I appreciate his words very much. We are too mouthy at times. Not enough stillness or silence. Yet, proclamation, stelling the story, sharing His wonders and deeds is core to our faith as well.
I know what most will say about the need to use our mind. Loo at his cautions below about exalting the mind. The transformed mind is not always the mind that is actually at work.
It is not either or. Rather, it is both.
"Presence is experienced in a participative way, outside the mind. The mind by nature is intent on judging, controlling, and analyzing instead of seeing, tasting, and loving. This is exactly why it cannot be present or live in the naked now. The Mind wants a job and loves to process things. The key to stopping this game is, quite simply, peace, silence, or stillness. I would even say that on the practical level, silence and God will be experienced simultaneously- and even as the same thing. And afterward, you will want to remain even more silent. The overly verbal religion of the last 500 years does not seem to understand this at all and tends to be afraid of any silence whatsoever. It cannot follow Jesus and go into the desert for forty days, where there is nothing to say, to prove, to think, or to defend.
Although we all use the phrase peace of mind, there is really no such thing. When you are in your mind, you are never truly at peace, and when you are truly at peace, you are never in your mind........
Yes, the mind is necessary, but it can't do everything.
Yes, the mind is receptive, but reason is not out only antenna. We also need our bodies, Our emotions, our hearts, our nose, our ears, our eyes, our taste, and our souls.
Yes, the mind can achieve great things, but through Over Control, it can also limit what we can know.
Yes, the mind can think great thoughts, and also bad and limiting ones. The mind can be a gift and a curse.
Yes, the mind can tell left from right, but it cannot perceive invisible things such as love, eternity, fear, wholeness, mystery, or the Divine.
Yes, the mind can discern consistency, logic, and fairness, but it seldom puts these into practice.
Yes the mind and reason are necessary, but they must learn to distinguish between what lies Beyond its reach; the prerational and the transrational.
Yes, the mind is brilliant, but the more we observe it, the more we see it is also obsessive and repetitive.
Yes, the Mind seeks the truth, but it can also create lies.
Yes, the mind can connect us with others, but it can also keep us apart.
Yes, the mind is very useful, but when it does not recognize its own finite Viewpoint, it is also useless.
Yes, the mind can serve the world, but in fact it largely serves itself.
Yes, the mind can make necessary distinctions, but it also divides in thought what is on divided in nature and in the concrete.
Yes, the mind is needed, but we also need other ways of knowing or we will not know well, fully, or freely.
Yes, the mind is good at thinking. But so much so that most humans, like the card, thing they are they're thinking.
Yes, the Mind likes to think, but until it learns to listen to others, to the body, the heart, and all the senses, it also uses itself to block everything it does not like to do or to acknowledge.
Yes, the mind is our friend, but when we are obsessive or compulsive, it can also be our most dangerous foe.
Yes, the mine welcomes education, but it also needs to be on educated, to learn how much of what it "knows" is actually near conditioning and Prejudice.
As a result, the great religions of the world found methods to compartmentalize, but not eliminate, the over control of the thinking, rational mind, through practices such as prayer, meditation, or contemplation this was the "new mind," which allowed
- 1. other parts of us to see
- 2. other things to be seen,
- 3. the rational mind to then be reintegrated, but now as a servant instead of the master.
- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now
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