we bring with us from early childhood and that are totally impracticable in adult life.
Reference: The Human Condition: Thomas Keating
Articles - Latest
- 3.2 MILLION-YEAR-OLD HUMAN ANCESTOR 'LUCY' HAD MASSIVE LEG MUSCLES TO STAND UP STRAIGHT AND CLIMB TREES
- PIONEERING BBC JOURNALIST STEPHEN GRIMASON DIES AGED 67
- AFTER DEATH: WHAT ARE THE BURIAL ALTERNATIVES TO REST IN PEACE?
- THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL REVIEW – THE SEXUAL STRATEGISING OF THE CONNIVING BOLEYN FAMILY BROUGHT SHARPLY TO LIFE
- MICHAEL BYRNE DIES AGED 36 AS TRIBUTES PAID TO FORMER GRAND NATIONAL JOCKEY
- Ukraine’s former Olympian weightlifter Oleksandr Pielieshenko killed in action
- FROM WHITE MISCHIEF TO BILL & TED, JOSS ACKLAND WAS AN ACTOR OF RARE POISE, RANGE AND PATHOS
- FOUNTAINS OF DIAMONDS THAT ERUPT FROM EARTH'S CENTER ARE REVEALING THE LOST HISTORY OF SUPERCONTINENTS
- ANCIENT HUMANS USED CAVE IN SPAIN AS BURIAL SPOT FOR 4 MILLENNIA, 7,000 BONES REVEAL
- THE MOODY BLUES FOUNDER MIKE PINDER HAS DIED AGED 82
- GOLD POCKET WATCH FOUND IN TITANIC SOLD FOR RECORD-BREAKING PRICE
- 5 CATASTROPHIC MEGATHRUST EARTHQUAKES LED TO THE DEMISE OF THE PRE-AZTEC CITY OF TEOTIHUACAN, NEW STUDY SUGGESTS
- FRENCH PALME D’OR WINNER LAURENT CANTET DIES AGED 63
- Norman Lear obituary
- AN UNHOLY TRAFFIC: HOW THE SLAVE TRADE CONTINUED THROUGH THE US CIVIL WAR
- QUEEN CHARLOTTE WAS ‘PERSON OF COLOUR’, MUSEUM CLAIMS IN LGBT GUIDE
- JEANETTE WINTERSON: I DIDN’T BELIEVE IN GHOSTS… UNTIL I STARTED LIVING WITH THEM
- ANCIENT HUMAN ACTIVITY DISCOVERED IN KILOMETER-LONG LAVA CAVE
- DNA ANALYSIS SPANNING 9 GENERATIONS OF PEOPLE REVEALS MARRIAGE PRACTICES OF MYSTERIOUS WARRIOR CULTURE
- LOST CITIES HIDDEN FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS DISCOVERED UNDER FOREST
- LETTER: ALAN ARKIN OBITUARY
- ARCHAEOLOGISTS CRACK MYSTERY OF ANCIENT MAYA AFTER 7,000-YEAR-OLD REMAINS FOUND
- NEW JERSEY REP. DONALD PAYNE JR. DEAD AT 65
Articles - Most Read
- Main
- Contact Us
- The science behind Ouija boards
- Cosmic Consciousness - What is Cosmic Consciousness-2
- Cosmic Consciousness-Introduction
- Cosmic Consciousness - Introduction-2
- MASSIVE 6.1 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE HITS NEW ZEALAND AS NATION STILL REELING FROM CYCLONE
- ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNRAVEL THE TRUTH OF APHRODITE, GODDESS OF LOVE, ON VALENTINE'S DAY
- The Human Condition-Thomas Keating
- Cosmic Consciousness First Words - 1V - 2
- Cosmic Consciousness First Words - V -
- Cosmic Consciousness V - 2
- Cosmic consciousness - First Words - IV
- Cosmic Consciousness - What is Cosmic Consciousness?
- Evolution and Devolution-Chapter 2
- The Human Condition - Thomas keating-3
- The Human Condition-2-Thomas Keating
- Drinking From The Mountain Stream - Milarepa
- Cosmic Consciousness-On the Plane of Self Consciousness
- The Human Condition - 4
- Cosmic Consciousness - 3 - On the Plane of Self Consciousness
- Evolution and Devolution-Chapter 1
- The Human Condition - 6
- Shakyamuni Buddha or India the 1st “Black Revolutionary Hero.”
- On the Plane of Self Consciousness - 2
- Milarepa's World
- The Human Condition - 5
- Milarepa's World-2
- The Buddhist System of Liberation
- Contemplation and the Divine Therapy - 2
- On the Plane of Self Consciousness IV
- The Buddhist System of Liberation - 2
- JERRY RAWLINGS, GHANAIAN STRONG MAN WHO CAME TO POWER IN A COUP BUT INTRODUCED DEMOCRACY – OBITUARY
- On the Plane of Self Consciousness IV - 2